Comment by thushan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thushan | Hacker News Reader

Just some quick math about this...

Adobe has released a Creative Suite package every ~20 months (Wikipedia).

CS1 - 09/2003

CS2 - 04/2005 - 19 Months

CS3 - 03/2007 - 23 Months

CS4 - 10/2008 - 19 Months

CS5 - 04/2010 - 18 Months

----

If we bought the first premium suite (based off current prices in the Adobe Store) it would have cost us around $1900. Add in upgrades at $400 each, and we get a total lifetime cost of $3500.

If subscription pricing was around since day one and we went with the new subscription pricing monthly rate of $95 (with one year contract) we would end up paying ~ $8650 to date or about 2.5x of buying it over that period (91 Months).

I don't find it surprising that they're going down this route. It surely is an interesting way to charge for downloaded software as we've really only seen this on the web front thus far.

I'm a bit interested to see how many total subscriptions we'll sign up for in a couple years. Reoccurring billing is certainly a nice stream of cash - and a bit of a trojan horse for additional revenue ;)

Right, but this is perfect for those of us who only need Adobe CS 1 or 2 months of the year--pay the monthly fee, add a little to our hourly rate to cover it, and voila!

Instead of ~$3500, you're looking at < $400 / year, which sounds just about right for me and the web dev / basic design work I'm doing.

I can use Gimp or Inkscape or Scribus for basic mockups, and than for the final client prints/work, I switch to the Adobe CS suite for standards compatibility, etc...

Ha! That's a great idea - add it in as a billable item on client invoices.

Unless you are that customer. Imagine going to a carpenter and then receiving an invoice for him renting a hammer. Wouldn't that look a bit odd?

In other words it is commonly expected that professionals come equipped with the tools of trade. Not that this is set in stone, but that's the state of affairs and trying to do it differently is an uphill battle.

It is not unusual for contractors to rent more expensive equipment.

>In other words it is commonly expected that professionals come equipped with the tools of trade

Not always. Construction firms hire a lot of what they need for each job, because it is not economical for them to store and maintain the enormous variety of tools/machines that they need over the course of a year. They'd need a huge warehouse and a whole team of people to manage and maintain all the equipment, and at that point you may as well start running a hire company.

They don't invoice you for each rental fee in an itemised fashion, for the same reason they dont invoice you for each screw, each nail, the fuel for their vehicles etc: you don't give a shit.

The same model applies in film production, where (literally) tons of very expensive equipment get used for brief amounts of time by people who are hired based on long-standing personal relationships, then equipped by rental shops that can afford to maintain the massive inventories of often peculiar parts that are needed on any given show.

Actually, it's not the parts that are peculiar, it's the amounts and configurations that tend to vary. In any case, it makes good economic sense for everyone involved to handle labor and kit separately.

I worked for a big general contractor (top 100 in the US) for a number of years and they regularly had tools and equipment factored into their bids because about half of them walk of each job (not that you can fire union labor for that).

Hammers don't cost $2500.

Sometimes heavy equipment is added on by contractors. For instance, I can dig this ditch with a shovel, or we can rent a backhoe, and have it done in a few hours.

It seems like a lot of overhead to have to work in/maintain/convert between multiple apps instead of just using "the good one". Especially when a version from several years ago would still work on a current OS and would still have "more features than you'd ever need."

I think maybe an even larger use case is shops whose number of asses-in-seats might fluctuate with projects. Being able to bring in four designers for a month-long project without breaking the bank on licenses would be pretty handy.

Or if you can't fork over $2600 ($1k+ more in Europe, because fuck you. Everybody else rapes us with prices, so why not) in one piece. I know a lot of freelancers can't. Or, suddenly out of nowhere, you have to raise temporarily your number of CS seats.

I don't believe this is intended as a replacement for one-time purchases (though I'm sure Adobe would love to have you switch), but rather as an option for businesses whose production needs fluctuate. I can easily see a company with a seasonal crunch time, such as an annual 300-page catalog, that hires on contractors for a couple of months, taking advantage of this.

