8 ms·

It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing. What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version o

It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing. What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck. Want to modify any of the software on your computer in any way or install any local software? That disables the trusted DRM and none of your remote apps will load anymore because your machine is no longer trusted. (We already have this on Chromebooks for DRM video). Want to cancel your Microsoft Office subscription? Fine, now you've lost the ability to view any of your documents any more. Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad, they just shut down the servers forever. Sorry, no refunds. All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined for terrorist terms, for your safety of course. All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined to build marketing profiles. Every piece of software having the ultimate in user lock-in - total control over the users data. I find it hard to imagine a more dystopian future for software.

astrocat 12y ago
I dunno... all of this sounds like fearmongering and some of these things are perfectly analogous to the way stuff already works. For example: "Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad..." Want to continue using TwitPic? Too bad. Obsolescence happens, companies shut down, products go off the market and cease to be supported every day. This isn't new. If there's enough demand for an alternative, it will happen. Where there's a market, there will be product. Or: "It's either pay up or lose access." When I stop paying my gym membership I loose access. Nobody complains that "it's either pay up or get fat." Photoshop used to be a product, now its a service. This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business. Data safety in the cloud though is a reasonable concern. You don't know what's going on with your data on remote servers. But then, most people don't know what's going on with their data on their own machines. We've found ways to implement safety and security on our local machines (monitor for malware etc...), I imagine we will eventually find ways to ensure it on remote machines as well. Maybe.
- marknow 12y ago
  Not quite the same as a qym membership, however. Many, many designers use Adobe products to create original work. The prospect of being forced to continue to pay for access to your own created works feel a bit like a strong-arm tactic... and that's honestly how many large and small agencies are beginning to feel. It's not easy to just use another product, since a lot of proprietary aspects of the Adobe universe make it nigh impossible to open or access in another application.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > Photoshop used to be a product, now its a service. This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business. Well, it isn't injustice. But it doesn't change the fact that this sucks, very badly. The thing about personal computing was that when a company goes out of business, the software they made still remains on machines. It can be 3rd-party-patched. File formats can be reverse-engineered, so that you can use your data with a new program. Software can be cracked, so if a company tries to make you pay too much it is the company, not users, that is going to have a bad day. All that move towards the cloud serves companies well, but sucks for the user. You don't get to tinker anymore. You don't get to do things your way anymore. Technologically, are being literally enslaved.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    A small silver lining may exist in a combination of open isolation platforms like Qubes OS / Genode and "cloudlets", http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu, http://qubes-os.org http://qubes-os.org, http://genode.org http://genode.org Latency / Speed of light is still a major factor in human-quality UX, even with GPU virtualization. Qubes/Genode can isolate "DRM zones" from "freedom zones" on the personal computer. DRM zones can run Adobe / Microsoft / Google / Netflix cloudlets and algos, with local caches that are DRM protected. User benefits from improved UX. Freedom zones can run open software that secures user data and requires the cloudlets to use network-isolated sandboxes when they need access to user data. If the user wants to sell/lease their data to a cloudlet, then an audited copy is allowed to leave the local PC, moving to the public cloud. Many permutations are possible in a multi-tenant client architecture. The key is to support the coexistence of open and closed enclaves on the same local device (a home server/bridge), isolated by hardware-assisted security that has an _open_ architecture TCB and root of trust.