When creative cloud was very first released, it was excellent value. I was actually quite supportive of Adobe's initial SaaS strategy. It was well and truly a "why would anyone ever pirate photoshop ever again?" type of product.
Fast forward a decade and that $19.99/mo product has become $89.99/mo and the value prop has plummeted on top of it. The big difference today is that instead of people returning to the high seas and continuing to use adobe software, they are just moving to different ecosystems -- procreate, davinci, foxit, etc.
> When creative cloud was very first released, it was excellent value. I was actually quite supportive of Adobe's initial SaaS strategy. It was well and truly a "why would anyone ever pirate photoshop ever again?" type of product.
This is the entire issue with these kinds of things. They always launch at a good value because they know they can capture the market. Yes if they were benevolent or whatever it'd be fine, but these things almost ALWAYS turn into cluster fucks.
They couldn't launch at worse value than the current product line because they need full adoption before they can put the screws to you.
Or you do what everyone else does, which is force everyone to adopt the SaaS model by revoking their licenses or otherwise bricking the software.
That's why it's important to own your own data in a way that can be reused and adapted when they try and screw you later. You see this all the time with video games nowadays. Everyone wants their own launcher and subscription services.
You can "own" a copy of Adobe's software (like earlier Creative Suite DVD versions) but then Adobe essentially bricked them by killing the activation server.
Interesting. I just installed a copy of CS4 Design Premium and InDesign CS5.5 without issue. Looks like CS5+ still has live activation servers, and CS4 didn't seem to care that its were gone.
"CREATIVE SUITE 2, 3, AND 4
You can no longer reinstall Creative Suite 2, 3 or 4 even if you have the original installation disks. The aging activation servers for those apps had to be retired. "
I know, I read that too. And I also have an official boxed copy of CS4 Design Premium that I installed from the DVDs, which loads and works without issue. Weird!
I don't think I tried with anything older than CS5 stuff, but blocking the program in the firewall and putting in any valid CD key (people posted them online) worked flawlessly.
I assume it worked this way so people with airgapped machines could still be sold the software.
An activation-free version of CS3 was available for about a year after the activation shutdown. You had to create an Adobe account, provide your original serial number, and get a new offline installer and new offline serial number to use with it.
Source: have Offline CS3 Master Collection and use PS CS3 daily to clean up my flatbed scans https://i.imgur.com/8tS8ced.png
I recall they used to have a free Photoshop CS2 download on their site with the activation removed. Strictly for existing license owners of course, but anyone could download it ;-)
This is honestly why I advocate for pirating software.
I purchased it once. So long as I don't make copies and send it to people I should be allowed to use it no matter what.
If the distributor no longer provides the software, or does not allow activation, I should be allowed to use any and all means to make it usable.
Any software that is no longer sold, should be free for anyone to get, by any means, regardless of prior legality.
Reminds me of an issue I had recently with Milkshape 3D. I needed to re-acquire some old 3D models out of an old game. But their service does not appear to work anymore.
100% agree. I would also add an explicit exception to the DMCA. Cracking copy protection on software you bought legally because the copy protection has failed in a way that prevents the software from working should be legal.
That's sadly why I stick with Windows. I am perfectly comfortable in Linux, but I know my next place of work will inevitably throw Windows hardware at me. And some vital professional tools only have Linux support in the most superficial stance.
But yeah, trying to make sure anything else I have control over.
And we keep falling for it, too. Folks on HN and elsewhere are fawning over Fusion360, despite Autodesk having a long history of being worse than Adobe and pulling the rug on individual features more than once.
People spend thousands of dollars on 3D printers or CNC mills, but the idea of spending several hundred bucks on "buy-to-own" software is so outmoded...
The other reason you have all these subscription models is that they obscure the total cost of ownership. Spending $300 on photo editing software seems like a big commitment. Paying $20/mo for a decade is easier. But when you add up Creative Suite, Office365, Xbox Game Pass, Spotify, Netflix, Squarespace, and whatnot, it's all of sudden a big chunk of your disposable income.
Every corporate leader has the opportunity to "bring value" to the company by upping the subscription fee a few dollars. Profits increase, shareholders are happy. Better than trying to solve twenty year old bugs or worse, refactor legacy code.
agree but I would reverse the cause and effect.. launch great experience on the web+cloud to gain traction.. then Because it is so Easy to Do It, change the terms of service, the benefits, the longevity, the billing practices, the prices.. etc
IMO pathetic to see a well-loved brand degenerate in the public.. especially while Apple counts that cash (and ways they ran rough over their former "friend" )
If I am reading the post you're replying to correctly they're saying that maybe it's not that they launched with a good value prop with a plan to screw you later, but rather that because the initial launch went so well and everyone says what a good value it is that maybe the SaaS vendor says to themselves, 'screw it, we're delivering so much value, let's raise prices'. But I agree that there's little difference between the two ultimately.
