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Upgrades Graphics Software

Adobe Makes Products Harder to Use, More Expensive 616

Posted by michael from the extracting-monopoly-rents dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package. It seems that Adobe has decided to go they way of Intuit's TurboTax last year and add activation to their products. Legitimate users are up in arms. For Adobe, they follow the steps of other companies, macromedia, quark (who coincidentally shipped their entire engineering offshore) in the graphics biz. Now since in theory they'll be making more money, I hope at least the price goes down (oops, it did not, looks like the upgrade price even increased)."
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Adobe Makes Products Harder to Use, More Expensive

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  • looks like i am not upgrading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cyberglich ( 525256 ) * on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:20AM (#7252088)
    Perhaps if we don't update there get the hint
    • who knows, maybe even they will get the hint.


    • Yep, it sure looks like the open season for proprietory software products that keep on distancing themselves from their users.

      Will the open-source alternative fill the void ?

    • Re:looks like i am not upgrading (Score:5, Insightful)

      by noewun ( 591275 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @01:14AM (#7252358) Journal
      Just had the same thought.

      In my opinion, Adobe's been on a slow, downward spiral for several years. Each new "upgrade" brings a few new features and countless bugs and problems. I can't remember an Illustrator release since 5.0 that didn't add some new, serious problems, including problems to the color model and handling. It's no wonder that most large organizations wait six months to a year to upgrade their Adobe products - let other people guinea pig them.

      At the same time, each release gets more and more bloated and takes an increasing severe performance penalty. I have spent a lot of time in Photoshop, but it looks like 7.0 may be my last upgrade.

      • 7.0 may be my last upgrade.

        I can tell you unequivocally that 7.0 IS my last upgrade. As far as I'm concerned, I will never purchase another product from Adobe. Yes, this is a hysterical rant and I can be a vindictive SOB, but that's how I get when someone punches me in the face.

        Adobe has, in effect, said that they don't want me to use a program that I purchased to fit the way I work. They're greedy bastards. They haven't learned from history about what happens when companies get greedy [usatoday.com] . They've lost at

  • EDU Price still good.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:21AM (#7252093)
    The EDU Price for the Suite is $399 (where I am, anyway)....so its a steal over the retail....activation or not.
    • > The EDU Price for the Suite is $399 ....so its a steal over the retail

      Hmm. A year ago the education price was USD $299. "Steal" is right, though not in the sense you meant.

  • just like.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by _RiZ_ ( 26333 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:27AM (#7252126) Homepage
    all the other products requiring "activation", someone will release a hack and there unbeatable, perfect scheme to get people to stop piracy will fail.

    There is only 1 way to stop piracy.....

    DROP THE HIGH PRICES ON SOFTWARE!

    Simple enough.

    • Re:just like.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:32AM (#7252156)
      I own a 100% legit Avid editing system, however I downloaded a crack and use it on my system.

      The reason?

      If you lose the hardware key (dongle), or it gets stolen, Avid helpfully suggests you buy another full copy of their software to replace it.

      So I use the crack on my system and have the dongle locked up somewhere safe where nothing is going to happen to it.

      Just another example of legitimate users who are inconvenienced by additional copy protection.

      I'm sure Adobe is trying to stem the casual copying of their products, as it will do absolutely nothing to stop hardcore hackers from breaking the protection in the course of a few hours and releasing a patch for everyone else.
      • I know you are nidded 0 as an AC, but i often find myself doing the same thing, I use no cd cracks on software i have purchased legally, the software tends to load faster, run better, and perform top notch, and if i have to shut it down and restart... well that aint half bad.

        I have always been annoyed, especially when the CD checking algo sometimes didnt work! Like when i first got UT 2k3, it kept saying i didnt have the disks, as i stared at my 3 perfectly legitimate non warez disks, i went on to a popul

        • If they come and hunt you down and say "hey you stole this" and you have your 3 freaking owned disks, what are they going to do?

          In today's climate, prosecute you under the DMCA.

