Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Makes Products Harder to Use, More Expensive
An anonymous reader writes "This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package. It seems that Adobe has decided to go they way of Intuit's TurboTax last year and add activation to their products. Legitimate users are up in arms. For Adobe, they follow the steps of other companies, macromedia, quark (who coincidentally shipped their entire engineering offshore) in the graphics biz. Now since in theory they'll be making more money, I hope at least the price goes down (oops, it did not, looks like the upgrade price even increased)."
Perhaps if we don't update there get the hint
all the other products requiring "activation", someone will release a hack and there unbeatable, perfect scheme to get people to stop piracy will fail.
There is only 1 way to stop piracy.....
DROP THE HIGH PRICES ON SOFTWARE!
Simple enough.
It's widely warez'd, and I think that's part of the reason it's the industry standard. So many people get their start using photoshop on a pirated copy. If that weren't the case, I don't think Adobe would have the market share that they have now.
Being bastards like this will probably do them more harm than good.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
I have a problem with product activation because it puts too much control into the software publisher's hands over how I use the software I've paid for. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to need to reactivate. I want to plan my software and hardware upgrades according to *my* schedule, not some vendor's. Fortunately, some companies are already learning hard lessons about product activation. Check out this story on Intuit: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinv estor/hellweg/
The company I work for bought a program called Stream Anywhere from Sonic Foundry a while back. It's great. We use it on every streaming media production that comes out of our video edit suite. But Sonic Foundry doesn't sell it anymore and they were just bought by Sony. Will Sony issue me a new activation code in the future if/when I move to a new computer? Will they even keep the key-generator around for an end-of-life product? What if I upgrade my computer in two years and I need to reactivate but they can't or won't give me a code?
We also spent $6,000 on a product to let us sync PowerPoint slides to live streaming video. When you install it and run it for the first time, it wants to connect over the internet to register. When we installed it on a different machine that we bought just for this purpose, I had to call them and talk them into letting me activate it again. This isn't an activation code -- it actually talks to their servers to activate.
What do I do if this small vendor goes out of business and I have to reinstall Windows for whatever reason? Am I just SOL? I wouldn't be able to reactivate even on the same machine because of the method they use. This isn't as much an issue with someone big like Microsoft or Adobe, but smaller companies usually follow ideas of the larger companies. I could see in a few years where everything from big commercial apps down to small shareware programs require activation.
Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS or Windows XP several years down the road when there's a newer verison out? Or will they refuse to reactivate it and tell me I have to purchase a copy of whatever newer program they are currently selling? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later. They have everything to gain yet the customer stands only to lose.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm writing to Abode to let them know I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation. Most importantly, I'm going to vote with my wallet (and my company's wallet where applicable).
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
"or more" is right much, much more. Sadly, Photoshop has gone from being just "very expensive" to being one of the most absurdly overpriced pieces of software around. If it was *just* $100 I'd sure buy it - as it is, I'll make do with cheaper alternatives.
Product activation in my experience too often gets in the way of non-infringing use. When I buy a new computer, or a just new hard disk, I want to reformat my old hard disk and reinstall all of my software on the new one.
Most pirates won't dare use pirated software for commercial purposes. They can lose it all if caught. And most non-commercial users aren't planning to buy photoshop in the first place. In this rare case, software piracy BENEFITS THE SOFTWARE COMPANY. The result is more people know how to use photoshop when entering a commercial environment, which is when they are most likely to make a purchase. Otherwise, there are many alternative products that amatuer users can get their hands on without a high initial investment, like Paint Shop Pro eval and the Gimp, and they will prefer those alternative products in the workplace.
Existing versions are pretty good. I see no need to upgrade unless they add some great new feature that turns the entire industry upside down.
The GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop.
No it's not. GIMP for Windows (and possibly for all platforms?) can't (won't) save as GIFs. That's a pretty big gap for a product that professes to be an alternative for Photoshop!
It is free.
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price?
The bus is cheaper than my car, but you don't see me on the bus, do you? I could wipe my ass with last week's newspaper, but I'll spring for the toilet paper instead, thanks. "Free" doesn't automatically mean "better." I could eat dirt for free, or chicken for a couple of bucks. Hmm...
