I am guessing that you are one of our much-valued and respected "transatlantic cousins", Simon. But, here in UK, it is a well-established and frequently proven business principle that the company that carefully researches customer needs - and then sets out to accurately meet those needs - will, in the long term, be the most successful. Unfortunately there are odd exceptions, particularly in oligopolistic situations such as power suppliers, but, generally in a mature economy, paying rather more attention to customers than is currently evident with Adobe does pay dividends (pun intended).
Well, on my side of the Atlantic (the Eastern side) as on the other side, it is usually the case with public corporations that their primary duty is to make a return to their investors. Some companies - often non-profit companies - have specific aims to provide a particular service (maybe a stated public good) as their primary role, but this is not the case in general with public companies. That's not venal capitalism, nor is it cynicism, it's the law.
In order to maximise that return to investors, generally speaking (in a competitive market) companies find that they need to satisfy their customers. As you say, successful companies are very often the ones that satisfy their customers the most. But if they lose sight of profits in pursuit of customer satisfaction, they won't be around to provide that customer satisfaction for very long. Either they go bust, or their shareholders will punish them, possibly replacing the management, or leaving the company open to a take-over by someone that will make profit a higher priority.
You may think that's cynical, but it's not: it's how business works.
The issue here is
not whether Adobe is putting profit ahead of customer satisfaction: of course they are, and so they should.
Rather, the issue is whether they're doing it right and providing sufficient customer satisfaction to maximise profit, or are damaging customer satisfaction by mismanagement or overcharging in a way that will not maximise profitability but reduce it.
I agree with all you say about researching and meeting customer needs. But making a profit comes first, or you can't meet customer needs for very long.