    • they've got only one master and it's wall street. steady quarter on quarter growth or your stock price gets a cap in the head. and that means senior management bonuses and stock options are in the toilet and under water. what, it's not all about senior management's compensation? you're naive. they'll put the screws to you for an upgrade at a higher price as long as they're not insanely growing their customer base. and since they're not investing in new products and the old ones do everything we need .
      • I know your rant is a common one, but nonetheless, I'm going to try responding.

        They should only have one master, and it should be Wall Street. In fact, they are in a relationship of fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and ONLY to their shareholders. The extent to which any consideration of customers enters the equation is, and remember that this is by law, only insofar as that consideration helps their bottom line.

        Corporate executives act on the behalf of everyone in the country (world?) who o
        • Well, talking about probabilities. The US is probably ripe for a new look at the advantages of a welfare state as we've apparently moved well into, or perhaps right past, the post-industrial stage at this point.
          Trust me, we'll all be better off in the long run by reducing income disparity and de-emphasizing a system in which only those with investment capital can live comfortable lives.

  • Ummmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot.stango@org> on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:29AM (#7252134) Homepage Journal
    Shouldn't Adobe wait until they actually steal more of Quark's XPress customers away, before they start doing the same shit Quark did to drive their customers away in the first place?

    ~Philly
  • I have not used it yet, but I hear that they have kind of dummied down the Photoshop interface to make it more consumer-software-like (eg iPhoto, PhotoDeluxe). Anyone with experience with this? 'Cause if it's true, I'm sticking with 7 anyway...
    • The interface really has not changed at all. Still looks like it was designed by a focus group comprised of librarians, accountants and a laywers. There are a few new features, but nothing exciting - stick with 7.

      You know, sometimes, I wish Apple would just go ahead and put photoshop to sleep. FCP stompes Premier, and Combustion make After Effects look like mickey mouse bs. I would not miss Adobe one bit.
  • "This is a follow-up to an earlier story on slashdot about Adobe releasing their Creative Suite package.

    Follow up? What follow up? I don't see any new information, rather, all I see is an editorial ranting about big ol bad Adobe. Also what the anonymous reader who submitted this apparently does not know is that Intuit apologized and removed activation from their products.

    Now, for some real questions: Does anyone know if Adobe is going to require activation for large corporations or educational users?
    • That's great until you need to go out and buy a zillion-port USB hub just so you can run apps.
      • Well, you could use a front-mounted USB port and plug in the key for the app you want to use, just like the old Atari days where the programs came on cartages :P
    • An average hardware USB dongle is sold to ISVs for about $50 apiece. I'd say it seriously affects prices of any software that is iself sold below $500. Business-wise, even that 10% overhead is significant.
    • Hardware locks cost maybe $32 in quantity. A software company's accountants don't want to lose $32,000,000 on a million copies.

      Protected USB ports are no problem. They can be inside the case.

      • Re:Hardware locks cost maybe $32 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tftp ( 111690 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:11AM (#7252545) Homepage
        There is yet another reason. If the software is popular, it will be cracked. Your expense on dongles won't help you at all.

        Normally, dongles are used with a very low volume, specialty software. Crackers are not interested in such software; imagine, for example, a package to control a sophisticated CNC or some industrial robot. A cracker won't ever get his hands on the set of software and hardware necessary to run the thing. Here the dongle serves as a barrier against owner of a herd of CNCs, so that he should buy a license for every machine he controls, instead of getting one and helping himself with the rest. A machine shop owner is not a cracker, and he won't even know how to contact one.

        So dongles are a social solution to a social problem. They can not be applied mindlessly.

  • The problem with activation for legimitate users (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tcd004 ( 134130 ) * on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:35AM (#7252180) Homepage
    I use quark and various adobe products for DP work and I have to meet deadlines. When it's 8 pm and I have to ship files by 8:45, I can't spend time troubleshooting an installation of a product that just went haywire. I don't have time to spend 2 hours on the phone with customer support figuring out how to RE-activate. (the activiation codes in quark are roughly 40 numbers long. 40 numbers!!!. Try communicating that over the phone line with a guy in india.

