[HN Gopher] FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancel...
___________________________________________________________________
FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 1281 points
Date : 2024-06-17 16:29 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftc.gov)
| extr wrote:
| Good IMO. Adobe is a uniquely bad actor here, I can't think of
| many other services that operate in a similar way.
| dboreham wrote:
| Try canceling SirriusXM.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Let's sue them too.
| davisr wrote:
| Way ahead of you.
| https://lite.cnn.com/2023/12/20/media/siriusxm-
| cancellation-...
| terinjokes wrote:
| I did so at the beginning of last year. I was on and off the
| phone within 5 minutes and they refunded the last month.
|
| I was canceling a several years old standalone radio
| subscription, and not trying to cancel at the end of a car's
| free trial, and I wonder if that's why I had such difference
| experience.
| PNewling wrote:
| I feel like something must have changed, because when we
| went to cancel ours on a previous car ~3 years ago it was a
| long-ish process, but only because they kept offering more
| and more discounts until it was essentially free.
|
| A couple months ago when the trial ran out on a different
| car it was like you said, over and done with in 5 minutes.
| judge2020 wrote:
| If you call to cancel every time, you'll probably end up with
| a subscription equal to $10/yr every year.
| heywire wrote:
| It's not hard at all. In fact, I use an iPhone, and they have
| an iMessage "service" or whatever it is called where I just
| text them for account related things. Every year I text them
| for a discounted renewal on my wife's car. Last year I
| cancelled service on my car because I just wasn't using it
| often enough. Of course they started offering a discounted
| price, but when I countered that I'm just not using it, they
| completed the cancellation without issue. Guess I've been
| lucky.
| meowster wrote:
| I never paid them, but used to receive their mailers.
|
| I once called them to stop sending me mailers, and they said
| they'll stop for two years, I said no, stop forever.
|
| I took my vehicle to a place that sold my information to
| SiriusXM and they resumed the mailers.
|
| But this time... I just created an account on their website
| and changed my address to their headquarters and phone number
| to their phone number. They can spam themselves for all I
| care!
|
| (I've done this with other businesses that don't respect
| their potential customers with great success! Often the
| people I speak with don't seem to recognize it when I give
| them their company's address or the 800-number that I called
| them at.)
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Sirius is easy these days, it's a 2 minute phone call.
| They'll offer a discount rate, decline it, canceled and
| refunded.
|
| Gym memberships and newspaper subscriptions is what needs to
| get targeted next. They are aggressive and lots of gyms will
| only cancel in-person, even if you move away.
| bogwog wrote:
| > Sirius is easy these days, it's a 2 minute phone call.
|
| That's still 2 minutes and one phone call too much.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I successfully canceled a newspaper subscription in like
| 2005, but for a few months, they'd call. The first couple
| times, I said I wasn't interested and hung up. Then I just
| stopped answering, but they still called. Then I finally
| answered once and said "Stop calling me" and they tried to
| say "If you want to be removed from our call list, you'll
| need to call our customer service line" and I said "No,
| that's not how this works. I asked you to stop calling me,
| so stop calling me." and hung up.
|
| Surprisingly, they actually did stop calling.
|
| SiriusXM never called me, but I got mail from them every
| damn week. I had even tried telling them to stop sending me
| mail, but still got it until I just changed my address to
| some bullshit fake address that didn't exist.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I was just having a terrible experience trying to uninstall the
| "Adobe Creative Cloud". I have used it and paid for it. It's
| full of anti-patterns to make it difficult to uninstall, and
| now that I don't pay for it any more it just exists on my
| computer to nag me to renew my subscriptions.
|
| They have good products and I gladly pay for software I use.
| But the whole cloud service experience has not been good for
| me. Cory Doctorow coined a word for this that I am too polite
| to use.
| beretguy wrote:
| Reinstall OS.
| spike021 wrote:
| New York Times. Last year I wanted to cancel my Athletic
| subscription and not only do they use the positively colored
| buttons to cancel the cancellation flow rather than continue
| with cancelling, once you get to what seems like a final
| confirmation, it doesn't show anything to confirm it actually
| was cancelled. I ended up needing to wait until the next bill
| date to make sure I wasn't charged again. Their support was
| useless too.
| gabinator wrote:
| Several years ago, the only way to cancel was over the phone.
| Hallmark of scumbag business.
|
| Planet Fitness requires in-person or a mailed note for
| cancellation (unless you "move" to California which legally
| requires companies to provide online cancellation if you can
| sign up online)
| lelandfe wrote:
| My local gym ducked my calls, ignored my emails, and then
| after finally canceling, actually restarted my membership
| two months later. Gyms thrive on those bad with finances,
| people who don't know what services they subscribe to.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If you pay via Apple Pay, they can't do that
| baal80spam wrote:
| Good.
| martinky24 wrote:
| Would love to get the money I wasted on this problem back. Who
| knows if that's on the table... Class action lawsuits can result
| in payouts though.
| strictnein wrote:
| $17 coupon for future Adobe services coming your way!
| gyudin wrote:
| From personal experience they refused to cancel subscription or
| close account as they failed to charge my card after a trial
| period. So I just blocked their emails for good :D
| ncr100 wrote:
| Does working at Adobe impact the individual 's ethics?
|
| This seems like a case where Adobe is behaving unethically.
|
| I wonder if long-term Adobe employees have the sense about their
| ethics being more flexible now, versus when they started at
| Adobe?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does working at Facebook, Twitt...er,X, TikTok, or any of the
| other soulless companies?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It's easy for things like Adobe or Facebook or Twitter
| because they're mostly one thing.
|
| The others are kind of complicated to me. They're so large
| that the sins kinda get diluted. How many products does
| Microsoft have? How many dark patterns do they need to make
| use of among those products before you can no longer justify
| working for the corporation as a whole? Can you work on
| Microsoft Research because the XBox Game Pass subscription
| cancellation is problematic? I think I could justify that to
| myself just fine, but I imagine that's a personal call.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I get the gist of your comment, but your specifically
| chosen example of Microsoft is a bad one. It's not just
| MS's XBox subscription is bad by itself. The recent news
| about the forced inclusion of Recall. The forced inclusion
| of ads into the OS. The horrendous data collection by MS.
| The list goes on and on that would put Microsoft on a
| egregiously morally bankrupt company on all levels.
|
| A novel idea let down by a poor example.
| dogleash wrote:
| To answer your question for real: Yes, obviously.
|
| To answer your question practically: No, it's just a job, gotta
| pay the mortgage. And you know companies have a legal duty to
| be amoral in the quest for profit, right?
|
| We live in a time where so many people work at and/or want to
| work at ethically dubious large tech companies, we experience
| overwhelming social pressure to see them as more morally-
| neutral than they are.
|
| We don't want the cogitative dissonance of hanging out with
| friends and spending the whole time thinking about what it
| means to have someone in my life that enables $foo for a
| living. Are you financially and emotionally ready to quit your
| job as soon as your employer crosses your line? You did spend
| time developing and reflecting on your own personal line in the
| sand, right? And are you're comfortable unabashedly sharing
| that standard over dinner to your 5 closest friends? What if
| one works at the place you find most-evil?
| quonn wrote:
| > companies have a legal duty to be amoral in the quest for
| profit, right?
|
| No, they don't.
| altacc wrote:
| About 25 years ago, working at one of those dot com bubble
| internet consultancy firms, I was told by an Adobe rep that they
| knew everyone at home had a pirated copy of their software but
| the company view was that they thought that was a good thing. It
| meant people learnt their software at home and then insisted on
| using it at work, where it would be a paid for license.
|
| It seems their attitudes changed soon after, perhaps due to their
| almost total market dominance, and they became aggressive towards
| their users in the pursuit of profits. The last Adobe software I
| really used was Lightroom as that was one of the last pay-once
| software titles. Now the only Adobe product most of us at work
| have is except Acrobat Reader. We were quite glad when the Figma
| purchase failed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The number of graphic artists working from home well before
| COVID definitely put a kibosh to that theory.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Were they not working for a company?
| nickff wrote:
| Many graphic artists operate as independent
| contractors/consultants.
| imabotbeep2937 wrote:
| Presumably they mean gig economy aka artists are vastly
| undervalued.
|
| For instance. It's not that AI is replacing artists. It's
| that people think you don't need to pay a license for
| generated images, even when they were clearly and provably
| stolen from copyright material. The bar was just lowered.
| If "AI" is used to remove the watermark from Shutterstock
| people think that's legal now.
|
| So WHEN gig economy workers get picked up by a company. Yes
| they pay for a software license as a "tax" on going pro.
| But from personal experience. A vast amount of art and
| content is made by people from developing economies on
| Fiver or whatever. Many of those licenses are stolen.
|
| And now everyone thinks you don't need to pay artists
| anymore. So nobody will generate licenses.
|
| Adobe was basically right. They're just going at it in the
| maximally enshittified manner.
| dylan604 wrote:
| No, this is not what I meant at all. I meant the
| independent artists that work without being attached to a
| firm or anything. The number of small owner/operator type
| places in the graphics/marketing type of world is
| apparently a much more common thing than the readers of
| this forum are familiar.
| acdha wrote:
| An independent contractor using Adobe is still helping cement
| Adobe's perception as a must-have for business. If you worked
| in that space at all, it was super common to have things like
| Illustrator or Photoshop specified in contracts for designers
| and print shops, and pretty much everyone needed Acrobat Pro
| for sone proprietary feature which didn't exist in the
| alternatives.
|
| Adobe wasn't going to risk bad publicity going after some
| freelancer for $800, but they could count on everyone in that
| world needing to use Adobe products for compatibility reasons
| to provide the inertia which meant that the businesses who
| hired those freelancers kept paying Adobe rather than
| switching at the threat of a lawsuit.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Anybody remember the Business Software Alliance[0] from
| years ago threatening to audit your company for using
| unlicensed software? I cannot believe any business would be
| dumb enough to allow them on their premises to even conduct
| an audit. Anyone with two brain cells would just laugh in
| their face.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Alliance
| stevekemp wrote:
| And yet it was only last week we started hearing of
| Oracle sending nastygrams to Java users:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/10/fortune_200_oracle
| _ja...
|
| As covered here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40639943
|
| So this is not just a thing of the past, sadly.
| crote wrote:
| How exactly are you supposed to do that, when your
| license includes their right to audit your business? If
| you refuse them they're going to sue you, and they have
| _far_ more money to spend on lawyers than your business.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You need to have proof that the software is being used.
| You also have to provide notice and cannot expect to just
| walk up and demand inspections. Also, this is a private
| company so they have no authority to do this.
|
| The primary bit of evidence to the BSA was/is from
| disgruntled employees "ratting" on their employer. Is
| that sufficient evidence of a crime to justify a warrant
| for any TLA to do an investigation? If not, that's the
| only way you're looking at my computers.
|
| Again, laughing in their face would be my response.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| new executives coming in, while the well connected ones leave
| completely to chase unicorns? maryhodderetc
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It seems their attitudes changed soon after, perhaps due to
| their almost total market dominance, and they became aggressive
| towards their users in the pursuit of profits
|
| It was probably just the advent of new technology that allowed
| them to rent instead of sell their product, and they can do it
| at different prices to different customers (price
| discrimination).
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Not so minor nitpick, but afaik you never got to purchase and
| own the software, you only purchased a license to it.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| That license used to be perpetual, and only enforced
| locally (i.e. without connecting to the internet). That's
| about as close to "owning" as anyone gets in software.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| If you need to put "owning" in quotation marks it isn't
| owning.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| If we go down this particular philosophical rabbit hole,
| you don't "own" anything. Stop making payments into the
| capitalist system we live under, and the bailiffs come
| and take away your car/house/possessions...
|
| A perpetual license is not meaningfully distinct from
| ownership in the context of software - you don't "own"
| open source software either, just license it for the low,
| low cost of free.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Stop making payments into the capitalist system we live
| under, and the bailiffs come and take away your
| car/house/possessions
|
| Your house/car get re-possessed if you stop making their
| loan payments since they are listed as collateral for the
| loan, that's different then you not owning them in the
| first place.
|
| I don't need my builder's permission to add a sofa, paint
| the walls, or change the locks. But god help you if Adobe
| finds out that you've changed the DRM locks on the
| version of Photoshop that you "own".
|
| > you don't "own" open source software either, just
| license it for the low, low cost of free.
|
| Depends on the license, ones like Unlicense or 0BSD try
| to opt out of the default copyrighted licensed state of
| released code.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Your semantic argument isn't useful to this discussion.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I have a full paid license of acrobat pro. I want to pay for
| the 2020 version as that's the last one before it became rental
| software crap. I refuse to pay monthly for this software.
|
| That and office, give me the full one time license. Im not
| paying for cloud crap.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| <sarcasm>Dear lord, did you stop to think of the shareholders
| before you wrote that screed?!</sarcasm>
|
| SaaS is a virus that has drastically reduced the power of the
| individual creator for the benefit of people who really don't
| need more money. I wish there were a viable FLOSS alternative
| to more of Adobe's CS software.
| dartos wrote:
| SaaS itself is fine. A lot of software has recurring costs
| for the saas company (think clarifai, chatgpt, or circleci)
|
| Subscriptions for software that you run on your own machine
| is a little much tho.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The word for the activity occurring in your second
| sentence used to just be called "hosting".
|
| The problem is that there are fewer and fewer pieces of
| software that aren't hosted somewhere.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Gotcha capitalism with a side of rent-seeking.
|
| If indies need it, then sure, it can be necessary to
| sustain smaller shops that have to support backend/cloud
| features and multiple OSes that churn APIs faster than a
| newspaper.
| asnyder wrote:
| I recommend a one-time Fox-it PDF pro purchase. While they
| too are getting into subscriptions they still make a one-time
| purchase available.
|
| Haven't found any significant deficiencies, nice tool
| overall.
| tombert wrote:
| Genuine question; what does Acrobat Pro buy you over the free
| versions and/or OSS competitors?
|
| I uses Apple Preview a lot because it lets me edit and sign
| documents pretty easily, and that came bundled with my Mac.
| What does the Acrobat Pro include that isn't in the free
| stuff?
| hedora wrote:
| I've been wondering about this too.
|
| In addition to signing documents with Preview,
| MacOS/Linux/Windows can all print to pdf / pdf/a, and the
| Notes app on iOS includes a camera-based document scanner
| that exports to OCR'ed PDF.
|
| I've been making PDFs with LaTeX, for decades, but those
| other tools are more mainstream, and work fine. I can't
| imagine why anyone would pay for acrobat these days.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| One huge flaw of Apple Preview is that it doesn't handle
| PDF forms well, as I discovered when trying to print tax
| returns.
| tombert wrote:
| Really? Me and my wife did her immigration paperwork a
| few years ago with Apple Preview (I think?) to edit the
| forms.
|
| I'd be curious to hear what Preview messed up?
| downrightmike wrote:
| The only problem is that ADobe is making the adobe engine
| incompatible with older versions. I've had PDFs that were
| made less than 10 years ago indesign etc that refused to load
| in Edge, which is where we work.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > It meant people learnt their software at home and then
| insisted on using it at work, where it would be a paid for
| license.
|
| That's also why so many companies practically give their
| software away through educational licenses.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| VMware and Citrix had a gentleman's agreement: they pirated
| each-other's stuff, and agreed not to break users' stuff in
| production and keep licensing issues to warnings.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I don't want to pay for a subscription for software I use
| thrice a year. I was looking forward to having Affinity's suite
| be the replacement, where I could buy it, and use it.
