Adobe Double-dipping with upcoming CS5.5 'upgrade'

[webb1970]

We broke over here

I hear ya we have the package Design Premium only just bought cs5 2 weeks ago i asked if i can get it for free since i just bout a new license they saidf no. Well i cancelled the purchase and i'm waiting for then to refund my money.

I haven't downloaded or logged in the portal to collect my ESD product...bring back Macromedia.

Adobe triple dipping

 

[Winni]

I hope and pray this isn't what the future of Adobe has in store for those of us that live off these programs.

Well, you can always change your tool set. Or at least you can try. Sometimes it's more economic to draw a line, cut your losses and start anew with something else.

 

[mBox]

Well, you can always change your tool set. Or at least you can try. Sometimes it's more economic to draw a line, cut your losses and start anew with something else.

Most professional services just stay at a working level. That goes for almost all workflows e.g. 3D, Video. Web....
I know some post houses still using 10 year old apps.

Real professionals dont need the new Photoshop Drop Shadow Plug-in

 

[cinder]

Why does everyone think that all Apple has to do is release a competitor to PHotoshop and all of their problems will be solved?

Photoshop is 23 years old. And it has significantly more R&D invested in it than Apple could feasibly compete with on a professional level. Even InDesign hasn't completely killed Quark, and it's been out for 9 years. If Apple released anything, it would take at least 5 years for it to gain any sort of mainstream acceptance, and that would give Adobe 5 more years of innovation. Which, admittedly, they'd probably squander.

I agree that Adobe's Creative Suite needs competition. I just don't see it coming from Apple anytime soon.

Maybe Quark will step up to the plate and...oh...who am I kidding.

People would have said that about AVID.
But Apple almost killed it - it certainly changed the game.

I don't believe Apple will get into that space - but if anyone could unseat Photoshop, they could.

However, the real issue is that no one could kill the entirety of CS. That is what is near un-beatable.

I think it's clear who the losers were in the Adobe+Macromedia merger: the users.

 

[digtlartst]

PS user since 1.0.

I bought a NOS "leftover" CS 4 Design Premium early last year cheap. Adobe contacted me in March 2011 with a $399 upgrade offer to CS 5 DP, which was at least $180 cheaper than any online retailer. I didn't really need it but my office has CS 5 so I figured I'd go for it to match up, even realizing there was a newer CS upgrade due this year.

Shortly thereafter, Adobe announced 5.5. What, no "6"? I looked at its features and decided I didn't need any of them so I was happy with my CS 5 purchase and realized it might be another year for "6" to arrive.

Lo, two weeks later Adobe sent me a "Valued CS 5 Customer" email offering a free upgrade to CS 5.5 DP for the asking. I asked and am awaiting shipment. Currently, upgrades from CS4 DP to CS5.5 DP are $649 on Amazon, so I did ok.

 

[Wang Foolio]

It was funny seeing Facebook light up when all my graphic designer friends found out about 5.5 ... which was about a week after I knew all about it Their claims of CS5 crashing nonstop since the announcement of 5.5 are always a bit worrisome. Personally, I have an older version of CS but I too noticed a drop in stability once newer versions were released. I thought I was just imaging things

I just miss being a student and having access to Adobe Master collection for like $600... really should have bought the latest version the year I graduated. That would have been clever.

Anyway, you definitely got a bit lucky there with the cheap upgrade and free bump to 5.5

 

[MooseBlood]

I know many people who work for Adobe. Some good friends, some former co-workers, some complete buffoons that have absolutely no business sense-social skills-or connection to reality. They are more concerned with putting on killer parties and having a "chillaxed" work environment than focusing on the company and its growth through positive customer relations and creating products that fit the needs of their customers in both price and function.

Rather than focusing on their products, their big focus now is on buying up smaller companies and touting all of the huge new buildings they are going to put up.

I've watched this before with Micron, Novell, even Wordperfect, and many many other companies. I bet somebody very in the know about such things that the next local company to go kaput would be Adobe and it would happen within five years and he just laughed and said, "Wow, you're generous. You're giving them five years? I get applications from employees of theirs daily and tons of walk-ins during lunchbreaks looking for work. They smell something and it isn't good."

