Adobe doesn’t get a lot of love these days. Or maybe they do, but I don’t see it because I no longer subscribe to the magazines that usually cover their software, no longer receive any of their marketing e-mail, and don’t keep up with the websites (such as Lynda.com and CreativeLive) that present online seminars and tutorials.
Today, I am going to give them some love. I am going to thank them for something they have inadvertently done for me.
First, a little background.
When Adobe announced its Creative Cloud subscription model a few years ago, it changed the way people would buy its software. No longer would Adobe offer what it called “perpetual licenses”—i.e., the way that most of us traditionally buy our software, in which you pay for a disk or download, and then you can use that program for as long as you want.
With Adobe software, that had always been an expensive proposition, especially for those buying in for the first time. Although the cost would depend on which program or package you purchased, even upgrades still required an outlay of several hundred dollars.
The Creative Cloud subscription model requires a monthly fee. Again, the cost depends on the program or package you choose, but that monthly fee entitles you to use the latest version of the software—without the traditional wait of one or two years for the next version.
The catch? You have to keep paying the monthly fee if you want to keep using the software. If you stop, you’re screwed.
There was a brief period during which Adobe continued to offer the traditional “perpetual license” for the Creative Suite. After tax season in 2013, I ponied up for the CS5.5 Master Collection; because I purchased it after Adobe announced CS6, I was able to upgrade for free.
Three weeks later, Adobe announced the end of the Creative Suite. From then on, it would be the Cloud or bust.
At first, I was upset about this. I much prefer owning the software I use. I did not like the idea of having to pay a monthly fee that seemed more like ransom—“send us the money, or you’ll never see InDesign again!”
Adobe would float special offers my way for a while—half off the usual amount because I was a registered CS6 customer—but I refused. It was the principle of the thing.
They would make a big deal of the latest features added to Photoshop or InDesign. Nope. Not gonna do it. (Or, as Dana Carvey’s George Bush would put it, naaa gaaa daaa!)
Today, I realized that, however unintentionally, Adobe did me a huge favor. Yup, favor. By discontinuing the Creative Suite in favor of the Creative Cloud, Adobe enabled me to break my dependence on the software-upgrade cycle—and the computer-upgrade cycle it sometimes entails.
Because Adobe introduced such an odious licensing method for its software, it forced me to be happy with the version I have. After all, except for the rare update, I would no longer have the option to upgrade to the next version in order to get a bunch of cool new features that would mostly go unused. Because I would not constantly be chasing the newest version, I would no longer have to worry about whether or not my computer had the capability of running it in the first place.
Not only was I saving hundreds of dollars in upgrade costs, but I was also spared from having to spend three thousand dollars on a new computer every four or five years when the software would suddenly require a newer, more powerful processor in order to run.
This change in my attitude towards software has extended to other programs as well, even though nobody else has switched to a subscription-only licensing model. I use Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, even though a newer version (Office for Mac 2016) is available; I simply see no need to upgrade. I use OS X Mavericks on my six-year-old MacBook Pro; I did actually try Yosemite and El Capitan, but found that they slowed down my computer too much. Now that I’m back to Mavericks, everything runs smoothly.
So, thanks, Adobe. Your blatant disregard for the needs of many of your customers has actually made things better for me. I appreciate it.
Ordinary Average Thoughts 
This is relevant to me as yesterday unbelievably I cancelled my Adobe cc license. And I can tell you it is not an easy process. First of all I had only wanted to sign up for a year. But what happens is that after a year you automatically get signed up for another year. With fifty percent cancellation fee of the annual amount of you decide to stop anywhere in that year. Which is what I decided to do. And what a process to cancel. You have to speak either an agent (live chat or phone call), and the agent is obviously incentived to do anything to keep the credit card payments. I was offered multiple free months if I decided to continue (free months for software I already said I don’t use), or wouldn’t I rather love a photograph app (‘the best photo app’) for only $9.95 on a new annual subscription. It took more than ten minutes to cancel my subscription, and I still got hit with a $60 cancellation fee because I opted to not pay 4 installments of $20 and 3 months free for the remaining 7 months of my second annual subscription which I didn’t want in the first place!! Gosh, glad I’ve got that off my chest.
I’ll admit that I was often tempted to give it a try. In the end, I simply couldn’t justify adding to my monthly expenses, especially since I don’t make all that much as it is. #PoetProblems
It adds up, every month I see twenty dollars for a product I don’t use, and yesterday I was charged $60 more on top of the $20 the previous, that’s eighty dollars for nothing! Obviously if I wa using it, then it would be different. But what gets to me is how hard they make it to cancel, being offered free months, annual photograph subscriptions etc, ten minutes for something that should be a two second cancel click.
Yup, that’s what happens with a monopoly. I also very briefly considered switching to Quark 10 for my design/layout needs, but gave up in frustration less than a couple of hours after working with the trial edition. It turned out to be very unintuitive to work with; I figured that being stuck with InDesign CS6 (which I do like using) forever wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Except forever is a long time!! 🙂 I hear you.
Reblogged this on Passion through Poetry and commented:
I wanted to do a post yesterday on the odious process of cancelling my Adobe creative cloud license, here is a relevant post and my comments:
This is relevant to me as yesterday unbelievably I cancelled my Adobe cc license. And I can tell you it is not an easy process. First of all I had only wanted to sign up for a year. But what happens is that after a year you automatically get signed up for another year. With fifty percent cancellation fee of the annual amount of you decide to stop anywhere in that year. Which is what I decided to do. And what a process to cancel. You have to speak with an agent (live chat or phone call), and the agent is obviously incentivized to do anything to keep the credit card payments. I was offered multiple free months if I decided to continue (free months for software I already said I don’t use), or wouldn’t I rather love a photograph app (‘the best photo app’) for only $9.95 on a new annual subscription. It took more than ten minutes to cancel my subscription, and I still got hit with a $60 cancellation fee because I opted to not pay 4 installments of $20 and 3 months free for the remaining 7 months of my second annual subscription which I didn’t want in the first place!! Gosh, glad I’ve got that off my chest
The only problem with not upgrading is eventually your software will poop out on you and they will not longer be supporting that software. Then you pretty much have to upgrade. It may take months, or it might take years, but nothing works forever. Unfortunately things these days are designed to be obsolete in a few short years.
Haven’t had any problems yet. Besides, software doesn’t wear out. Either way, until they change the way they do business, Adobe has lost me as a customer for any of their new products. I get along fine with CS6 and Lightroom 5, particularly since I have never used all of the available features (or even all of the CS6 programs).