I wonder what this part means:
"Because of this we have no plans to change our focus on Creative Cloud. We understand this is a big change and for customers who are not yet ready to move, we will continue to offer CS6 products through our reseller partners and Adobe.com."
It could be understood as a decision to continue selling the boxed version.
This would put an end to most short term concerns.
Cheers,
Bernard
The whole Adobe blog post is so carefully worded and contrived, it is somewhat excruciating to think about how many levels of sign-off it went through to appear on a "blog". The "YET" part in the above quote is interesting - it would appear to imply, in a somewhat patronizing tone, that resistance is futile. You can continue to purchase CS6 until you finally give in and subscribe ... which we know you will do, just maybe not quite yet - but you really don't want to wait too long or you will be left behind in the vapor trail of the Cloud.
I also received the email inviting me to participate in the online survey and I took great pains to be objective and informative. I pretty much also commented that I was aware of the CC, understood Adobe's pitch, trialed the CC for free and that I had no plans to subscribe or purchase Adobe software in the future as a result of the emphatic insistence on a subscription-only model with no ability to retain access to software that I had paid to subscribe to once I terminated the subscription.
Hopefully the execs cede some of the piloting through this storm to the goodwill ambassadors at Adobe that are able to bridge the newly formed chasm between the loyal users and the long-standing reputation of Adobe creative products. The perception of Trust has been steamrolled and that makes even loyal people unwilling to listen to too-little-too-late. In the end, a cynical Adobe may just ride out the storm with unflinching blog post "updates" and anticipate the mass acceptance of the inevitable after the hoopla has died down.
Fascinating as always. Unyielding and patronizing on the outside with a soft, gooey center implying that maybe they would like to know what registered users of their products actually think about their decision. As Mark says, it will be interesting to see what they come up with to deal with the current state of affairs - but really, given no plans to change the focus on the Cloud, will the solution be to offer some token free Cloud storage or 6 months of free subscription as a peace offering? Would loyal users be that stupid to interpret that kind of offering as a solution to any of the current complaints and criticisms? What calculation would yield the requisite number of free subscription months to mollify an angry user and convince them that the Cloud subscription is worth it? It will be interesting indeed to see how this shakes out -maybe the Adobe execs and PR machine can use the CC to arrive at a creative solution.
kirk
