Mikehit said:
Is it just me or are there pretty strong parallels between what Adobe is doing and how Canon develops its cameras? ...snip...
Only if Canon:
Made 2 cameras, a Pro and a Pro-er model
Which do not function unless constantly connected
Many of the buttons will change functionality every 5 months
And you must make monthly payments to keep it functional
payments = (MSRP cost of new camera, in dollars)/(length of update period, in months)*(service markup, unitless)
with service markup > 1
Incoming rant, feel free to ignore.
In the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Adobe (or AutoDESK, or Microsoft, or pick a current software as a service company) would do a periodic, expensive version update. In order to get their clients to update the software, they would have to think of something new, exciting or at the very least useful to a large part of their user base. If the new version had no benefit for you or your organization, it would be skipped. That was immediate, solid (i.e. monetary) feedback to the software company that perhaps this isn't what our users want.
Now with the subscription model, you still end up paying for that periodic update, broken up into monthly payments, but now the software company doesn't have to give much, if any consideration to what their users want or need. Feedback is now soft and financially delayed, "The users are revolting. So? The users have always been revolting." They have you captive. If I was cynical, and I am, Adobe can now puppet whatever new feature they come up with as "The features our users DEMAND", with users = marketing department.
Bang out an update full of shovelware, you don't need and/or want it?
To bad. You have to install it.
Change the interface and workflow, possibly dramatically?
Too bad, suck it up. This is our program, our house, our rules. You don't own it.
Jack up the monthly price for 'reasons'?
Too bad, give us our money. If you don't like it, the door is over there, and by the way, we have all your work right here, and you can't access it any longer.
The subscription model makes perfect business sense, mainly from Adobe's perspective, for tax, budgeting and other considerations. Especially if you ignore the fact that you will pay more in the long run for software that you use, while exposing your work to new, trending and exciting modes of failure that you have little or no control to resolve or mitigate.
I do photography for a hobby, but with a vast majority of my photos going to support the work that I do. (photographs of things broken, overall layout of sites, spatial orientation for the guys doing the on site work etc.) Which means I have until I decide to get a new camera to find a replacement for Lightroom. I find that annoying since I'm used to the way Lightroom operates.
If my job was directly photography related, I imagine I would be in some elevated state of seething rage. Not only would my job depend on the usual skill set (Customer relations, photographic skill, resource management etc.) but now with the added worry of:
...
/end rant
