[David Lawrence]

[Kevin Monahan] “You are going to have to ask them directly. Again, I’m only the support guy around here”

Fair enough. BTW Kevin, I just want to say thank you for your ongoing presence and support on these forums. I imagine it’s been a rough week for you guys and I understand a lot is completely out of your control.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Kevin Monahan] “Get your questions answered about Premiere Pro CC tomorrow from 6-7 PM PST. “

Thanks for the pointer. Are any of the team empowered to address licensing issues?

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Ann Bens] “No. DL only works between apps from the same bundle.”

Not the answer I was hoping for. Thanks for clarifying, though.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Steve Connor] “Magnetic billing, sticks on you forever”

LOL! +1

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “At some point, you have to do the work now to prepare for the future. They couldn’t make awesome new CS7/CS8/CS9 releases while simultaneously developing an awesome CC in secret and unleashing it fully-formed. They also couldn’t throw out a few crummy CS7/CS8/CS9 releases because they were focusing all their energies on CC.”

Agreed. But my point is they don’t have to make separate releases to have a perpetual license. A perpetual license would simply give you unlimited use of the applications you purchase frozen at their current state when you download them. No feature updates for a year. If you want the new features rolling out thru-out the year sooner, join the cloud. This isn’t rocket science.

[Walter Soyka] “I understand where you’re coming from. I had advocated for perpetual licensing plus maintenance, which I think would have met your needs nicely. “

Absolutely!

[Walter Soyka] “I really like the Adobe toolset, and I want to see Adobe do well. If CS was bad business for them, then I’d eventually suffer if they continued with it.

Of course, if CC is bad business for their customers, then Adobe will suffer, which would lead back to me suffering. I don’t want to suffer, so I hope this works out, or gets worked out!”

Yes, me too! I want a win-win for customers and for Adobe. I’d much rather be telling everyone how much I love Adobe’s software than how much I hate their business model.

[Walter Soyka] “That said, we’re both in favor of making the CC offering better so it works for more people. The more feedback, the better. Let’s talk about it here, but let’s also not forget to send it where it actually gets tracked:

https://www.adobe.com/go/wish/“

Indeed!

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “I think what’s really going on is Adobe is working on their next generation of tools.

Maybe they can figure it out, but I can understand how the goals of CS and CC are different enough that splitting effort to produce both would satisfy neither.”

No doubt they’re developing their next generation of connected tools. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. But that’s in the future, we’re talking about now.

Ironically, Adobe is going out of their way to assure potential customers that you *don’t* need an alway on internet connection to use Creative Cloud. Talk about a muddled message! When you tell your customers the only reason they need the internet is to make sure they’ve paid the rent, don’t be surprised by the reaction.

From a development standpoint, there’s no need to split efforts between perpetual and rental. It’s absolutely trivial to implement and the foundation already exists. Here’s just one way it could work:

Right now when you sign up for Creative Cloud, you have two options:

1) 30-day trial
2) Activate membership

All Adobe needs to do is add a third option:

3) Full license (or whatever the marketing people want to call it)

In all cases, you enter your credit card number. If you choose option 1) you get to try the software for 30 days, then after 30 days you return to the activation dialog and can choose from options 2 and 3.

If you choose option 3, you’re presented with a dialogue that allows you to enter a serial number from a previous version of CS. Your price for the upgrade depends on the serial number. You then have perpetual use of the software in its current state. You account is flagged so that you do not get any upgrades as they roll out. A year later, you again return to the activation dialog and can choose from options 2 and 3. If you choose 3 you pay the upgrade cost and catch up.

At anytime, you’re free to sign up for Creative Cloud membership from your perpetual license if a compelling feature is rolled out and you want it now.

In each of these three cases, development is exactly the same. In each of these three cases, download is exactly the same. The only difference is a single one-bit flag on the users account that determines whether they get feature updates during the year.

It’s absolutely trivial to implement.

Honestly, this is exactly how I thought they would roll this out from everything we heard during the year. I’m blown away by how they could get something so simple so wrong.

What would make Creative Cloud worth it to me? True networked collaboration features. Adobe Anywhere offered as a service, hosted by Adobe. That’s the kind of value I need to buy in. That’s not what they’re currently delivering.

[Walter Soyka] “For whatever it’s worth, I like that Adobe is going to stand behind CS6 for some time to come. You do still have a choice, even if it’s not the choice you want.”

Yes, true and if I was exclusively a Photoshop/Illustrator user, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The design tools are mature, robust, and do every thing I need. I’d stay with CS6 and that would be that.

You can be sure a lot of people are thinking that way.

My problem is I need Premiere Pro. And more specifically, I need this Next version of Premiere Pro that addresses all the major workflow bottlenecks.

So I’m looking at all my options. And I’ll continue to speak out to Adobe.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Walter Soyka] “You can’t own the Internet. You can’t own social. You can’t own connectivity. These things are not products you can put in a box, or on a disk, or in an installer with a serial number to sell once, forever. “

Thank you, Walter. I agree with everything in your post and I too am excited about the possibilities of the connected future. But I don’t think that’s what Adobe is selling. Yet.

I find the syncing/social features in the current Creative Cloud offering shallow and of little value to me personally. Anywhere looks to be transformative, but it will be a while before it’s available outside of enterprise. As far as I can tell, there is nothing intrinsically connected about the functionality of the current CC suite.