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Uh no. You see the reason personal computing exists is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own. All of those things are still true. But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez forum and get a cracked Adobe CSx suite and run it on your machine at home. That feature goes away, Your only option is to run Gimp, and if it doesn't have features you need, then you get to write new features yourself because, well its open and you have the source code. So the world will change, it always does, but the ability for engineers and hobbyists to have their own computers that do exactly what they want them to do, that won't change.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Sure, but you then end up with two entirely divergent software ecosystems. As it stands two people, one of whom uses Linux/LibreOffice/GIMP and another who uses Windows/MS Office/Photoshop are able (bar some possible formatting issues) to share data and collaborate together because they can share files via dropbox or USB dongles. Once Photoshop and Office move entirely to the cloud there will no longer necessarily be "files" to share.
  - nailer 12y ago
    Web intents would allow new competitors to open existing docs.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      In a way controlled by yet someone else. Contrast with files, which I own, can open in anything I want and that I can reverse-engineer in order to write a custom app for them.
      - ChuckMcM 12y ago
        I realize that I'm going to be a bit pedantic here, and it is not an argument I would support, but your statement *"Contrast with files, which I own ..." which is only true in a limited sense. If you have a book, in a file, which is stored on your device for your Kindle app, Amazon will tell you that you don't own it, what you "own" is a right to view it in the Kindle app for as long as your maintain your side of the agreement and Amazon doesn't feel like using one of their escape clauses. Now I completely get how crazy that makes people, who argue "I paid money, I got this thing, I own it." but the only reason that it is in a "file" today is because Amazon hasn't figured out how to give you access to it without giving you a file. Nothing in the Adobe announcement changes anything, except that it provides for them, what they consider to be a better implementation of their rights management paradigm. Again, I don't condone or support it, but it's important to note that their thinking hasn't changed, only their implementation has. This also helps them to avoid you reverse engineering their files which they don't like because it allows you to circumvent their rights management tools. Again, I don't condone or support, just report. So what may happen here is that something which has some value to a person, will be put outside their reach behind a price they are unwilling to pay. I understand that this situation sucks, but on the positive side it adds energy to the 'free' side of the equation because if there really is value there, it is only extractable if stealing is less easy than paying, and paying is at a market price that can support the energy of making it available. That price may be in programmer hours, not necessarily in dollars.
tree_of_item 12y ago
Why do you feel entitled to use proprietary software with no restrictions? Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are going to charge you rent. So what? Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. Adobe and Microsoft were never your friends, and if you feel bad about this recent development I don't know why you were using their software in the first place. They were always looking for a way to do this to you, all that's changed is that they've figured out how.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > They were always looking for a way to do this to you, all that's changed is that they've figured out how. And that's why things start to suck. What they way "always looking to do" to us is bad, but we had a period of happiness when they couldn't effectively implement their vision.
- anon1385 12y ago
  >I don't know why you were using their software in the first place Who says I'm concerned about myself here? Maybe I'm concerned about other people, especially those with less technical understanding who don't fully appreciate what it means for all their files to be locked away on a cloud server. >They were always looking for a way to do this to you So we can't complain when bad people do bad things now? Also, I was replying to a post that was celebrating this as the future of all software (and democracy and human knowledge in general it seemed).