|
| However I don't want to support another company that is
| inevitably going to go subscription. Since they've been bought
| by canva, it's just a matter of time.
|
| I even went so far as to get Affinity Photo being able to start
| on Wine. But lost interest since their acquisition.
|
| (I'm sure people will question why I don't just use inkscape,
| krita, or gimp. And its because all of them have a subpar
| vector experience IMO)
| tombert wrote:
| Corel's (or whatever they call themselves now) stuff is
| generally pretty ok, and most of their stuff still lets you
| buy it outright.
|
| I don't know much about Affinity Photo but Paint Shop Pro and
| Aftershot have been "good enough" for the limited uses I have
| for photo editing (though I'm definitely far from a
| professional). CorelDraw is, I think, a very decent vector
| drawing program if nothing else.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| CorelDraw is great, but for years they were also
| subscription-only. In the last six months or so they
| finally started offering a single-price license again--at a
| prohibitive level.
|
| I bought the previous single-price version years ago, and
| it's so stale that I prefer to use Inkscape, despite the
| more limited feature set, and I've been using the Affinity
| suite as a more professional replacement.
|
| Now it looks like they let you buy it again, but at $550,
| I'm still giving them the finger. Their upgrade price used
| to be ~$200; I would pay that once ever 3-4 years or so,
| and consider that a reasonable expense to get a good
| product and have it available when I did need it. But for
| $550, I'd need to be planning on keeping it for something
| like a decade to get a similar value--and it's too much to
| justify buying at my limited usage level.
|
| All of these subscription services should get over
| themselves and allow you to rent them for occasional usage
| for a reasonable amount of money. If I could give them $20
| for intermittent (time-limited? operation-limited?) use,
| with no "auto-renewal", I might do that every time I
| actually needed the product.
|
| But no, they need to be greedy and demand that you pay for
| a year of usage in advance (or by using deceptive practices
| like Adobe above).
|
| I've used Paint Shop Pro, and I really don't like it. I can
| use Corel PhotoPaint and Affinity Photo, and they're fine,
| but PSP makes me crazy when I try to use it. I'd almost
| rather use Gimp.
| tombert wrote:
| Fair enough. I've never paid full price for any Corel
| product. They're frequently on Humble Bundle where you
| get a bunch of them on the order of like $30 total. It
| looks like right now there's even a sale going on:
| https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-
| cre...
|
| My CorelDraw license is for 2020, so not super up to
| date, but I've generally liked it. I've not tried the
| Essentials package.
| gmjosack wrote:
| I ended up grabbing the Affinity bundle since it's half off
| despite concerns about Canva. I'd expect even if they end up
| moving to a subscription I'd at least have the versions I
| bought for an extended amount of time. I still have a working
| copy of Photoshop CS 5 as well. Hopefully we see Affinity
| remain committed to affordable non subscription plans but if
| they don't I think the one time purchase will last me a long
| time. If they put out a version 3 without subscription and
| it's compelling i'll upgrade, if not i'll continue to use 2
| for I'm sure years to come.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Completely agree! I also refuse to put gas in my car because
| I know that prices will go up later...
|
| Or on a more serious note: I use Affinity professionally
| (previously PhotoShop). Why would I care the slightest about
| what they might or might not do with their pricing model in
| the future? I need software that delivers right now.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| I don't want to pay for the car nor the gas. Let's not let
| the same hostage situation extend to other aspects of our
| lives it we can avoid it.
| anonymousab wrote:
| For the same reason that you would care with Photoshop or
| Premier or Lightroom; you're investing money in learning
| and building your workflow around a tool that is guaranteed
| to go down the subscription and enshittification path.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Your computer will not explode if or when Affinity
| changes to a subscription model. You'll still have the
| software and can use it until the next ice age if you
| please.
| roughly wrote:
| Well, until there's an OS update. Most of us have gone
| down this road before - the old software works until it
| doesn't, it runs on the old hardware until that doesn't,
| it's usable until it's not. The actuarial table for any
| given software release is north of 5 years and south of
| 10.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| We're talking about professional software. If you're a
| professional you have a machine dedicated to that work.
| If a software update will break software you've paid for
| and need to use, you don't update that machine. Between 5
| and 10 years is a perfectly reasonable run time for paid
| pro software. You can also keep the old machine around
| for the software and have a new machine for other needs.
| roughly wrote:
| > Between 5 and 10 years is a perfectly reasonable run
| time for paid pro software.
|
| Not really a reasonable run time for a career, though.
| What do you do after that?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If I was successful with my career, I hope I would have
| saved up 50 dollars in 10 years so I could buy the new
| version of the software or buy an old used computer to
| run my old version on.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _If you 're a professional you have a machine dedicated
| to that work. If a software update will break software
| you've paid for and need to use, you don't update that
| machine._
|
| Yes, that's exactly the right thing to do. Only then the
| security folks will start whining about factories and
| shipping terminals being controlled by ancient PCs with
| WinXP (not to mention power plants with hardware and
| software older than most of us on this site). In fact,
| the security folks and the business folks align enough on
| it that professional software is force-feeding you
| updates too, and you can't do anything about it unless
| you're a multinational megacorp and can afford to make
| bespoke deals with OS vendors.
|
| > _Between 5 and 10 years is a perfectly reasonable run
| time for paid pro software._
|
| 5 is the minimum. Legal minimum for some documents, in
| some cases.
|
| Still, the problem usually isn't upgrades per se, it's
| that universally these days, newer versions of products
| are almost always inferior in terms of functionality,
| performance and ergonomics. So, I might be easily able to
| afford refreshing my software tools after 5 ways of using
| them to earn a living, but then I discover they all went
| to shit and new versions are worse than the versions I
| have (and even worse, half of the software is now
| subscription-only).
| mrandish wrote:
| This is true on Mac but Windows is remarkably good at
| allowing most old software to still run. I still run
| games and professional applications from the 90s on Win11
| and only occasionally need to set "compatibility mode" or
| change resolution. I haven't even had to resort to
| running a VM with an old version of Windows yet (although
| that's always an option).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And that's exactly what subscription model kills. Stuff
| only works for as long as you pony up - and it's only the
| newest, stuff. When the new version turns to be less
| useful and more bloated than previous versions, you're
| out of luck, because eventually the old version won't
| authenticate against license servers.
|
| Not to mention, the push to run everything in the cloud,
| via the browser, means that for a lot of software, you
| literally have zero flexibility and control.
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| I just don't understand why you're using your own time to
| defend predatory business models that inevitably screw
| over the user. You can't just sit on an old piece of
| software and expect it to work forever because the
| companies do not want that. I know you're not being
| malicious but we have so many receipts of this happening.
| People have plenty of reasons to not want to support
| companies doing this, and to be wary when they move in
| this direction.
|
| 10 years down the line their DRM stops working because
| you're on locked down, ancient hardware and they don't
| want to support your OS anymore. Steam is relatively
| benevolent and now there are games you bought and paid
| for that require a version of windows that steam no
| longer supports. Maybe they just do what autodesk did,
| revoke your perpetual license, and tell you to buy a
| subscription?
|
| Maybe you need to replace your motherboard and it counts
| as a "new" computer, and it no longer runs on. Maybe they
| take away your ability to reinstall it on another device
| because offline authorization no longer is enabled, and
| their online services don't support your old license.
| Both of these were done by reason studio. I hope you
| didn't buy a $400 perpetual license and expect it to work
| until the ice age.
|
| Maybe they change the ToS like blizzard, and you now have
| to agree to the new ToS to continue using the software
| you bought and paid for?
|
| Maybe the company switches to a subscription model, and
| then updates the ToS to say you owe them an indeterminate
| amount of money that you never agreed to, like the whole
| unity fiasco?
|
| I am so sick of people pretending the free market of
| software isn't rigged against the user. Every single
| company screws us over and I hate to see people defend it
| because they think you can just opt out of it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And I don't understand why you would write such a long
| rant about something that hasn't happened and "get sick
| of people". Learn to love yourself and you can love
| others.
|
| I'm happy to pay for quality software, both professional
| and consumer. With Affinity it took exactly one project
| to recoup much more than the cost ($50) of the software,
| and I expect that to be true for 99% of graphics
| professionals.
|
| > Maybe the company switches to a subscription model, and
| then updates the ToS to say you owe them an indeterminate
| amount of money that you never agreed to
|
| Yeah, and then I'll laugh my ass off at them. It's like
| me writing that anybody who reads this comment owes me a
| hundred dollars. Now you read it, now you pay. Or not.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I bought the Affinity suite and have gotten good value out of
| it. If at some point in the future new versions go to a
| subscription model, I just won't buy them.
| duped wrote:
| Is that the exact situation that subscription pricing (in
| principle) solves? If you only use it thrice a year then you
| can pay for it as you go instead of needing pay for the thing
| outright.
| paulmd wrote:
| none of these companies offer monthly subscriptions - they
| offer a 12-month subscription billed monthly or annually
| (with a slight discount), your choice.
|
| This is adobe's whole schtick with the cancellation fees
| for example. You pay 50% of your remaining subscription
| balance as a termination fee. So if you subscribe 3 times a
| year for a month and then immediately cancel you are paying
| more than a yearly subscription.
| protocolture wrote:
| You would think wouldnt you.
|
| But some of these subscriptions, including the one I think
| this thread is about, will obligate you for a period of
| time. This happened to me, signed up to a trial of Adobe to
| test a graphic designers pc, once it ticked over to paid, I
| was told that I had a 12 month sub, just billed monthly. (I
| screeched and pulled my hair out and went all karen and
| they ended it, but they wouldnt do it twice)
|
| The "Apps on Tap" enthusiasts got absolutely mogged by
| Adobes commercial reality.
| shostack wrote:
| I use Lightroom and Photoshop very irregularly. I now can't
| access Photoshop 5 that was installed on my Macbook because
| it doesn't work with the current MacOS. So now not only can I
| not deauthorize the license to free it up for my Windows
| machine, I can't actually use it either.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I keep older hardware running older OS's for just this
| reason.
|
| There was one version of Apple's Photos for MacOS that has
| not been topped in terms of its retouch tool (actually got
| much, much worse). Since I restore a lot of old scanned-in
| family photos I keep this aging iMac just for photo
| editing.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't used any Adobe products since they started doing the
| subscription-only model. I _want_ to use it, they typically
| make good enough software, but I have a line in the sand that I
| will not pay for a subscription. I want to buy my software and
| own it and use it for as long as I want.
|
| Basically my options if I don't want top pay a license fee for
| forever is to find alternatives, or pirate the software. I've
| opted for the former, but either leads to Adobe getting $0 from
| me, where they could have gotten >$0 if they had had a "pay
| outright" program.
|
| I have generally found good enough alternatives with their
| competitors (Toonboom is generally good enough for basic
| animation, Krita is good enough for artsy stuff, Final Cut Pro
| is good enough for video editing).
| johndhi wrote:
| You'd pay $1500 or whatever for a perpetual Photoshop
| license? I wouldn't
| tombert wrote:
| I mean, sure, there's probably an upper bound of a number
| I'd pay, and I don't do enough photo editing to justify
| paying really any amount of money for Photoshop.
|
| For software I'd actually use though? Upper bound is
| probably $600 judging by what I paid for Toonboom Harmony.
| Honestly if I had known about Moho at the time I probably
| would have gotten that since it's considerably cheaper and
| on Humble Bundle fairly often.
|
| I'm not in a creative industry so it's tough for me to know
| "fair" numbers, just "what can I justify as a toy" numbers.
| I like to occasionally whip out an animation tool and draw
| stuff with stick figures, and I like having that readily
| available, and I don't want my tool to change from under me
| so I don't want transparent updates. I just want to buy my
| software once.
| bobim wrote:
| That's dirt cheap for a software you can make a living off.
| For FEA or CFD one would need to shell off in the order of
| 50-100k plus 20k per year. 1500? I would.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| But not all of us _make a living_ off of Photoshop.
|
| I'm a programmer. I periodically need to make a tiny
| tweak in a file that's been created by a real artist, or
| I want to edit a photo I took, or whatever.
|
| It's insane to spend $1500, or even $500 (the CorelDraw
| buy-it-outright price) for hobby and occasional-use
| software like that.
|
| And yeah, I use other things like Affinity Photo, which
| is Good Enough for many of my purposes, but it's just
| annoying to not be able to use the same software as my
| artists--unless they flatten the image before giving it
| to me, it's a crap-shoot whether I can import it in
| anything but the exact version of PhotoShop they were
| using.
|
| It feels like extortion: I have to pay the artist to make
| the tiniest changes because I can't edit the original
| file, or I have to pay Adobe an outrageous sum to do it
| myself. Lose-lose.
| bobim wrote:
| Fully understood, this carefully engineered vendor lock-
| in is the cherry on the cake. It's in all CAD software
| for no reason and forces you to follow the herd. Open
| standards should be imposed by state actors...
| goosedragons wrote:
| If you're paying artists to make art in PS, are you not
| doing it for something you make money off of? Or are you
| just really deep in the hobby that you're nearing
| professional level?
|
| Photoshop was never $1500 either. CS6 was $700. The
| design standard CS6 suite was $1300.
|
| Maybe hunt for artists that use the reasonably priced
| Clip Studio Paint instead? It's pretty popular among
| manga and the like artists anyways.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I have to pay the artist to make the tiniest changes
| because I can't edit the original file
|
| Hire the artist and ask them for the files exported into
| a format you can open. If they refuse, hire somebody
| else.
|
| I do agree with the sibling that open standards should be
| set by state actors. But they should only make them
| available, not mandate them into private actors.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I wouldn't pay $1 for Photoshop when GIMP is free and open
| source. It's been my daily driver in a personal and
| professional capacity for ages, and Photoshop offers
| nothing special for me.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| If GIMP is a replacement for you, you're not Adobe's
| target customer.
| ipaddr wrote:
| But you are their average customer
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'd be interested to know exactly what task Photoshop is
| capable of that GIMP isn't.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| I agree with you in principle, but there is one big task
| where Gimp can't compete: importing PSD files. Kudos to
| Gimp developers for the level of psd support it has, but
| it's not perfect (naturally).