    My old solution: I have another computer with the same software installed. When one goes down, I drop it like and empty bic lighter and fire up the other one. No problem.

    With software activation, I can't set up this failsafe without blowing my department's budget.

    softare activation wankers

    tcd004
    • Err, no.

      Adobe lets you activate on two computers. In fact, most Adobe licenses allow you to use their software on a "primary" and a "secondary" computer, as long as you don't use it at the same time on both machines.

      Sheesh, talk about overreacting..

      Nathan
      • This is bigger than Adobe. What happens when the smaller vendors start using product activation and aren't so generous? What happens when those small vendors go out of business and you're left with useless software? We need to fight this now before the smaller software companies see the larger software companies doing it and jump on the bandwagon.
    • Ok, usually I don't reply to my own post, but I should make a few clarifications:

      1. I'm basing my crash problems on Quark 6 which I have little experience using so far. Previous versions of quark are notoriously buggy so I don't expect this one to be much better.

      2. Also, I'm basing my knowledge of activation on Quark's current scheme. They only allow installation on one harddrive. (2 if you pay an extra fee for a "mobile") If that harddrive, or anything else on that machine fails, you're fucked. You can m


  • > It seems that Adobe has decided to go they way of Intuit's TurboTax last year and add activation to their products.

    I read somewhere recently that Intuit had issued an apology to their customers about that.

    • I read somewhere recently that Intuit had issued an apology to their customers about that.

      I read that too. Too little too late in my opinion, the damage is done, they've already lost me as a customer. If they'd recanted when people first started complaining about it it might have mattered, but a year later just doesn't cut it.


      • > If they'd recanted when people first started complaining about it it might have mattered, but a year later just doesn't cut it.

        Presumably the timing has something to do with a sales cycle based on the annual tax cycle.

  • Problems with product activation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FattMattP ( 86246 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:42AM (#7252209) Homepage
    [I originally posted this on a digital video forum so I'm reposting it here on slashdot]

    I have a problem with product activation because it puts too much control into the software publisher's hands over how I use the software I've paid for. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to need to reactivate. I want to plan my software and hardware upgrades according to *my* schedule, not some vendor's. Fortunately, some companies are already learning hard lessons about product activation. Check out this story on Intuit: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinv estor/hellweg/ [cnn.com]

    The company I work for bought a program called Stream Anywhere from Sonic Foundry a while back. It's great. We use it on every streaming media production that comes out of our video edit suite. But Sonic Foundry doesn't sell it anymore and they were just bought by Sony. Will Sony issue me a new activation code in the future if/when I move to a new computer? Will they even keep the key-generator around for an end-of-life product? What if I upgrade my computer in two years and I need to reactivate but they can't or won't give me a code?

    We also spent $6,000 on a product to let us sync PowerPoint slides to live streaming video. When you install it and run it for the first time, it wants to connect over the internet to register. When we installed it on a different machine that we bought just for this purpose, I had to call them and talk them into letting me activate it again. This isn't an activation code -- it actually talks to their servers to activate.

    What do I do if this small vendor goes out of business and I have to reinstall Windows for whatever reason? Am I just SOL? I wouldn't be able to reactivate even on the same machine because of the method they use. This isn't as much an issue with someone big like Microsoft or Adobe, but smaller companies usually follow ideas of the larger companies. I could see in a few years where everything from big commercial apps down to small shareware programs require activation.

    Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS or Windows XP several years down the road when there's a newer verison out? Or will they refuse to reactivate it and tell me I have to purchase a copy of whatever newer program they are currently selling? I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later. They have everything to gain yet the customer stands only to lose.

    Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm writing to Abode to let them know I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation. Most importantly, I'm going to vote with my wallet (and my company's wallet where applicable).

    • I don't like it and won't purchase any of their products that use product activation.