With that unbeatable price, you even get the source code !
Do you think the people who buy Photoshop give a shit about the source code? Do you think they even know what "source code" is?
If there's a bug, you can do the debugging yourself.
I've been using Photoshop for several years now, and haven't found a single bug. The few days I spent fighting with the GIMP, on the other hand, it crashed several times. But hey! I've go the source code, and it was free! I can spend days and days fixing it myself, instead of earning the tousands of dollars I would otherwise have earned from the graphics I could have been designing! Surely that's worth the $900 I saved, right? Not!
Plus, if you think you wanna tweak the code to your own liking, you can do it.
Photoshop already has more features than I know how to use. I'd rather use the software as it is to create products I can sell, rather than donating my time improving a sub-standard product for free.
With photoshop, you don't get the source code.
Yah, that's a big deal. I think that's what's hindered Windows from gaining widespread adoption. The lack of source code. That must be it. Windows could've been huge, if they'd only included the source code.
Plus, if you want a legal copy, be prepared to fork over your hard earned money.
Do taxi drivers bitch about spending money on the car they use to earn their living? Do airlines consider stealing the airplanes to use to earn their revenue? Do mechanics bemoan the few hundred bucks they spend on their tools, so they can charge you $80 an hour to change your oil?
Here's a clue: when you use something that costs $n to perform services that can bring you $(n*100) per day, you don't bitch about the $n. Saving the $n isn't even a factor. The only thing that matters is how easily and quickly it allows you to perform theh tasks that earn you the dough.
You definitely don't spend your valuable time fixing bugs and making the "free", sub-standard product functional, while your customers wait patiently for you to take their orders.
Also, if you find a bug, you can't do anything about it, because you are at the mercy of Adobe.
We're up to version 7, pal. All major bugs are fixed. All minor bugs are fixed. We're in the "continuous improvement" phase now.
So why are you using Photoshop ?
Because it's stable, works, is affordable, generates money for me, has a wealth of published materials documenting it, is supported, mature, reliable, and well-known.
Download GIMP now !
Uh, no thanks. You have fun with your buggy little "free" toy. While you're busy implementing features that should already have been there and fixing bugs that never should have made it into the "stable" tree, I'll be taking care of your customers.
You won't regret it.
Spring for the professional software that lets you forget about all the meaningless things like tweaking the hundred-thousand line source code and focus on delivering what your customers want.
You won't regret it.
Stay in school, kid.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
This is bigger than Adobe. What happens when the smaller vendors start using product activation and aren't so generous? What happens when those small vendors go out of business and you're left with useless software? We need to fight this now before the smaller software companies see the larger software companies doing it and jump on the bandwagon.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
It's true that Panther and Jaguar have no features to help out a product that's trying to add product activation - actually, I don't know that Windows XP even has a framework for that yet.
But just because the OS does not help the app writer do something, does not mean they cannot do what they like within the app. After all, they have the code - if they really want to they can have the product require the use of the internet and talk to the company to allow you to run it every time. Product activation is a less extreme example of this where if the system changes much it demands to get an OK from "Big Daddy" as it were to let you run the thing. Any app could do that, most choose not to.
So buying a mac does not necessarily protect you from product activation - though you could say that as a group, Mac users would probably be far less likely to accept activation and so they may decide it is too risky in that market. Since every user of XP by definition supports product activation (well, ok not the guys running pirated copies) it's a lot easier to just throw it into a product as you know the backlash will not be as significant a percentage of customers.
I don't like product activation from a consumer perspective of course, but to me the bigger crime is the resources it takes to develop by a company, for zero gain. Every time a company tries something like this there are always cracked copies without the protection floating around. So since activation does not really gain you anything in terms of stopping piracy why waste a companies valuable cash reserves and technical expertise on something so pointless? Instead they go to extra expense to hope that they will not drive off more than 10% of the instal base.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So I'm Joe Average user and I get home from work on a Friday to find out I've been hit by this nasty new virus. I spend a while trying to fix it, but can't. I call up my friendly neighbourhood computer shop who tells me he wants 3 figues to fix it and he tells me it may end in a format.