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| I'm glad there are people willing to pay for the
| development of software so I'm not stuck using GIMP. It's
| actually a good thing when people get paid for their
| work, the issue here is that adobe's predatory pricing
| models and making it difficult to cancel.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| "ToonBoom, is generally good enough for basic animation".
|
| What? This is the premier 2D animation package used by most
| of the top studios.
| tombert wrote:
| Oh no question, bad phrasing on my end, I sort of meant it
| inverted.
|
| Toonboom is _excellent_ if you 're a professional. I'm very
| much _not_ a professional, I barely know what I 'm doing. I
| think Flash/Animate appealed to someone like me, because I
| found it easier to draw some goofy thing really quick and
| animate it.
|
| I feel Toonboom has a much higher learning curve and isn't
| really for people like me. It's not insurmountably
| difficult or anything, just that I'm not really the target
| audience and as such I don't know that it's a good fit for
| "basic" stuff, if that makes any sense.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Adobe software isn't quite "good" in my experience. The
| company is an Oracle: all-in on giving the right bullet
| points to pointy-haired managers but with a palpable paucity
| of technical merit.
|
| I have to work with Adobe Experience Manager and it's a
| weird, painful, slow/inefficient kludge, not to even get into
| the licensing terms and what devs are "allowed" to do on
| their own servers.
|
| Acrobat Reader stands out in my memory only as that extremely
| slow, bloated thing you launched by accident, then closed 5
| minutes later once it loaded to use Sumatara instead.
|
| They killed Flash by neglect after buying it from Macromedia
| - we might still have it around if they invested in it
| properly and made it up to par for the iPod. Thankfully we
| finally have good emulators that work in the browser to see
| the vast amount of old Flash content.
|
| Creative Suite is _fine_ and mostly functional from what I
| hear, but they didn 't make that codebase either, and I've
| never felt limited by free or cheaper alternatives like GIMP
| or Sony Vegas. (I find it baffling how people rag on GIMP - I
| use it in a professional and personal capacity and I love it,
| and I'm familiar enough with Photoshop to compare it.)
| tombert wrote:
| I don't think Vegas has been Sony for quite awhile has it?
|
| Vegas is great, but as far as I'm aware there's not really
| a way to get it running on Mac, and I don't own a Windows
| computer anymore (I still will VM it if I really need it).
| For my video stuff I've been using Final Cut Pro and Apple
| Motion for the last couple years since it's a one-time
| purchase and I think pretty good. I'd like to use Premiere
| and After Effects but, as stated, I don't want to pay for
| subscriptions.
|
| I don't know enough about photo editing to say if GIMP
| sucks, I've used it before and it seems fine.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| It's Vegas Creative (MAGIX), now...
| https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah I looked it up shortly after posting that comment.
|
| I wish they'd release a Mac version, because that was
| actually my favorite video editor on Windows. It would be
| _really_ great if they made a Linux version but I 'm not
| holding my breath for that.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Surely Apple bears a ton of responsibility for killing
| Flash. That was the beginning of their mobile walled
| garden.
| tombert wrote:
| I know that there were almost certainly patent issues and
| the like that made this difficult, but I firmly believe
| that if Adobe had open-sourced the Flash player, then
| Flash would still be as big or bigger today.
|
| If it were opened up, it could have been integrated
| directly into browsers and maybe even the web standards.
| The Flash desktop program would still probably be the de
| facto means of creating Flash content but at that point
| it could have conceivably still been on iPhone, at least
| eventually.
|
| It's easy to blame Apple for this stuff, but
| fundamentally Steve Jobs' complaints were fair and I
| think it was a matter of "when", not "if" Flash was going
| to die.
|
| The death of Flash kind of makes me sad. A lot of HTML5
| stuff feels like it's playing this huge game of catchup
| from what we had in Flash in 2004, and I still think that
| Flash was one of the most _fun_ development platforms
| ever; the ease of quickly going from "drawing" to
| "animation" to "code" was so streamlined and as a
| teenager I had a lot of fun with it, and I haven't found
| a tool since then that I've had as much fun playing with.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| It's easy to blame Apple for this stuff, but
| fundamentally Steve Jobs' complaints were fair and I
| think it was a matter of "when", not "if" Flash was going
| to die.
|
| I just do not believe it. It was the best available rich
| presentation/interaction game in town. Trivial to get
| started and no need for a platform to sign off on your
| work.
|
| No doubt there was a never ending litany of security
| problems, but if Flash had been available at the birth of
| smartphones, I suspect it would have flourished. Or even
| led to a competitor targeting the same space with better
| characteristics.
| tombert wrote:
| There were performance issues too, and it was pretty bad
| on Android phones, at least when I used it in 2012.
|
| I think it might have been able to live on in the form of
| Adobe AIR if Adobe hadn't given up on it. I think AIR
| could have occupied the space that Electron does now.
| vr46 wrote:
| Kindof, but there was a ton of work done on ActionScript
| 3 making it all ECMA (?) compliant and there was a heck
| of a lot of road left on that. It was TypeScript before
| there was modern Javascript. And that could have been
| parlayed into a different runtime, like Haxe did. Flash
| the runtime had many problems, but the IDE and tools
| behind them were mature and well-understood.
| tombert wrote:
| AS3 is a pretty underrated language. It was ridiculously
| fun to make stuff with it, and if you bought the official
| Flash Builder IDE (which was Eclipse based), you had
| decent autocomplete and everything.
|
| The runtime definitely needed to be improved, but I feel
| Flash gets a bit more hate than it deserves. By the tail
| end, there was even decent 3D graphics support, and
| CrossBridge was a pretty cool predecessor to Emscripten
| that allowed you to convert C++ programs into SWF stuff
| (IIRC an early version had the Doom engine ported over).
| b3ing wrote:
| Adobe has let pretty much all of the Macromedia stuff fade
| out
|
| Sure Apple is to blame partially for Flash, but even now
| they rarely add new features to "Animate". There are other
| applications out there that are doing more interesting
| things.
|
| Dreamweaver has been outdone by visual studio code and
| sublimetext, granted it was really only good for
| ColdFusion.
|
| Fireworks was left to die, oddly enough it could of been
| the next Sketch, although Figma probably would of beaten it
| eventually anyway
|
| Freehand was killed to let Illustrator be dominant
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There is also the affinity suite where you can get the whole
| suite for less than the annual cost of photoshop alone.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Affinity software is exceptionally good. 50% off right now,
| btw... https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
| eastbound wrote:
| DaVinci!
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
| w0m wrote:
| > subscription-only model
|
| When did they do that? I guess I only really use Lightroom;
| but you've been able to buy each major release outright for
| ~1.5years of subscription (last I worked it out)
| tombert wrote:
| I believe CS6 was the last version of Adobe Animate you
| could purchase outright. I don't know about their other
| products as much.
|
| I even emailed Adobe sales representatives two years ago to
| see if I was missing something, and maybe there was a way
| to buy it that I wasn't seeing. They made it very clear
| that subscriptions are the only way now.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| CS6 was followed by Creative Cloud for all their
| products.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| They drove me off Lightroom, I was just a causal user. The
| upsell spam and ads in Adobe Reader has also driven me away
| from that too. I would have considered buying an upgrade for
| both, but the price was never right for casual home use. Now I
| don't use any Adobe products at all.
| ein0p wrote:
| As someone looking to drop Lightroom, what did you move to?
| Last I checked everything else sucked pretty bad.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| I switched to Capture One. Not as easy to use as Lightroom,
| but the RAW processing is actually superior. It's a one
| time purchase. The professionals can choose to upgrade
| every year, the casual users can upgrade less frequently.
| buildbot wrote:
| Capture One is just ~5 years behind Adobe pushing people
| to subscriptions - in fact they are actually quite bit
| more expensive for what you get now. Perpetual licenses
| are going away
| coder543 wrote:
| I also use Capture One, and I actually liked it
| _significantly better_ than Lightroom when I did a side by
| side comparison of them a couple of years ago.
|
| Lightroom is starting to get some HDR processing
| capabilities that are interesting to me, but that one
| feature by itself isn't currently worth paying Adobe's
| crazy subscription prices just to use a program that I
| otherwise don't enjoy.
| sib wrote:
| I strongly dislike paying for subscription software that I
| don't use very frequently[1], but I do pay for the Photoshop
| & Lightroom bundle. At ~$10 / month, it ends up being a lot
| less than I paid for updating "perpetual" licenses to those
| products frequently enough (every two years?) to get the new
| features.
|
| [1] I'm a hobbyist photographer, but not a pro.
| hahajk wrote:
| What have you replaced lightroom with? That's the one thing
| Adobe makes that I haven't found a good replacement for.
| tombert wrote:
| I've not really done enough with "real" photography to have
| strong opinions on this, but Aftershot (which was included in
| a Humble Bundle a few years ago) has been ok for the stuff I
| used it for.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Bill Gates once expressed a similar view about rampant piracy
| of Microsoft software in China [1]:
|
| > Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in
| China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will,
| though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them
| to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll
| somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-09-fi-
| micro...
| jpeter wrote:
| Well did they figure it out?
| shuckles wrote:
| My feeling is this logic only holds if your product is
| being pirated because it's the best. Windows was certainly
| better than Linux, but ultimately when a consumer can
| afford it they'd rather buy a Mac.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. Plenty of people won't
| buy a Mac because it's "different", which of them is
| 'better' never factors into it.
|
| While I don't use Photoshop I'd assume that logic holds
| even stronger - if you know how to use Photoshop you're
| going to ask for that rather than a tool you don't know
| how to use.
| shuckles wrote:
| If people were pirating Photoshop only because it was
| easy to pirate, my guess is when it came to professional
| work or another occasion where they had the funds to pay
| for image editing software, they would overcome whatever
| friction necessary to buy the best. That definitely
| happens in other cases like video editing where easy to
| access software is different than what studios pay for.
|
| As a thought experiment: if Photoshop was means tested
| and free to anyone who couldn't afford it, would that
| actually convert users when they had money?
| fragmede wrote:
| How many people ever got rich enough to pay for a copy of
| WinRar?
| popcalc wrote:
| The US government is one of WinRar's biggest customers.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I grew up on pirated windows, and never had the
| opportunity or means to pirate Mac software. I now cannot
| stand the mac software - alt tab is broken (for me), as
| are copy / paste. I think piracy had a huge involvement
| in my preferred software.
| mixermachine wrote:
| I switched from a PC to a Mac at work. Macbook Pro M2
| Pro, 32GB RAM. The performance and battery life are
| absolutely lovely. Compile tasks run great.
|
| MacOS on the other hand not really. It is
| better/acceptable after I installed some Plugins. But I
| still wish Linux was fully supported (and my company
| would allow it). Even Windows would be an upgrade
| currently for me.
| plufz wrote:
| What plugins do you use? And what do you miss from
| windows?
|
| As a long time mac user I am probably unaware of neat
| stuff from windows.
| cwillu wrote:
| Probably the biggest one for me is alt-tab switching
| between windows, without regard for whether its the same
| app or not. This matters, because keeping track of
| whether the documentation I'm referring to are currently
| in a gvim window vs a vim terminal vs a browser, and
| whether the work I'm currently doing _with_ the
| documentation is in a gvim window, a terminal, or a
| browser, is enraging.
|
| The key to bring back the last window I looked at should
| not change depending on whether the app name happens to
| be different.
| nehal3m wrote:
| By default the hotkey for tabbing through app instances
| is Cmd + ~
|
| I bound it to Option + tab though, more intuitive to me.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Alright.
|
| My current laptop was about 750$ , has a 8845HS and I
| added a 4TB SSD for 200$.
|
| If I wanted to do the same thing with a Mac I'd be
| spending over 3k.
|
| I actually have a M1 Air, but Apple decided soldering
| SSDs would be a good idea.
|
| Dualboot Linux and Windows for the best experience...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If I wanted to do the same thing with a Mac I 'd be
| spending over 3k_
|
| Right, "when a consumer can afford to."
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Ok.
|
| So instead of being able to upgrade to a 8TB in a few
| years when the prices come down, I can just throw out my
| 3K Mac and buy a new one. Only 5k for the 8TB Mac.
|
| I make music and I'm getting into photography and film
| making. I prefer more space over being having to carry
| around an external SSD with me
|
| I also enjoy gaming, which is still much better on
| Windows. If I want to play some COD or Tony Hawk HD,
| that's very well supported.
|
| Not really going to work on a Mac.
|
| Macs do have a much more premium feel to them, but I've
| had great experiences with cheap laptops. Even if I drop
| it, shucks, I'm out 750$, not 3k.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _instead of being able to upgrade to a 8TB in a few
| years when the prices come down, I can just throw out my
| 3K Mac and buy a new one_
|
| Mac buyers fall into two groups: those who don't need
| that upgrade (most consumers) and those who can afford to
| spec it up at the beginning, cost be damned. That's what
| OP meant by "when the consumer can afford to."
|
| > _also enjoy gaming, which is still much better on
| Windows_
|
| 100%. I don't think Apple has meaningfully contested this
| space.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Realistically I can afford a 1500$ M3 Pro with a 512
| drive.
|
| I'd just prefer to save my money and get significantly
| more storage.
|
| I will miss Logic though...
| II2II wrote:
| > Macs do have a much more premium feel to them, but I've
| had great experiences with cheap laptops. Even if I drop
| it, shucks, I'm out 750$, not 3k.
|
| Not to mention that feeling premium doesn't mean that it
| is more durable. I used to joke that those cheap plastic
| bodies found on cheap products did a much better job of
| protecting a device from the shock of a fall than the
| glass and metal bodies of premium feeling products.
|
| And while my experience with Macs is dated, I had an
| optical drive in one that refused to accept disks because
| there was a minor bend in the case. That machine never
| suffered from a fall, though it was likely a result of
| how I stuffed the machine into my book bag.
| II2II wrote:
| When a consumer can afford to means they have the
| opportunity to, not that they will. If you told me that I
| could buy widget A for $10 or widget B for $30, where
| both widget A and widget B will satisfy my needs, I am
| going to buy widget A. It doesn't really matter if widget
| B tries to justify that premium by doing a bunch of stuff
| that doesn't reflect my needs.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you told me that I could buy widget A for $10 or
| widget B for $30, where both widget A and widget B will
| satisfy my needs_
|
| Sure. But most high-income consumers value many of the
| perks that Apple products provide.
| jabbany wrote:
| I guess in a way?
|
| They learned from XP/7 that they'll never recoup it though
| licenses so now its ads and subscription upsells for
| everybody.
| SR2Z wrote:
| I think they would have moved to ads and subscriptions
| either way. It's hard to resist that sweet, sweet cash
| flow.
| colpabar wrote:
| Yeah, they're putting ads everywhere and selling all your
| activity data.
| gibolt wrote:
| "Ghost" Windows is a thing of the past, and most modern
| installations in China are legit. Bing is also an approved
| search engine, even if not used by a majority of people.
| I'm sure their revenue is significantly higher than a
| decade ago.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ahh, yes, the "drug dealer" model of sales.
|
| Netflix also famously went this route, allowing rampant
| password sharing and then deciding "Hey, we want to get
| paid!" On one hand I don't have a problem with companies
| wanting to get paid for what they produce, but on the other,
| given that allowing the piracy is a _deliberate_ decision
| they made from the get-go, I don 't have a problem telling
| them to get bent once they decide "Time for profits!
| Enshittification it is..."
| okr wrote:
| I wish i had a product that people just wanna use and i
| have not figured out yet, how to monetize it. What a luxury
| position to be in. Sigh.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It's weird to watch Adobe make these fundamentally short
| sighted decisions. I can only assume the ultimate cause is the
| individual motivations of executives and managers. "Oooo, if we
| raise subscriptions $10/mo, we'll make lots of money, and it'll
| look really good on my annual review." "Oooo, this cancellation
| fee will really help our retention, which will look really good
| on my annual review." "Making Photoshop subscription only will
| do amazing things for our revenue."
|
| When you have complete market dominance, you have little
| opportunity for growth. If your employees and investors have an
| insatiable need for growth, you have to try anyway, and that's
| where things fall apart. The #1 threat to your magical money
| faucet is something replacing your product as the photo editor
| of choice, and you should be 100% focused on making sure that
| doesn't happen. To do that, you need to be focused on keeping
| up quality, periodically adding the latest features, and making
| absolutely sure that the next generation of artists is coming
| up using your tool.
|
| That Adobe rep 25 years ago was 100% correct, but "I keep the
| money pipe flowing and did not actively make it worse" does not
| get you a promotion.
| alt227 wrote:
| When you make the industries best software and pretty much
| have a monopoly on the market, the only place left to go is
| adding markup to your product.