Adobe has two types of customers: individual designers and big companies. The individual designers might want a subscription so they can "rent" the applications only when they need and then bill their clients.

Big companies' are often adverse to big cash outlays to buy expensive product licenses. They might prefer to subscribe month-to-month to expand or shrink their license pool and also avoid a big up front expense. Plus tax laws may induce "irrational" behavior because a company may be taxed differently for purchasing an product versus renting it.

and then after you've been paying for a subscription for 3 years and you decide you are happy with version X for the time being, you won't be able to continue using it if you stop paying. From the Subscription FAQ:

If I cancel my subscription, does that mean I can still use my software, and that I just won’t receive updates for the most current version?

No. When you cancel your subscription you will no longer have access to any version of your Creative Suite subscription software.

That's a bad move IMO. Would be better if they let people at least pay off a version of it, or issue benchmarks as an incentive.

I didn't run the numbers, but at that point it looks to me like it's cheaper to put it on a credit card and pay it off in small monthly increments, even including the interest.

what % of CS users do you think are using a pirated version?

I wouldn't be surprised if the number was close to 90% or higher.

Pirates will still pirate regardless of having a lower initial cost subscription option - they're mostly not folks who would be paying customers anyway.

That might be very logical when we talk about things that cost less than $100 and kids but this is another thing, we are talking about people who actually work on it but find more than $2000 to be a lot, think small starting companies or freelancers. I remember when I was younger my dream was to one day be able to pay for it because they really deserve it. This new model surely helps.

Yup - honestly, it's the truth. Most freelancers DON'T pay for Photoshop. They don't have to - because they don't work in a corporate office, where software piracy can easily be enforced by BSA.

I know a lot of people 'want' to pay for the software, because they feel it's the right thing to do. A system like this will help them to do the right thing.

Have you seen the obscene prices adobe charges? For my rather light usage of image editing software there's no way I'm paying that. I know plenty of people who have hacked versions including businesses as they consider the price extreme. Yet they pay for other software.

Personally I go open source as I don't want to pay that amount for an image editor. On principal I paid for software from the day I could afford it, given that I make money from software. I find it makes me wince slightly when friends and clients ask me where they can get office, photoshop and cs5 for free. Would they pirate my work if they could?

So I don't use adobe on principal as I see their stuff as a total ripoff. Not very good either, I tried the trial version 6 months back, while better than GIMP/Paint.Net it's still got a pretty awful UI.

The only annoying thing is that a lot of people send you PSD files, so I sometime have to fire up another trial just to export certain layers easily. There are some plugins available for this but they are a bit cumbersome last I checked.

Exactly - It's great that there are a growing list of viable alternatives to Photoshop. Their products are seen as the default requirements, but they're not at all.

Unfortunately, for serious professional work, there really aren't any serious competitors to Creative Suite today. That is how Adobe can charge sky-high prices and yet still ship products with crash bugs and silly inconsistencies between different applications' UIs.

I'm always a bit surprised that none of the major software vendors with the muscle to put a few hundred developers on a new project for a couple of years have tried to break into the graphics/DTP market that Adobe dominates today. Given their reputation for poor quality and usability, it's not the most defensible position for Adobe to hold against a competitor with good developers and talented project management/vision people.

It sounds like you're not really using Photoshop for all of its features, especially if you're just using it for light image editing. Check out Photoshop Elements for $80.

It's not true to say that a pirated copy always equates to a lost sale, but neither is it true that a pirated copy never results in a lost sale at any price. Some people would prefer to have legit software but simply can't afford it.

In the case of Photoshop you're going from $1300 up front to $50/$35 per month. That's a huge difference in affordability, so I'd be surprised if that wouldn't make a dent in piracy, particularly in small businesses.

I needed to use Photoshop exactly twice (essentially to import existing photoshop files) in the past 3 years. Mind you, I didn't buy it. However, I would probably have bought a one month subscription.

You can not upgrade only for the first version the second one is not available for upgrade like you can upgrade from CS1 to CS2 but you are not going to be able to upgrade to CS3 as far as I remember.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com