My recipe for dealing with "cranky" proprietary software like this:
Step 1. Buy CC subscription and install what you need.
Step 2. Look for a good patch/crack that makes everything work ofline, and that still allows you to update.
Step 3. Make peace with the risk of having installed some possible malware on your machine with the patch/crack (ie. do the sensible thing of doing you shopping and ebanking on the other dedicated machine you only use for this).
Step 4. Stop caring that step 2 is illegal and get on with your life, you paid for the damn thing and nobody will really sue you for using it in a way that breaks the damn EULA anyway...
I have been so, so happy. Not 100% apples-to-apples of course but it's been great for my UI design needs, way better than Photoshop/Fireworks.
For bitmap editing I supplement with Pixelmator (only $15!). I used to say Photoshop couldn't be beat because of insanely hardcore features like content-aware fill, but then this is happening: http://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2014/04/17/sneak-peek-at-pixe...
This all seems sensible until Adobe revokes your license and you lose all money you invested so far and access to the work you produced. There should be consumer protection laws for these cases. When you pirate software, everything works smoothly (unless you catch some trojan), but if you are a paying customer, all kinds of unpleasant and artificial problems are thrown at you.
And this is why I won't trust SaaS that doesn't provide a viable self-host solution (which for practical purposes tends to mean Free software, although I suppose "binary" only self-contained jars might be a realistic alternative). And also why I can't see myself selling/working on such a solution without providing some form of viable/realistic exit strategy/alternative.
With traditional apps, you run the risk of eg: your laptop crashing/being stolen -- but if you need to work, you can just go and pick up a new laptop, burn an hour or so reinstalling your application(s) -- and hopefully get your work done by the deadline. With a self-hostable SaaS, you can spin up a vps/dedicated server and install, maybe even in less time -- but with "closed" SaaS -- you have no option.
Of course, with all (high-bandwidth) SaaS-solutions, network access becomes a single point of failure.
It should be noted that "just spin up a VPS/dedicated server" is not a serious competition for most SaaS companies, nor is it a requirement for most people who buy SaaS. Try explaining that process to Office Manager Milly, whose #1 feature request is being able to fax documents to the SaaS app rather than having to upload them.
Milly may have heard about Heartbleed recently. She doesn't understand public key cryptography, SSL, servers, configuration files, or the command line. She does understand that all of her information being leaked to bad guys is not optimal. How would you go about advising Milly on what the consequences of Heartbleed are for her self-hosted SaaS product?
We've learned to live with centralized water and electricity and banking, all outside of our control, rather than rely on on-premises solutions. SaaS, too, will win out after a few hiccups.
I don't have the data to back it up, but (for example) data loss as a whole have probably considerably gone down with transitions to SaaS.
Sure you can self-host, but who do you trust more: some guy on your team who has other things to do, or a team that does only that? And a team whose livelyhood depends on uptime/data protection.
Here people can't work, but imagine the amount of work if there was a data failure on your machine? Your example (laptop being stolen) means you probably don't even have access to your data.
I'm building a POS app for the invoice. One of the main requirements (self impose) is that the data is local-first and sync with the cloud. THIS point is one of the hardest to implement for me, and I still have not figured how do it well.
But still can't release this app without this. I believe that have a exit strategy for the app data is too important (the data is stored in a sqlite database, with decent naming and very simple structure).
I'm not sure to understand your point. Does it boil down to "single point of failure are bad"?
There are alternatives to each of the Adobe products, self hosted and available offline. People going the Creative Cloud route for their daily job are in a situation where the alternative costed too much or doesn't allow them to do their job in a sufficient way, so there was no real viable options from the start.
The problem is not really to trust Adobe or not. Adobe doesnt have any track record of great online services, I don't think they have an image of high quality software either, they do some amazing things and bring killer features, but I harldy heard anyone being loyal to Adobe itself.
I think this whole discussion would have taken a different turn if it wasn't Adobe but Amazon AWS or Google. When S3 is down, I don't remember seeing more than a few comments in the 'you should have self hosted your data' line. Why is it so different for Adobe ?
