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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think my opinion of Adobe could be lower than now and I wonder what the founders 40 years ago would think of the current version of Adobe. Their “subscriptions out the wazoo” model is cancerous. I remember I had an Adobe Photoshop (can’t remember the version) disc and it meant the program was mine to use forever. Our transaction was done when I bought it and it did pretty much everything I needed Photoshop to do.

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Adobe employs more dark patterns in their rebill/subscription products than any other established company I've dealt with. I go out of my way to avoid them now. It doesn't surprise me that they had to pay such a premium for Figma.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.adobe.com

They've earned these 1.2 stars.

No. They have not. They deserve 0 stars. I am sure there is some truly 1.2 star company out there with better customer service and company policies.

I think Oracle is holding a beer to Adobe :)

I hate them and yet I pay for it because I have 20 years of sunk cost in learning Photoshop and Illustrator. I execute very complex editing in those apps as a reflex/on autopilot. I'm sure it's the same for many others.

I’m very much less experienced but have really enjoyed the Affinity apps, especially the illustrator replacement.

It's awful. I'm glad that there are up and coming alternatives Adobe haven't bought and ruined yet though.

Affinity are doing some great stuff, can't praise them enough.

There's the odd tiny thing I'd miss Adobe for, but between their prices, their business practices, and the invasive software there's really no comparison any more.

As much as I loathe subscription models for things like this, I turn my sub on and off as needed. That Photoshop + bundle CD cost me $1200 in 2008. Now I pay $20/mo which = 5 years until I reach that CD cost. It's not usually my profession, so most months I don't use it.

I miss that CD. I told Adobe (in my head) that I'm stealing their software until I can afford to pay for it. Then I could, so I did.

From what I'm seeing, Photoshop only costs $20/month (actually $20.99) if you commit to an annual plan. It's $31.49/month if you want month-to-month.

And in the past, every time I've wanted to cancel a subscription, I've had to spend ~30 minutes with their support. How are you able to turn it on and off so easily? I'd love to figure out a way to avoid their normal cancelation flow.

I had an annual plan last year that was 50% off for new users (easy, use a new email) and I canceled it online this year, no problem. I had a 12 month commitment but just set a reminder to cancel in month 11. No problem. This was better than past experiences.

(I also get CC from work which negated me needing another subscription.)

Isn’t the Photo plan that includes Photoshop only $10?

Yes. Though it's easy to miss.

Adobe software could literally poke you through the eyeball every time you use it and people will still go "What am I going to use instead? GIMP can't hold a candle to Photoshop."

Though I actually got my sister hooked on Krita as a Windows tablet replacement for ProCreate.

With a forever license, the incentive is a bit too weak for continual security patches.

It's not like everyone buys it on the same day, and never buys anything else from them. If they don't fix security issues new customers will refuse to buy the product.

Besides in the old days you could still buy a "maintenance" agreement for your product, which entitled you to x months of upgrades. You would still own the licence, though.

As Khaled Mardam-Bey recently discovered.

I don't need security fixes for Lightroom or Photoshop... Like my camera is not going to start hiding viruses in photos all of a sudden.

It has less to do with your camera injecting viruses. There are other attack surfaces. For instance someone could send you a malicious Jpeg and if your Adobe application has a vulnerability and you decide to open that file, it could be exploited.

Sure, but I don’t use photoshop or Lightroom for images I didn’t create.

Same feeling, I really hope Adobe is disrupted and destroyed soon

If anything machine learning researchers will finally acchive something worthwhile by killing the company off

Amen! waiting for that day to come

That of course is true as a user but do you realize Adobe never had a negative quarter?

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