6 ms·

"I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market." I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the ram

by epo 13y ago

"I think Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market." I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products. What this now does is open up the domestic image processing market, while businesses can be milked for all they're worth. I'll stick with Photoshop CS3 until it stops working.

Negitivefrags 13y ago
It might be that rampant piracy of Photoshop is part of the reason it is so dominant though. Every kid who had some desire to edit images pirated Photoshop, and thus they get used to using that particular tool. If they actually end up working in a real business doing this for a job then they will demand the use of Photoshop because it's what they already know and few businesses pirate their software.
kstrauser 13y ago
And by "fixed the rampant copyright violation" you mean "closed the top of the funnel to newcomers". I don't know a single college student or new home experimenter who paid for Photoshop, but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.
- powertower 13y ago
  > The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. Except the entire industry claims that the number of people that would have bought it if they could not have pirated it is GREATER than the number of people that pirated it, used it as some kind of month or year long trial-ware, and eventually paid for it. My own experience - the day a warez copy came out on Google's front page results for my software, was the day sales got cut in half, and stayed cut. People pirate because it's easy to do, and fewer people will buy it if it's being given away for free by some site that generates its revenue from stealing other peoples work and showing you ads in the process.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    businesses are different from people. They are "much" more likely to get caught through auditing or the like. Never mind the fact that companies have budgets allocated for this sort of thing, so there's no real incentive to pirate it unless it's actually a big time-saver.
- stusmall 13y ago
  I really dislike the "it brings new users" argument for piracy. If it made business sense to provide a free entry to their product they would. Pirates aren't somehow doing them a favor and its moral acrobatics to pretend like they are. For students they have heavily discounted licenses and I know a few low-quality(I don't know anyone worth their salt who pirates it), professional graphic designers who use pirated copies. It is lost revenue and if they wanted to provide demos that should be up to them not the pirates.
  - ender7 13y ago
    It is up to them, but the parent is arguing that it's a bad business decision, and I agree. Even their "student" versions are wayyy too expensive for people to dabble with (especially penny-pinching students).
  - te_chris 13y ago
    The piracy amounted to blocking a few urls in the hosts file, between versions they never changed these urls, not even between updates. I'm going to draw the conclusion that making it so easy is at least a tacit acknowledgement of Adobe being OK with having such an effective funnel.
  - integraton 13y ago
    It's a mistake to use the "if it made business sense ... they would" line of thinking when interpreting the decision-making of any organization, especially large established ones. As Marc Andreessen has noted: "The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue. ... "The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more. ... "You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company. ... "You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all." http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL41g0J:pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-5-the-moby+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...
- coldtea 13y ago
  >but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. You'd be surprised.
- loceng 13y ago
  And there will be competitors.
- krapp 13y ago
  but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. I suppose it depends on your definition of 'professional' but I know a few. Maybe not in the AE realm but among web designers and graphic artists, and especially freelancers and small business owners...
- tolmasky 13y ago
  Cloud pricing provides some interesting alternative remedies for his problem. For example, it might make it easier to offer schools discount pricing so all their students get CC. More creatively, if they could offer "student" pricing for say 5-10/mo, I think you enter the territory where it's easier to pay than to steal. If you imagine an ideal in the future where photoshop was just a website you loaded, this pricing model is how it would work probably.
- epo 13y ago
  Oh for God's sake! The "piracy is a gateway to purchase" argument is asinine and only believed by people trying to justify their own thieving. Any "backlash" to Adobe's move will come from the thieves, who were never going to be customers anyway. As I said, what is good is that the lower end of the market may have been opened up.
  - pliny 13y ago
    >The "piracy is a gateway to purchase" argument is asinine and only believed by people trying to justify their own thieving For my benefit, please explain what is wrong with his rationale.
- ChiperSoft 13y ago
  I'm ok with this because it means those newcomers will be forced to learn on other tools. Maybe this will weaken Adobe's chokehold on web developers. I welcome the day I don't have to use photoshop just because that's what the designer used.
uptown 13y ago
"I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products." I don't see how this accomplishes that. The programs still get downloaded to people's desktops where they'll be able to be cracked in a way that allows for unauthorized installations. The whole "cloud" terminology with their Creative Suite doesn't require any sort of always-connected status to use their apps. You literally just download and install like any other application.
uptown 13y ago
"I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products." I don't see how this accomplishes that. The programs still get downloaded to people's desktops where they'll be able to be cracked in a way that allows for unauthorized installations. The whole "cloud" terminology with their Creative Suite doesn't require any sort of always-connected status to use their apps. You literally just download and install like any other application.
Karunamon 13y ago
If that was their goal, they are doing it about as wrong as could be possibly done. The Cloud stuff doesn't run in a browser, it's just digital distribution. You download a helper app which lists the apps you have access to, and you download and install them from there. If anyone thinks that when whatever CS7 equivalent comes out that there won't be cracks in the usual places just like CS6, they're sorely mistaken.

