7 May 2013 Last updated at 11:45

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22432171

Adobe starts subscription for Photoshop and Dreamweaver

Adobe is introducing a subscription model for many of its most popular programs, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

Up to now, customers had perpetual access by paying a single fee for Adobe’s Creative Suite.

From next month, continuing access to the programs, either individually or as a whole, will demand a monthly fee.

Standalone versions will still be available but will not be upgraded.

The change was announced at Adobe’s annual Max conference, at which it details the latest updates to its products.

‘Company free from upgrade cycle’

Adobe spokesman Scott Morris said the move to a subscription system would free the company from its traditional 18 to 24-month upgrade cycle. From June, he said, improvements would be released as they became available.

At Max, Adobe said the standalone version of its Creative Suite, which bundles together 16 programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, Dreamweaver and Premiere, would be frozen at version 6. Bug fixes would be made available for this version but new features and enhancements would not. Currently, the standalone version of Creative Suite 6 costs about £1,800 from Adobe.

Those who want to keep up with upgrades and changes to Creative Suite would have to take out a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud – a web-based system through which customers can manage what they do with the different tools. In return, customers get access to the software as well as an online storage system and project management tools.

In the UK, access to all programs in the Creative Cloud costs £47 a month provided customers agree to pay for at least a year. If customers opt to pay month-to-month the cost is £70. Access to individual applications costs just under £18 a month if customers sign up for a year.

’500,000 subscribers for Creative Cloud’

Discounts would be available for those that signed up before 31 July, Adobe said.

“Customers have to come to terms with the end of perpetually licensed software,” IDC analyst Al Hilwa told the Associated Press.

The move to a subscription model is the culmination of a long experiment by Adobe to see if customers would pay monthly for access. Adobe said it now had 500,000 subscribers for Creative Cloud after running a pilot programme for a year.

Adobe is the latest in a number of large software firms that have moved to a cloud-based or subscription model. Microsoft has also introduced Office 365, a subscription version of its set of office productivity programs.

http://theunhivedmind.com/wordpress3/2013/05/07/software-companies-to-fleece-users-with-new-cloud-based-only-software/

theunhivedmind on May 7, 2013 at 11:58 pm said:

So where as now you pay a one-off payment and you own the software to use whenever you like and without the need for a costly internet connection, soon this will be no more. Instead you will now have to fork out extortionate levels of currency in order to do the simple tasks you could do in your own time and on your own machine in your own privacy. Now you have everything being done in the cloud which is monitoring your every move. More to the point, they could even stop you using certain software.

The cloud also means you do not own anything in the slightest. There will also be no way for you to get hold of a pirate copy of software since no one will own the software other than the software whore house themselves. This is the death of the personal computer as we know it. Why would anyone want to work in the cloud with the current piss poor net infrastructure still using copper lines etc? Do you really want to have to keep uploading to the damn net stuff which is lying on your computer? For example you will have to upload all your video clips to the web before you can use the video editing program. All time wasting and hey you are paying for your time. Time where you are rushed to do your work because you have a months subscription only to do it in. Or of course you end up paying for a subscription length you do not need. Lets face it how many people will be using a graphics editor every day?

We should do away with companies like Adobe and their fleecing of the users with this inferior cloud experience. You’ve been dumbed down and now your technology is to be dumbed down so only the slave masters have the tech and you cannot be no threat and never excel from a slave under big brother surveillance. Stick with real alternatives such as Gimp for graphics editing or Audacity for audio editing.

-= The Unhived Mind