| callalex wrote:
| That's not true, you can also expand to new markets. For
| example Adobe doesn't really have many offerings for
| musicians.
| gabeio wrote:
| > That's not true, you can also expand to new markets.
| For example Adobe doesn't really have many offerings for
| musicians.
|
| Ah yes, the google style of offerings.
|
| https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| LoopStart: Expand into so many markets to then be
| unmaintainable, then randomly decide to focus on your
| main stream of revenue again and kill off the side
| offerings GOTO LoopStart.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Having a monopoly like this is like having a goose that
| that lays golden eggs. The right thing to do is nothing
| except to guard the goose and keep it happy and well fed.
|
| But what Adobe has done is a series of aggressive egg
| laying hormonal supplements and force feeding. Yes, it
| might get them even more eggs for a bit, but it's also a
| big risk for killing the goose for not a whole lot more
| eggs, with the side effect of definitely making everyone
| angry with you.
|
| But I think Adobe, and most companies, would inevitably
| make this decision. If you give a medium-sized public
| corporation a faucet that spews money at a constant rate
| forever and a button that has a 60% chance to double the
| money and a 40% chance to destroy the faucet, I suspect
| that most corporations would push that button at least once
| every few years.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _If you give a medium-sized public corporation a faucet
| that spews money at a constant rate forever and a button
| that has a 60% chance to double the money and a 40%
| chance to destroy the faucet, I suspect that most
| corporations would push that button at least once every
| few years._
|
| That pretty much sums up all of what business and
| investment is. Play with money to get more money to play
| with.
| lmm wrote:
| You could cut costs and let the money roll in. But
| unfortunately even if that's the smart move for the
| company, it's unlikely to be the smart move for the
| individual decisionmakers.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Now the only Adobe product most of us at work have is except
| Acrobat Reader.
|
| [I think you didn't mean 'except']
|
| I haven't had an installed copy of Adobe Reader on any computer
| I've used in the last 15 years.
| seemaze wrote:
| I was an architecture undergrad (bricks , not bits) in the
| early 00's and everyone had pirated software. And then we all
| got hired and brought our quiver of technical skills with is
| into industry and convinced our managers to purchase the tools
| we knew so well.
|
| Now as the manager making decisions, I actively search out
| alternatives to Adobe due to the overwhelmingly poor experience
| (cost, bugs, support, tactics).
|
| I know folks who keep VMs for the explicit purpose of running
| releases from 10 years ago.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Figma's pricing is extremely exploitative too, it's essentially
| designed in a way were trivial actions can instantiate new
| subscription seats that have to be manually removed.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Somewhat reminds me of netflix's policy on sharing accounts.
| The CEO used to straight up say they don't care, and it's not
| really feasible to enforce account-sharing rules. Fast forward
| to today, and they "figured out" how to enforce it.
| pndy wrote:
| > It seems their attitudes changed soon after, perhaps due to
| their almost total market dominance,
|
| I'm pretty sure Adobe went for subscription model as one of the
| earliest big companies and then the trend bloomed all around us
| - especially on mobile devices.
|
| Few years ago my friend had issues with her computer after
| being forced to upgrade from Win7 to 10 - it was something
| drivers related. She reinstalled 7 but couldn't activate her CS
| anymore because servers for that particular version were no
| more active. She could use crack and activate the software but
| she didn't want to risk issues if she'd face the visit from
| Polish tax office (which is permitted to check legality of
| software in business). Purchasing new license was out of the
| question because Adobe already introduced subscription at that
| point and she, as a single-person company couldn't afford it in
| expenses. A colleague suggested her Affinity and she gladly
| switched.
| bradgessler wrote:
| That was the best most companies could do before SaaS. Now that
| we live in a SaaS era, it's much easier and acceptable for
| corps like Adobe to minimize piracy and increase revenue with
| subscriptions.
|
| This isn't unique to Adobe--most software companies have
| followed suit because it just makes sense. What is unique about
| Adobe is they're doing some really shady things with
| subscriptions that are abusive to customers, which this suit
| hopefully ends and serves as a warning for other abusive SaaS
| corps.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is exactly right -- Adobe wanted people to pirate
| Photoshop at home because they knew it wasn't realistic for a
| lot of home users to pay for an entire Photoshop license
| upfront. Back in 2010, that was a whopping $700 [1].
|
| SaaS changed that -- you can now get Photoshop for a month
| (no annual contract) for $10 [2, 3].
|
| Which is truly just an amazing deal -- that $700 in 2010
| would be $1015 today, so the subscription will be cheaper
| until you use it for _eight and a half years_ , plus you get
| upgrades. It's a lot fairer for everyone. Except when Adobe
| pulls sh*t like the FTC is suing them over.
|
| But yes -- SaaS absolutely ended the idea of companies
| wanting home users to pirate their stuff so companies would
| buy it.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/12/photoshop.first.look.
| wir...
|
| [2] https://petapixel.com/how-much-is-photoshop/
|
| [3] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography.html
| kbenson wrote:
| Once the infrastructure and social acceptance was there to
| allow for subscription based pricing, the bost benefit ratio
| shifted enough that the benefit of those people using Adobe
| products at home that weren't paid for changed, since they
| could now get the specific products they needed for a small fee
| that only lasted a short while.
|
| I.e. $400-$1200 for a home user is a hard sell for someone that
| only needs it for a bit, so they accepted the benefit piracy
| gained them since the sales lost was minimal. Once they could
| feasibly expect someone to pay $30 for a short term access to
| some tools (whether true or not, it's the perception of that
| which matters), I think there's little incentive for them to
| still allow that piracy.
|
| I'm not sure if this was very forward thinking of them or they
| just got lucky by allowing the piracy instead of allowing
| cheap/free home users, but I suspect they would have had a much
| harder time trying to charge for home users if they had
| previously offered home user free use licenses to legalize the
| benefit that piracy was providing. Raising prices is harder
| than enforcing pricing that was unenforced, and charging
| something for what was previously free is _very_ hard to get
| away with without a huge reputation impact.[1]
|
| 1:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...
| sirspacey wrote:
| Yep, I finally cancelled and didn't take any of the "two free
| months" offer because I just don't trust their billing approach
| anymore. The "pay monthly but can't cancel for one year" model
| ruined it.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Pretty sure cc is still piratable
| ljm wrote:
| The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky describes the fall of Behance,
| the fall of Adobe's perpetual licensing, and the rise of their
| cloud subscription offering.
|
| I wonder what he thinks about all that in hindsight, putting
| the many millions he made aside.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The bank should just have some sort of interface where you can
| cancel recurring charges on the card.
|
| Changing card is a bit to blunt.
| teeray wrote:
| The problem is that that does not release you from your
| contractual obligation to pay every month. The company is still
| free to (and often does) send you to collections.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's fine with me. We can then let that "debt" linger until
| it is bought up by some company willing to settle for pennies
| on the dollar
| teeray wrote:
| Meanwhile, you can't get a mortgage or a car loan because
| your SiriusXM bill remains unpaid because you "fixed the
| glitch."
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, caveats are always included, but if you don't need
| a mortgage or a car loan, fuck 'em.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not just a mortgage or car loan. Credit checks[1] are
| being used by landlords to decide whether or not to allow
| you to rent. They are being used by employers to decide
| whether or not to hire you. They are being used by
| utility companies and insurance companies to decide
| whether or not to do business with you.
|
| It's slowly getting to the point where a low credit score
| will bar you from participating in major areas of the
| economy.
|
| 1: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-
| credit-c...
| antihipocrat wrote:
| 21st century debtor's prison. No walls, chains or guards
| required!
| judge2020 wrote:
| Then it ruins your credit, and technically the three
| bureaus disallow "pay for delete" agreements between
| consumers and debt collectors which would get it off of
| your report entirely (some still do it).
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| One outstanding charge won't tank your score.
| guntars wrote:
| I'd argue that heavily lopsided TOS in favor of the company,
| that can be changed at any time by said company, and your
| access can be cut off unless you agree to the updated TOS,
| does not make a contractual obligation. In a B2C context, the
| business is the more sophisticated entity so it's up to them
| to make sure everyone knows what they are agreeing to. They
| could have put up a bold summary of "this is a yearly
| contract, you will be charged $79.99 to cancel, please type
| YEARLY CONTRACT in the box" somewhere in the signup flow. Had
| they done it, the case could be dismissed.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| > Had they done it, the case could be dismissed.
|
| You mean _this case_? Why should that get it dismissed?
|
| This is about abusive (and unlawful) business practices,
| not a lack of knowledge on the consumer's end. If the
| customer had full knowledge of the terms before agreeing it
| would still be unlawful, the law generally doesn't care
| that the two parties consented to an abusive business
| relationship.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You put the ball in their court. They have to do something to
| get your money, which you might contest or ignore.
|
| But ye it is not optimal. You'd probably want to have some
| record of trying to cancel.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Don't trust changing your card either. I had a predatory LA
| Fitness membership. When they made me jump through one too many
| hoops to cancel, I called up WF and had them issue me a new
| card (Visa). Well, Visa, in their infinite wisdom, gave my new
| credit card number to LA Fitness and they kept on charging me
| for almost two years before I noticed. I don't remember the
| name of that program at Visa, but I'm sure they and other CC
| companies continue to do this. Should be illegal.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Netflix does this as well, and is how I found out about it.
| They claim that since you didn't cancel the service, it was
| clearly a lapse in your updating of the new number so they
| just helped you out. Of course it is in everyone's favor
| except yours when this happens.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| It's only not in your favor if you changed your card to
| cancel Netflix specifically, in which case you should've
| just logged in and canceled.
| kemitche wrote:
| If someone steals my card, and uses it to pay for
| Netflix, how will I log in and cancel?
|
| The simplest, safe route is to not give companies the
| newly updated number. If my Netflix lapses because I
| forgot to update the number after a card change (whatever
| the reason), they can email me, and then I will log in to
| my account and update the card on file.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Do companies that do subscriptions know when multiple
| accounts are using the same card number? Just curious if
| they try to use something like that for fraud detection
| or anything. Then again, I don't think they'd care. Just
| take the monies and let the card people deal with it.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| During the whole clamping down on password sharing era,
| I'd be very surprised if some folks haven't had to pay
| for multiple Netflix subscriptions (for summer houses, or
| their kids off at college, that sort of thing...)
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| > If someone steals my card, and uses it to pay for
| Netflix, how will I log in and cancel?
|
| You dispute the charge, just like any other unauthorized
| transaction. That's quite different than changing your
| card number under their feet, and will be received as
| such by Netflix.
| strickjb9 wrote:
| Don't trust cancelling your card either. I closed my account
| at Capital One, paid the final balance, and six months later
| I noticed a steep drop in my credit score. I had a $3 monthly
| charge that kept recurring even though I had closed my
| account.
|
| Also, because my account was "closed," I didn't receive any
| statements notifying me that I was being charged. I only
| discovered this issue when my credit score dropped by 100
| points.
| stavros wrote:
| The bank allowing a charge on a closed account is some
| bullshit.
| kbolino wrote:
| Closing a credit line penalizes your credit score in
| general. It's why the standard recommendation is generally
| to leave the accounts open, forever.
|
| Another thing for the FTC to investigate/stop.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Closing a personal credit card, in my experience,
| temporarily drops the score a few points and then it goes
| back to normal. It's a myth promulgated by banks to keep
| accounts open.
| kbolino wrote:
| If so, that just raises the question: of what benefit is
| it to the banks to keep unused accounts open? The
| maintenance costs may be low, but they're still nonzero.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Ask Wells Fargo -> https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wells-
| fargo-agrees-pay-3-bill...
| mh- wrote:
| That bank-facing service from Visa is called VAU - Visa
| Account Updater.
|
| https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau
| thallium205 wrote:
| You have to report the card is lost or stolen then the new
| number will not propagate. You likely asked for a replacement
| card which will propagate the new number through the network.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Great tips thanks.
| themagician wrote:
| American Express asks you (or at least used to) if you want
| to allow recurring billing when canceling.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I am really amazed how people can go years with not knowing
| what companies are regularly charging them money.
| andoando wrote:
| It needs to be some integration with the actual provider. You
| should be able to cancel through your CC, but they ought to get
| notified you canceled.
| wmf wrote:
| This is a huge advantage for subscriptions that go through
| Apple or Google since they have a central dashboard to
| cancel.
| judge2020 wrote:
| For Apple Pay, they did recently introduce this (or maybe it
| has been a thing for a bit).
|
| https://rr.judge.sh/IMG_1150.PNG
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://privacy.com/
| jordanpg wrote:
| This is the way. Easy solution when forced to do business
| with actors with dark cancellation patterns.
|
| Also good when forced to do archaic practices like writing
| credit card numbers on a form or saying them over the phone.
| altairprime wrote:
| Amex will let you permanently block a merchant that has
| previously charged you from making any further charges, but you
| have to call and ask for it. Goldman Sachs, under the guise of
| Apple Card, does not permit this by phone or by app. I have no
| other experiences to report data on. (Note that this does not
| exempt you from any contractual obligations to pay ETFs or
| whatever.)
| rainclouds wrote:
| Wow that is great. I've been told that was impossible by
| several cards and ended up reissuing.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| In some countries/banks you can generate one-off CC numbers
| that are tied to your real one. I use it all the time for
| online services.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It doesn't matter, because it's a contract. Even if you cancel
| your card, Adobe can send it to collections, and it will show
| up as unpaid debt and negatively impact your credit score,
| which means you might pay more for your next mortgage or car
| loan.
|
| This is not uncommon for businesses that use annual
| subscriptions. Certain gyms are particularly known for this.
| And with Adobe being so sneaky and aggressive about
| subscriptions, it wouldn't even surprise me.
| otar wrote:
| Long overdue
| brink wrote:
| While we're at it, can we sue Apple for making it too hard for us
| to export our data off of their cloud?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| No - because that's clearly an attack vector to steal
| information as well.
| stavros wrote:
| What attack vector could that possibly enable for a session
| with a valid login?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| The regulations generally have required businesses to
| respond to written requests.
|
| While GPDR and others vary, at least with CCPA two data
| points are enough to get a release of data.
|
| What's done is if general info on you has leaked (say email
| address / date of birth / social etc) then someone can use
| that to go to Apple and now request a full dump of
| everything they have on you.
|
| So you can leverage one dump / leak, and now go after lots
| of players that have to comply with a data export request
| to get everything you want to know about someone.
|
| Google / Microsoft / Apple / etc can have a surprising
| amount of sensitive data (every photo you have taken or
| that's been shared with you) and even though you've been
| hit by one data leak, you may not want those folks to be
| able to leverage that for more leaks.
|
| https://dataprivacy.foxrothschild.com/2019/02/articles/euro
| p...
|
| The liability is usually very high if the companies DON'T
| release data - so the bias moves to releasing data (there
| are folks who go around putting requests in and complaining
| if the data dump is not easy to get).
| stavros wrote:
| But this seems trivial to stop: "you can find the
| 'Download Everything' button in your account settings".
| MaKey wrote:
| Do you have any other source than a generic warning about
| malicious data export requests? Otherwise your take seems
| like fearmongering to me.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Do their instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/108306
| not work?
| imzadi wrote:
| So, this might be fixed, but you could get around the
| cancellation fee by changing your plan to the Dreamweaver monthly
| plan and then cancelling that. You'd get a prorated refund when
| you changed plans and then an additional refund for the monthly
| plan when you cancelled it.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| A reminder that like all good companies adept at scamming folks
| they have HUGE ethics policies :)
|
| Ethics and Integrity At Adobe, good business begins with our
| commitment to the _highest_ ethical standards.
|
| We adhere to the following core principles:
|
| Integrity, by conducting business according to high ethical
| standards Respect for our employees, customers, vendors,
| partners, stockholders and the communities in which we work and
| live Honesty in our internal and external communications and all
| business transactions Quality in our products and services,
| striving to deliver the highest value to our customers and
| partners Responsibility for our words and actions, confirming our
| commitment to do what we say Fairness through adherence to
| applicable laws, regulations, policies and a high standard of
| behavior
|
| We encourage you to read our policies to learn more about the
| legal and ethical standards we embrace.
|
| AI ethics at Adobe
|
| Australia Modern Slavery Act Statement
|
| California Transparency in Supply Chains Act Statement
|
| Code of Business Conduct
|
| Code of Ethics
|
| Conflicts of Interest
|
| Global Anti-Corruption Policy
|
| Partner Code of Conduct
|
| Public Policy and Government Relations Policy
|
| UK Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement
|
| Adobe Whistleblowing Privacy Notice
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| In Spanish se have a saying: "Dime de que presumes y te dire de
| que careces".
|
| Tell me what you brag about and I'll tell you what you lack.
| personalityson wrote:
| Leaked messages show Adobe employees worry AI could kill the jobs
| of their own customers, reducing the number of Creative Cloud
| subscriptions. https://petapixel.com/2023/07/31/adobe-staff-
| worry-their-ai-...