      I endured weeks of pain when a product activation scheme broke. In fact, it helped me to convince my boss to get rid of the software.

      I reluctantly put up with a hardware dongle for LightWave, but I will not use product activation; not for Windows XP, Office XP, TurboTax, nor Photoshop. I use Windows 98 at home, Windows 2000 at work, and Linux at both. When my hardware no longer has drivers for an activation-free version

    • The small business I work for has already run into this problem once. We had purchased a very nice piece of software to handle our business phone lines and act as our voicemail system. The software used several hardware IDs to construct a "key" that you would have to send to the software mfg. in order to receive your activation code. Needless to say, we went through the hassle a few times of having to reinstall the software when we upgraded the system or when it crashed. A little over a year into ownership,

    • Re:Problems with product activation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blincoln ( 592401 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:38AM (#7252630) Homepage Journal
      Small companies (at least in my experience) used to be even worse about this than big ones. I guess they figured they had more to lose every time someone pirated their software, but some of them took it to ridiculous extremes.

      A few years ago I worked in tech support, and I thought it would be cool to set up an IRC server so everybody on the phone could "talk" to each other and pool troubleshooting resources while they were on the phone. The company I work for is very much against free software (because of support issues), so it had to run on Windows. I managed to convince them to let me use a free port of ircd for the test, but for the real rollout they insisted on something that cost money (and didn't crash every twenty minutes).

      I found two commercial IRC servers for Windows. One was very overpriced, and the other seemed like what we were after. It cost about $100 for the number of clients we were going to have, had support, etc.

      So I got a license, and installed it on a server. But hey, it needed to connect to the vendor's website to validate my unlock code. Okay, fair enough, I got security to open up a few ports for fifteen minutes. It validated itself, and then I noticed some kind of timer that said it would need to do so again... in a day or two. I emailed the vendor, and confirmed that yes, that ridiculously short interval was by design, and couldn't I set up some kind of perpetually recurring window to open in the firewall to allow the machine to revalidate itself? After I explained to them that this was not the case, they agreed to send me a file that would validate the app for six months if I put it in the install folder.

      Anyhow, it seems that the big companies are now catching right back up. Entering a serial number is one thing, but I'll buy an app and then download a crack for it before I have thirty dubious authentication systems running in the background on my machine.
  • Although many of the free programs that compete with the Adobe products aren't 100% comparable, they do an admirable job for us folks at home. I stopped buying Adobe software with Photoshop 4, since I don't have to go to print unless you count my Epson (which is great for the home photos, but little else). Now, they've bought Cool Edit Pro (and Syntrillium software) as well, so I guess it's time to start exploring Ardour. The basic point here is... it's not going to affect me or people like me, so there i

  • Not Just CS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KagatoLNX ( 141673 ) <kagato@NospaM.souja.net> on Sunday October 19, 2003 @12:49AM (#7252249) Homepage
    I recently felt really good about deploying Acrobat 5.0 with a customer for in-house forms work. Basically, they had 45 people. 2 stations had Acrobat so they could make forms, everyone had the free reader, and the 10 few who needed to save or sign forms had the $50 Acrobat Approval. This worked wonderful, was affordable, and I could feel good about PDF as an "open" format.

    So what happened? Acrobat 6.0 came out. Sure enough, they left out Approval. Their customer service tells me to either get Adobe Acrobat Elements (1000 licenses or more only!) or "upgrade" to Acrobat 6.0 (mind you, they have a Standard or Professional version now). So I just went from:

    2x$250 + 10x$50 = $1000

    to

    12x$250 = $3000

    That was not cool and makes me look like a dork for recommending Adobe as being somehow "more open" than, say, MS Word. To this day, they won't even say that there will be no Approval version. All I want is for them to say "we don't plan on it" so that I can just tell my customers to abandon it--they won't even do that. They just say "stay tuned to the website for the next exciting release".

    This mentality makes me wonder when PDF will become a closed format.