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  > Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).
  - tree_of_item 12y ago
    The reason for this is that those kinds of software require lots of money to pay developers to work on them full time, because they aren't straightforward applications of the sort of thing you'd get in an engineering/computer science education. Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of affairs, they need to step up their game.
baddox 12y ago
> I find it hard to imagine a more dystopian future for software. Really? The dystopian parts of that vision are already here: laws protecting software as intellectual property and laws prohibiting the circumvention of DRM. The other parts are almost certainly better for the vast majority of users.
cwilson 12y ago
I haven't used Photoshop (and will never subscribe to any Adobe software) in over a year because there are plenty of alternatives that meet my needs, and web/graphics design is my lively-hood. Between Sketch, Pixelmator, and just designing in CSS/HTML I do not need Photoshop. I haven't been hampered by DRM, subscriptions, or anything else with these apps/technologies and that is because personal computing is alive and well.
MarkMc 12y ago
OK those are all valid downsides, but here's a potential upside: A software company will make more profit selling its software as a service than a single-fee product. Therefore consumers will find software developed for them in markets which were previously not viable. To take a personal example: I develop traditional desktop accounting software for the UK market. There is absolutely no way that I could produce a version for India due to piracy. I also cannot produce a version for Ireland because I simply would not get a good return on my investment. But if I provide my accounting software as a service I can capture more of the value my software generates for my users. This would mean people in India and Ireland getting more accounting software choices.
- fsloth 12y ago
  Thank you, I had this dynamic of cost-to-market in mind and you provided the perfect example. I would see the propagation of SaaS model as advantageous to competition and not detrimental and thus beneficial to all who consume software, as it will reduce the cost to market and make profit models actually deterministic. I work in a company whose products deal in the structural design for construction. The energies put into retail, licencing, fighting piracy etc. are very off-putting for anyone thinking of starting a software business but they seem to be essential part of selling expensive desktop software. Also, the de-facto standard licencing server solution (I'm looking at you, FlexLM) is ... not so good. I actually only now start to believe there could emerge viable competitors to Adobe in publishing/graphics design, Microsoft in Office and Autocad in 3D design. The age of the dinosaurs is finally coming to an end. Yay! To the average consumer it does not matter whether the software lives in the providers server or in the local substrate. It's the added value, usability and the trust in the software that matters. Adobe's CreativeCloud pricing pisses you off? Fine, start up your own desktop publishing software company, implement, say 20% of the features you need and expand. Of course, race to the bottom is never good but a product that implements say 10% of the Creative Cloud feature set does not need to be as expensive - it's in a totally different segment - and once it has a user base and traction the company can grow, implement new features and products. When this virtualization-as-a service really kicks in it actually will be just as realistic option to start a desktop-equivalent product as making a web-app as the dynamics of propagation _will_be_the_same_ as for any web service. Good products will propagate and creativity will flourish. Huge proportions of cost of desktop software development are about licencing, fighting bugs in different user desktop configurations, etc, non value-adding, labour intensive things that you need to provide a usable desktop product which are mostly about platform fragmentation. Suddenly you can develop software on top of _only_one_platform_ that will be more or less _stable_ in terms of your core functionality. People, this is not a catastrophe and return to the age of the mainframe behemoths, this will be a new renaissance (... just as long as the pricing for the core technologies will be such that they do not lock out small time players... fingers crossed). The only downside here are software patents which probably could and will be used by large companies to fight scary small competitors who will not sell but I'm optimistic their time will go away... at some point.