Adobe did not "capture" the old single license sales customers, they are just walking away from them.. any way they can, into the cloud.. the results look similar but thinking about the power dynamics that drive them, here...
what I meant to say is.. that the driver to launch a great experience is first, then it is easy and tempting to change the cloud terms.. not compared to the deal you get with desktop purchase.. not because you captured the single license customers with better deals in the cloud.. but because the cloud is just so easy to change, the money so tempting..
maybe the anecdote.. when Apple stopped caring so much about the desktop, after the iPhone.. they did not "capture" the single sale customers.. they just walked away to focus completely on the new, more profitable model
For people who hate or simply can't justify the subscriptions, big shout out to Affinity suite v2. Currently 50% off at $83, permanent universal license for Mac/Windows/iPad
That includes Photo/Designer/Publisher, which are competitors to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign respectively.
It's not a drop-in replacement and if you're collaborating with other people who are in Adobe-land then you'll need to stick with Adobe too. But for people who occasionally need an image editor for solo work and have been priced out of all the Adobe products, it's a solid option.
One caveat is they're now owned by Canva, things haven't gone to shit yet but they might in the future.
Another caveat is that if your workflow requires dealing with complex text layout on a regular basis (e.g., Asian languages), Affinity suite support for it is pretty much non-existent. For example, lack of a working right-to-left support, no vertical text support for CJK, broken tone markers handling in Thai layout, lack of complex word-break for any languages that is not space-based, etc.
Sadly, Adobe is still the only option in the market for this.
It's really striking to see two things in this thread: (1) complaints about price, and (2) repeated (cjk, lightroom library management, a half dozen other things) that Adobe offers features that have no competition. Feels like Adobe is charging for being the sole provider for various features that people need.
Photoshop has been around for 34 years, even if they jacked the price up to $500/month nobody would be able to show up with feature parity to compete for 100% of their customers right away. It's a heck of a moat.
Sure, but the thread is also full of people claiming Adobe is rent seeking. Charging a high price for differentiated, unique features that competitors haven't replicated is not rent seeking. That's just capitalism.
I expect the previous versions to stop getting compatibility updates which is a bigger problem on macOS than Windows, but that's the deal with buying a license vs monthly subscriptions.
It's so much cheaper that I'll take that trade any day. I'm guessing v3 will be an eventual AI focused update since that's an area where they haven't tried to compete with Photoshop in v2.
But you can keep using your previous version after you stop getting updates. With Adobe you have to keep paying, even if you don't care about updates anymore.
Exactly! I will say that Adobe still does add features to the CC subscription[1], but the things I spend 90% of my time using in CC haven't changed all that much in the past decade. I'd be OK with continuing to use an older version. I only have a CC subscription because it's what my employer uses. If we all used Affinity instead, I'd be perfectly OK with that and we'd have more money in the bank.
[1] Contrast that to a company like Salesforce, which charges every year for its core product then adds most of the interesting new features to outside products with separate subscriptions.
And that cost per month is for a 12 month contract that if you try to cancel early will require you to pay 1/2 of the remaining contract to get out of it. You cancel on day 32... that'll be 5.5 x your monthly payment to cancel.
Adobe makes all of this insanely hard to understand and fully grasp as a consumer. It's also almost completely unique in software licensing. I tried to find out when my current 'contract' was up a couple months ago and it was nowhere in their website account section nor in the Adobe Creative Cloud app on my PC that I could find. I had to call them and wait something like 30 minutes on hold to find out.
I wound up getting an extremely discounted rate for a year, but I now know the date it will end and have set reminders to cancel before and have begun transitioning to DaVinci Resolve now and will start transitioning to Affinity soon.
Not for students.
CS6 single product was up to $250, CS6 DS $350, CS6 MC $800 compared to CC 1st year $240 increasing to $360.
If you only needed a single product you were off worse after one year. Even doing a bachelors which required all products would have been less expensive with the one time fee if you had the money.
Back in the day (a decade ago) you would go to the lab which had Autodesk/Solidworks/Matlab/Adobe/$expensive-software installed instead of buying it for your personal (and probably underpowered) device. It was one of the few things that your tuition actually paid for.
And you'd have to learn time management to make sure you could get your project done on time instead of crunching at the last minute, because the lab would be filled with people who didn't.
Our lab used to let you remote desktop in for that stuff, but it was unreliable at best (especially during project crunch times) because anyone physically at the lab could kick you off your computer by unplugging it. Was still really nice to have if you were letting a rendering run overnight.
On the Autodesk side, they give out free access to student accounts, so I had that stuff both in the lab and on my home computer.
