I may be a bit late to the party, but Adobe has announced [Creative Cloud][adobecloud] pricing. If you didn’t know already, I’m [not][adobe1] a [big fan][adobe2] of Adobe. I want a proper competitor to come along and dethrone the beast with bloated software, and Creative Cloud does nothing to change my opinion.
As I say in the posts above, I’d still be on CS4 if Adobe had not jerked me around. There is no technical reason they can not cross-grade (kill a license on one OS and give a new one on an alternate) older versions of their software. They do this purely to force upgrades, plain and simple. Secondly there have been no features that I need (as a web designer) in Photoshop or Fireworks for a few versions.
In short I really have no reason to upgrade.
Creative Cloud would have me on the latest and greatest version all the time but since I don’t need it, it’s a waste of money. I certainly don’t mind paying for worthwhile upgrades to software, and I don’t really mind subscription upgrade pricing (I am a [PHPStorm][phpstorm] user which does subscription upgrades). The difference with Adobe is that I’ve not found the next version compelling at all. Yes photographers, there are typically upgrades that you’re going to use but not me, even in Fireworks which is the application designed for designing websites.
What would get me to update to the next version of CS-whatever? I want a leaner application. How about a modular version of Photoshop? I don’t need content aware fill and a myriad of other features so make them ‘plugins’ and let me skip all the code so I can start your app in less than a few minutes (I might be embellishing a bit) and just do the work I need to do.
I suppose that’s it. I want Photoshop to be more modular so I don’t have to waste time opening code I don’t need. If that was in the next version I’d upgrade, other than that I’m happy with CS5, but CS5 only because Adobe made me purchase software I didn’t need.
[adobe1]: https://curtismchale.ca/2010/11/17/i-wish-adobe-would-die-or-adobes-customer-service-motto-were-not-happy-till-youre-not-happy/
[adobe2]: https://curtismchale.ca/2010/11/18/adobe-makes-goodish/ “Adobe Makes Goodish”
[adobecloud]: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html “Adobe Creative Cloud”
[phpstorm]: http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/ “PHPStorm”