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Comment by samsolomon | Hacker News Reader

The case of Adobe is interesting. I think the move to a subscription model has been a hostile move for customers. The second you stop paying for the software, you lose the ability to open your old files.

This has allowed smaller software applications such as Sketch, The Affinity Suite and Capture One to grab marketshare. I think Sketch’s current business model is perfect. Customers pay for a year of updates. If a customer decides not to upgrade, they stay at the same version as when their license expires.

I’m certain Adobe has made a good amount of money in the short term, but they've forfeited a monopoly. I’m more skeptical about their long-term business.

EDIT: Updated for clarity.

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While not perfect, I think JetBrains made an acceptable compromise with their new subscription licenses. Getting stuck with a 1-year-old version rather stinks if you decide to cancel, but you're never "stuck" without access to a product you rely on because you decided to stop paying.

We stopped using ReSharper (and paying for upgrades), so we never paid for that new subscription.

It was not pure fault of subscription model though. ReSharper became too slow in the recent years.

> I’m certain Adobe has made a good amount of money in the short term, but they've forfeited a monopoly. I’m more skeptical about their long-term business.

I don't think they ever would have had a monopoly, even if they had kept their perpetual licensing instead of moving to subscription. The cost of those licenses was pretty high, so there was always room for someone to come in at a lower price point and undercut them.

Besides, $10/month for Photoshop and Lightroom is much more accessible than $699 for a perpetual license, especially if you don't need to use it that often.

I kind of disagree about Sketch having a customer-friendly model, because files produced by a newer version can't be opened by an older version - regardless of whether any new features have been used in that file.

So you pay for a year of updates, but if anyone you collaborate with updates their software, you have to as well, because you can't open the files they produce or even edit and save.

Most of the time you're paying for updates so that you can open collaborator files, not because you want new features. It's effectively a subscription paid annually.

While I still consider Sketch's model leagues more customer-friendly than Adobe's, I'm not happy that they appear to have given up any attempt at meaningfully versioning the file format. I can completely understand something like an overhaul to the way symbols are handled breaking compatibility with older versions of the app, but when an update is adding things like a new color picker and tweaking vector snapping, it seems like a stretch that the previous version can no longer open files created by the latest one.

Right - because their business model depends on you updating, they are strongly incentivized to break the file format with every new version.

Adobe users like to whine but ultimately they're more likely to give up their firstborn child than switch products they're so attached to the Adobe tools and ecosystem. And I'm not sure the upper tier of users who are kind of setting the standard is all that price sensitive to begin with. I'm sure they lose hobbyists. But I don't think there are enough defectors to change the bottom line of their de-facto monopoly on raster/vector graphics software.

True.

Although I would like to expand on my true if I may. The dribble of defectors to the completion fuels a virtous cycle, I myself migrated to Pixelmator (I have little use for vector as a marketer) and since then I have seen its capabilities jump.

I like to think those capabilities jumped because the new influx of Adobe refugees provided them with enough revenue to supplement their dev team. Or am I wrong?

I would argue that the more psychos in the market, the better for startups and I am quite comfortable with that idea.

"The second you stop paying for the software, you lose access to any of your old files."

It seems you lose editing access, you still can view them. Still not great, but I wanted to clarify.

I've updated my comment. You don't lose access, but you cannot open old files.

I suppose you could use a PSD or AI to Sketch converter. I'm unsure about other file types.

I think you can open and view them with Photoshop, just not edit. At least that's my understanding.

I suspect you can still edit them with an older version of the Photoshop. PSDs have been around forever.

I am not arguing that subscription models forced by Adobe on users is a good thing. It is, IMO, horrible and is the reason I am still using CS3 for my photography hobby.

I left Adobe because of the subscription model. The fact that they don't handle Fuji images well made this decision easier.

That is the case with Office 365 too.

I personally hate the Adobe model and am still on Photoshop CS6 but my artist friends all love it. Maybe they don't realize they're paying at least double. All they concentrate on is it's cheap to stsrt.

But licenses for the old Creative Suite were an eyewatering $2500 USD for the full suite. Sure, you'll get there in four years with a full-on CC subscription, but for the large number of users who only want Photoshop, the ~ $10 USD / mo. plans are pretty appealing (and Adobe now makes money off of them, since it's easier than pirating it to pay for it).

The value really depends on what you need. Most people don't need the whole create suite. If all you need are the photo/design/print apps you really get screwed by the subscription.

Photoshop Illustrator and inDesign haven't had upgrade worthy releases since like CS5. Acrobat Pro seems to be getting worse.

The pricing difference really depends on what apps you use and what your update schedule was before, it was from a general paying at least double (yes, a lot of the professional users I know obviously did those calculations when the subscription stuff started. Enthusiasm about it varies accordingly)

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