    Adobe is plummeting rapidly on my list.
  • from the website:

    "Product activation applies only to the individual retail version of Photoshop CS for Windows...". there's no mention of the os x version. hmmm...
    • for now. They say though that if acceptance of activation goes, it will be added to other products and platforms. So even if you buy it now and it has no activation, thats not to say a patch in six months will add it on (though, will you be forced to accept such a "patch")?
      • but could there maybe somehting in the architecture of os x that makes it not possible? i have an ibook, so i ain't gonna be running photoshop, but, i do plan on buying a g5 or a PB within a year. well, i still ain't gonna buy photoshop, don't need it. what is funny is that mac has not put any reg crap in jaguar, nor it seems upcoming panther. and hasn't put it into keynote either. is os x drm resillient? now, that'd be sweet.
        • It's true that Panther and Jaguar have no features to help out a product that's trying to add product activation - actually, I don't know that Windows XP even has a framework for that yet.

          But just because the OS does not help the app writer do something, does not mean they cannot do what they like within the app. After all, they have the code - if they really want to they can have the product require the use of the internet and talk to the company to allow you to run it every time. Product activation is
  • so the only people who suffer are legitimate users.
  • I used to beta test M$ Office packages, then I got Office XP beta, which required registration. No biggy, not uncommon for Beta products they want in the hands of certain people. (I was the IT advisor for a company at the time). Well then Office XP was released and I installed on my laptop. Only problem, I never used my laptop to get online because it didn't have an ethernet card. So I had to call M% and get a registration number.

    I saw where everything XP was going that direction and decided, "I don'

  • Adobe probably has the most widely pirated software in the world. I mean it seems like everyone has a pirated copy of Photoshop at least.

    But that doesn't necessarily mean that all those people would convert to paying customers, after all not too many people could justify the $800 price tag required, and would either find a cracked version, or move to the GIMP.
    • And all the others who would seek to compete. Just like pirating RIAA music hurts the indies, cuz it just perpeptuate the mindset that the majors are the only game in town.

      I don't care for Adobe at all, but I rather hope this works. Making it impossible to "upgrade" without paying money isn't going to drive all those students and housewives and schoolteachers to shell out hundreds of dollars, but it might convince a few thousand to try out gimp and PSP.

      By making their software harder to pirate, they are u

    • will never be used in a professional market because it refuses to cater to even the most "basic" features like CMYK. If you're doing professional print work CMYK is an absolute requirement. It is practically a science to get from the monitor to a printer in the quality that is demanded by professionals. GIMP has failed to beckon to the call. Ever. It came out before Photoshop and has failed to be anything that a professional would want to use.

      Considering how badly Photoshop is pirated it doesn't shock
  • Macromedia's recently released Studio MX also uses product activation [macromedia.com].

    The RIAA, MPAA, and now software vendors are going crazy! I wouldn't hesitate to plunk down $50 for Studio MX, but $900 (or $500 for the upgrade) is just complete bunk. I don't make money on my personal web hacking. Why don't software companies get real and offer hobbyist pricing? Or even reasonable pricing across the board, there's a thought.
    • It costs more than $50 to make the box with a CD, to ship it to stores, and to sell it to you. In other words, they would have loss on every box sold. Remember how RedHat abandoned retail recently? Same reason - not profitable. Too few people buy, not enough volume to get even.

      Nowadays if something is cheap, it has been made overseas. I bought speakers for $4.65 - and they even work! Incredible. In USA it would cost $2 only for the labor to package them, not counting even making the speakers :-)

      • Why the hell would I want a box shipped to me? I'm happy to download stuff from the web. The Powers know I pay enough for a fat pipe so I can download big installers fine.

        I happen to work for a software company that does most of its business selling software from our Web site. We have a free version that is actually quite useful, then a for-pay upgrade, a few add-ons, and an enterprise product. We charge under $50 for most products, and our business is fine. Last quarter was our best ever by a large margin
        • Yes, I was referring to boxed products. If you have only soft copy to sell then you don't have that overhead, and any price > 0 would be profitable.