Adobe seem to do all they can to screw up the computer their software is installed on. On a Mac you are supposed to drag an app into the Applications folder; to delete it, drag it to trash. Adobe software doesn't work like this. To install a trial of their software you have to install multiple apps, that can't be easily removed, and put up with their stupid Adobe logo in the title bar even when you're not using their software. You can't even use a trial without signing up for a "Creative Cloud" account.
Adobe's "Creative Cloud" is a great example of how to alienate and annoy your customers.
What's funny is this is what Quark did in the 90s and then they got their market share stolen by Adobe. The same thing will happen to Adobe at some point. There will be so much user frustration that people will pack up and leave to the first reasonable tool that comes along.
Not to mention that the Creative Cloud app itself is a battery vampire, automatically sets itself to launch at startup, constantly nags about updates, and then screws everything over when you do update.
I won't touch Adobe products anymore. Their products are great, but for the average shop there's barely anything they can do that can't be done with open source or reasonably priced alternatives, and often with much less bloat.
I find it funny that my graphics card is now faster than the world's fastest supercomputer in 1997, yet I am forced to "offload" stuff to cloud.
I bought CS6 suite as it became clear Adobe is moving full steam ahead with CC. I think it is one of those examples where the move serves only company's interests and doesn't make much sense to users (except for continuous updates that might accidentally break things as well). The initial pricing might have been competitive for some packages, for many users however caused substantial increase if they used to skip one cycle for upgrades. I understand Adobe needs a predictable revenue stream though I consider this as a flop.
> Adobe had categorically assured users and journalists, when replacing Creative Suite with Creative Cloud in May 2013, that apps only needed to check in with the server every 30 days, telling MacUser in a written reply that products would continue to work for 99 days in the absence of a server connection.
Cloud computing is a great theoretical idea, but extremely fragile in the face of serious crisis, like economic meltdown, wars, sanctions or even natural disasters.
All the websites, always-on apps, mobile operating systems, etc will be worthless if (when) the shit hits the fan. In case of global economic meltdown, the companies would be unable to pay for the huge data-centers, the providers will go belly up and it would be next to impossible to restore or recover the data stored in the 'cloud'.
Imagine waking up one day and not having access to the Internet. Try it and see how much you can do with your computer.
And with Russia under KGB dictatorship (read: insane, evil people), that shit can hit the fan as soon as this year.
That's why it is imperative to create an offline database of important things which would be available even when the clouds evaporate.
By 'important' things, I mean open source code (eg. offline github), wikipedia and other encyclopaedias, scientific works, books, music, movies.
From this angle, I consider thepiratebay to be the most important archive of art that humanity has collectively produced.
I've even started working on some sketches of a distributed read-only filesystem based partly on the concepts in the bitcoin blockchain, but I guess a simple solution using torrents plus a distributed offline index, can do the job just fine.
Anyone else thought about this ?
A simple solution that works now tends to beat a complex solution still on the drawing board. I'd say go ahead with the torrents plus distributed off-line index.
When I had to go out to buy licenses a few months ago for an intern at our company and found out that it is no longer possible to buy the regular Adobe licenses for the latest products we solved this by using competitor products and open source projects to give us a patched together set of tools.
The money was not an issue, what was an issue is that I think that tools should not be shoehorned against all logic into a pay-to-play model, they should just work. Imagine your c compiler or your editor failing to work because some third party service is down. To me that is not an option.
I hope Adobe learns their lesson and re-instates the licensing model they used in the past and gets rid of their 'Creative Cloud' nonsense asap.
And if they don't then I hope some competitor will realize this is a huge opportunity and will jump into the gap opened up here.
Adobe is good, but they can be beaten, especially if they shoot themselves in the foot (repeatedly).
I have a hard time understanding why anyone would lease a service that is vital to their job, or at least without a backup. If your livelihood depends on something then spend your money appropriately. Even if you did sign up for CC you can still have an older version ready to go in a pinch.
