Photoshop has always been way too expensive for hobbyists or people just dipping their toes in the water. The people who pirated it and got serious about it eventually bought a copy, but the people who said "that's nice" and uninstalled it never would have paid for a copy anyway.
This will make their numbers look good in the near future, but I'd stake cash money that it's going to screw with their long-term user base.
Except the entire industry claims that the number of people that would have bought it if they could not have pirated it is GREATER than the number of people that pirated it, used it as some kind of month or year long trial-ware, and eventually paid for it.
My own experience - the day a warez copy came out on Google's front page results for my software, was the day sales got cut in half, and stayed cut.
People pirate because it's easy to do, and fewer people will buy it if it's being given away for free by some site that generates its revenue from stealing other peoples work and showing you ads in the process.
For students they have heavily discounted licenses and I know a few low-quality(I don't know anyone worth their salt who pirates it), professional graphic designers who use pirated copies. It is lost revenue and if they wanted to provide demos that should be up to them not the pirates.
As Marc Andreessen has noted:
"The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue.
...
"The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more.
...
"You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company.
...
"You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all."
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...
My point still stands that it is their product and it should be their choice even if they piss it away.
I've been using Illustrator for about ten years. It's my main artistic medium; I'm currently engaged in drawing a comic book entirely in it. I'm at the point where I can pretty confidently say I've mastered it.
I've been paying for Illustrator for about five or six years. When I started using it, I was not a student, and there was no way I could afford a full-price legal copy.
If I hadn't pirated it, I would have not learnt it to the point where I could make enough money using it to buy it and keep it up to date. I would have used some other program, or gone with physical media. And I would not have been buying the thing for the past several years.
You'd be surprised.
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'professional' but I know a few. Maybe not in the AE realm but among web designers and graphic artists, and especially freelancers and small business owners...
As I said, what is good is that the lower end of the market may have been opened up.
For my benefit, please explain what is wrong with his rationale.
I welcome the day I don't have to use photoshop just because that's what the designer used.
Every kid who had some desire to edit images pirated Photoshop, and thus they get used to using that particular tool.
If they actually end up working in a real business doing this for a job then they will demand the use of Photoshop because it's what they already know and few businesses pirate their software.
I don't see how this accomplishes that. The programs still get downloaded to people's desktops where they'll be able to be cracked in a way that allows for unauthorized installations. The whole "cloud" terminology with their Creative Suite doesn't require any sort of always-connected status to use their apps. You literally just download and install like any other application.
If anyone thinks that when whatever CS7 equivalent comes out that there won't be cracks in the usual places just like CS6, they're sorely mistaken.