astrocat 12y ago

I dunno... all of this sounds like fearmongering and some of these things are perfectly analogous to the way stuff already works. For example: "Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad..." Want to continue using TwitPic? Too bad. Obsolescence happens, companies shut down, products go off the market and cease to be supported every day. This isn't new. If there's enough demand for an alternative, it will happen. Where there's a market, there will be product. Or: "It's either pay up or lose access." When I stop paying my gym membership I loose access. Nobody complains that "it's either pay up or get fat." Photoshop used to be a product, now its a service. This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business. Data safety in the cloud though is a reasonable concern. You don't know what's going on with your data on remote servers. But then, most people don't know what's going on with their data on their own machines. We've found ways to implement safety and security on our local machines (monitor for malware etc...), I imagine we will eventually find ways to ensure it on remote machines as well. Maybe.

marknow 12y ago
Not quite the same as a qym membership, however. Many, many designers use Adobe products to create original work. The prospect of being forced to continue to pay for access to your own created works feel a bit like a strong-arm tactic... and that's honestly how many large and small agencies are beginning to feel. It's not easy to just use another product, since a lot of proprietary aspects of the Adobe universe make it nigh impossible to open or access in another application.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> Photoshop used to be a product, now its a service. This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business. Well, it isn't injustice. But it doesn't change the fact that this sucks, very badly. The thing about personal computing was that when a company goes out of business, the software they made still remains on machines. It can be 3rd-party-patched. File formats can be reverse-engineered, so that you can use your data with a new program. Software can be cracked, so if a company tries to make you pay too much it is the company, not users, that is going to have a bad day. All that move towards the cloud serves companies well, but sucks for the user. You don't get to tinker anymore. You don't get to do things your way anymore. Technologically, are being literally enslaved.
- walterbell 12y ago
  A small silver lining may exist in a combination of open isolation platforms like Qubes OS / Genode and "cloudlets", http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu, http://qubes-os.org http://qubes-os.org, http://genode.org http://genode.org Latency / Speed of light is still a major factor in human-quality UX, even with GPU virtualization. Qubes/Genode can isolate "DRM zones" from "freedom zones" on the personal computer. DRM zones can run Adobe / Microsoft / Google / Netflix cloudlets and algos, with local caches that are DRM protected. User benefits from improved UX. Freedom zones can run open software that secures user data and requires the cloudlets to use network-isolated sandboxes when they need access to user data. If the user wants to sell/lease their data to a cloudlet, then an audited copy is allowed to leave the local PC, moving to the public cloud. Many permutations are possible in a multi-tenant client architecture. The key is to support the coexistence of open and closed enclaves on the same local device (a home server/bridge), isolated by hardware-assisted security that has an _open_ architecture TCB and root of trust.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Uh no. You see the reason personal computing exists is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own. All of those things are still true. But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez forum and get a cracked Adobe CSx suite and run it on your machine at home. That feature goes away, Your only option is to run Gimp, and if it doesn't have features you need, then you get to write new features yourself because, well its open and you have the source code. So the world will change, it always does, but the ability for engineers and hobbyists to have their own computers that do exactly what they want them to do, that won't change.

jiggy2011 12y ago
Sure, but you then end up with two entirely divergent software ecosystems. As it stands two people, one of whom uses Linux/LibreOffice/GIMP and another who uses Windows/MS Office/Photoshop are able (bar some possible formatting issues) to share data and collaborate together because they can share files via dropbox or USB dongles. Once Photoshop and Office move entirely to the cloud there will no longer necessarily be "files" to share.
- nailer 12y ago
  Web intents would allow new competitors to open existing docs.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    In a way controlled by yet someone else. Contrast with files, which I own, can open in anything I want and that I can reverse-engineer in order to write a custom app for them.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      I realize that I'm going to be a bit pedantic here, and it is not an argument I would support, but your statement *"Contrast with files, which I own ..." which is only true in a limited sense. If you have a book, in a file, which is stored on your device for your Kindle app, Amazon will tell you that you don't own it, what you "own" is a right to view it in the Kindle app for as long as your maintain your side of the agreement and Amazon doesn't feel like using one of their escape clauses. Now I completely get how crazy that makes people, who argue "I paid money, I got this thing, I own it." but the only reason that it is in a "file" today is because Amazon hasn't figured out how to give you access to it without giving you a file. Nothing in the Adobe announcement changes anything, except that it provides for them, what they consider to be a better implementation of their rights management paradigm. Again, I don't condone or support it, but it's important to note that their thinking hasn't changed, only their implementation has. This also helps them to avoid you reverse engineering their files which they don't like because it allows you to circumvent their rights management tools. Again, I don't condone or support, just report. So what may happen here is that something which has some value to a person, will be put outside their reach behind a price they are unwilling to pay. I understand that this situation sucks, but on the positive side it adds energy to the 'free' side of the equation because if there really is value there, it is only extractable if stealing is less easy than paying, and paying is at a market price that can support the energy of making it available. That price may be in programmer hours, not necessarily in dollars.