You can't buy the latest versions of Adobe software. They are simply not available for purchase. You can only rent them. So if you work with designers who use Creative Cloud you are similarly forced to subscribe. At this point, I'm probably just going to get out of the field entirely once it becomes impossible to continue because of Adobe's idiocy.
If you Google around Adobe released a statement saying that those CS2 downloads and provided serial number are for customers who bought CS2. Adobe switched off their activation servers but made the serial numbers available to mitigate that.
If you're happy using software you don't have a license for, why not grab CS6 off of the your favorite torrent site.
People bitch and bitch about DRM (and god knows I do as well), but as soon as a company tries to release software without any licensing hoops or other checks, people jump all over it and shout "Hey everybody, this company isn't going out of their way stop me from using their software, it must be free!!!!" Just because you can download and run some piece of software from a companies website doesn't mean you have a license to freely use it.
I'm a developer, and I only use Adobes products to pull images and the like out of Photoshop/Illustrator files given to me by my design team. I don't want to use Adobes software, as its entirely wasted on me. But I don't think any of the other apps handle PSD's (a horrid file format) well enough to allow me to replace them :( Anyone in my position that has replaced them? What should I look at?
I've had fair success using Gimp for similar use-cases -- with the caveat that that is mostly for design mock-ups made in photoshop (no vector graphics to speak of).
There's definitely a learning curve, and Gimp still has a long way to go -- but it's passed into "usable" quite a while ago for my uses.
[edit: if anyone knows of other alternatives (preferably that runs on Linux and/or under Wine, preferably Free software - but also closed source -- I'd love to hear about it]
what made Fireworks cool is that it used png as native file format,so even if you didnt have the software installed,you could open the file with any soft that support PNG. And guess what ,that wonderfull piece of software was retired by adobe.
It really is the moments like this when I look at my stack of Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, and Darktable, and am glad that I invested in the alternate solution.
Bohemian Coding has finally fixed the grid snapping bug that plagued all previous versions of Sketch so I will definitely not be renewing my CC subscription when it expires. CC feels like it has much more do with Adobe's needs than mine.
And this is the sticking point for cloud-focussed systems. It's too early to implement an "always-on" attitude in so many parts of the world. I hope the backlash to this 24-hour outage (which in some cases will lose clients over) acts as the poster-child for would-be cloud-only services.
7.5 hours worth of repeated (and I mean repeatedly explaining the situation to each new contact) tech support calls over a licensing issue that was, ultimately, a 10 minute fix (allowing for included administrivia) that was already sitting available for access/correction on the computer in front of a "supervisor".
That left me swearing Adobe would never see another dime from me or people I advise. And it leaves me repeating this anecdote every time the news surfaces another story about their cr-p administration systems and support.
And these are the people who are going to be involved in e.g. EME DRM in our browsers? I sincerely hope not.
I have CC and was able to work fine all day. I wasn't able to sign in but that has no bearing on me doing my job. Was this something that affected the licensing servers and I just happened to be lucky?
[+] [-] nnq|12 years ago|reply
Step 1. Buy CC subscription and install what you need.
Step 2. Look for a good patch/crack that makes everything work ofline, and that still allows you to update.
Step 3. Make peace with the risk of having installed some possible malware on your machine with the patch/crack (ie. do the sensible thing of doing you shopping and ebanking on the other dedicated machine you only use for this).
Step 4. Stop caring that step 2 is illegal and get on with your life, you paid for the damn thing and nobody will really sue you for using it in a way that breaks the damn EULA anyway...
[+] [-] abalone|12 years ago|reply
Uninstall and switch to Sketch. http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/
I have been so, so happy. Not 100% apples-to-apples of course but it's been great for my UI design needs, way better than Photoshop/Fireworks.
For bitmap editing I supplement with Pixelmator (only $15!). I used to say Photoshop couldn't be beat because of insanely hardcore features like content-aware fill, but then this is happening: http://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2014/04/17/sneak-peek-at-pixe...
