One for Adobe’s Marketing Geniuses

R
Posted By
Rick
Nov 20, 2003
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566
Replies
12
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Closed
http://forums.about.com/ab-graphicssoft/messages?lgnF=y& tid=4599

Would product activation stop you from upgrading Photoshop?

Yes 65%
No 22%
Not sure 13%

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J
JJS
Nov 20, 2003
"Rick" wrote in message
http://forums.about.com/ab-graphicssoft/messages?lgnF=y& tid=4599
Would product activation stop you from upgrading Photoshop?
Yes 65%
No 22%
Not sure 13%

Of course that is self reported and probably quite unreliable.
R
Rick
Nov 20, 2003
"jjs" wrote in message
"Rick" wrote in message
http://forums.about.com/ab-graphicssoft/messages?lgnF=y& tid=4599
Would product activation stop you from upgrading Photoshop?
Yes 65%
No 22%
Not sure 13%

Of course that is self reported and probably quite unreliable.

Time will tell, although it sounds about right from feedback I’m getting in the field and elsewhere.

Rick
W
Waldo
Nov 21, 2003
Time will tell, although it sounds about right from feedback I’m getting in the field and elsewhere.

Don’t think people will stop buying it, are there any alternatives? Probably yes, but keep in mind that training etcetera is required. Other software is not what the designers used to use.

I don’t see any trouble of activation except illegal use 😉

Waldo
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Rick
Nov 21, 2003
"Waldo" wrote in message
Time will tell, although it sounds about right from feedback I’m getting in the field and elsewhere.

Don’t think people will stop buying it, are there any alternatives? Probably yes, but keep in mind that training etcetera is required. Other software is not what the designers used to use.

Designers aren’t the ones who’re keeping Adobe in business. According to the surveys I’ve seen on the issue, 8 out of 10 people who buy Photoshop never touch its advanced features. In other words, 80% of Adobe’s user base could use another program and probably not miss anything.

I don’t see any trouble of activation except illegal use 😉

As with all copy protection schemes, the only people who will be limited or inconvenienced by activation are legitimate customers. The pirates already have their cracks, while much if not most of the "casual piracy" group will switch to other software.

Rick
N
nospam
Nov 21, 2003
In article <bpkncu$1p36uh$>, "Rick"
wrote:

Designers aren’t the ones who’re keeping Adobe in business. According to the surveys I’ve seen on the issue, 8 out of 10 people who buy Photoshop never touch its advanced features.

That is true for almost all software with complex features.

In other words, 80% of Adobe’s user base could use another program and probably not miss anything.

Perhaps Activation is an attempt to give greater exclusivity to Photoshop CS and similar high-end products and to pursuade people to move to Elements which can probably be stabilized right now and ‘improved’ merely by changing the interface to accomodate automagic mentalities.

We will have a better idea if/when Adobe raises the USA price of PS/CS to some Euromarket levels.
T
tacitr
Nov 21, 2003
I don’t see any trouble of activation except illegal use 😉

Actually, that’s not true at all; indeed, it’s a bit like saying "There’s nothing wrong with the PATRIOT act because the only people troubled by it are terrorists."

Illegal users aren’t bothered by activation. They download the crack and go about their merry way.

It’s legal users who are troubled, both by glitches in the software and by the fact that they must re-activate it whenever they change hardware or re-install the software.

That’s not a big deal for casual users and amateurs. It *is* a big deal for a professional on a tight deadline, if something goes all pear-shaped with the activation processl.

I just received a frantic call from a client about two days ago; their imposition software (not Photoshop) had a similar activation process, and suddenly refused to activate in the middle of running a very large (~$20,000 US) job on a very short deadline. The activation glitch was cleared up by the vendor the next day, but "the next day" was too late; I had to crack the (legitimately purchased, $4,000) software so they could get the job out on time.

Activation problems can and do happen. I will not bet my business on someone else’s activation scheme.


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nospam
Nov 21, 2003
In article ,
(Tacit) wrote:

[…]
I just received a frantic call from a client about two days ago; their imposition software (not Photoshop) had a similar activation process, and suddenly refused to activate in the middle of running a very large (~$20,000 US) job on a very short deadline. The activation glitch was cleared up by the vendor the next day, but "the next day" was too late; I had to crack the (legitimately purchased, $4,000) software so they could get the job out on time.

Activation problems can and do happen. I will not bet my business on someone else’s activation scheme.

That’s the perfect example of the very worst feature of the very best software. When a true professional won’t use it, then that pretty much negates the professional value, and therefore the unique property of PS. It makes no sense to kill your most dependent and best customers – unless Adobe no longer cares.