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| AI will eliminate a lot of creative industry jobs regardless of
| what people at Adobe say.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Adobe says "Make amazing transformations in seconds with
| tools powered by Firefly generative AI! Create images with
| just a few words, unlock endless color combinations, and make
| eye-popping text effects! You have to try it to believe it!
| See what generative AI can do for your business!"
| paradite wrote:
| If you buy or still have the perpetual license of Lightroom, can
| you use it to process raws from newly released cameras?
| perfectstorm wrote:
| i tried activating my old Lightroom software (purchased in 2015
| or 2016) and they wouldn't let me activate it. Adobe customer
| service said their activation servers are taken offline for my
| Lightoom version.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Why does the version of the complaint embedded in the article
| have so many redactions? Any idea what kind of information those
| would contain and why they would be redacted?
| dagmx wrote:
| Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel
| your sub and they'll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to
| 60% off.
|
| Though, obviously as per the article, this is a pain to do.
|
| It's really a shame there's nothing comparable to Adobe's
| products on the really pro-artist end of things.
|
| Companies like Serif have tried with Affinity but it's lackluster
| when you really need to do some high end work. OSS stuff like
| Krita, Inkscape and Gimp have improved a lot but there's still a
| huge gulf.
|
| Photoshop is perhaps the easiest to replace, but the rest of the
| suite like Illustrator really has no competition when it comes to
| functionality.
|
| Affinity Designer lacks so many of the gradient tools, shape
| repetition, and even certain alignment tools.
|
| InDesign similarly has many QoL features that Affinity Publisher
| lack.
|
| After Effects has some competition but nowhere near the ecosystem
| it provides.
|
| I guess premiere and animate (previously flash) have a lot of
| competition but that's about it?
|
| For reference of where I'm coming from , I own licenses to the
| full Adobe suite and the full affinity suite. I have
| professionally done art and programmed for features in multiple
| domains for a decade and my work has shipped with major products
| from FAANG-like companies.
|
| I totally think the alternatives can replace Adobe products at
| some level, but the level of tooling I need and that Adobe has
| provided, is currently unmatched.
|
| It would be great to see better alternatives someday.
| imabotbeep2937 wrote:
| This is true of literally everything in the new economy.
|
| Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and your
| bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow magically
| you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone line.
|
| Any subscription service is like this. I sometimes grab a Blue
| Apron when it's 65+% off which is anytime I want. My ex used to
| do this with clothing subscriptions, up to 80% off.
|
| There are laws against things being "always on sale". But now
| they're just being used to punish lazy customers who don't keep
| up on their promos. Only lazy or ignorant people pay the "real"
| price.
|
| Oh hey would you look at that, another billion dollar IPO with
| no plan for profitability went bankrupt. Weird.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I had T-Mobile starting in ~2003 and it included unlimited
| tethering.
|
| After they introduced the Netflix included offer I inquired
| and they offered an "upgrade" that they swore up and down
| would not change my current service.
|
| After agreeing, I was traveling and tried to tether and boom
| nothing. Their upgrade that would change nothing got me out
| of this grandfathered situation. Over time the cost of
| Netflix resulted in a higher fee for Netflix and ultimately I
| pay more for less.
|
| Can't trust any company not to do anything in their power to
| squeeze another dime out of you.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Why accept oral promises when a contract with the term is
| definitely available? I guess you didn't record the
| conversation so why not giving the papers a look?
| nkozyra wrote:
| It's a lesson we all have to learn at some point, that
| was mine.
|
| Recording calls is always tricky because of party consent
| rules, although telling people you're recording probably
| puts some guardrails on behavior.
| bityard wrote:
| "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance," is
| ubiquitous when calling the official sales/support number
| for any US company.
|
| However, every single one of those call centers _also_
| instructs their employees to hang up immediately if they
| are told (or have good reason to suspect) that the
| _customer_ is recording the conversation. It sounds
| hypocritical (and it is), but this rule comes from the
| company's legal department, whose sole job is to shield
| the company from legal liability.
| reaperman wrote:
| When I'm recording (usually using the Rev app on iPhone
| if its not particularly sensitive or legally confidential
| information) I always start the human conversation with
| something like "hey so this call is recorded right? Thats
| what the message told me when I picked up. Just double-
| checking that we should consider this call to be
| recorded?"
|
| I figure that it is completely legally unnecessary but it
| guarantees there's an understanding between all human
| participants to expect a recording, which brings it in
| line with my own personality morality when conversing
| with an "innocent / relatively powerless human" (my
| morality exceeds the ethical and legal framework we
| operate in).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You don't have to tell them. You're dealing with the
| company, not the individual employee. If the company is
| recording the call, so can you.
| ixwt wrote:
| I can't find an app that lets me record both sides of the
| conversation on Android. Only my side. When I looked
| into, it seems that Google has disabled that part of the
| API that apps cannot record both sides of a conversation.
|
| Does anyone know of a reliable way to record
| conversations?
| genewitch wrote:
| I got around this by paying for a VoIP line and running
| 3cx to utilize it, 3cx can record calls. I've never
| actually done it - not even to test - because right
| around the time i got it set up covid hit and the people
| i used to spend 1-2 hours a day talking to on the phone
| about tech and other interesting things stopped having to
| drive to work so my phone usage is now down to maybe 4
| hours a month on private calls that no one else would be
| interested in.
|
| Technically i've been paying for a voip line for 20
| years, and shoehorning it into 3cx was mostly to allow my
| young kid to be able to call his aunt or someone who
| isn't on our PBX (grandma and grandpa and his siblings
| are, already).
|
| believe me i was really annoyed when android stopped
| being able to reliably record calls. Another alternative
| that i did actually use is a 3 channel breakout connector
| on my cellphone, a DAC/ADC, PC microphone and headphones.
| You could tell the OS to "monitor" the microphone, and
| record mix (remember those days?). Or now-a-days you'd
| have to use VAC(virtual audio cable) or something to
| manage the routing. Speaker out goes to mic in on phone,
| and vice versa, hit record on your PC, and both the
| remote side and your side will be recorded. I never got
| too deep into this because it's a huge hassle unless you
| have a phone _just for this_ ; but multi-channel
| recordings would let you have synchronous audio, for,
| say, correct transcriptions.
| bityard wrote:
| Many states in the US do not allow calls to be recorded
| unless all parties on the call consent to being recorded.
| There is no distinction (that I am aware of) between
| companies and natural persons in those laws. In those
| states, you can _technically_ record a call without
| consent, but my guess is that if you try to use it as
| evidence, you open yourself up to being prosecuted for
| wire fraud or somesuch.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > You don't have to tell them. You're dealing with the
| company, not the individual employee. If the company is
| recording the call, so can you.
|
| The whole point of "this call may be recorded" is to
| establish consent between both parties. In two-party
| consent states (caller or recipient), you still have to
| establish consent to record.
|
| If you're calling from a 1-party consent state _to_ a
| 1-party consent state, you don 't have to tell them,
| although I don't know how that works legally with call
| center routing.
| nickff wrote:
| All this back-and-forth about promos and cancellations is
| just the latest form of haggling; there's nothing new under
| the sun.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Internet? Wait until the moment your "promo" cost ends and
| your bill goes from $80 to $150, threaten to quit, oh wow
| magically you can have $80 again and a free mobile phone
| line.
|
| Careful though. Companies are catching on to the "threaten to
| cancel" trick. Last time I tried this with Comcast, the
| support rep put me on hold, and then instead of sending me
| over to the "retention" specialist, just canceled my service
| and asked if I needed anything else. Oops..
| LegitShady wrote:
| There's no need to be worried about it. Don't just
| threaten, actually switch when a competitor is having a
| promo and stop worrying about it. I switched internet
| service between a few providers almost every year for quite
| a while. It saved a lot of money.
| vngzs wrote:
| In the vast majority of America, there is no serious
| high-speed internet competition.
| genewitch wrote:
| up until 2022 i had 2 options, dialup, or 5mbit DSL. I
| don't consider hughesnet workable for anything other than
| email (seriously, 1500ms latency on a good day?)
|
| As siblings comment, this only works if you're not a
| captive audience.
| accrual wrote:
| > "always on sale"
|
| Lenovo is great at this. Their absurd $3,000+ laptops are
| conveniently priced near market value after their perpetual
| 50% off LENOVOJUNE, LENOVOJULY, etc. coupons are applied. You
| don't even have to do work to use them, they're usually
| automatically applied at check out.
|
| Talk about cheapening your brand and pandering to people who
| only buy things "on sale" out of principal. It almost feels
| insulting to the customer.
|
| This is one thing Apple does right - there are no sales or
| discounts, it costs what it costs regardless of which US
| holiday is approaching.
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th.
| ..
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Apple devices go on sale on other platforms (I only look at
| Amazon, but it must be the same for any other retailer),
| that's how they differentiate.
|
| As device registration and customer support still goes
| through Apple, it makes absolutely no difference wherever
| you buy it, and anyone looking for a lower price will wait
| for Prime day or any other bigger sales in the year.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/17/24104233/the-m1-macbook-
| a...
| chimen wrote:
| Only if you can cancel your sub. They are taking money from my
| account even after 6 years, each month, and I can't cancel it.
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619329#40619770)
| acdha wrote:
| Have you disputed the charge? If the bank is refusing to
| honor your request, that's both reason to switch banks and to
| try small claims court to get your money back.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Have you filed a complaint with the FTC and your state's
| attorney general?
|
| https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
|
| https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
| auggierose wrote:
| That's why you always sign up for one of these things with
| something like Revolut, which will give you a new credit card
| number for each subscription.
| chimen wrote:
| I had no Revolut back then
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I have seen some of the sites not work with these
| "throwaway" cards - when I supplied my regular card, it
| worked.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you're letting the situation go on for 6 years, the
| problem is you. Call your bank or threaten to sue them, stop
| being a doormat.
| liendolucas wrote:
| Is that a pro-tip? I mean, I wouldn't give them a penny more
| for having this attitude towards customers in first place. The
| real pro-tip at least for me would be to pay once for a product
| that I can use without being enslaved to a for-life
| subscription. It really really pisses me off how most
| commercial software is offered today. F** all that.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The really pro-tip would be "try paying for an imaginary
| alternative I just made up!"?
| egypturnash wrote:
| I get the impression from my friends in the animation industry
| that Toon Boom's animation suite pretty much dominates the
| industry. Flash hung on a while but TB has _so_ many features
| designed for the particular craft of assembling a small army of
| people who collaborate on making a moving and talking drawing.
|
| I keep on thinking of ditching ~25y of specializing in
| Illustrator for TB lately but I really just do not feel like
| paying $1k/y for a subscription to it. They have cheaper
| subscriptions but one of the ways they differentiate them is by
| limiting the effects, and "constantly pushing the limits of
| Illustrator's effect system" is one of the reasons I want to
| move on from it.
| dagmx wrote:
| Toon Boom's domination really is very regional. But that's
| one reason I list flash as having competitors.
|
| In Canada, you'll find a lot of the larger shops use toon
| boom and the smaller shops use Flash/Animate.
|
| When you move out to Asia, the balance changes quite a bit
| the other way but you also see a lot more players in the form
| of OpenToonz etc entering. Especially on the anime front.
| egypturnash wrote:
| god it's like there's actual multiple viable options, is
| that even legal any more. My animation friends are all in
| the LA scene; they all started out in Flash cartoons in the
| 00s and some of 'em kept on using it for a pretty long time
| but it seems to have pretty much vanished.
|
| I really gotta make some time to grind on tutorials for
| Toon Boom or this copy of Moho 14 I have on my computer and
| see if I actually _want_ to animate again once I get over
| the hump of "how does this giant toolkit even work".
| tomschlick wrote:
| > Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to
| cancel your sub and they'll send you repeat offers at lower
| prices up to 60% off
|
| I have found the same to be true with SiriusXM radio as well.
| You can ask the chat bot to cancel your account when a promo
| runs out and it will take you back down from $19/mo to like
| $6/mo. I setup a calendar item so I know when the promo is
| going to expire and do this. It's a PITA but it only takes 5
| minutes.
| meowster wrote:
| Their discounted rate is $5/month.
|
| I once called them to stop sending me mailers, and they said
| they'll stop for two years, I said no, stop forever.
|
| I took my vehicle to a place that sold my information to
| SiriusXM and they resumed the mailers.
|
| But this time... I just created an account on their website
| and changed my address to their headquarters and phone number
| to their phone number. They can spam themselves for all I
| care!
|
| (I've done this with other businesses that don't respect
| their potential customers with great success! Often the
| people I speak with don't seem to recognize it when I give
| them their company's address or the 800-number that I'm
| called them at.)
| spookie wrote:
| I don't think there's such a huge gulf between Krita and
| Photoshop for digital artists. I do work with it professionally
| all the time, mostly dealing with texture work for CG.
| dagmx wrote:
| Digital artists is a pretty wide term.
|
| But if we're limiting it to stuff like illustrations and
| texturing, it's very capable. I've introduced it in several
| areas specifically for that.
|
| however for other things like photo retouching and product
| design, Photoshop has a pretty wide moat at the moment
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > Photoshop is perhaps the easiest to replace
|
| I wish
| jwells89 wrote:
| For Photoshop specifically (and perhaps other CC programs, but
| I'm less familiar with them) another problem compared to
| alternatives is that a great wealth of instructional material
| (tutorials, paid video courses, etc) are built around
| Photoshop.
|
| While there are ways to make alternatives more Photoshop-like,
| there's always going to be unreconcilable differences which
| bring unwelcome friction when the goal is to learn whatever the
| material is teaching rather than screw around with keybinds and
| UI configuration.
|
| More projects that aim to adjust existing FOSS alternatives to
| more closely clone Photoshop would be of great help here. There
| used to be GIMPShop[0] that did this for GIMP but it's
| unfortunately been defunct for a long time now.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop
| altruios wrote:
| I've only ever used Krita, really. What features am I missing
| from photoshop? What is that gulf that I do not see?