[+] [-] Fuxy|12 years ago|reply
What happens when these "cloud" companies go out of business?
You're pretty much SOL if you can't find a replacement quick.
Don't ever rely on "cloud" software for critical infrastructure unless you own that cloud.
Everybody get CS6 and delay upgrading as long as you can.
[+] [-] bitL|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdfaoeu|12 years ago|reply
Are you talking about the Creative Cloud drm or the crack?
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_ancient|12 years ago|reply
That is what VM's are for.....
[+] [-] e12e|12 years ago|reply
With traditional apps, you run the risk of eg: your laptop crashing/being stolen -- but if you need to work, you can just go and pick up a new laptop, burn an hour or so reinstalling your application(s) -- and hopefully get your work done by the deadline. With a self-hostable SaaS, you can spin up a vps/dedicated server and install, maybe even in less time -- but with "closed" SaaS -- you have no option.
Of course, with all (high-bandwidth) SaaS-solutions, network access becomes a single point of failure.
[+] [-] patio11|12 years ago|reply
Milly may have heard about Heartbleed recently. She doesn't understand public key cryptography, SSL, servers, configuration files, or the command line. She does understand that all of her information being leaked to bad guys is not optimal. How would you go about advising Milly on what the consequences of Heartbleed are for her self-hosted SaaS product?
[+] [-] DenisM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtpg|12 years ago|reply
Sure you can self-host, but who do you trust more: some guy on your team who has other things to do, or a team that does only that? And a team whose livelyhood depends on uptime/data protection.
Here people can't work, but imagine the amount of work if there was a data failure on your machine? Your example (laptop being stolen) means you probably don't even have access to your data.
[+] [-] mamcx|12 years ago|reply
I'm building a POS app for the invoice. One of the main requirements (self impose) is that the data is local-first and sync with the cloud. THIS point is one of the hardest to implement for me, and I still have not figured how do it well.
But still can't release this app without this. I believe that have a exit strategy for the app data is too important (the data is stored in a sqlite database, with decent naming and very simple structure).
[+] [-] ant_sz|12 years ago|reply
I think Adobe CC is an example of useless cloud service. In fact I think the only reason Adobe insist on providing a cloud service is to avoid piracy.
[+] [-] hrktb|12 years ago|reply
There are alternatives to each of the Adobe products, self hosted and available offline. People going the Creative Cloud route for their daily job are in a situation where the alternative costed too much or doesn't allow them to do their job in a sufficient way, so there was no real viable options from the start.
The problem is not really to trust Adobe or not. Adobe doesnt have any track record of great online services, I don't think they have an image of high quality software either, they do some amazing things and bring killer features, but I harldy heard anyone being loyal to Adobe itself.
I think this whole discussion would have taken a different turn if it wasn't Adobe but Amazon AWS or Google. When S3 is down, I don't remember seeing more than a few comments in the 'you should have self hosted your data' line. Why is it so different for Adobe ?
[+] [-] aeberbach|12 years ago|reply
Adobe seem to do all they can to screw up the computer their software is installed on. On a Mac you are supposed to drag an app into the Applications folder; to delete it, drag it to trash. Adobe software doesn't work like this. To install a trial of their software you have to install multiple apps, that can't be easily removed, and put up with their stupid Adobe logo in the title bar even when you're not using their software. You can't even use a trial without signing up for a "Creative Cloud" account.
Adobe's "Creative Cloud" is a great example of how to alienate and annoy your customers.
(Don't get me started on Flash)
[+] [-] kyrra|12 years ago|reply
http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensitiv...
[+] [-] narrator|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elektronaut|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] increment_i|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|12 years ago|reply
I bought CS6 suite as it became clear Adobe is moving full steam ahead with CC. I think it is one of those examples where the move serves only company's interests and doesn't make much sense to users (except for continuous updates that might accidentally break things as well). The initial pricing might have been competitive for some packages, for many users however caused substantial increase if they used to skip one cycle for upgrades. I understand Adobe needs a predictable revenue stream though I consider this as a flop.
