Creative Cloud Open Letter

I am battling it out with an Adobe Rep (in India) on Chat right now...seems that you DO have to sign an Annual Commitment if you want the INDIVIDUAL COMPLETE PLAN @ $49.99 per month and you cannot quit at anytime without PAYING A FEE...otherwise you have to pay $74.99 per month. You have to renew the annual commitment every year if you want that price or you are paying $74.99 per month with no cancellation penalty.

That is extortion in my book.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I don't think Adobe's marketing makes it clear that the lowest prices require a commitment. I know lots of people who misunderstood it.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

I didn't realize it until today. Everyone was telling me you can "quit anytime"...WHICH YOU CAN'T.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yea. It is a bit more complex than "buy this for $X, upgrade for $Y". But I feel Adobe marketing complicated it by marketing the annual commitment price with a "per month" tagline as opposed to a "per year" tagline. It should be monthly sub vs yearly sub. If you pay for a yearly sub, it's approx $600 a year as opposed to a monthly sub of $75 per month ($900 per year). But yea, it IS a monthly vs yearly sub, hence the discount.



www.strypesinpost.com

They did mention "requires annual commitment".



www.strypesinpost.com

They worded it "Annual Commitment Billed Monthly". I really resent being on the hook with Adobe like this. I really need that After Effects / Cineware relationship so I am forced to do this. I resent it.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It is annual commitment, which is billed monthly as opposed to billed annually. Alternatively sub at a rolling cost.

I'm actually liking the creative cloud. The license is much more mobile than the creative suite. On quite a few occasions I have downloaded CC apps to run on my work machine. I don't have to worry about keying in serial numbers and then deauthorizing.



www.strypesinpost.com

It's obviously putting some people out of joint quite a bit, which is sad. The software is excellent. And Joe - would you pay $600 to upgrade? If so, just put $600 in your account and let Adobe take their share out of that once a month.

Yes I would...but I usually upgrade every other year. Now I am forced to keep an "open tab" signing annual commitments. I do not like annual contracts...like owning my iphone. Contracts suck no matter how you spin it / rationalize it.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

They do need to sell it as software as a service (SaaS) to keep pace with FCPX's development, due to the Sarbanes Oxley act. There is no doubt that FCP X was the fastest developing software last year simply because Adobe couldn't release any new features until this cycle. Give it until the end of the year and you could be seeing a whole different app with all these new features being added.



www.strypesinpost.com

I'll be interested to see what Apple's long-term strategy is with FCPX. Will they have free updates forever, will they have upgrade pricing or will they just release a separate app that everyone has to pay full price for again? I'm curious as to whether or not FCPX development breaks even.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

I paid my $300. to be a beta tester for FCPX. I don't feel I should pay full price for any upgrades for a long while... Back to CC. I talked to a guy last week that speaks all over the country about the Adobe Cloud. He seams to think that Adobe is considering that if you've been paying the monthly plan for a few years, that if you end the subscription, you get to keep that version of the CC apps. I think that is one of the biggest gripes most people have.

Unless the iPhones / iPads continue their slide and fall completely off the sales charts, FCP X doesn't have to earn anything. When you look at their sales compared to everything else on a pie chart, I was told the ProApps sales were literally a line. Too small to even be a very very small piece of pie, literally a line on the chart.

In other words, Apple doesn't even need the ProApps period, they're just offered "because they can." In more other words, those apps could be cancelled at any time and it would affect Apple Sales less than 1%.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Right, but I think it's interesting if Apple is prepared to make a loss on FCPX despite killing lots of pro products in recent years.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Jon Chappell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Right, but I think it's interesting if Apple is
> prepared to make a loss on FCPX despite killing
> lots of pro products in recent years.

It's interesting only in the sense that it's interesting so many people want to use a product that is such a tiny blip on a company's radar that if it was killed tomorrow it would be completely inconsequential to Apple but HUGELY consequential to folks who have gone whole hog into the product.

That's my biggest problem with Apple and their "pro apps." Completely unnecessary to survive for Apple's financial health which means it's more of a pet project than a driving money maker. Pet projects can be canned at any time.

Adobe and Avid MUST make good products in order for folks to keep using them or risk losing their user base and that will have real bottom line issues. In terms of Avid, the company going out of business would not be that big a deal because someone will pick up the software and keep it rolling, ala Davinci Resolve. But FCPX would not be sold to anyone as Apple would continue to retain the intellectual rights like they did with the original ProApps so everyone would be completely out of luck there.

It's nice that X is progressing and adding more features, but Apple is a consumer company now and I still won't trust my livelihood to a company that really doesn't need to make the software I use to make my living.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

<but Apple is a consumer company now and I still won't trust my livelihood to a company that really doesn't need to make the software I use to make my living.>

Even though I do own a copy of FCPX, I moved to Adobe PPro from FCP 7. Adobe is a software company that deals with pros. But like you said, Apple is a consumer company.

Bingo Walter. I won't be putting all my eggs in the basket of a company that does not need their software to effect their bottom line...which is why I won't go to FCPX, period. Adobe and AVID have too much to lose so they need to keep the updates / features coming.

I have come to realize very painfully that Apple is like the "Costco" of software developers...when app buying slows, off the shelf it comes.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Adobe servers HACKED - 2.9 MILLION user's private information & credit card numbers compromised. Anyone else sorry they handed their credit card to Adobe for the CC membership autopay?

[www.macrumors.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Getting hacked isn't anything new. EA Sports was hacked, so was PS3, Steam, the Bank of America, Vodafone, Google, my web page a couple of times, Citibank, etc.. I'll be a lot more worried if my bank was hacked as I usually don't have much money available via online credit.



www.strypesinpost.com

Minimize it all you want strypes...it sux hard. Don't like autopay - never did (especially being forced into it: autopay or don't use the CC software). This is why.

Well...I got the dreaded email this morning from Adobe that my information was among those 2.9 million users compromised. Cancelled card / changed adobe password. I contacted Adobe to cancel CC...they want to charge me the 50% of the annual contract as a cancellation fee. B*ST*RDS

#1unhappyadobeuser

Maybe something good will come out of this like a normal way to pay (one-time transaction).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.