Tag: Applications

Wish Adobe would get its head out of the clouds

http://forums.adobe.com/community/creative_cloud?view=discussions

The range of issues with Adobe’s Creative Cloud is, to be blunt, simply staggering. Users can’t even install updates consistently. Updates change where or how certain tools are accessed (destroying months or years of muscle memory). Or remove former features and its difficult to find release notes. Customers having all sorts of issues and not knowing where to find consistent (and accurate) information. A single business model that makes it difficult if not impossible for certain business organizations to even engage with. People in low-bandwidth areas who now have to download monstrous application files over a constrained connection – and pay for that connection as well. Oh and if the licensing server goes down when your license needs to check…fun times I hear. And other issues.

I think there’s cool services Adobe can provide with a “cloud” offering – but their current “subscription-only” approach is probably going to result in some golden parachute openings – too much ill-will and trouble generated with the cloud-only subscription approach.

The better approach in my opinion would have been to:

  • Do a maintenance-type subscription model, a la Autodesk.
  • Keep working on developing compelling cloud features and make sure they work! The current issues CC subscribers have experienced is just inexcusable for a pro-level tool set only available through subscription.
  • Another alternative would be something like this: After a 3 year subscription is completed (or whatever is a good consumer and Adobe friendly period of time), provide the subscriber a frozen snapshot of the Creative Cloud tools at that point of time and give them a permanent license to use that toolset. This would stop the currently accurate perception that one’s work files would be “held hostage” by failing to pay the Adobe “tax” (i.e. failure to re-subscribe would leave your work orphaned and uneditable.)

I’ll just leave it at that.

Thoughts on the Mac App store…

So I recently made some purchases through Apple’s Mac App store. Overall I think it’s a good system, particularly for those developers without strong marketing and distribution channels. The net benefit for the world is positive, although I wouldn’t want app stores like this to be the only way of buying and distributing software.

Here’s a quick list of pros and cons, followed up with my “huh…this could change everything” realization.

Pros:
– Purchases are amazingly easy and generally painless.
– instant gratification (click, purchase, download, and go)
– easy to keep apps up to date
– curated experience means good exposure to new/useful apps while (so far) keeping malware out
– App Stores – not just the Mac App store – provide economic impetus to develop for the Apple ecosystem, meaning more cool apps for Mac OS/iOS

Mixed:
– walled garden – it’s nice and pretty, but sometimes you want to break out…

Cons:
– the store is difficult to search
– for a “curated” experience, the store still has a lot of “this passed review?” kind of apps
– broadband is a necessity, particularly for larger apps

And now for the “this can change everything” realization. So most software licenses basically tie the software to a machine, device, and sometimes even by CPU. Under the App Store, once you purchase software, it is licensed to your App store user account. This means you buy software once and can use it anywhere (after logging into the App store and installing the app under your App store user account). It’s basically a floating license (I’m looking at you, Luxology Modo). This makes perfect sense to me – the machine doesn’t matter – it’s not licensing the software. The user though…they matter a lot, they’re the ones licensing the software. I eagerly await for this licensing model to become the norm because it has the potential to change everything.