[Talking Madness]

Thanks, Mike.

[Talking Madness]

Tim,

Your opinions are held in high regard by me. I agree with much of what you said, but have a few slightly different POV’s in some areas.

[Tim Kolb] “When FCP cost a thousand dollars American and Premiere cost four hundred, Premiere was thought to be a toy…this at a time when FCP didn’t even have audio level indicators in v1 for crying out loud. Adobe has chosen to take Premiere Pro to a different level of user…there’s no way to maintain it for the price-sensitive user while building the application’s capabilities. That’s why Premiere Elements was invented.”

Are you saying Adobe was justified in a higher price just so the perception of their product would be as a more professional suite?

[Tim Kolb] “It seems pretty right FOR Adobe as far as I can see. Can you upgrade Word outside of Office? No. Microsoft drove their competitors out buy bundling and putting all their applications in your hands at once…making you less interested in buying another spreadsheet or data base because you already have one. You can like it or not, but marketing-wise, it appears to be working pretty well.”

The upgrade path from Video Collection Premium to Production Studio Premium seems to be alright (still a bit expensive in my mind, but fair enough). However, the upgrade from Standard to Standard is a fiasco — you pay $499 and lose two of your applications (Audition & Encore).

You can like it or not decisions are not what inspires confidence in a company or its products. A better marketing angle would have been to include Audition, Encore and Photoshop for free (talk about something that would’ve gotten some people to switch over) in the new Standard suite. I can hear the marketing and sales people groaning right now about giving Photoshop away in the bundle, but it wouldn’t really be free for most people here since we already own it as a part of other suites. Heck, I bet everyone serious enough to commit to Production Studio already owns a copy of Photoshop — it would be a zero sum game for consumers and Adobe.

[Tim Kolb] “Other than for the forseeable future you have to buy a Mac that’s most likely more expensive and has less torque than a comparably priced PC with apps like AE…the Intel chips will help that so we’ll see how that goes. We have a Final Cut system in our facility. I honestly don’t see what the big differences are other than if you are a Mac person, obviously it’s the only game in town.”

Don’t overlook the fact that many people are starting from scratch, or at the point where they’re buying a new computer to handle the demands of a video editing system, so the notion of having to buy a Mac won’t be a factor for everyone. With the production Studio Premium being $400 more than FCP, some will view this as a $400 discount on the price of a new Mac.

[Talking Madness]

This thread has strayed a bit from the original question, but that’s OK. As someone who was waiting with bated breath over what Premiere would release I gotta say I was a bit let down for several reasons.

1. The price is too high leading to a general sense that Adobe is taking advantage of me.

2. The upgrade path is non-existent. I feel like Adobe is trying to get people hooked on their other products so that they have too much invested to change. All companies do this, but it just seems wrong this time from Adobe.

3. There seems to be nothing here that’s gonna stop people from switching to FCP (in fact the price and upgrade path I’m sure will make some people finally make the switch to FCP). I want more of a feeling that others out there are gonna be joining the Premiere party, but it seems like everyone is checking out. This is a gut feeling, but I bet some of you have it too.

4. Too much concern on making the Adobe apps work together and not enough attention to making them work with the rest of the industry workflow standards.

I truly like Adobe, but I think they’re getting too greedy.