Look, activation can create a whole new and incredibly viable market for competition: a new and exceedingly high motivation for the hackers, especially the truly big time overseas CDROM distributors. So here’s the new senario: persons like yourself (rather, persons less ethical, less informed, but similarly daunted by the death of a job and diminished reliability) find a Chinese/Indian/Korean/whatever hacked CD for half the price of an update to V8 and buy it in order to insure their continuing professional delivery. That pits Adobe’s marketeers against their best customers under the worst terms I can imagine.

What was Adobe thinking? Have they lost their mind? What do they know that we do not know? Do they care? And why do the corporate licenses have no Activation scheme? I swear they must have a Harvard MBA on their board to come up with a stupid, counter-effective idea like activation. Right now that idiot is probably hiring a _team_ of Harvard MBAs and digging for a long siege of denial; meanwhile a few very bright and financially well endowed Chinese are setting up a production line of hacked CS CDROMs. And some Adobe marketeer is suggesting that Adobe offer a special PRO-PRO-PRO version without activation for, you guessed it, more money, possibly the price of a hacked Chinese CDROM.

I’m getting CS because I work under federal and state grants and my employer – _you_, Mr. and Mrs. American taxpayer – are buying it for me and I’m having _grave_ reservations. It won’t take much for me to sink the purchase of CS for the whole institute. I believe we can get by with plug-ins over V7. We shall see.


R
rubik{remove}
Nov 21, 2003
Don’t think people will stop buying it, are there any alternatives? Probably yes, but keep in mind that training etcetera is required. Other software is not what the designers used to use.

Designers aren’t the ones who’re keeping Adobe in business. According to the surveys I’ve seen on the issue, 8 out of 10 people who buy Photoshop never touch its advanced features. In other words, 80% of Adobe’s user base could use another program and probably not miss anything.
photoshop elements is plenty good for those ppl
J
Joe
Nov 22, 2003
"Rick" wrote:

"Waldo" wrote in message
Time will tell, although it sounds about right from feedback I’m getting in the field and elsewhere.

Don’t think people will stop buying it, are there any alternatives? Probably yes, but keep in mind that training etcetera is required. Other software is not what the designers used to use.

Designers aren’t the ones who’re keeping Adobe in business. According to the surveys I’ve seen on the issue, 8 out of 10 people who buy Photoshop never touch its advanced features. In other words, 80% of Adobe’s user base could use another program and probably not miss anything.

This is very true. I only use very few features of Photoshop and I believe the others have them too. The only reason I am using Photoshop because

1. The upgrade price isn’t so bad, and I skip upgrade now and then

2. And I use Photoshop because I am vey familair with some commands I have been using over and over for many years.

The other thing that Photoshop is very stable newer version doesn’t have some nasty bug like CorelPaint. I got CorelDraw at very low price ($30 for the whole suite) not for the CorelPaint and others but for the Clip Arts, I upgraded to 2 newer versions just to see how the newer Corel Paint compare to PhotoShop *but* both versions were too buggy to use (v10 was the last one I tried).

I don’t see any trouble of activation except illegal use 😉

As with all copy protection schemes, the only people who will be limited or inconvenienced by activation are legitimate customers. The pirates already have their cracks, while much if not most of the "casual piracy" group will switch to other software.

Rick

I am pretty sure I will stay with v7 and don’t know what I may do next, v7 is more than what I need.
T
toby
Nov 22, 2003
"Rick" …
http://forums.about.com/ab-graphicssoft/messages?lgnF=y& tid=4599
Would product activation stop you from upgrading Photoshop?
Yes 65%
No 22%
Not sure 13%

Our studio of designers typically buys Adobe volume licenses. We won’t be upgrading to CS, because of "activation". I agree with the other posters’ comments, especially about not making one’s business dependent on the functioning of such devices.

Toby
T
threetoe
Nov 23, 2003
Mac version has no activation.
none.
Photoshop CS has me grinning ear to ear as i process raw files into 16bit psd files.

In article <bpje7h$1pl2lb$>, Rick
wrote:

http://forums.about.com/ab-graphicssoft/messages?lgnF=y& tid=4599
Would product activation stop you from upgrading Photoshop?
Yes 65%
No 22%
Not sure 13%

N
nospam
Nov 23, 2003
In article <221120031741082257%>, threetoe
wrote:

Mac version has no activation.
none.

Now what’s up with that? Did Adobe just go for a bad sales pitch? They have the development team to deploy their won activation scheme and bought that piece of crap – because it was easy?

What’s the sound of a head rolling? I want to hear it!

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