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-----Original Message-----
From: BrianH
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 5:59 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Adobe shifts to subscriptions for software package
I don't know if this is old news. First I've heard about it...
Adobe Systems Inc. said Monday that it will not release new versions of
its Creative Suite software package. Instead, the maker of Photoshop,
Illustrator and Acrobat, is shifting focus to Creative Cloud, which
makes its software available through a monthly subscription that starts
at $50 for an individual if they sign up for at least a year.
>>>>
>From what I was able to find out yesterday, it appears they are only doing this with the Creative Suite package at this time, and not the Tech Comm Suite that tends to be more popular with tech writers. But I would only assume other products will start to move to this same model.
Even with the Tech Comm Suite products, Adobe's model has been building for this the past few years - a newer version of the software every year, putting efforts into building for the newer release rather than doing a lot of bug fixing or enhancements in the existing release. And even at a total of about $600 a year for a whole year subscription, it is slightly less than their upgrade prices for Suite software.
It's been many moons since I have used the Creative Suite tools so I don't know if the users of those tools look at them the way I look at Frame - I'm never an early adopter who jumps on the latest version of Frame. I need to do some careful testing of the tool itself, how various plugins and scripts work with this version, etc., before I go to the latest version. If a subscription only covered the latest and greatest, that might be a problem.
However, if the subscription let me choose the version I wanted to work with but also have access to older and newer versions as I might need them (like when a team sends me docs in Frame 11 because they didn't bother to tell us they went full steam ahead with the upgrade), that would be a definite bonus.
- V
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