back to article Adobe thinks outside box, nixes retail Creative Suite packaging

Adobe is moving ahead with plans to phase out the boxed, retail versions of its Creative Suite and Acrobat software families, in favor of a distribution model based exclusively on digital downloads and subscriptions. Word that the graphics software maker had set a hard date to stop selling its wares on physical discs first …

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  1. cynic 2
    Alert

    Gasp! So Adobe's odd policy of charging more for downloads than boxed media finally bites the big one.

    I'm astonished it lasted this long. Welcome to the nineties, Adobe!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Subscription

    What Adobe really really want is for everyone to be on their subscription cloud model so this is a first step.

    At the moment the "Creative Cloud" has quite good pricing, but many are suspicious that when enough people are hooked not only will they make subscription mandatory for all, but will whack the price up.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The likes of Google and Amazon with their online subscription services "in the cloud" are popular because they are inherently useful to the customer in that form.

    More and more, we seem to be seeing "the cloud" used as an excuse to convert software that isn't inately online to a subscription style service presumably to extort more cash and crack down on any piracy.

    It's doomed to failure really.

  4. Ketlan
    Thumb Down

    Rent or buy? Not a dilemma at all.

    The idea of renting software rather than buying it outright must be the biggest corporate wet dream ever but I'd expect consumers generally to tell them to shove it. I put this idea roughly on a par with 'the cloud': no-one is interested except the mega-corps that are flogging it to the suckers and the industry press who largely support the concept. While it's free, most people will use it. Even a one-off payment would leave most people happy. Try making the consumer pay forever and they'll disappear before you know it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rent or buy? Not a dilemma at all.

      While I appreciate being called a sucker (and I'm sure that Adobe appreciates being called a mega-corp; as far as economists are concerned they're probably classified as a 'small to medium business' or something) I take issue with your reasoning.

      Perhaps I'm an edge case, but here's my situation: I run a small business - only a few people. But I need to do a lot of content stuff - graphics content, photos, audio, video, web, print design, you name it. I subscribe to Creative Cloud because it makes my life vastly easier - say what you will about Flash and Acrobat (to an extent), but Photoshop, Indesign, and Illustrator are by and large rock solid and are the class of the field. I've tried FOSS alternatives - quite a few of them - and they don't measure up. The time lost (at least for me) in difficulty of use, instability, and the lack of features is too costly.

      So I pay $600/year. After four years I'll be paying more than I would have otherwise - but by then chances are there'll have been upgrades that make it worth my while anyway. And given the size of my business and the way cash flow works, I'm a lot better off with a consistent small hit than I am trying to find 2.5gs to blow all at once.

      Not only that, if I *do* find FOSS alternatives (or others) within four years, I can drop CC and still come out ahead.

      It also gives me the opportunity to try things other than my main applications (PS, ID, AI, PR) that I might not have been able to justify buying outright otherwise (Audition and After Effects, say).

      I'm not terribly worried about content lock-in; if my business stops being able to afford fifty bucks a month, having access to my Premiere source files is probably not going to be a major priority. And either way, I'll have a month or so to convert anything I won't be able to access in 'source' form (PSDs, whatever).

      Yeah, ideally, it'd be nice to own the lot outright, and I can see a significant downside *overall* if the whole business switches to this paradigm; $50/month is fine for CS, but what happens when it's $50 for CS, $40 for Visual Studio, $20 for the OS, $10 for this, $15 for that... And, of course, there's the issue of resale: At the moment, the poor-of-wallet can still grab old versions of things on the cheap and sacrifice some functionality for the ability to do stuff at all. While I understand the business case for a subscription model that avoids that, it strikes me as a Bad Thing overall socially, and possibly bad business long-term, as potential customers don't get to learn your environment on the cheap.

      On the other other hand, one could argue that bad pricing and uber-lockdowns are a good thing on balance: If piracy becomes untenable and pricing unreasonable, people in situations such as mine will be more likely to move to - and contribute to - promising-but-unpolished options like Scribus (which was tantalizingly capable but infuriatingly buggy, with major but boring features missing but arcane options like Sanskrit scripting available in spades).

      IMO, what it comes down to is this: A subscription software model is no more inherently good or evil than a pay-once model. Accusing vendors of evil and customers of idiocy is a vast and unfair oversimplification.

  5. h3

    They are not as bad as Nintendo when it comes to downloads.

    i.e all 3DS Nintendo 1st party games are £39.99 on the eshop. (Zelda was £19.99 once never seen any other discounts on it). All the games are £30 or less from e.g Amazon. You can get it for £38 from the one site that sells codes.

    (Japan seems to be dealt with better as usual).