| dagmx wrote:
| Krita is geared towards illustrative work versus photo vs
| editing/product design. While it can do both, it misses or is
| behind in several areas
|
| 1. Photoshop has a much better template and smart referencing
| system
|
| 2. Photoshop has better photo retouching tools in the form of
| healing or switching working spaces to tune filters.
|
| 3. Photoshop has better image manipulation tools like warping
| and perspective correction
|
| I do really like Krita, and I've replaced Photoshop use for
| illustrative use cases for several studios and individuals
| with it. So it really depends what you do, but Photoshop just
| has a lot of little and big things that add up which prevents
| me switching myself.
| altruios wrote:
| Ah... so it seems there is nothing deficient for artists.
| Just photographers?
| starkparker wrote:
| Yes. Photoshop, which is photo and image editing software
| for photographers, has more features for photographers
| than Krita, a painting program for artists.
| dagmx wrote:
| That's a pretty curt dismissal given that tons of artists
| paint in photoshop and have for decades.
|
| Photoshop is a great painting app that rivals krita for
| painting. That it does other things well or originated
| for just photo editing doesn't take away from that.
| elcomet wrote:
| I think you misread the parent. He didn't say Photoshop
| is bad for painting. He said Krita is bad for photo
| edition.
| oregoncurtis wrote:
| Davinci Resolve is miles better than Premiere. I don't do a lot
| of compositing, but I know more and more people are starting to
| use it over After Effects as well.
| dagmx wrote:
| Resolve is better than Premiere on its own (hence why I list
| premiere as having competition) but the Fusion compositing is
| not a comparison for After Effects, but rather for something
| like Nuke.
|
| While After Effects does some compositing (and it's decent at
| it but poor in comparison to Nuke/Fusion), its' stronghold is
| motion graphics. There's very little other than Cavalry to
| compete with it.
|
| And with that comes the benefit of Premiere: live updates to
| my edit when using After Effects.
| giobox wrote:
| > Pro-tip if you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to
| cancel your sub and they'll send you repeat offers at lower
| prices up to 60% off.
|
| The issue though is this often only works for many subscribers
| for a small window each year, when the *annual* "renewal"
| occurs.
|
| The problem with much of the Creative Suite subs, and what the
| FTC are also suing over, is that it looks and smells like a
| monthly sub you can cancel at any time, but you often can't -
| its "annual paid monthly" as the linked article describes.
|
| The big problem is their ridiculous "annual paid monthly" plan
| - you often can't cancel, or it takes a ridiculous amount of
| effort to escape "annual paid monthly". I know plenty of people
| who needed Creative Suite for one month who fell into the
| "annual paid monthly" trap assuming it was a typical
| subscription service.
|
| > "Adobe pushes consumers to its "annual paid monthly"
| subscription plan, pre-selecting it as a default. Adobe
| prominently shows the plan's "monthly" cost during enrollment,
| but it buries the early termination fee (ETF) and its amount,
| which is 50 percent of the remaining monthly payments when a
| consumer cancels in their first year."
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| After Effects competition is the furthest away I feel.
| Everything else I could get by but nothing has the same toolset
| as AE
| w10-1 wrote:
| > you ever want cheaper Adobe subscriptions is to cancel your
| sub and they'll send you repeat offers at lower prices up to
| 60% off
|
| That used to be true at NYTimes and WaPo. But new WaPo
| management does the reverse: - offer to keep
| at same price? No? - offer to re-up at 50% more? No?
| - offer to re-up at 100% more? No?
|
| With the election coming up, they're determined to raise
| prices, and they know all they need to about you.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This and the unified user interface - most Adobe products have
| the same look and feel, and it happens to be a good one.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| "FTC charges Adobe their annual Business Practices fee"
|
| Not to be a pessimist, but what's the chance this is just another
| suit that's a rounding error compared to the revenue Adobe gains
| from these unethical business practices in the first place?
| wmf wrote:
| Presumably Adobe will have to stop these practices to settle
| the case.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Yes - and the penalties would not be a rounding error the
| next time.
| josephcsible wrote:
| IMO, fines for deceptive or unfair business practices should
| never be less than the total revenue resulting from them.
| bogwog wrote:
| The FTC has been more aggressive and actually doing their job
| under this administration. Idk if this particular case will
| have a satisfying conclusion, but I'd say the chances are as
| good as they've ever been.
| lagniappe wrote:
| To be a fly on the wall at Planet Fitness HQ right now..
| katangafor wrote:
| Or any gym I've tried. Washington sports club kept charging me
| after email/verbal confirmations that the account was closed.
| Trying to do it in the app resulted in a "server error" lmao.
|
| Had to pester them so many times, and of _course_ they never
| refunded me for the months where they lied to me and I thought
| the account was canceled
| slater wrote:
| Did anything ever come of those proposed "cancelling
| subscriptions must be as easy as setting up the initial
| subscription" laws?
|
| I kept hearing about them in discussions about the infamously
| impossible-to-unsub NYTimes subscriptions, then nothing happens.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm. So the FTC has no power to enforce the rules it makes? Has
| to resort to lawsuits?
|
| How about the other US government agencies regulating ...
| something? Is the FDA as toothless as the FTC?
| acdha wrote:
| Agencies have the powers specifically delegated to them by
| Congress. That's different in every case because there are
| different politicians in power when various laws are passed and
| the political factors vary. In cases like this, you really want
| to contact your congressional representatives because they will
| hear a lot from the companies who see enough revenue to make it
| a lobbying point and might figure that the general public
| doesn't really see it as a priority.
| nottorp wrote:
| As an outsider, I'm just surprised to find out another
| weirdness of the US system :) I have no congresscritter to
| contact.
|
| Around here if an agency is regulating something it also has
| the power to impose changes and/or fine. Those can be
| contested in court but involving the legal system for years
| isn't the first step.
| kbolino wrote:
| Civil action _is_ enforcement. The standards of proof and costs
| involved are lower than for criminal prosecution.
| dynjo wrote:
| Totally deserved for a morally corrupt business.
| EncomLab wrote:
| Went to GIMP years ago and never looked back.
| powersj wrote:
| Cancelled my lightroom cloud account last night and was very
| surprised at the "early cancellation fee". Only made me upset and
| more determined to move off to something else! Very happy to see
| this post this morning.
| uptown wrote:
| What'd you switch to?
| powersj wrote:
| Darkroom [1], my scenario is I am editing my photos on my
| iPad and it can do all the same basic edits and modifications
| with it and I can use my photo library to organize things
| rather than have them in Adobe's cloud
|
| [1] https://darkroom.co/
| focusedone wrote:
| Please do share what you moved to. Lightroom is the only Adobe
| product I'm still on the hook for.
| powersj wrote:
| Darkroom https://darkroom.co/
| gorkish wrote:
| When creative cloud was very first released, it was excellent
| value. I was actually quite supportive of Adobe's initial SaaS
| strategy. It was well and truly a "why would anyone ever pirate
| photoshop ever again?" type of product.
|
| Fast forward a decade and that $19.99/mo product has become
| $89.99/mo and the value prop has plummeted on top of it. The big
| difference today is that instead of people returning to the high
| seas and continuing to use adobe software, they are just moving
| to different ecosystems -- procreate, davinci, foxit, etc.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| > When creative cloud was very first released, it was excellent
| value. I was actually quite supportive of Adobe's initial SaaS
| strategy. It was well and truly a "why would anyone ever pirate
| photoshop ever again?" type of product.
|
| This is the entire issue with these kinds of things. They
| always launch at a good value because they know they can
| capture the market. Yes if they were benevolent or whatever
| it'd be fine, but these things almost ALWAYS turn into cluster
| fucks.
|
| They couldn't launch at worse value than the current product
| line because they need full adoption before they can put the
| screws to you.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| agree but I would reverse the cause and effect.. launch great
| experience on the web+cloud to gain traction.. then Because
| it is so Easy to Do It, change the terms of service, the
| benefits, the longevity, the billing practices, the prices..
| etc
|
| IMO pathetic to see a well-loved brand degenerate in the
| public.. especially while Apple counts that cash (and ways
| they ran rough over their former "friend" )
| swores wrote:
| Maybe I'm misreading somehow but you seem to be saying the
| exact same thing as the person you replied to, without
| reversing anything?
| Matl wrote:
| If I am reading the post you're replying to correctly
| they're saying that maybe it's not that they launched
| with a good value prop with a plan to screw you later,
| but rather that because the initial launch went so well
| and everyone says what a good value it is that maybe the
| SaaS vendor says to themselves, 'screw it, we're
| delivering so much value, let's raise prices'. But I
| agree that there's little difference between the two
| ultimately.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Adobe did not "capture" the old single license sales
| customers, they are just walking away from them.. any way
| they can, into the cloud.. the results look similar but
| thinking about the power dynamics that drive them,
| here...
|
| what I meant to say is.. that the driver to launch a
| great experience is first, then it is easy and tempting
| to change the cloud terms.. not compared to the deal you
| get with desktop purchase.. not because you captured the
| single license customers with better deals in the cloud..
| but because the cloud is just so easy to change, the
| money so tempting..
|
| maybe the anecdote.. when Apple stopped caring so much
| about the desktop, after the iPhone.. they did not
| "capture" the single sale customers.. they just walked
| away to focus completely on the new, more profitable
| model
| duped wrote:
| Or you do what everyone else does, which is force everyone to
| adopt the SaaS model by revoking their licenses or otherwise
| bricking the software.
|
| That's why it's important to own your own data in a way that
| can be reused and adapted when they try and screw you later.
| You see this all the time with video games nowadays. Everyone
| wants their own launcher and subscription services.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'll never again learn another proprietary tech unless I'm
| getting paid to do it. open source or nothing.
| jandrese wrote:
| 100% agree. I would also add an explicit exception to the
| DMCA. Cracking copy protection on software you bought
| legally because the copy protection has failed in a way
| that prevents the software from working should be legal.
| exe34 wrote:
| I don't buy ebooks with drm anymore, and when I buy
| movies on Amazon I treat them as a long term rental.
| whycome wrote:
| You can "own" a copy of Adobe's software (like earlier
| Creative Suite DVD versions) but then Adobe essentially
| bricked them by killing the activation server.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| That really should be illegal. They need to be forced to
| patch out the license check if they're going to shut down
| the server.
| veeti wrote:
| I recall they used to have a free Photoshop CS2 download
| on their site with the activation removed. Strictly for
| existing license owners of course, but anyone could
| download it ;-)
| starkparker wrote:
| Interesting. I just installed a copy of CS4 Design
| Premium and InDesign CS5.5 without issue. Looks like CS5+
| still has live activation servers, and CS4 didn't seem to
| care that its were gone.
| whycome wrote:
| https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite.html
|
| "CREATIVE SUITE 2, 3, AND 4 You can no longer reinstall
| Creative Suite 2, 3 or 4 even if you have the original
| installation disks. The aging activation servers for
| those apps had to be retired. "
|
| Those poor servers.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Every corporate leader has the opportunity to "bring value"
| to the company by upping the subscription fee a few dollars.
| Profits increase, shareholders are happy. Better than trying
| to solve twenty year old bugs or worse, refactor legacy code.
| shostack wrote:
| Which is where they shift focus to lock in and growing the
| amount of your things that live in their walled cloud garden.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| And we keep falling for it, too. Folks on HN and elsewhere
| are fawning over Fusion360, despite Autodesk having a long
| history of being _worse_ than Adobe and pulling the rug on
| individual features more than once.
|
| People spend thousands of dollars on 3D printers or CNC
| mills, but the idea of spending several hundred bucks on
| "buy-to-own" software is so outmoded...
|
| The other reason you have all these subscription models is
| that they obscure the total cost of ownership. Spending $300
| on photo editing software seems like a big commitment. Paying
| $20/mo for a decade is easier. But when you add up Creative
| Suite, Office365, Xbox Game Pass, Spotify, Netflix,
| Squarespace, and whatnot, it's all of sudden a big chunk of
| your disposable income.
| atoav wrote:
| Just as if the goal of corporations isn't to provide value,
| but to extract value.
| richbell wrote:
| > When creative cloud was very first released, it was excellent
| value.
|
| Your wording reminds me of this infamous video where Adobe's
| CEO refuses to answer a question about them overcharging
| customers in Australia.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnrMhbWG0Pc
| whycome wrote:
| For the longest while, Adobe charged Canadians in USD despite
| having an entirely Canadian version of the site etc. It meant
| that the price of the software varied each month!
| behringer wrote:
| I only pay 32/mo for creative cloud.
|
| Sign up for the free trial, then "cancel" you'll get a screen
| that says "offers" and you can choose a realistic price plan.
|
| Remember to "cancel" before your year is up or else you'll be
| automatically charged the full price the following month.
| londons_explore wrote:
| They should release a home-user version with some restrictions
| unpalatable for commercial use - eg. "Can only edit 5 files per
| month" or "All edited images get non-commercial use licenses
| attached".
|
| Or even "May only be used during evenings and weekends".
| alt227 wrote:
| I like this idea,
|
| Or even better it could run on credits. 100 credits per
| month, and then various things in the software cost a credit
| each. Load a file = 1 credit. Save a file = 1 credit, etc.
|
| You could even turn this into an ecosystem by itself, so
| instead of buying or 'renting' the software users are buying
| credits to actuallyt operate the software.
|
| Newer features like AI could cost more credits up front.
| There could be sales on credits etc.
|
| Somebody please show me a downside to this model?
| swores wrote:
| I think there's multiple downsides, but the biggest one is
| that it makes it a massive pain in the ass for any price-
| conscious users to decide whether it's worth paying for.
|
| Right now if I want to install some software to edit images
| on my PC, I can look at how much Photoshop costs, how much
| rival 1 costs, and look at Free Alternative 2, and decide
| what I'm willing to pay.
|
| But under your scenario, I have no clue how much more (or
| less) expensive Photoshop will be than the paid or free
| alternatives, unless I can first forecast all the
| individual steps that will be needed to do the editing I
| have in mind, and then spend time adding up each action's
| costs to get an idea of the total price. Not only would it
| be extremely hard to accurately list every action that
| would be needed before actually doing them, but even if I
| thought that were possible then the amount of hassle would
| be a big enough deal breaker that I just wouldn't be
| willing to bother with it.
| whycome wrote:
| > it makes it a massive pain in the ass for any price-
| conscious users to decide whether it's worth paying for.
|
| The goal would be to dissociate the software from the
| price/value. It happens when people are enticed to get
| loyalty points for things like grocery purchases. No one
| would move if the deal was "save 30cents" but they would
| for "and get 300 bonus points!" (See McDonald's or every
| other loyalty system). Entire ecosystems have been
| created around inflated point value too.
|
| Adobe should just call them "Adobe points" and make it
| essentially a digital currency that can also be used for
| stock photos, etc too. Or maybe even for cloud computing
| for fast render farms of your increasingly complex
| video/3Dworks. Heck, it could be blockchain based too
| (AdobeCoin?)
|
| They're already trying the kind of "buffet" model with
| their cloud subs. Maybe they can shift to a credit system
| to encourage other users.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Autodesk has this system with "credits". Seems hokey.
| alt227 wrote:
| Wow, this Autodesk Flex Tokens system is exactly the sort
| of thing I was suggesting, it looks really cool!
|
| https://www.autodesk.com/buying/flex?term=500&tab=flex
|
| Looks like they do it per day per user, so 1 token allows
| 1 user to use the software for 1 day. Really good idea
| for licensing teams to use expensive industry software
| IMO
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| No, different applications have different token/day cost.
| kbolino wrote:
| > Somebody please show me a downside to this model?
|
| For whom? The user? It's an absolute clusterfuck. Always
| online video games have already done this shit, and it's
| been a nightmare for the end user, and that software
| doesn't do anything "important".
|
| Can you imagine not being able to open or save your file
| because the servers are overloaded? Or getting charged a
| premium at the end of a long day because you weren't
| carefully counting your credits and you need to save your
| file?
| alt227 wrote:
| I would argue gaming does not equal business.
|
| I was just suggesting that something like this could be
| offered alongside existing models, and so offer a cheaper
| alternative to people who only want to edit a few files
| per month.
|
| >Can you imagine not being able to open or save your file
| because the servers are overloaded?
|
| This happens all the time in business since the world
| moved to the cloud. Microsoft is down? No opening or
| saving office files, say goodbye to email. Amazon down?
| Your website is now not currently taking customer orders.
| kbolino wrote:
| Fair point -- the delta to be considered is against the
| existing SaaS/cloud offering, not the old-school
| everything-local model.
|
| That having been said, not being able to save a file
| you've worked on because you ran out of credits would be
| a serious issue.
| alt227 wrote:
| > not being able to save a file you've worked on because
| you ran out of credits would be a serious issue.
|
| Yeah I agree with that, I think I went down the wrong
| path with credits = individual functions. Ive since seen
| that Autodesk does a credits system where tokens are used
| for time using the software. I think thats a much better
| idea than mine.
|
| https://www.autodesk.com/buying/flex?term=500&tab=flex
| hmottestad wrote:
| If it's Photoshop, Illustrator and/or InDesign that you want
| I would recommend Affinity instead:
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/#universal
|
| You can actually buy the software, not just rent it.
| lbotos wrote:
| Long time fan of Affinity, they were just acquired so I'm
| waiting with baited breath....
