Adobe Abandons Creative Suite, Announces Full Switch to Creative Cloud

[Joachim Hoge]

http://timelapse.org/2013/05/adobes-creative-monopoly/

As they say in this article: CS6 is now so mature and feature rich that it´s hard for Adobe to come up with "must have" upgrades often enough, so they figured out a way to get a steady stream of income. If they only had been honest enough to admit that and not pretend it will make it easire for their engineers to focus.....

 

[Brian Merlen]

Well I doubt CS6 will support Dragon, so right there boom, we all need to upgrade if we want the new color science support...

 

[Jack Stenner]

So here's the impact on education. In a single lab we have 20 machines with the Master Suite. The not-so-creative cloud costs $40/machine = $9600/year....every year!
Our permanent license price is $11,180/year and historically we upgrade every other year, effectively costing us $5500/year. In years with budget cuts, we at least have the option of skipping an upgrade to keep going, no more......this is ONLY good for Adobe.

The GIMP is looking better every day!

 

[Charles_Z]

Do any of you honestly believe this will deter piracy (copyright infringement)? The scene always releases CS versions with patched host files to stop the software from "checking in" with Adobe every so often.

This just hurts the honest customer who wants to own a perpetual license and may upgrade their version only every other (or third) release.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Pros:
...
-updates are free
-multiple systems (2 I believe) run at the same time

cons

-Must pay to play

I think these pros and cons contradict each other, no? The updates are not free. You pay for them, and you no longer have the option NOT to pay for them.

It will be interesting to see how often upgrades come and how significant they are when Adobe no longer feels the pressure to release a new full version in order generate income.

As for the multiple systems, The current licensing permits for installation on two machines. By rights the end user is not supposed to be running both at the same time. There is no new benefit being offered on that score. The cloud just enables them to better enforce that portion of the agreement. After most folks have made the transition, expect to see the online callbacks to increase in frequency from once a month to something more frequent.

 

[Brian Merlen]

If anything adobe should flood the market with virus enabled bootlegs if I were them... Once upon a time my friend had a cracked FCP7 that would corrupt your project files...Key was it only did this like the third or fifth time you opened the project. That way you could get really far into the edit before your toast lol!

 

[Dave Blackham]

So here's the impact on education. In a single lab we have 20 machines with the Master Suite. The not-so-creative cloud costs $40/machine = $9600/year....every year!
Our permanent license price is $11,180/year and historically we upgrade every other year, effectively costing us $5500/year. In years with budget cuts, we at least have the option of skipping an upgrade to keep going, no more......this is ONLY good for Adobe.

The GIMP is looking better every day!

Id agree for education and also for professional users. Im not so concerned about cost Im very concerned about the direction this will go if and when internet connectivity is needed to run the software. Also about the configurability and interoperability. Ive no issue about paying for upgrades but I don't want it working via some sort of Adobe cloud. I tried to contact Adobe today, I have to say the company were even unwilling to connect the call to a representative, if they cant even do that how on earth can any support be expected to professional users. Im not impressed.

 

[Angelo Lorenzo]

After a lot of research, I can really get on board with this. Especially being a RedUser, constant updates on the post side of things will be welcome.

My only concern that I haven't seen responded to yet was with Plug Ins. Will AE and Premiere Cs6 Plugins work, will they have compatibility issues when upgrading the software? Etc...

The biggest hurdle was the 32-bit to 64-bit architecture switch for Premiere and AE. Since CS5, the SDK for plug-ins has been relatively stable so I don't foresee any issues over the next few years of plugins breaking completely due to an update unless Adobe also has to work around some major OS update.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

I just saw this from Adobe:

For those enterprise environments, there is (already) a system that acts as an activation server, so the individual computers just contact it for activation information. This requires the system administrator to have access to the Internet on at least one computer---but that is a requirement that every enterprise meets.

http://mograph.net/board/index.php?showtopic=28489#entry209362

So, there will be an activation server for enterprise environments that do not allow workstations to have direct Internet access.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well it seems that partner resellers will get to offer the plans at discount prices. I'm already seeing prices roll in and it looks like the best deal for me is to forget about the CS ownership first-year discount. It only applies to one person/ seat anyway. And to buy from one of the resellers at their discount rate. These deals are not locked in for the first year, you can sign up at that rate and it's good until Adobe decides to change pricing. Makes the most sense for the Teams variant. I don't need much, but I need two seats, possibly three.

...I kinda wish this whole cloud fad would just fuckin' die. I think people and companies will back off of it a bit once the masses realize that "the cloud" is not some magical IT wonderland, but could be anywhere -- often in someone's garage, basement, janitorial closet, etc.. Most cloud services are garbage anyway and of little value. By and large, most internet connectivity is too slow and cloud storage is too costly per GB to be useful for anything serious.

I think going solely to Creative Cloud for licensing and distribution is just fine. But in addition to the subscriptions, I would really like to see a persistent license option that lets us keep using whatever software was available at the time our subscription ran out. Essentially once the term is up, we can keep using, but can't download any upgrades or call in for support. I'd also love to see them allow the ability for one license or seat to install on up to 3 computers. 2 is great, but 3 is more practical. For a lot of independent users it can mean office, home and laptop. Or Mac, Windows and laptop. Even if this came at a premium, but less than buying two full seats.