    1. Rukario

      Nintendo

      Japan is dealt with better because if the Japanese gamers were treated the way that NOA treats us, Shigsy would have been forced to commit public seppuku.

  6. sandholme
    Thumb Down

    Three DVDs for the master suite, that's probably 10GB+ even if they're only single sided or possibly 25GB+. Those of us with 500kb/s lines would still be downloading this weeks later, not to mention busting our data limits. Looks like CS6 is my last version.

    1. Peter 48
      Stop

      not really

      at 500kb/s it would take you all of 5.5 hours to download 10GB worth of data. hardly a major inconvenience. let it run overnight and you would have the software faster than ordering the dvd online.

      1. Graham 24

        Re: not really (bytes vs bits)

        10GB is 85899345920 bits, so at 500k bits per second, it would take 171798 seconds, or 47 hours, to download.

  7. Schultz

    Renting software...

    ... might mean that all content you create will be locked away if you stop the subscription. That's a wet dream that might lead to quite a hangover (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

  8. Michael Habel

    Why do Downloads cost more?

    Simple Ya gotta remake back the loss on the Postage & **Packing**.

    Implying that this practice doesn't happen anywhere else where the On-Line Price is on the Face of it ~cheaper~ till ya factor in what the Shippings gonna be. By which time your paying the in store Price, if indeed not in some cases more. Plus having to calculate the delay to it actually arrives, and if you're extra special lucky you'll get some dipshi-- Driver that can't find your House 3 days in a row too...

    In the case of Amazon are you downloading the Software ~from them?~ are do they just give ya a Valid Key and tell ya to go and get the package from Adobe?

    If its the former then Those Servers aren't free. If its the latter then yeah I'd call shenanigans...

  9. Decrapifier
    Thumb Down

    The Second Thing That Adobe Should Shove...After Flash

    Bill Gates is merely abusive and greedy, not brilliant. The creep made his fortune because of his lawyer's (father's) shrewd advice: Get the suckers (IBM) to sign a lease (licensing) rather than purchase agreement.

    Adobe wants the same kind of income stream.

    In line with Microsoft's B.S. of "Software Assurance," Adobe's recent policy change that forbids upgrades (cheaper prices) to customers not on the latest versions of Photoshop was the first kick in the groin. This is the second, unless you're one of the fools who bought into Flash development (For you, it's the third. No, wait...it's the fourth, if you have experienced Adobe's faulty, feature-deficient Flash follow-up built on top of jQuery, Adobe Edge.).

    I hope that the mostly asleep public revolts against this rewarmed attempt at renting software. Remember when this Salesforce-scented, "ASP" (Application Service Provider) sewage was pitched a decade ago as a replacement for purchased desktop software free of expiration (and, in most cases, "Activation" crippling)?

    Professionals had better start striking out now. Hit Adobe in the wallet, because that's all the company understands. The same goes for Microsoft.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't mind a digital store, what I do mind is a digital store that would sell to selected countries. Going by the list of countries on there site ( https://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayStoreSelector&nr=1 ), people from many countries aren't allowed to buy a legitimate digital copy. And now that the physical copy option is taken away from them, then Adobe will no longer have the right to complain about piracy of their products in those countries.

    A friend of mine wanted to buy a copy of an Adobe product (didn't ask which one), after having trouble getting either the physical or digital copy, he settled for asking a friend in the US to create an account and buy it for him. I still think he made a mistake by insisting to buy the product after the trouble he was put through to acquire it; but he said that he didn't want any trouble with the updates.

    Adobe isn't the only digital store with this "selected countries" policy; almost every large software company have this same policy: you can only buy from the regional office... if they had one! Even Microsoft will not sell Windows 8 to certain countries, not even 3rd party phones running their OS have made it to those countries!

  11. MachDiamond Silver badge

    I'd rather own it.

    Ok, it is actually a perpetual license but I'll pretend that I own the software that I buy. My worry about the online "rent" arrangements is that I am relying on having access to the internet everywhere I go to use the software. As a photographer, I am in loads of places where I don't have access to the internet but I still need to get work done. What happens at home if my internet goes down or theirs? What do I do if they send me a notice accusing me of sharing my serial number and disable my account? I've had this happen before on some eBay seller software and never got it resolved with the vendor. I never received a refund either.