          But big companies like Adobe don't like this approach. First of all, their overhead is extreme. Your $50 will go through ten accountants, this alone will cost more than $50. Then there are tons of support people (HR etc.), they want their salaries too. Then the company probably owns the building and the land, so taxes and loans come into play. Productivity

  • This will hurt Adobe down the road (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Sunday October 19, 2003 @01:03AM (#7252299) Journal
    Product activation in my experience too often gets in the way of non-infringing use. When I buy a new computer, or a just new hard disk, I want to reformat my old hard disk and reinstall all of my software on the new one.

    Most pirates won't dare use pirated software for commercial purposes. They can lose it all if caught. And most non-commercial users aren't planning to buy photoshop in the first place. In this rare case, software piracy BENEFITS THE SOFTWARE COMPANY. The result is more people know how to use photoshop when entering a commercial environment, which is when they are most likely to make a purchase. Otherwise, there are many alternative products that amatuer users can get their hands on without a high initial investment, like Paint Shop Pro eval and the Gimp, and they will prefer those alternative products in the workplace.

    Existing versions are pretty good. I see no need to upgrade unless they add some great new feature that turns the entire industry upside down.

  • Help Sodipodi and Gimp become good alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bryce ( 1842 ) * on Sunday October 19, 2003 @01:12AM (#7252350) Homepage

    Others have mentioned Gimp as a potential alternative to Photoshop. Sodipodi [sodipodi.org] is considered to be a potential alternative to Illustrator. Sodipodi also strives to be the best SVG editor around, free or commercial.

    However, anyone who has used either knows that they need more work to get them up to the level of quality artists need. These projects need your help. Instead of forking out more C notes to Adobe or wasting time warezing, do something constructive.

    You can make a significant contribution for as little as a few afternoon's of your time. Write a tutorial or a chapter for the GIMP Users Manual (GUM) or the Sodipodi User's Manual (SUM). Publish an article about the apps for a suitable online or print magazine. Or just teach it to some friends. If you can code, pick a bug or feature request and contribute a patch to address it. If you don't code but want to, take it as an opportunity to learn how and to be a part of the Open Source community's successes.

    • That link for Sodipodi doesn't seem to work. Here is another: http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

      -Mary

    • Re:Help Sodipodi and Gimp become good alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FullCircle ( 643323 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:17AM (#7252567)
      I agree, but how about donating a name that makes sense and doesn't sound funny?

      Look at Cinepaint, Gimps big brother that was originally called Film Gimp. It has commercial donations from the film studios. They changed the name because it was stupid and hard to justify to the higher-ups.

      If you asked a corporate buyer which graphics program to use, would they pick Photoshop or Gimp?

      If you installed Gimp instead of Photoshop, then ANYTHING went slightly wrong, you are out of a job.

      If something goes wrong with a program called Photoshop or anything normal, more than likely they will simply write it off as a software error.

      What the heck to Gimp and Sodipodi mean to the user anyway? PHOTOshop and Illustrator both make sense.

      On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple
      Lets figure out some program to call Nigger next!

      Names do make a huge difference to the public.
      • On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple

        Whenever I hear someone talking about using Gimp, I get a mental picture of the leather-fetish guy from Pulp Fiction hopping out of a box.

        You are very right to suggest that open source software tends to need better names if it's going to be widely accepted. Made-up or hybridized names like "Linux" are good if they're short and snappy-sounding. Common (but previously unused) ones like "Apache" are too, especially if
        • The first time I saw GIMP, I figured the original author(s) had been watching Pulp Fiction and heard the line "bring out the gimp" and thought that was hillariously funny, and would be hillariously funny to say when they needed to do Photoshop style work. The greater implications were never considered.

          It's an absolute horrible name for a product. I also thought that the first time I saw it. I just figured that by now it would have changed, kind of how products are called one thing in development and tes

  • Applogies to Avril Lavigne (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tell me
    Why'd you have to go and add product activation?
    It's just gonna lead to lots of user frustration.