[+] [-] abandonliberty|12 years ago|reply
> Adobe had categorically assured users and journalists, when replacing Creative Suite with Creative Cloud in May 2013, that apps only needed to check in with the server every 30 days, telling MacUser in a written reply that products would continue to work for 99 days in the absence of a server connection.
[+] [-] codeshaman|12 years ago|reply
All the websites, always-on apps, mobile operating systems, etc will be worthless if (when) the shit hits the fan. In case of global economic meltdown, the companies would be unable to pay for the huge data-centers, the providers will go belly up and it would be next to impossible to restore or recover the data stored in the 'cloud'.
Imagine waking up one day and not having access to the Internet. Try it and see how much you can do with your computer.
And with Russia under KGB dictatorship (read: insane, evil people), that shit can hit the fan as soon as this year.
That's why it is imperative to create an offline database of important things which would be available even when the clouds evaporate.
By 'important' things, I mean open source code (eg. offline github), wikipedia and other encyclopaedias, scientific works, books, music, movies. From this angle, I consider thepiratebay to be the most important archive of art that humanity has collectively produced. I've even started working on some sketches of a distributed read-only filesystem based partly on the concepts in the bitcoin blockchain, but I guess a simple solution using torrents plus a distributed offline index, can do the job just fine. Anyone else thought about this ?
[+] [-] rwallace|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterkelly|12 years ago|reply
- Leslie Lamport
[+] [-] ISL|12 years ago|reply
Edit: Answering my own question... Not the main repository, but it's something.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20...
[+] [-] brenschluss|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thirsteh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grue3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
The money was not an issue, what was an issue is that I think that tools should not be shoehorned against all logic into a pay-to-play model, they should just work. Imagine your c compiler or your editor failing to work because some third party service is down. To me that is not an option.
I hope Adobe learns their lesson and re-instates the licensing model they used in the past and gets rid of their 'Creative Cloud' nonsense asap.
And if they don't then I hope some competitor will realize this is a huge opportunity and will jump into the gap opened up here.
Adobe is good, but they can be beaten, especially if they shoot themselves in the foot (repeatedly).
[+] [-] rgrieselhuber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flixic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greendata|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbatten|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: For example, can you figure out how to buy Photoshop from this page? I can't. I've been trying for a couple minutes.
http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/software._sl_id-conten...
[+] [-] LoganCale|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofmangos|12 years ago|reply
It works pretty well in Wine as well, if you fiddle with the settings.
[+] [-] taspeotis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagw|12 years ago|reply
People bitch and bitch about DRM (and god knows I do as well), but as soon as a company tries to release software without any licensing hoops or other checks, people jump all over it and shout "Hey everybody, this company isn't going out of their way stop me from using their software, it must be free!!!!" Just because you can download and run some piece of software from a companies website doesn't mean you have a license to freely use it.
[+] [-] johnatwork|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girvo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|12 years ago|reply
There's definitely a learning curve, and Gimp still has a long way to go -- but it's passed into "usable" quite a while ago for my uses.
[edit: if anyone knows of other alternatives (preferably that runs on Linux and/or under Wine, preferably Free software - but also closed source -- I'd love to hear about it]
[+] [-] camus2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vetrom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thejosh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mandatum|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|12 years ago|reply
That left me swearing Adobe would never see another dime from me or people I advise. And it leaves me repeating this anecdote every time the news surfaces another story about their cr-p administration systems and support.
And these are the people who are going to be involved in e.g. EME DRM in our browsers? I sincerely hope not.
[+] [-] ShaneOG|12 years ago|reply
Adobe Management: Oh no, our users cannot work. Let's remove the requirement for our software to phone home just to open/work.
What will probably happen:
Adobe Management: Hmm, maybe let's try to make our servers more available?
[+] [-] mcmillion|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theFletch|12 years ago|reply