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-
| press-...
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/affinity-
| and...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Been using Affinity since Adobe started requiring me to
| rent their software. Designer, Photo, even Publisher.
|
| I use Affinity Photo the least though -- for pixel-based
| drawing I prefer Pixelmator Pro.
| alt227 wrote:
| I had forgotten that they offer the 'Elements' range where
| you can buy Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements. These
| are stripped down versions of the full software, but they are
| not subscription. You pay once, you own it.
|
| https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-elements.html
| Trollmann wrote:
| Not for students. CS6 single product was up to $250, CS6 DS
| $350, CS6 MC $800 compared to CC 1st year $240 increasing to
| $360. If you only needed a single product you were off worse
| after one year. Even doing a bachelors which required all
| products would have been less expensive with the one time fee
| if you had the money.
| duped wrote:
| Back in the day (a decade ago) you would go to the lab which
| had Autodesk/Solidworks/Matlab/Adobe/$expensive-software
| installed instead of buying it for your personal (and
| probably underpowered) device. It was one of the few things
| that your tuition actually paid for.
|
| And you'd have to learn time management to make sure you
| could get your project done on time instead of crunching at
| the last minute, because the lab would be filled with people
| who didn't.
|
| </grumble>
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Our lab used to let you remote desktop in for that stuff,
| but it was unreliable at best (especially during project
| crunch times) because anyone physically at the lab could
| kick you off your computer by unplugging it. Was still
| really nice to have if you were letting a rendering run
| overnight.
|
| On the Autodesk side, they give out free access to student
| accounts, so I had that stuff both in the lab and on my
| home computer.
| wnevets wrote:
| > Fast forward a decade and that $19.99/mo product has become
| $89.99/mo and the value prop has plummeted on top of it.
|
| Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
| jonathankoren wrote:
| It's not. The quality stayed the same, even improved. It's
| run of the mill monopoly pricing.
| crote wrote:
| It is 100% enshittification. The definition is even in the
| linked article:
|
| > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their
| users; then they abuse their users to make things better
| for their business customers; finally, they abuse those
| business customers to claw back all the value for
| themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification,
| (..)
|
| The core point here is "abuse the user", not "make features
| worse". Price gauging would be included in that definition.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Enshittification usually refers to companies that run
| two-sided markets ("platforms"), like rideshare and
| delivery apps. Adobe raising prices on everyone isn't
| really the same thing. Enshittification works by first
| subsidizing everything for everyone, then alternately
| squeezing the sellers and buyers on the platform by
| increasing their cut and raising prices. It's about
| playing a game where you alternately squeeze one side or
| another of a marketplace that you control.
|
| Adobe doesn't really run a platform, they're selling a
| product and finding ways to raise the price.
| Retric wrote:
| Ensnittification definitely applied to home appliances
| like washing machines.
|
| IMO inkjet printers where the front runner here before
| online platforms really took off.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I don't think any of that stuff really follows the
| definition as quoted though. That definition is all about
| a middleman squeezing buyers and sellers. That people use
| it to mean "any scummy business practice that uses lock-
| in or corner-cutting to squeeze customers" doesn't make
| those uses fit that definition.
|
| That stuff is not new, enshittification was coined to
| refer to the relatively _new_ ways that _platforms_
| started to squeeze people.
| Retric wrote:
| The original word is really just descriptive of the
| unpleasant side of optimization you see in commerce.
|
| Walmart finding the minimum product quality they can sell
| is no different than Facebook finding the maximum number
| of Advertisements people will tolerate.
| roywiggins wrote:
| People can use words however they want, but it _wasn 't
| coined to refer to that in general_. You can read the
| blog post: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-
| ai/
|
| > "I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly
| inevitable consequence arising from the combination of
| the ease of changing how a platform allocates value,
| combined with the nature of a "two sided market," _where
| a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each
| hostage to the other_ , raking off an ever-larger share
| of the value that passes between them." (emphasis mine)
|
| All I'm saying is that citing back to the original
| definition (which is talking about _platforms_ ) does not
| bolster the case that what Adobe is doing counts, because
| it plainly doesn't fall under that definition. Adobe is
| not running a two-sided market. For it to be
| enshittification you need to use a much more expansive
| definition. Which is fine, but in that case you _can 't_
| cite the original definition!
| Retric wrote:
| He applies the word to more than just that kind of 2
| sided market. https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-
| enshittification-memos-2...
|
| In his own words the enshitificstion of Google is:
| _"curse of bigness."_
|
| > With no growth from new customers, and no growth from
| new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing
| workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock
| buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next
| 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with
| Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue
| conspiracy), or end-users.
|
| _Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly
| signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring
| out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not
| to do it because it liked the money too much._
|
| _How did a company like Unity -- ... -- turn into a
| protection racket?_
|
| So, while he may describe Enshittification as platform
| decay he's not limiting its use to such.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Are you sure you read the article? The very first
| sentence of the article is, "Enshittification is _the
| pattern of decreasing quality_ observed in online
| services and products[.] " (Emphasis added.) If the
| quality remains the same, or improves, it's by definition
| not decreasing, and therefore not enshitification.
| Furthermore, as other people pointed out, this is a
| reference to two sided marketplaces.
|
| Just because there's a new buzzword, doesn't mean it
| applies. In fact, it usually doesn't.
| whycome wrote:
| Adobe has removed features from Premiere and Flash/Animate
| (those are the ones I know personally and have been pissed
| off at)
| crazygringo wrote:
| Nevertheless, they've added _far more_ features to
| Premiere than things they 've removed.
|
| So it's not "ensh*ttification", which is when prices go
| up while the product gets worse.
|
| Nobody can seriously argue that Premiere hasn't been
| getting better overall. It has been. And it's continuing
| to.
|
| (Which is totally separate from how scummy their
| subscription cancellation/renewal practices are.)
| wnevets wrote:
| It absolutely is. I now dread every single time I am forced
| to open a modern creative cloud product.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| For people who hate or simply can't justify the subscriptions,
| big shout out to Affinity suite v2. Currently 50% off at $83,
| permanent universal license for Mac/Windows/iPad
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/
|
| That includes Photo/Designer/Publisher, which are competitors
| to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign respectively.
|
| It's not a drop-in replacement and if you're collaborating with
| other people who are in Adobe-land then you'll need to stick
| with Adobe too. But for people who occasionally need an image
| editor for solo work and have been priced out of all the Adobe
| products, it's a solid option.
|
| One caveat is they're now owned by Canva, things haven't gone
| to shit yet but they might in the future.
| sirn wrote:
| Another caveat is that if your workflow requires dealing with
| complex text layout on a regular basis (e.g., Asian
| languages), Affinity suite support for it is pretty much non-
| existent. For example, lack of a working right-to-left
| support, no vertical text support for CJK, broken tone
| markers handling in Thai layout, lack of complex word-break
| for any languages that is not space-based, etc.
|
| Sadly, Adobe is still the only option in the market for this.
| atoav wrote:
| I was one of those who wasn't supportive back then, because it
| was pretty clear where things would go from there. They
| wouldn't switch for a subscription model to earn _less_ money,
| that was sure.
|
| And being a quasi monopolist meant keeping working with that
| old CS6 version was less and less of an option. So what are you
| going to do? Complain? Suck it up?
|
| Even back then it was clear they are going for the slow-
| warming-the-water temperature-till-it-boils-strategy.
| 42lux wrote:
| If affinity would just get their act together and release their
| suite for linux we could all get over adobe real quick.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Has Adobe released their suite for Linux?
| 42lux wrote:
| That's not the point. Industries such as VFX and game studios
| often either run dual-boot systems or provide two
| workstations per artist. If there is a usable equivalent for
| Linux, they will adopt it because the rest of their tooling
| runs on Linux anyways. Currently, they have no incentive to
| switch.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, I see what you're saying. It's not that Linux users
| can't switch off an existing Adobe setup to Affinity, as
| that having a native Affinity build on Linux would enable
| people to switch off Adobe.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| I have never heard of any VFX artist running linux. Is that
| really true?
| SSLy wrote:
| https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/s
| fdc...
|
| Operating System
|
| Rocky Linux 9.3 Rocky Linux 8.7 Rocky Linux 8.5
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| I meant more are most VFX artists actually using Linux
| like the commenter claims. There are DAWs for linux too
| but everyone is using mac or windows in music.
| 42lux wrote:
| All the big studios run on Linux.
|
| https://vfxplatform.com/linux/
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Very cool!
| djbusby wrote:
| I had similar issues with OVH. Got an annual contract, didn't
| like their service, went to cancel but it had already renewed
| into second year and I had to cancel 30 days before that. So I
| missed my small window. Now stuck with another year because to
| cancel means just pay out the rest of the contract. Grrr.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I recently used Privacy card to purchase a monthly subscription
| to Adobe Acrobat for a one-time need. They've been failing to
| charge me $30 for weeks now. Sad that I have to resort to this
| kind of stuff to protect myself from businesses.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Be aware that they sometimes send folks to collections (with
| the corresponding credit hit) over this; most of the
| subscriptions are worded as annual commitments.
| jmount wrote:
| I was at a party once and was introduced to a nice person who
| worked for Adobe. At the time I was heavily into photography, and
| I started praising Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately (due to a lack
| of editor) I continued with how Photoshop was great, unlike so
| many other Adobe products. Then I attempted to apologize by
| saying I was wrong and rude, but it is just that Adobe policies
| are so nasty. Saw the guy on BART the next day, he didn't make
| eye contact. I still feel both bad and right.
| iamleppert wrote:
| Customers should be required to pay out the FULL contract
| enterprise value under force of law.
| twosheep wrote:
| "annual contract billed monthly" is a dark pattern - it's not
| monthly, it's annual, and deliberately confusing
| terpimost wrote:
| As a happy paying customer of Photopea (photoshop in a browser by
| not Adobe) I'm glad Figma isn't under Adobe but there is a
| revenue/investors pressure and Figma is becoming more and more
| affected by it.
|
| I would be fine paying for Adobe if their software would be the
| beat example of UX and performance. But sluggish brush stroke on
| M1 is just not acceptable.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| Figma is VC funded, and will soon IPO. It will soon be owned by
| the same people that own Adobe.
| kaetemi wrote:
| I had the "cancel anytime after the first year" plan, and after
| that first year was over, they tried charging another whole year
| as cancellation fee.
| drra wrote:
| I own an ancient box copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 and use it just
| because of muscle memory. Since a year or so, periodically it
| bullies me with a popup that my unlicensed software is going to
| be disabled and it shows every 15 minutes regardless if I run
| Photoshop or not. Can't close it without going to Adobe website.
|
| I'll never going to buy or support anyone in buying anything
| produced by Adobe. Not going to cry if they go down either.
| focusedone wrote:
| I'm also nursing along CS4 but (very fortunately) haven't seen
| that error. I'm woefully out of date, so maybe got lucky with
| that.
|
| After many sleepless nights fighting with Adobe's licensing
| servers, which had erroneously declared my installation no
| longer valid, I keep an extra desktop offline with my 2nd
| licensed install ready for their next round of shenanigans.
| rglover wrote:
| The funny part of this behavior is (I'd imagine) Adobe would make
| far more money if they just offered simple plans and a "cancel
| any time" option alongside a "pay once for one year of upgrades
| and then that version works/is supported until the support window
| ends" option.
|
| So many great businesses have been ruined by the need for endless
| growth leading to dark patterns.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh no, I guarantee you the current way is making Adobe more
| money. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. It's not a mistake.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It absolutely can be a mistake. It's probably making them
| significantly more money in the short term, but it can be a
| total self-own on the scale of years, and perhaps not even
| that many years.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thank goodness, it's about time!
|
| My only question is, what the heck took the FTC this long? Why
| didn't they do this years ago?
|
| The problems with cancelling Adobe CC are well known:
|
| - Consumers think they've subscribed to a monthly plan only to
| discover it's yearly
|
| - If they cancel before the year is over they still have to pay
| 50% of the remaining time, while the software stops working
| immediately, and they had no idea
|
| - But worst of all, if you want to set it to NOT autorenew at the
| end of the year, YOU CAN'T [1]. You can't cancel renewal but keep
| the existing subscription through the end of the year. Which is
| insane. You have to wait until some brief "cancellation window"
| period at the end of your year, and cancel it AFTER the window
| has opened up but BEFORE it actually renews. Again, this is
| INSANE
|
| And all this is on top of the complaints that people try to
| cancel over the phone even _within_ the cancellation window, and
| either can 't do it, or think they've done it but it hasn't.
|
| There's no way the FTC won't win here. And I hope the FTC levies
| a _truly_ massive fine on Adobe, ON TOP OF refunds to consumers
| of all previous cancellation fees.
|
| It's absolutely despicable behavior, and there's no way Adobe
| would be able to get away with it if they didn't have network
| lock-in effects from what have become the industry file formats
| of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc. If you collaborate in
| the graphics space you need to use their tools period, so you can
| edit files people send you and vice-versa. Conversion tools never
| work perfectly, or even well, when they even exist at all.
|
| [1] https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/manage-auto-
| ren...
| hparadiz wrote:
| I hope they get the book thrown at them. Absolute scum.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| >My only question is, what took the FTC this long? Why didn't
| they do this years ago?
|
| In general, the government and its agencies move _very_ slowly.