I decide that I can backup my stuff myself and as I have disks for all my software, this isn't too big of an issue. So I format, install windows and with a new sound card find myself on the phone dealing with product activation. That's frustrating as it's past midnight and the phone lines aren't staffed as well as they could be.
This by itself is frustrating......but imagine this is the norm....imagine I have graphical software, tax software, a few games and several apps...all paid for and all requiring activation. How happy do you think I'd be?
As long as activation isn't the norm it's not too big of an issue...more of an inconvenience....but it has the potential of being much more of a problem in the not to distant future.
While we're at it let's just toss those letters of objection about European software patents and wait until we actually have software patents that are causing problems. No need to chase non-existant "what if" scenarios.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
There is no "open source alternative" for Photoshop, After Effects, or most of the other high end Adobe products.
Not yet, but I think many people underestimate the open source movement. As Taco Cowboy pointed out, proprietary software is continually distancing itself from the end users. More and more people are turning to Open Source, and it's not going to stop because it is FREE!
There will eventually be alternatives for the products you mentioned as well as others. Eventually people are going to be sick of shelling out money for things that they can do for free.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Normally, dongles are used with a very low volume, specialty software. Crackers are not interested in such software; imagine, for example, a package to control a sophisticated CNC or some industrial robot. A cracker won't ever get his hands on the set of software and hardware necessary to run the thing. Here the dongle serves as a barrier against owner of a herd of CNCs, so that he should buy a license for every machine he controls, instead of getting one and helping himself with the rest. A machine shop owner is not a cracker, and he won't even know how to contact one.
So dongles are a social solution to a social problem. They can not be applied mindlessly.
I agree, but how about donating a name that makes sense and doesn't sound funny?
Look at Cinepaint, Gimps big brother that was originally called Film Gimp. It has commercial donations from the film studios. They changed the name because it was stupid and hard to justify to the higher-ups.
If you asked a corporate buyer which graphics program to use, would they pick Photoshop or Gimp?
If you installed Gimp instead of Photoshop, then ANYTHING went slightly wrong, you are out of a job.
If something goes wrong with a program called Photoshop or anything normal, more than likely they will simply write it off as a software error.
What the heck to Gimp and Sodipodi mean to the user anyway? PHOTOshop and Illustrator both make sense.
On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple
Lets figure out some program to call Nigger next!
Names do make a huge difference to the public.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple
Whenever I hear someone talking about using Gimp, I get a mental picture of the leather-fetish guy from Pulp Fiction hopping out of a box.
You are very right to suggest that open source software tends to need better names if it's going to be widely accepted. Made-up or hybridized names like "Linux" are good if they're short and snappy-sounding. Common (but previously unused) ones like "Apache" are too, especially if they have connotations that people will generally appreciate. Conglomerates of simple words that convey a point (e.g. "OpenOffice") are good too.
"Sodipodi" is kind of cute, but it sounds like a dot-com that sells carrying pods full of soda or something and is about to go out of business. Still, it's better than taking the name of the commercial equivalent and tacking "free" onto the beginning.
I'm far from a master of marketing, but having apps called something like "OpenPaint" and "OpenDraw" would seem to me to be a lot more likely to pull in potential users.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Do you think the people who sell multi-thousand dollar ads using Photoshop give a crap about the $900 sticker price? The bus is cheaper than my car, but you don't see me on the bus, do you? Spring for the professional software that lets you forget about all the meaningless things like tweaking the hundred-thousand line source code and focus on delivering what your customers want.
Sure, assuming everyone who needs to use a graphics program is up to their eyeballs in these thousand dollar contracts, then yeah, invest in your tools.
But this is like saying "There's no need for bus service since people who need transportation to work can afford a car." Some don't work. Some work but don't make enough to buy a car. Some don't want a car. Some aren't going to work. And a few actually like *being* on a bus.
Today, creating art is not the exclusive realm of professional artists, nor should it be. For many, expensive art software is simply beyond what they can justify for their modest needs. But There simply aren't a lot of alternatives to Adobe.