They should release a home-user version with some restrictions unpalatable for commercial use - eg. "Can only edit 5 files per month" or "All edited images get non-commercial use licenses attached".
Or even "May only be used during evenings and weekends".
I had forgotten that they offer the 'Elements' range where you can buy Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements. These are stripped down versions of the full software, but they are not subscription. You pay once, you own it.
Or even better it could run on credits. 100 credits per month, and then various things in the software cost a credit each. Load a file = 1 credit. Save a file = 1 credit, etc.
You could even turn this into an ecosystem by itself, so instead of buying or 'renting' the software users are buying credits to actuallyt operate the software.
Newer features like AI could cost more credits up front.
There could be sales on credits etc.
I think there's multiple downsides, but the biggest one is that it makes it a massive pain in the ass for any price-conscious users to decide whether it's worth paying for.
Right now if I want to install some software to edit images on my PC, I can look at how much Photoshop costs, how much rival 1 costs, and look at Free Alternative 2, and decide what I'm willing to pay.
But under your scenario, I have no clue how much more (or less) expensive Photoshop will be than the paid or free alternatives, unless I can first forecast all the individual steps that will be needed to do the editing I have in mind, and then spend time adding up each action's costs to get an idea of the total price. Not only would it be extremely hard to accurately list every action that would be needed before actually doing them, but even if I thought that were possible then the amount of hassle would be a big enough deal breaker that I just wouldn't be willing to bother with it.
> it makes it a massive pain in the ass for any price-conscious users to decide whether it's worth paying for.
The goal would be to dissociate the software from the price/value. It happens when people are enticed to get loyalty points for things like grocery purchases. No one would move if the deal was "save 30cents" but they would for "and get 300 bonus points!" (See McDonald's or every other loyalty system).
Entire ecosystems have been created around inflated point value too.
Adobe should just call them "Adobe points" and make it essentially a digital currency that can also be used for stock photos, etc too. Or maybe even for cloud computing for fast render farms of your increasingly complex video/3Dworks. Heck, it could be blockchain based too (AdobeCoin?)
They're already trying the kind of "buffet" model with their cloud subs. Maybe they can shift to a credit system to encourage other users.
Looks like they do it per day per user, so 1 token allows 1 user to use the software for 1 day. Really good idea for licensing teams to use expensive industry software IMO
> Somebody please show me a downside to this model?
For whom? The user? It's an absolute clusterfuck. Always online video games have already done this shit, and it's been a nightmare for the end user, and that software doesn't do anything "important".
Can you imagine not being able to open or save your file because the servers are overloaded? Or getting charged a premium at the end of a long day because you weren't carefully counting your credits and you need to save your file?
I was just suggesting that something like this could be offered alongside existing models, and so offer a cheaper alternative to people who only want to edit a few files per month.
>Can you imagine not being able to open or save your file because the servers are overloaded?
This happens all the time in business since the world moved to the cloud. Microsoft is down? No opening or saving office files, say goodbye to email. Amazon down? Your website is now not currently taking customer orders.
> not being able to save a file you've worked on because you ran out of credits would be a serious issue.
Yeah I agree with that, I think I went down the wrong path with credits = individual functions. Ive since seen that Autodesk does a credits system where tokens are used for time using the software. I think thats a much better idea than mine.
I've been on the $29.99 full Creative Cloud plan for over 2 years. I got it as a Thanksgiving offer in 2021. Just last month they told me the deal was over and I needed to pay full price. I went to faux-cancel and they gave me 2 free months, but I still need to find a way to get a reduced price again.
> Fast forward a decade and that $19.99/mo product has become $89.99/mo and the value prop has plummeted on top of it.
Counterpoint - most management teams undersell their sales relative to what the market is willing to pay them. Adobe is figuring out where that local maxima is (still).
> they are just moving to different ecosystems -- procreate, davinci, foxit, etc.
Are they though? Source?
These figures would suggest otherwise:
Year Active Subscribers
2013 1.4 million
2017 12.0 million
2020 19.5 million
2021 22.0 million
2022 24.5 million
2024 29.5 million
For the longest while, Adobe charged Canadians in USD despite having an entirely Canadian version of the site etc. It meant that the price of the software varied each month!
It was well and truly a "why would anyone ever pirate photoshop
ever again?" type of product.
Nah. Lightroom is/was the primary Adobe product I used. Pretty much the only new features they've ever introduced that meant anything to me revolved around supporting new cameras. At $80 for a perpetual license it was great because I rarely upgrade my camera bodies. Aside from supporting new cameras the only other worthwhile to me feature Adobe's introduced was a 64-bit installer. Yeah, LR 4.4 was a 64-bit app, but the installer remained 32-bit because Adobe is that lazy or greedy.
None of that justifies renting the newer versions from Adobe. Were I using LR professionally I'd just have buy something capable of running Windows 7 and keep it air gapped instead of upgrading.
