Adobe’s Creative Suite is dead, long live the Creative Cloud

 Design, Tech News  438 Responses »
May 072013
 

Adobe’s Creative Suite and the applications that make it up—Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere, and a host of others—have been staples of many professional toolboxes for almost a decade now. The full suite itself has been available since September of 2003, and many of its applications have a history that reach back even further. Today at its MAX conference, however, Adobe announced a major shift in strategy for the software: boxed versions, along with their perpetual licenses, will no longer be available for any Adobe software newer than CS6. Going forward, subscribing to Adobe’s Creative Cloud service will be the only way to upgrade your software.

As with the boxed versions of the software, Adobe offers several different pricing options for Creative Cloud subscriptions: new users can buy a subscription at $50 a month with an annual commitment (or $75 month-to-month), which gets you access to the full suite of software plus, all of Adobe’s Edge services, 20GB of cloud storage. Users of Creative Suite versions 3 to 5.5 can get their first year of service at a reduced rate of $30 a month for the first year, while current CS6 users can subscribe for $20 a month for the first year. For individuals, these subscriptions buy you the right to use the software on up to two different computers, same as the boxed versions.

MORE: Adobe’s Creative Suite is dead, long live the Creative Cloud | Ars Technica.

 

 

 

Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down

 Tech News  471 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Cutting the cord is still an outlier activity. You have to do too much searching, use too many specialized devices, and configure too many settings to get what you want. But as devices from Google, Apple, Roku and others make internet delivery indistinguishable from cable and satellite delivery, we’re going to wake up one morning and find cord-cutting has gone completely mainstream. And those devices are pretty much already here.

All the advantages enjoyed by subscription TV today are melting away. In five years, those advantages will have been eliminated entirely. In a decade, many of today’s constraints will seem laughable. The idea that you had to pay for 400 other channels just because you wanted to watch a single show will be akin to paying for internet access by the hour.

Xfinity, Time Warner and their cohorts aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But while the cable company of tomorrow may provide the pipes, it’s certain that it won’t provide the plan. In short, subscription TV is already dead. The body just hasn’t quit twitching yet.

MORE:  Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down.