People keep saying that one of the reasons Adobe is doing this is to combat piracy. Yeah, right. If anyone, at Adobe or elsewhere, thinks this is actually going to stop piracy, or even have a noticeable impact on it, then LOL... that's all I have to say.

 

[Kwan Khan]

If anyone, at Adobe or elsewhere, thinks this is actually going to stop piracy, or even have a noticeable impact on it, then LOL... that's all I have to say.

another LOL

 

[Sergio Perez]

...I kinda wish this whole cloud fad would just fuckin' die. I think people and companies will back off of it a bit once the masses realize that "the cloud" is not some magical IT wonderland, but could be anywhere -- often in someone's garage, basement, janitorial closet, etc.. Most cloud services are garbage anyway and of little value. By and large, most internet connectivity is too slow and cloud storage is too costly per GB to be useful for anything serious.

I think going solely to Creative Cloud for licensing and distribution is just fine. But in addition to the subscriptions, I would really like to see a persistent license option that lets us keep using whatever software was available at the time our subscription ran out. Essentially once the term is up, we can keep using, but can't download any upgrades or call in for support. I'd also love to see them allow the ability for one license or seat to install on up to 3 computers. 2 is great, but 3 is more practical. For a lot of independent users it can mean office, home and laptop. Or Mac, Windows and laptop. Even if this came at a premium, but less than buying two full seats.


People keep saying that one of the reasons Adobe is doing this is to combat piracy. Yeah, right. If anyone, at Adobe or elsewhere, thinks this is actually going to stop piracy, or even have a noticeable impact on it, then LOL... that's all I have to say.

Agreed. The persistent license option could be more expensive on the signing. And the user could just pay for the upgrades. That sounds fair.

 

[Thomas Mathai]

If a DI facility is working on studio projects, they get audited by the MPAA on their security measures. One of the things they have to do is keep the production network separate and offline. This is to avoid any leaking of material online.

IMO this is a non-trivial issue. Does anyone think connecting to the web is going to get safer going forward? Amongst the folks I hang with I'd say 90% keep their primary editorial/DI boxes offline and use a laptop and USB sticks to load updates between projects. Is this just paranoia fueled by urban legend or a past "incident"? Perhaps, but I'd hate to be near the end of posting a long form project and have to risk the exposure of going online, and, potentially, having the software auto update in such a way that it creates a conflict.

Hopefully Adobe has already looked at this issue and at the very least offers the option to toggle off any operations beyond authentication, though, as Brian notes, that might not be enough to overcome set policy at some installations.

Cheers - #19

 

[Ben Scott]

Just popping in to say

Adobe's move to the cloud-only service will cost people in the UK £46.88 per month for the full suite of applications. In the US that cost will be $49.99 per month.

It's an absolute pisstake they way we get charged over here. I'm already looking for alternatives.

 

[Joachim Hoge]

In Norway it's 489,- NOK, $85.
The price has always been close to double over here when it comes to Adobe. It's a joke

 

[Jeremy Wiles]

I've been an Adobe way back in the day when Adobe wasn't cool. It's the only editing application I've used (10 years). I'm not going to start paying a monthly membership! Adobe has the chance to keep this train wreck from happening, but I hope they're reading these posts. They're on the verge of becoming a huge failure like Final Cut X.

 

[Joachim Hoge]

I've been an Adobe way back in the day when Adobe wasn't cool. It's the only editing application I've used (10 years). I'm not going to start paying a monthly membership! Adobe has the chance to keep this train wreck from happening, but I hope they're reading these posts. They're on the verge of becoming a huge failure like Final Cut X.

And Final Cut X is on the verge of becoming a huge success again. (Just a shame they don't have any proper hardware to use it on)

 

[Gary Paul Walker]

Just popping in to say

Adobe's move to the cloud-only service will cost people in the UK £46.88 per month for the full suite of applications. In the US that cost will be $49.99 per month.

It's an absolute pisstake they way we get charged over here. I'm already looking for alternatives.

Yup, it looks like Adobe are trying to get the 50% off they gave migrating FCP users back.. and then some.

 

[Brice Ansel]

Just popping in to say

Adobe's move to the cloud-only service will cost people in the UK £46.88 per month for the full suite of applications. In the US that cost will be $49.99 per month.

It's an absolute pisstake they way we get charged over here. I'm already looking for alternatives.

Maybe Resolve could become the alternative, they are smart enough me think.

 

[Brian Merlen]

Although I don't like the move on Adobes part AE, PS, and the like are industry standard and those will be much harder for people to ditch than say Ppro... Personally I am going to start using resolve and already use Avid more than Ppro. I'll keep my CS5 suite around on the back burner, but I hardly use it now anyway... Without Scarlet DSMC support and wanting to wait on upgrades until cs7 came out, I found myself not using the suite much, now probably not at all. I don't do AE compositing but I know a lot of post people consider it an important app, wonder if they will move away. I mean lets face it, Maya, Smoke, Flame, ain't none of them cheap...AE is a major driving force in the adobe suite..