Sadly, as bad as Adobe is, they still way ahead of the competition. Some come close with photo editing capabilities, but nothing touches Lightroom for library management. DxO comes with a rootkit (and has for years). DarkTable and Raw Therapee suffer the open source curse of mediocre (yet strongly opinionated) user experience.
I was one of those who wasn't supportive back then, because it was pretty clear where things would go from there. They wouldn't switch for a subscription model to earn less money, that was sure.
And being a quasi monopolist meant keeping working with that old CS6 version was less and less of an option. So what are you going to do? Complain? Suck it up?
Even back then it was clear they are going for the slow-warming-the-water temperature-till-it-boils-strategy.
honestly, i found a solution for this. it is a little unethical, but is as unethical as them forcing me to never be able to unsubscribe (there's only a short time where you can unsubscribe once per year). i have a card that i use only for recurring subscriptions, when one of the recurring subscriptions gets problematic, i first block the card (this is important!) and then delete it and create a new one. this way they can not continue to charge me.
if you don't block it, they may be able to use the associated card payment token to charge you even after the card has been deleted. on one of my banks i can even see the associated tokens and delete them individually.
they can sue me, sure, but nobody will do that for 10€/month.
It is 100% enshittification. The definition is even in the linked article:
> Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, (..)
The core point here is "abuse the user", not "make features worse". Price gauging would be included in that definition.
Are you sure you read the article? The very first sentence of the article is, "Enshittification is the pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products[.]" (Emphasis added.) If the quality remains the same, or improves, it's by definition not decreasing, and therefore not enshitification. Furthermore, as other people pointed out, this is a reference to two sided marketplaces.
Just because there's a new buzzword, doesn't mean it applies. In fact, it usually doesn't.
Enshittification usually refers to companies that run two-sided markets ("platforms"), like rideshare and delivery apps. Adobe raising prices on everyone isn't really the same thing. Enshittification works by first subsidizing everything for everyone, then alternately squeezing the sellers and buyers on the platform by increasing their cut and raising prices. It's about playing a game where you alternately squeeze one side or another of a marketplace that you control.
Adobe doesn't really run a platform, they're selling a product and finding ways to raise the price.
I don't think any of that stuff really follows the definition as quoted though. That definition is all about a middleman squeezing buyers and sellers. That people use it to mean "any scummy business practice that uses lock-in or corner-cutting to squeeze customers" doesn't make those uses fit that definition.
That stuff is not new, enshittification was coined to refer to the relatively new ways that platforms started to squeeze people.
The original word is really just descriptive of the unpleasant side of optimization you see in commerce.
Walmart finding the minimum product quality they can sell is no different than Facebook finding the maximum number of Advertisements people will tolerate.
> "I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them." (emphasis mine)
All I'm saying is that citing back to the original definition (which is talking about platforms) does not bolster the case that what Adobe is doing counts, because it plainly doesn't fall under that definition. Adobe is not running a two-sided market. For it to be enshittification you need to use a much more expansive definition. Which is fine, but in that case you can't cite the original definition!
In his own words the enshitificstion of Google is: “curse of bigness.”
> With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, “growth” has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.
Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much.
How did a company like Unity — … — turn into a protection racket?
So, while he may describe Enshittification as platform decay he’s not limiting its use to such.
> Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).
I am not saying he is using it to say ‘things are getting worse’ but rather ‘things are being optimized in ways we don’t like by large companies’ which is meaningfully different.
However, because he’s using ‘platforms’ so broadly it’s not just marketplaces but basically any business. It’s hard to draw a meaningful circle around Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Google, and Unity that excludes Walmart’s online store.
They subsidized things for everyone by turning a blind eye to personal piracy for so many years. They got entrenched as a defacto standard, and then they started tightening the vice.
It's enshittification. Why defend a multibillion dollar corporation who doesn't care about you one bit?
I'm not defending them, I'm saying that their behavior is probably a different sort of bad. There are lots of ways for companies to extort consumers, they can't all be "enshittification".
If enshittification is anything a company does that involves delivering a worse product for more money, that's fine, but then it becomes a less useful concept.
My attitude in general is that diluting useful ideas to the point where they encompass an entire vibe is unhelpful. If anything anti-consumer a company does is enshittification, the causes are so disparate that solutions seem impossible. If you draw a tighter boundary around it, you can try to nail down causes and solutions.
The point I mentioned isn't enshittification by itself so much, but combined with the predatory dark patterns, I personally consider it enshittification as a whole.
Fast forward a decade and that $19.99/mo product has become $89.99/mo and the value prop has plummeted on top of it. The big difference today is that instead of people returning to the high seas and continuing to use adobe software, they are just moving to different ecosystems -- procreate, davinci, foxit, etc.