by epo 13y ago

Negitivefrags 13y ago

It might be that rampant piracy of Photoshop is part of the reason it is so dominant though. Every kid who had some desire to edit images pirated Photoshop, and thus they get used to using that particular tool. If they actually end up working in a real business doing this for a job then they will demand the use of Photoshop because it's what they already know and few businesses pirate their software.

kstrauser 13y ago

And by "fixed the rampant copyright violation" you mean "closed the top of the funnel to newcomers". I don't know a single college student or new home experimenter who paid for Photoshop, but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.

powertower 13y ago
> The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway. Except the entire industry claims that the number of people that would have bought it if they could not have pirated it is GREATER than the number of people that pirated it, used it as some kind of month or year long trial-ware, and eventually paid for it. My own experience - the day a warez copy came out on Google's front page results for my software, was the day sales got cut in half, and stayed cut. People pirate because it's easy to do, and fewer people will buy it if it's being given away for free by some site that generates its revenue from stealing other peoples work and showing you ads in the process.
- rtpg 13y ago
  businesses are different from people. They are "much" more likely to get caught through auditing or the like. Never mind the fact that companies have budgets allocated for this sort of thing, so there's no real incentive to pirate it unless it's actually a big time-saver.
stusmall 13y ago
I really dislike the "it brings new users" argument for piracy. If it made business sense to provide a free entry to their product they would. Pirates aren't somehow doing them a favor and its moral acrobatics to pretend like they are. For students they have heavily discounted licenses and I know a few low-quality(I don't know anyone worth their salt who pirates it), professional graphic designers who use pirated copies. It is lost revenue and if they wanted to provide demos that should be up to them not the pirates.
- ender7 13y ago
  It is up to them, but the parent is arguing that it's a bad business decision, and I agree. Even their "student" versions are wayyy too expensive for people to dabble with (especially penny-pinching students).
- te_chris 13y ago
  The piracy amounted to blocking a few urls in the hosts file, between versions they never changed these urls, not even between updates. I'm going to draw the conclusion that making it so easy is at least a tacit acknowledgement of Adobe being OK with having such an effective funnel.
- integraton 13y ago
  It's a mistake to use the "if it made business sense ... they would" line of thinking when interpreting the decision-making of any organization, especially large established ones. As Marc Andreessen has noted: "The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue. ... "The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more. ... "You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company. ... "You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all." http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL41g0J:pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-5-the-moby+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...
coldtea 13y ago
>but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. You'd be surprised.
loceng 13y ago
And there will be competitors.
krapp 13y ago
but I also don't know a single professional user who didn't pay for it. I suppose it depends on your definition of 'professional' but I know a few. Maybe not in the AE realm but among web designers and graphic artists, and especially freelancers and small business owners...
tolmasky 13y ago
Cloud pricing provides some interesting alternative remedies for his problem. For example, it might make it easier to offer schools discount pricing so all their students get CC. More creatively, if they could offer "student" pricing for say 5-10/mo, I think you enter the territory where it's easier to pay than to steal. If you imagine an ideal in the future where photoshop was just a website you loaded, this pricing model is how it would work probably.
epo 13y ago
Oh for God's sake! The "piracy is a gateway to purchase" argument is asinine and only believed by people trying to justify their own thieving. Any "backlash" to Adobe's move will come from the thieves, who were never going to be customers anyway. As I said, what is good is that the lower end of the market may have been opened up.
- pliny 13y ago
  >The "piracy is a gateway to purchase" argument is asinine and only believed by people trying to justify their own thieving For my benefit, please explain what is wrong with his rationale.
ChiperSoft 13y ago
I'm ok with this because it means those newcomers will be forced to learn on other tools. Maybe this will weaken Adobe's chokehold on web developers. I welcome the day I don't have to use photoshop just because that's what the designer used.

uptown 13y ago

"I think what they did, or at least what they wanted to do, was find a fix for the rampant theft of their products." I don't see how this accomplishes that. The programs still get downloaded to people's desktops where they'll be able to be cracked in a way that allows for unauthorized installations. The whole "cloud" terminology with their Creative Suite doesn't require any sort of always-connected status to use their apps. You literally just download and install like any other application.

uptown 13y ago

Karunamon 13y ago

If that was their goal, they are doing it about as wrong as could be possibly done. The Cloud stuff doesn't run in a browser, it's just digital distribution. You download a helper app which lists the apps you have access to, and you download and install them from there. If anyone thinks that when whatever CS7 equivalent comes out that there won't be cracks in the usual places just like CS6, they're sorely mistaken.