    It's like this it'll
    Be hacked 'till it's cracked and then it will be put on p 2 p
    Honestly, it's not gonna stop the pirates anyway...
    No, no, no.

  • An associate reviewed Adobe Acrobat version 6. She said she did not like it as well as version 5.

    Sometimes in a software company, the good, creative, technically knowledgeable people leave. The company that remains is not able to continue in a competent fashion, but they don't want the customers to know that.

    I know of two software companies that went out of business by releasing one bad version.

    Treating ALL of your customers as though they are criminals to stop the pirates is all war, all the t
  • And here I was, thinking they'd finally got a semblance of a clue. Well, the pricing helps anyway and I'll still end up getting it- but it had better be nothing special in terms of product activation. I've had my share of irritating pain in the ass moments with product activation already...
  • Subject Line Troll should take lessons from Michael. "Adobe makes products harder to Use, More Expensive," and "RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers." I'm surprised that he missed "Doubleplusgood Europeans Still Fighting Evil Corporate Software Patents." Once again, editors, if you have something to say, do it in the comments section so that it can stand on its merits rather than using your high-and-mighty status to push flamebait on everyone.
  • The philosophy behind DRM: Spend a dollar to save a nickel. But wait... it's not my dollar! Full speed ahead!
  • the poster danced on this brieflly but one of the issues at fault here is that it seems like adobe brought out a new version of photoshop just so it could implement product activation. the actual amount of new features in photoshop from 6 to now is so incremental its hard to justify its cost. I had people in the graphics department pissed at 7 because it switched some default keyboard layouts and hated the web implementation tools, right now I think adobe is really pushing the envelope here. The new photosh
  • adobe rectally self inserts 12 gauge shotgun loaded with slug rounds, and pull trigger repeatedly. Between Bullshit (er product) activation and the heinous crime they commited against Sklyarov, I see no reason for anyone to legally give Adobe one cent.
    Warez their products or use an alternative.
  • I'm trying to use nothing but free software.[1] I've discovered that this is very rapidly getting easier. OpenOffice improved a lot in the last year, for example; Scribus shipped a 1.0 release; Evolution is all I want in an email client; GIMP 1.3 is slick and I can't wait for it to ship as GIMP 2.0.

    With free software getting better all the time, it's even worse idiocy than ever to start jacking up commercial software with "product activation" codes!

    When people ask me if I have any trouble with my free s

  • The price doesn't matter one bit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by faust2097 ( 137829 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @09:49AM (#7253853)

    If you're good with Photoshop it's difficult to not make more money than you spent on it in a year. Even a beginning designer could make enough to buy the whole suite in under a week. Plus it's deductible.

    Now there's a lot of people recommending thg Gimp in this thread and if you use it and enjoy it that's fine. But feature and usability-wise there is absolutely no comparison. Yes, OSS is wonderful but the fact remains that for someone who is trying to make money using a bitmap-editing program Photoshop offers a better value propisition than the Gimp does, even though you have to pay for it. Adobe doesn't take the money they make from Photoshop and use it to pay for a factory that converts orphans and kittens and orphaed kittens into fuel oil, they improve their products continuously. There's a reason that a real alternative to Photoshop doesn't exist and it's not because Adobe is anticompetitve or anything, it's because it's really hard and really expensive to make software as good Photoshop unless you're just ripping off thier feature list as quickly as you can. One of the reasons that I don't like The Gimp is that except for Script-fu and a mess of a user interface the developers brought nothing original to the bitmap editing table and are instead content to just poorly ape the work of others. Now that's innovation, eh?

    As far as activation goes, it's not that big of a deal either. Adobe is only using it on Photoshop for Windows. It's pretty obvious that it'll get cracked. They're probably just doing it to please their dumb shareholders who think that all those copies of Photoshop being used to ham-fistedly combine Domo-kun, Admiral Akbar and the Eiffel Tower at Fark will somehow magically become sales.

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