| Compared to the FTC, Adobe 's move over to subscription is
| quite recent. Adobe's only been doing subscriptions for what,
| maybe 10 years? And these problems are even more recent than
| that.
|
| It also takes time to build up a case, even if they had looked
| into it immediately. Get a nice long paper trail, lots of
| documentation, consumer complaints, etc. That can take years.
|
| As they get more familiar with the modern world of software, I
| think cases like this will take less and less time to deal
| with.
| michael_vo wrote:
| My dad was accidentally paying 89.99$ a month and hasn't used
| their service for a year. I cancelled it for him after going
| through his taxes/finances. They use all sorts of dark UX
| practices at signup and cancellation.
|
| Honestly there should be a law where if you haven't logged into
| your account in 3 months you should get a notification asking if
| you want to cancel. It's one thing if the company is storing your
| data (like google photos) as that has an associated cost, but
| inactive accounts just feels like corporate theft.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've never really understood how someone could "forget" they
| were paying for something. Like, doesn't everyone check their
| bank balances and purchase histories at least once a month? Or
| at least just skim their credit card bills? How do you even
| make sure you have enough money for things? I have Quicken open
| pretty much constantly, and refresh at least once a day. Of
| course not everyone is as anal as me, but you'd think at a bare
| minimum most people took a peek at their finances once a month?
| Once a year even? How do people just stay on autopilot for
| months/years and just wing it?
| beretguy wrote:
| Some people are rich.
| themagician wrote:
| Once you have enough money it doesn't matter. You don't spend
| time looking at bills. You know roughly that credit card X
| has a bill of $4-5k a month and as long as it's close to that
| why bother. You set an autopay with an upper limit and just
| never think about it. You rely on things like email
| notifications to "catch" odd spending. Look at a bill maybe
| twice a year. You don't go through line by line, you just
| look for things that are odd and if nothing stands out you're
| done. Maybe you spend 30 minutes a year looking at bills.
|
| Oddly, poor people make similar choices for almost opposite
| reasons. They don't want to check because it causes anxiety
| and they feel like they don't have control anyway.
| michael_vo wrote:
| Yea I briefly glance over and struggle to recall what I
| bought. I was going to dispute a charge that was 15 minutes
| apart and a few Pennies different for the same grocery
| store. Then I realized it was the gas station outside owned
| by the grocery store.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This has been an enlightening thread. I can see now why
| companies use every dark pattern in the book to get you to
| subscribe, because apparently, for many people, once a bill
| is on "autopay" then as long as it's a low enough charge,
| the company probably doesn't even have to provide any
| service for it. Just milk that forgetful customer forever.
| And multiply that customer by... at least everyone in this
| thread!
|
| So wild, I guess I'm actually an outlier. I actually keep
| paper receipts and compare with what I was charged when it
| hits my balance. You'd be surprised how often restaurants,
| grocery stores, hotels and so on are off by a few cents or
| even a dollar or so. You'd think with everything
| computerized these errors wouldn't happen. I also never use
| autopay for bills.
| genevra wrote:
| I assume some, like myself, don't want to spend time on
| that
|
| I do glance at my statements every few months though
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Once you have enough money it doesn't matter.
|
| That threshold must be VERY high!
|
| Over half my income is disposable. My wife (who also works)
| and I end up eating out way too much and still manage to
| put 40% of my after-tax salary into savings each month.
|
| I still log into my bank and credit card accounts every
| week to make sure nothing suspicious has appeared, and I
| manually pay off my credit card with every paycheck on the
| 1st and 15th of every month.
|
| > Oddly, poor people make similar choices for almost
| opposite reasons. They don't want to check because it
| causes anxiety and they feel like they don't have control
| anyway.
|
| An utterly dangerous action to take based on that mindset.
| I've been poor (though not really destitute, just could
| only budget ~$3 per meal), and I watched my finances like a
| HAWK. I even had a Post-It note stuck to the side of my
| monitor with the due dates of all my bills as well as the
| typical range (ie, Electric $30-100 depending on season),
| so I always knew what was coming.
| hbn wrote:
| Not a good habit but I rarely check my credit card
| statements, I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where money
| isn't a stressor for me so I just wait for the email that my
| next statement is ready and pay it off.
|
| To be fair, itemized credit card charges are always formatted
| so badly and it usually just ends up stressing me out because
| I see some $83 charge on there for something in all-caps that
| doesn't look familiar, then I search my emails and figure out
| what it was and I don't know why they're named like that when
| the charge is put through.
|
| But man, thank god for this thread because I thought to check
| just now and I realized my bank didn't email me when my last
| statement was ready, and I would have been late to pay if I
| didn't by tomorrow.
| shaan7 wrote:
| I find going through monthly statements quite cumbersome, so
| instead what works better is to enable notifications for each
| transaction. That way I just get an email when something is
| charged to the card, makes it easier to notice unused
| subscriptions.
| michael_vo wrote:
| The elderly forget. My dad forgets his login password every
| single time. He does a password reset to login to anything.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| Reminds me of [1]
|
| > There are still 1.5 million people paying a monthly
| subscription service fee for AOL -- but instead of dial-up
| access, these subscribers get technical support and identity
| theft software.
|
| > The number of AOL dial-up subscribers is now "in the low
| thousands," according to a source.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-
| people-s...
| michael_vo wrote:
| What a scam! I have seen companies who offer to check your
| subscriptions and automatically cancel for you.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| They absolutely deserve it. A number of these companies have
| started abusing their customers in illegal ways by forcing them
| to accept new terms and conditions before they can even login to
| cancel subscriptions or access things they have already paid for.
|
| This needs to be ended through legislation, but also needs to be
| retroactive, with fines and jail time for the senior most
| executives. Adobe is not the only problem company. Blizzard and
| Roku and TP Link and Sonos are all recent examples.
| docmars wrote:
| _Adobe Color_ me absolutely shocked! ;)
| gist wrote:
| Not a fan of HN posts like this that devolve into a bunch of pile
| on anecdotes which end up creating chatter which obscures the non
| anecdotes.
| qwertox wrote:
| After letting them do their shenanigans for over a decade...
| datahack wrote:
| Honestly, cancelling Adobe after getting my kids school account
| shadow billed for 6 months was a nightmare and obscenely
| difficult. I really think Adobe has gone full vulture on their
| users and they need a change of leadership of a breakup.
|
| I was so relieved when the Figma acquisition fell through -- the
| only serious competitor to their ecosystem almost died in that
| deal.
| unsignedint wrote:
| The concept of "annual paid monthly" subscriptions is similar to
| other services offering annual payments at a discounted rate
| compared to monthly subscriptions. However, the presentation can
| be somewhat deceptive. Adobe's challenge lies in its relatively
| steep pricing, which may cause consumers to experience sticker
| shock upon seeing the total amount. A pricing model akin to
| JetBrains, with more reasonable options to individual, could
| potentially be more appealing to customers.
| RRWagner wrote:
| I tried to block Adobe from automatically billing my account for
| a monthly fee, Adobe phone support said if I couldn't tell them
| the email that was billing my bank account, they wouldn't cancel
| it. I then told the bank to block further billing. Then the
| billing name started changing on my statement: Adobe -> Adobe
| Inc. -> Adobe _Creative C - > Adobe _Stock, so the "new name(s)"
| didn't get blocked. The bank eventually refunded a portion
| because I had called the first time. Wonder if the bank would
| have a claim against Adobe in addition to the FTC?
| slater wrote:
| I'd forward screenshots of those shenanigans to the DOJ folks
| on this case, sounds like they'd want to know about that too.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's honestly insane
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| they really know what they're doing don't they I imagine the
| implementatioin of this as some executive saying "surely we
| can't get away with that" and then of course, them getting away
| with that
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| If you're in the US, I wonder if you could get your state's AG
| to charge Adobe with wire fraud.
| vardump wrote:
| I didn't actually _dare_ to subscribe due to horror stories I 've
| heard about Adobe.
|
| Luckily Open Source tools have been sufficient for my limited
| needs. Like Krita, Inkscape and Gimp.
| FredPret wrote:
| The subscription model is awful because of the dark patterns in
| cancelling.
|
| But it does open up their product suite to people who would be
| hesitant to shell out a couple of hundred bucks upfront.
|
| Adobe was a stagnant business until 2014. Revenue is up 500%
| since then: https://valustox.com/ADBE
| cjensen wrote:
| Very interesting here is the charges against a pair of specific
| executives who are _not_ at all C-Suite level. Makes me wonder
| why them, specifically. E.g. could it have been something like
| emails between them suggesting the illegal activity, but no
| evidence they told anyone above them?
| whatever1 wrote:
| The first saas with a hidden cancellation fee! When I first saw
| it I ran away.
| gjs4786 wrote:
| I just recently went through this nonsense sand that was just
| getting my money back after canceling on day 3 of their 7 day
| trial. it had been years since I last used photoshop, so I wanted
| to see what they had don on the generative side.their tactics
| from the perspective of someone in the maze is unflattering to
| say the least. they deserve this
| holler wrote:
| About six months ago I was auditing my bank statements and
| realized I've been paying Adobe ~$40 for the past 5-6 years or
| so, almost $3,000 for software I very seldom used if at all in
| recent times. Closed my account, downloaded gimp, and won't be
| using Adobe in the future.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm just curious how you miss something like this for 5+ years?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| A list of Adobe alternatives:
| https://untested.sonnet.io/Alternatives+to+Adobe
| Osiris wrote:
| The FTC is on a rampage lately.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| I'm not a professional designer but I do quite a bit of design,
| photo, and typography work these days.
|
| The Affinity suite of programs (Photo, Designer, and Publisher)
| have been the perfect alternative for someone like me who does
| casual work, isn't locked into the Adobe ecosystem, and doesn't
| want to spend $60+/month on a subscription.
|
| Their programs are full-featured, blazing fast, integrate with
| one another, and are - most importantly - pay once per license.
| Funnily, they're doing a 50% sale right now, which brings the
| entire line of products to a one-time payment of $83. Likely to
| capitalize on the Adobe's bad press cycle.
|
| The value of this package is undeniable. I'm a very happy user.
|
| The only caveat is that they don't yet have all of the cutting-
| edge high-end features that Adobe offers (AI integration, etc).
| But the nuts and bolts functionality is rock solid and they are
| adding more and more features each day. I find the lack of bloat
| and a massive codebase really help to streamline the performance.
| It's been flawless for me.
| bentt wrote:
| I'm a game developer and Affinity Photo is missing a couple key
| features which make it nearly useless for us. In particular, it
| doesn't have individual channel editing. This is sort of
| baffling because it's only a UX issue... the tech to edit
| individual channels (including Alpha) is innate in image
| editing.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Yep, just got this package yesterday and I was pretty amazed at
| how easy it was to switch over. Their PSD compatibility seems
| quite good too, although obviously some of the effects are
| implemented subtly differently.
|
| I've tried to quit Photoshop before with GIMP, Krita and even
| more obscure alternatives but gladly shelled out the cash for
| the Affinity Suite.
| teekert wrote:
| The law in the Netherlands says you can only prolong
| subscriptions by a month after the first year. I was only able to
| cancel my 2.5 year Adobe subscription after speaking to 3 people,
| in English arguing they are breaking local laws (not many people
| here can have the discussions I had to have in English). I never
| used anything from adobe again after that. I filed an official
| complaint with our government after someone here in HN suggested
| it, never heard anything about it anymore. Glad someone is doing
| something about it now.
| silcoon wrote:
| I subscribed for a month for try photoshop and got locked for an
| entire year with costo growing after few months. I was able to
| terminate my subscription by changing payment to an empty prepaid
| card.
| jarbus wrote:
| Lina Kahn, once again, is the greatest thing to happen to America
| I've ever seen in my short time alive.
| nabaraz wrote:
| I did a trial of Creative Suite on my mac. When it was time to
| uninstall, I couldn't do it using Creative Cloud Uninstaller.
| Because, Apparently I have to uninstall photoshop and other
| softwares from Creative Cloud App before uninstalling Creative
| Suite. I couldn't uninstall Photoshop etc. because my login to
| Creative Suite App didn't work. So, I contacted Adobe, there was
| some issue with getting 2FA to my email for some reason. So I
| couldn't login to CC to uninstall Photoshop to uninstall Creative
| Suite.
|
| I had to reset my mac just to get rid of Adobe spywares.
| bentt wrote:
| I would love to know if and how Adobe has obstructed a FOSS
| competitor to Photoshop (akin to Blender in 3D). There must be a
| good reason that nothing has emerged over the years. My guess is
| there are some features they get territorial over and then start
| to lawyer scare programmers who tread too closely.
| fritzo wrote:
| I haven't used photoshop since the 1990s, GIMP has plenty of
| features.
| solfox wrote:
| Good, I've had such bad experiences with this company. Adobe is
| the king of dark patterns.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Adobe F-ed around for soooooo long. Too bad the "find out" part
| won't effect those who have been making the decisions to put
| these practices in effect.
| poopcat wrote:
| I am just glad that I finally learned that I do not, in fact,
| have to pay for Adobe Acrobat to be able to edit a PDF and can do
| it for free in Preview on Mac.
| paxys wrote:
| If by "edit" you mean rearrange the order of pages or add a
| signature then sure, but Preview can't do too much more than
| that.
| einpoklum wrote:
| For me this is another example of why, all things said and done,
| we need free software for image processing and for final-form
| document processing - not Photoshop and Acrobat.
|
| For Acrobat, at least, a combination of tool sorta-kinda-mostly
| gets the job done; look at Xournal++, qpdf, and the various PDF
| printers (gradually being superseded by library-based PDF export
| filters).
|
| For image processing, we have simple programs like Paint.Net or
| Krita, and we have GIMP - which is quite featureful but I don't
| know if it's a "match" for Photoshop.
| chipsdip wrote:
| Until recently, I was using the Adobe suite extensively. I
| decided to switch to a competing software exactly because of the
| practices mentioned in the article.
|
| I don't want to elaborate unnecessarily, but I can confirm that
| these accusations are absolutely valid, and I even recently told
| my friends about how unfair Adobe's practices towards consumers
| are.
|
| I also personally know someone who decided to block their payment
| card at the bank because it was the only way they knew to free
| themselves from Adobe's subscription.
| polak84 wrote:
| Thanks.
| sinecure wrote:
| Photoshop is, unfortunately, the most comfortable art application
| out there for a lot of art related workflows. The pattern preview
| mode allows for painting tiling textures easily (a feature oddly
| lacking from all competitors--except asperite oddly), the filters
| are all top notch, the ability to do non-destructive adjustments
| is insanely useful and not seen anywhere else, and the brush
| engine is the industry standard. There are a lot of nice things
| about how Photoshop approaches art that others are missing. The
| fact that Photoshop can manipulate images as easily as it can
| create them is what makes it special. Procreate is great for
| painting, but lacks even 10% of the features Photoshop has. Gimp
| is a decent photo editor with terrible painting tools.
|
| There is a massive opportunity in the market for Procreate to
| come out with a desktop version that expands on its
| functionality, but my theory is that it is probably the #1 iPad
| selling point for many people and Apple is paying them to keep it
| iPadOS / iOS only. Some big name Japanese anime studios are now
| working a big percentage of their workflow on iPads with
| Procreate.
| polak84 wrote:
| Thanks
| ryanmccullagh wrote:
| I hope FTC gets DirectTV next -- which also fails to adequately
| disclose to consumers that by signing up for a subscription
| your're agreeing to a 2 year contract.
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