Until the network is an inextricable part of the software experience, I would say it’s premature to call it a service.

Right now, the only reason the network is required is to make sure you’ve paid your monthly rent. All other network functions are optional. It’s really not a service, it’s software that phones home every month for an authentication check. I don’t see the added value.

I think Adobe would have a better marketing case for Creative Cloud if their networked vision was more fully realized and its value intrinsic and undeniable. Until then, there’s no reason why they couldn’t continue offering perpetual licenses along with Creative Cloud.

Why not offer both? If renting truly is better, the service will sell itself. I think the fact that we’re not being offered a choice is a clue to what’s really going on.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’ll have a longer response later, but to be ultra clear: I did not mean to suggest to GTFO of here, it was to GTFO of there

I meant for you to GTFO of a “crappy” situation.

I am sorry of it came across any differently.

Thanks so much for writing up the response.”

No apology needed, I understood exactly what you meant.

You’re welcome, and I hope my response sheds some light on why I would consider walking away from Adobe defeatist right now. I’ve already walked away from Apple. Walking away from Adobe would be a lot harder. I love what they’re doing with software. My problem is with the licensing model – something that can be fixed with the stoke of a pen. I think if enough customers like myself put pressure on Adobe, management will eventually listen. I keep saying this because it’s true – they have may ways of making a win-win.

I look forward to your response and more dialogue later.

–dhl

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David Lawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “If CC was $20/mo indefinitely, would it ease the transition?”

Ease? Maybe, but it doesn’t address the main issue.

[Jeremy Garchow] “With all due respect, defeatist is a strong word.”

Compared to GTFO? Really? 😉

[Jeremy Garchow] “It just seems that CC isn’t it worth it to you. If it isn’t worth it, why waste time on it?”

The software is totally worth it to me. My problem is with Adobe’s radical new business model.

[Jeremy Garchow] “I would like to hear more. Please explain.”

Sure. I have a pretty long view on the digital revolution. I wrote my first program in grade school in the 60’s. It was a simple Fortran loop that output a picture in ascii characters to a line printer. I programmed it with punchcards and it ran on a mainframe.

I remember seeing a demo of the IMSAI 8080 at a homebrew club. How the guys described hand loading BASIC by flipping the toggle switches on the front. I was fascinated.

I read Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib/Dream Machines” and dreamed of world of infinite creative possibility through digital media.

Back then, the only way to access to real computing power was on a mainframe.

What inspired guys like Woz and Jobs?

It was the idea that instead of renting time on a mainframe, you could buy your very own computer. A “bicycle for the mind”. A consciousness amplifier. A personal computer.

The rest is history, right?

I bought my first computer, an Apple//e in college and learned everything I could about it, programming in assembly language and building custom hardware I/O to make art. It became my medium instead of painting or sculpture. One of the reasons Lucasfilm was interested in me was because my degree was in art, not computer science.

I still have that //e, btw. And it still runs everything.

So this is where I’m coming from.

Personal computers transformed industries and society by enabling the individual to own means of production that previously were completely controlled by centralized powers. You buy a computer, you buy the software, and you do whatever you want with the system because it’s your system.

Software rental flies in the face of this notion. Once again, the central powers want to own the key part of the system and rent it back to you. It’s ironic that Adobe – the company that single-handedly transformed the publishing and pre-press industries by making the means of production own-able by anyone – are leading the charge back to the old days when you had no choice but to rent.

Even Microsoft thinks it’s too early for such a seismic shift:
https://bit.ly/12jQoRy

Computers are useless without software. If you don’t own the software, you don’t really own the system.

While the argument that you never really “own” software may be technically true, in practice, ownership is recognized, even by Adobe. For example:

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/transfer-product-license.html

If you don’t own it, why do they let you resell it?

I want to use the best, industry-standard content creation tools available. I believe Adobe continues to make these tools, just as they have for decades. I want to pay them for those tools. After I’ve paid a fair fixed price, I want to be able to use them as I please without them going poof. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. From the many hundreds of comments I’ve read online all over the net, I’d say 90% of the people commenting seem to agree.

Adobe has many options for a win-win. We know their engineering teams listen to their customers. Now we get to see if management does as well.

Do you own a laptop? Or a personal computer? If so, why did you buy it instead of leasing it? Software is no different.

I know you like to say it’s all about the money. While that may be true for you, it’s simply not true for everyone. For some of us, there are much bigger issues at play here.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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facebook.com/dlawrence
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[David Lawrence]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “Educators, independents, and artists tend to have a very different relationship to their work and its future. They’ll assess tools differently in light of those values.”

[Jeremy Garchow] “And colleague to colleague, if the Cloud really doesn’t make sense, GTFO of there and find something else that does make more sense.”

Well said, Franz.

That’s when I bristle at the suggestion if I don’t like Adobe’s new licensing model, I should GTFO. Sorry, but no. That’s a defeatist attitude. I want something better.

Sure, I’ll absolutely be keeping my eye on every competing option. I’ll also continue to use my existing Adobe tools. And for the first year before they double the price, I’ll check out the Cloud to evaluate Premiere Pro. After the year’s up, I’ll decide what to do next. Meanwhile I’ll continue to let Adobe know how I feel. This is a far bigger issue to me than just one companies’ business model. I believe software rental goes against the core values that created the personal computer to begin with.

_______________________
David Lawrence
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facebook.com/dlawrence
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