A few days ago I dusted off a Mac Pro 2012, reinstalled Mavericks and Photoshop CS6. It's the first time in my 40+ years of computing life where I've ever "roll

A few days ago I dusted off a Mac Pro 2012, reinstalled Mavericks and Photoshop CS6. It's the first time in my 40+ years of computing life where I've ever "rolled back" 10 years. I quit Adobe a few years ago and decided never to go back, however recent work dictated reading and editing of .PSD files - complicated enough that only Photoshop could do the job. I opined during the whole installation process: something is very wrong with the modern computing industry when a user feels the need to wind the clock back 10 years (and go to the substantial trouble of doing so) to obtain needed functionality when there is no legal alternative. (i.e. I licensed CS6 in 2012, I was used to paying 600 or so dollars every few years for an upgrade, but I'm done with paying another cent for "renting" creative cloud at it's ridiculous ever-increasing price and CPU absorbing DRMware client. Adobe had me paying since CS3 - and for eight years as a CC customer). Capitalism would dictate that there should be a viable alternative, and yet, there is not. I also found myself thinking, what have we gained in the last 10 years? Telemetry? Desktop advertisements? New icons? Loss of backward compatibility. Mavericks - to me - seems perfectly usable even 10 years later, however I don't dare to connect it to the internet for lack of security updates. So... I too wonder if the future of the desktop is retro. It sounds jaded when I say that if this "rolling back" becomes a mainstream thing, surely big tech will come up with a derogatory term for it: "The Dr. Who's" who somehow undermine progress. I can't help feeling that we're experiencing multiple business monopolies simultaneously: because in Adobe's case - there was tremendous pushback against their subscription model... all to no avail. Their vendor-lock-in is as strong as it gets. Adobe's behaviour is also enabled by Apple and Microsoft in this case, newer versions of the OS's do not support CS6, and to use newer versions of Photoshop you'll need a newer version of the operating system. So what do we get now as locked-in photoshop users? Creative cloud ever increasing fees, Adobe CC software that wastes computing resources, topped off with the privilege of Microsoft or Apple telemetry. Back in the day it used to be called spyware. How are we moving in the right direction as an industry? I am completely sick of it.