Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

I’m always the first one to criticize companies for exploitative and evil business practices. Adobe is far from innocent. However, I will argue their subscription model itself is actually better than the previous model.

The reality is that Adobe has a large team of engineers to create and maintain several high end professional digital art creation tools. They also frequently add new and excellent features to those tools. That costs money. This money has to come from somewhere.

With the old model Creative Suite 6 Master Collection cost over $2600. They updated that software every two years. The maximum Creative Cloud subscription today costs $1440 for two years. They even have a cheap Photography plan for $20 a month with Photoshop and Lightroom. That’s $480 for two years. Photoshop 6 cost $700+ alone all by itself with no Lightroom.

Why would Adobe allow for much lower prices, even considering inflation? Because they get reliable cash flow. Money keeps coming in regularly. That’s much easier for keeping people employed and paid than a huge cash infusion every other year and a trickle until your next release. It’s just not feasible to sell software that way anymore.

Of course the argument is that with the old model you didn’t need to update. You could just pay for CS5 or 6 and use it forever without ever paying again. That’s true. And I guess that’s viable if you are want software that is never updated, never gets new features, and never gets bugfixes and support. I would argue that a user that can get by without updating their tools, and has no use for new features, is not a professional. They can get by with free or cheap competitors, and they should.

Professional digital artists do need and want those updates. They are the kind of people that were buying every version of Creative Suite in the old model. For those users, paying a subscription is a huge improvement. It keeps the updates and bugfixes coming regularly instead of rarely. It funds development of new and powerful features. It keeps Adobe solvent, so the software doesn’t die. It lowers the overall price paid by the user significantly.

Plenty of things we can criticize with Adobe. Bugs they haven’t fixed. Crashy software sometimes. Products they come out with and then give up on. Doing dark patterns and fees to prevent people from unsubscribing. But the subscription model itself is a net positive compared to the old way.

The first comment seems to be interesting:

> I don't like subscriptions but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest issue is Adobe's software has been getting worse as the years have passed. It's slow, incredibly buggy, their new features are often an embarrassment, and Adobe seems to do nothing other than increasing prices. And therein lies the issue with subscriptions - the user keeps paying higher prices and the company has zero motivation to fix bugs

I wonder how hard it is to create the core functionalities of Adobe Photoshop. Maybe many people have different definitions of what are the core functionalities, thus turning making a replacement software very tough.

1) Switched about 4 years ago

2) to Affinity Photo & Designer (perpetual license)

The problem is the microblogging format. No microblogging site can be a good town square. It’s not designed for discussion. It’s designed to allow people to shout into the void, hoping that someone hears them, so that they feel for a moment that their lives have meaning.