Without programs like Sodipodi and The GIMP, the choice wouldn't be between a car and a bus but between buying (or stealing) a car or not being able to go anywhere at all.
As to complaints about the community nature of open source development, think about it like this. Community software is like going to a potluck at your friend's house. Instead of having to pay $60 for a dinner at a restaraunt, you get the food for free, but the catch is that you're expected to bring something to share. If you like making stuff, it gives you a chance to show off your skill. A potluck may not be as convenient as a restaraunt but can be a lot more fulfilling and fun.
While I would love to see it be true, I doubt that software like Gimp, Sodipodi, Open Office, Linux, and so forth would ever completely replace proprietary alternatives. If nothing else, professionals will always need to have that edge beyond what 'the masses' can do, and will be more than willing to invest in obtaining that edge. But I think it is critical that we also have the alternatives freely available for those who can't have or don't want the dominant player.
The first time I saw GIMP, I figured the original author(s) had been watching Pulp Fiction and heard the line "bring out the gimp" and thought that was hillariously funny, and would be hillariously funny to say when they needed to do Photoshop style work. The greater implications were never considered.
It's an absolute horrible name for a product. I also thought that the first time I saw it. I just figured that by now it would have changed, kind of how products are called one thing in development and testing and something much more commerical when they are actually released.
-------------------------------------------------
What "we" need is to stop using PDF and start using Postscript (.ps) instead!!!!
It would help having a proper Windows based Postscript reader. The Ghost... look's and feel's terrible.
Do you want to start a new cool opensource windows project?!! Do me a Acrobat Reader like app for Postscript on Windows!!!!
I'm tired of these arguments, people keep saying them but it won't make them true.
Unix systems also had millions of dollars of engineering (strange measuring unit for engineering), X Window also...
Adobe doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) use secret algorithms, they have high quality standard and know how to leverage a few technological advantages to get a strong grip on the market.
Also, speaking as if Open Source or Free software was only written by hobbyists or students is a little ignorant, don't you think? Have you checked the eclipse project, for instance?
I am a graphics designer and had been looking into Photoshop CS. A few magazines highlighted some of the features and they seemed rather interesting. Last week I secured approval to have it purchased.
I am so completely sick of product activation in appliations that as of about 5 minutes ago, I withdrew my purchase request. Photoshop 7 is more than adequate. There is no quantity of features that would make me willing to be treated "guilty until proven innocent" by product activation (auditing).
At home I have a rule: if a product requires activation, I avoid it and find alternatives. If I must buy it, I crack my legitimate copy and run it cracked. I know it's technically in violation of the EULA, but I figure once I've paid for it, a software company has no right to peer deeper into my life. Too bad the laws aren't written that way, huh?
These stupid priced software products will never sell to a home user - never. $600 for a package that makes PDF's? Please - home users typically don't pay more than $100 for any piece of software - that's why XP Home is $100.
This will only just screw them up. Activation is a pain in the ass for one user, but downright impossible for an IT department with 1200 users. This is labor intensive, slows down roll outs and inconviences users.
Also, screwing with your home user's ability to use the software diminishes the software's acceptability in the enterprise. Users want to use the software they are comfortable with.
Again, big software misses the big picture: Most users of their producitivity/design/graphics/editing packages have jobs and home computers. They are both corporate users and home users. THEY'RE THE SAME PEOPLE!
I personally believe that if your company paid for a package at work for your PC, you should use it royalty free at home - and if your company didn't pay for it at work, you should still use it at home either for free or less than $100, as a marketing tool.
Well - screw them. Adobe isn't the only game in town. Every product they make - Ulead makes one.
Do they know how many art students and new graphic artists take a copy home to learn how to properly use this application that will now be limited to what they can learn in the shop? How do they think they got ahead of Quark and their like in the first place? They are not going to buy a new version, they cannot afford it. Hence the term struggling artists. I hope they enjoy a year or two without people upgrading and super low new features use. What scumbags. Casual copying was their greatest selling point. Why do they think they get recommended so often by employees? It's because they have a pirated copy at home and they liked it. Let see if GIMP gets a kick in the pants now, we need a good option.