    Having software that is always up to date with the latest upgrades sounds like a good thing, but how many times have OS upgrades been released only to find some massive bugs when it is used in the real world? I have a tendency to be conservative when it comes to my production computer. I like to wait a few days or a week after a new update has been released so I can check the blogs to find out if there are any bugs that will affect me before I take the plunge and install it myself. I used to play more with beta software and 0-day updates on a secondary computer, but I don't do much of that anymore so I can go outside and play more. With the online subscription models, you have no control on whether you upgrade your software or not. You also do not have the option of reinstalling the last stable version from original disks so you can get back to work and deliver to your customer. I used to freelance for a major news service and requirements for event photos was often times a maximum of 45 minutes after the end of the event to have pictures uploaded to the photo editor. It could be an expensive day to be locked out of Adobe Lightroom and miss the deadline (not getting paid and losing points with the editor). We should also consider that with the current crop of "3 strikes" or "6 strikes" or "no tolerance" copyright abuse enforcement (aka, customer loss programs) the wide availability of wi-fi hot spots and other internet availability options may start drying up. Hotels may also want to limit their liability by choking internet speeds to the point where checking email and perhaps getting directions from Google is all that can be accomplished in an hour online. Anything that would require high speed access will be near impossible except from a business, home or a cellular account with a data dongle.

    Online subscriptions may be a good idea to allow people to rent software that would otherwise be too expensive to purchase for their application. In the business world and especially for people on the road, an online subscription model might be far too expensive.

    1. fung0

      Re: I'd rather own it.

      Thus spake MachDiamond: "...how many times have OS upgrades been released only to find some massive bugs when it is used in the real world?"

      It's actually worse than that - not just a question of bugs, but of actual malice. When Microsoft foisted WGA on Windows users as a "software update," I turned off auto-updates on all my software. And have never looked back. There is no way I'm going to give any company the authority to modify software on my computer - simple as that.

  12. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Not for the first time Adobe dances to Apple's tune

    Apple axes Flash for their platform, Adobe axes Flash for all platforms. Apple axes DVD drives for their platform, Adobe axes DVDs for all platforms.

    In both cases if Adobe had asked the professionals who use their products they might have decided differently...

    1. Steve78

      Re: Not for the first time Adobe dances to Apple's tune

      Adobe are a business and they will do what's best for their bottom line. So many millions of users are tied in to their products that Adobe knows it can get away with offering subscription-only software. I personally don't see it as a big issue as long as the cost is reasonable. I also would rather subscribe to things annually rather than pay monthly instalments, I would hope that Adobe gives users the option.

      I think the real reason is to cut out the resellers. Adobe wants to be the only 'go to' place for their software. To be honest, if I was running Adobe I'd be doing the same thing! Why give others a portion of your income when there's no real need to do so? The only major downside is that Adobe can then decide to charge what they want. Of course if it's too expensive then you don't buy it, no once forces people to spend their cash. Adobe will soon change their tune if sales significantly decline.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Not for the first time Adobe dances to Apple's tune

        MS has also decided they can go it alone without resellers and knock OEMs on the head. It's debatable if it's been a success so far.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. tempemeaty
    Mushroom

    Never mind what the user actually needs.

    Have to go to the cloud now at gun point? Looks like having no choice is being swiftly delivered by Adobe. I guess all the monopolies like Adobe and Microsoft are feeling empowered to do as they will to you, it's the cloud or nothing soon. Never mind what the user actually needs. Most American households are suffer with those "average" horrible broad bands speeds they have. Can I put my boot up Adobes' bum now? Please?

    Oh and Apples premature discontinuance of Optical discs and Adobes' apparent love of this. They both can stuff it.

    1. N3214

      Re: Never mind what the user actually needs.

      Read the article. You aren't being forced "to the cloud now at gun point". They're discontinuing boxed products, not buy-once products. Even if they were, so what? You can stop buying their product if you want to. Take the $1000 you would have spent on Photoshop Extended and donate it to GIMP or Paint.Net.

      I've only ever bought the downloads myself. Even on my slow 1Mbps connection it only takes overnight, which is still way faster than waiting for it to ship from Amazon. I haven't used my CD drive for anything except movies in years.

  15. Callam McMillan

    Does anybody actually buy Adobe software

    I thought a huge percentage of the running copies of their stuff was pirated?

  16. Rambler88
    Meh

    1) Since Shuttleworth took Linux out of the running as a possible general-purpose user OS, walled gardens are looking more profitable for the long run.

    2) If, or when, software makers go too far in abusing subscription systems, pirating software will become respectable, and the hacker infrastructure will evolve to meet the need for user-controlled software.

    3) One thing that won't happen, of course, is the development of real open-source alternatives.

  17. KenJ

    Its even better for Adobe than is first seen. Boxed software sold through distributors / retailers nets Adobe someone where between 35-40% of the retail price. By going online download only, Adobe captures all the product revenue and avoids manufacturing and inventory expense. Not so clear what the benefits for the consumer is.

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