Update So Adobe got wind of this little blog post and got in touch. Greatly reduced cost on the upgrade to CS5. You can read my thoughts on it here.
Recently I made the switch to a fully OS X environment. For a few months now I’ve been doing all my design work on PC and all of my development on my Hackintosh. This was mainly because the Hackintosh was under powered for design work and I already owned CS4 on PC.
When I went to make the change to fully OS X I contacted Adobe support to confirm the rumour that you could switch over your valid license to a new platform. On Adobe’s live chat they were helpful and said it would be no problem just call a number on their contact page.
Trusting support to know what they were talking about I confidently set my budget and bought a new 13″ MacBook Pro then got in touch with Adobe to transfer platforms.
Well, it turns out that support lied to me. Now they don’t like that word since it implies deceit but the truth is that support told me something that wasn’t true. When you tell someone something that isn’t true it’s called lying no matter what verbiage you use to pretty it up a bit and make yourself look good. At least that’s what you teach kids. Adobe will only convert platforms if you’re on the current version which happens to be CS5 not CS4 of course they would be happy to upgrade me into software that offers no features that I need.
While I’d love to be able to switch away from Adobe software to a company that actually values it’s customers business the unfortunate fact is that Adobe software is a standard. If you’re trading files with other designers you need to have Photoshop InDesign and Illustrator. Secure in this knowledge Adobe is free to treat their clients like crap. It’s not like you can really go anywhere.
So while I’ve been forced to upgrade to CS5 so I can continue working I’m also waiting for someone to come along that lets me get out of dealing with Adobe in any fashion. I’m waiting for software to come along (and an open standard for swapping files) that lets me kill off this craptacular beast.
The fact of the matter is that Adobe doesn’t care and won’t care about how it treats it’s paying customers until its bottom line is affected. I’m hoping that this little rant can help affect its bottom line.
If you’ve got suggestions to get me out of the Adobe environment for good I’m all ears.
2 responses to “I Wish Adobe Would Die – Or Adobe’s Customer Service Motto, We’re not happy till you’re not happy”
Curtis,
I would think that you would have moral and legal justification for using a “copy” of CS4 for OSX regardless of where you get that copy from, on the basis that you DO own a license for it and you are only using it on one computer as well. You can still upgrade to CS5 (or CS6 or whatever) later, and don’t lose any of the benefits of being registered.
Just because a company won’t send you the CD’s, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to do something. Just my 2 cents. I wonder what a lawyer would say.
Scott
I don’t disagree with you. I’m going to look into less than ‘official’ options as well. I’ve heard in the past that there are often upgrade issues with them though.