tree_of_item 12y ago

Why do you feel entitled to use proprietary software with no restrictions? Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are going to charge you rent. So what? Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. Adobe and Microsoft were never your friends, and if you feel bad about this recent development I don't know why you were using their software in the first place. They were always looking for a way to do this to you, all that's changed is that they've figured out how.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> They were always looking for a way to do this to you, all that's changed is that they've figured out how. And that's why things start to suck. What they way "always looking to do" to us is bad, but we had a period of happiness when they couldn't effectively implement their vision.
anon1385 12y ago
>I don't know why you were using their software in the first place Who says I'm concerned about myself here? Maybe I'm concerned about other people, especially those with less technical understanding who don't fully appreciate what it means for all their files to be locked away on a cloud server. >They were always looking for a way to do this to you So we can't complain when bad people do bad things now? Also, I was replying to a post that was celebrating this as the future of all software (and democracy and human knowledge in general it seemed).
JohnBooty 12y ago
> Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  The reason for this is that those kinds of software require lots of money to pay developers to work on them full time, because they aren't straightforward applications of the sort of thing you'd get in an engineering/computer science education. Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of affairs, they need to step up their game.

baddox 12y ago

> I find it hard to imagine a more dystopian future for software. Really? The dystopian parts of that vision are already here: laws protecting software as intellectual property and laws prohibiting the circumvention of DRM. The other parts are almost certainly better for the vast majority of users.

cwilson 12y ago

I haven't used Photoshop (and will never subscribe to any Adobe software) in over a year because there are plenty of alternatives that meet my needs, and web/graphics design is my lively-hood. Between Sketch, Pixelmator, and just designing in CSS/HTML I do not need Photoshop. I haven't been hampered by DRM, subscriptions, or anything else with these apps/technologies and that is because personal computing is alive and well.

MarkMc 12y ago

OK those are all valid downsides, but here's a potential upside: A software company will make more profit selling its software as a service than a single-fee product. Therefore consumers will find software developed for them in markets which were previously not viable. To take a personal example: I develop traditional desktop accounting software for the UK market. There is absolutely no way that I could produce a version for India due to piracy. I also cannot produce a version for Ireland because I simply would not get a good return on my investment. But if I provide my accounting software as a service I can capture more of the value my software generates for my users. This would mean people in India and Ireland getting more accounting software choices.

fsloth 12y ago
Thank you, I had this dynamic of cost-to-market in mind and you provided the perfect example. I would see the propagation of SaaS model as advantageous to competition and not detrimental and thus beneficial to all who consume software, as it will reduce the cost to market and make profit models actually deterministic. I work in a company whose products deal in the structural design for construction. The energies put into retail, licencing, fighting piracy etc. are very off-putting for anyone thinking of starting a software business but they seem to be essential part of selling expensive desktop software. Also, the de-facto standard licencing server solution (I'm looking at you, FlexLM) is ... not so good. I actually only now start to believe there could emerge viable competitors to Adobe in publishing/graphics design, Microsoft in Office and Autocad in 3D design. The age of the dinosaurs is finally coming to an end. Yay! To the average consumer it does not matter whether the software lives in the providers server or in the local substrate. It's the added value, usability and the trust in the software that matters. Adobe's CreativeCloud pricing pisses you off? Fine, start up your own desktop publishing software company, implement, say 20% of the features you need and expand. Of course, race to the bottom is never good but a product that implements say 10% of the Creative Cloud feature set does not need to be as expensive - it's in a totally different segment - and once it has a user base and traction the company can grow, implement new features and products. When this virtualization-as-a service really kicks in it actually will be just as realistic option to start a desktop-equivalent product as making a web-app as the dynamics of propagation _will_be_the_same_ as for any web service. Good products will propagate and creativity will flourish. Huge proportions of cost of desktop software development are about licencing, fighting bugs in different user desktop configurations, etc, non value-adding, labour intensive things that you need to provide a usable desktop product which are mostly about platform fragmentation. Suddenly you can develop software on top of _only_one_platform_ that will be more or less _stable_ in terms of your core functionality. People, this is not a catastrophe and return to the age of the mainframe behemoths, this will be a new renaissance (... just as long as the pricing for the core technologies will be such that they do not lock out small time players... fingers crossed). The only downside here are software patents which probably could and will be used by large companies to fight scary small competitors who will not sell but I'm optimistic their time will go away... at some point.