He works for the second largest online retailer in the world and they have culled an entire building full of developers just from people who have left Adobe over the last several months. They've even taken lesser jobs just to get out knowing that Adobe is collapsing on itself due to poor decisions by management and their insistence on continuing to overpay people that have been there a long time and nothing else..... whether they actually do anything or not. They look very much like a mid-90's company that is bloated with middle management that buzzwords you to death, but when you ask what they do they can't exactly pinpoint it. They are a "senior co-vice president over new product integration" or some other busy title that essentially means they show up when they want, act like a jerk, play guitar hero for an hour, go out to lunch and use a corporate card, and then go home at 2:00 and make 6 figures a year.

Great planning guys.... just great. Another company going down the tubes and further destroying our local economy due to your bad choices.

 

[bonjon9]

Got my CS5.5 Web Prem Upgrade today - free

I got CS5 Web Prem on 3/14/11. As soon as I heard about the 5.5 release, I checked with Adobe and I qualified for a complimentary upgrade. (Just under a month from when I bought ver. 5) So, you might want to try that. It took me a few online chat sessions to get it accomplished, but the form is on their website - what they didn't say was to go ahead and send in proof of purchase with the initial request.

Am about to install it now.......

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Where I work, we just upgraded 3 of 6 workstations from CS 4 DP to CS 5 DP. The upgrades were purchased just under one month, just as bonjon9. We were planning on upgrading all 6 within the week they announced. After multiple live chats, I was able to get the post-product announcement information that Adobe hasn't posted. The free or complimentary upgrade works like this:

• Any purchased made on or after April 10, 2011 is eligible.
• I was first told any 5.0 purchased BEFORE 5.5 ships would be eligible for the free upgrade. I later was told it's until May 14, so if you buy 5.0 before the 14th, you get 5.5 free.
• All requests MUST be made by May 30, 2011.
• You MUST have the actual receipt or invoice, scanned or PDF to attach with request form. Order confirmations, packing slips and emails do not count.
• You can NOT upgrade just one application within a suite with a stand-alone upgrade.

Hope that helps.

As far as double-dipping goes, if Adobe is cunning enough, they'll upgrade InDesign every mid- and full-cycle point, since 5.5 documents are not compatible with 5.0. So, for businesses like mine because we collaborate with clients, we have to upgrade if they do. We also have to support older versions for a number of clients (v2.x - 5.5) making document versioning even more problematic. We simply can't skip an upgrade as some suggest. If Adobe does plan on upgrading InDesign each time, then they have in effect sped-up their cycle to 12-months. Time will tell but I have a sinking suspicion this may be the case.

 

[opeter]

As far as double-dipping goes, if Adobe is cunning enough, they'll upgrade InDesign every mid- and full-cycle point, since 5.5 documents are not compatible with 5.0. So, for businesses like mine because we collaborate with clients, we have to upgrade if they do. We also have to support older versions for a number of clients (v2.x - 5.5) making document versioning even more problematic. We simply can't skip an upgrade as some suggest. If Adobe does plan on upgrading InDesign each time, then they have in effect sped-up their cycle to 12-months. Time will tell but I have a sinking suspicion this may be the case.

What about Indesign Intechange Format .inx or InDesign Markup Language (.iml)? Doesnt this work?

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6d4da.html

 

[digtlartst]

...if Adobe is cunning enough, they'll upgrade InDesign every mid- and full-cycle point, since 5.5 documents are not compatible with 5.0.

Cunning enough? You mean brutal enough!

Adobe changes their document standard in a .5 update release?? Idiocy. My free 5.5 update is on the way but now it turns out I won't be able to use it since I can't interchange 5.5 documents with 5.0 coworkers.

 

[SamuraiArtGuy]

I haven't thought too hard about the Adobe Subscription plans since the announce, other than wondering if they are putting more of their creativity into more ways of prying money out of my bank account than into the core applications. But I have for a while been a little disturbed that Adobe has Creative Pros over something of a barrel.

For the most part, if you're in Publishing at most levels, you are pretty much required to have the Creative Suite application or you're not working. Especially since their merger with Macromedia some years ago has given them nearly a de facto monopoly in pro-class graphics applications (and an actual monopoly with Flash). It's not complete of course, but nearly so. Corel photo paint? Pixelmator? Acorn? Hmmmm... no, not really.

Creative Suite can cost more than the computers many designers are running it on. And of course, we have to upgrade our gear with nearly every other version due to CS's legendary hunger for processor power and RAM. I'm still rocking CS3, on a Power Mac G5 - and I live in fear for the day when a CS5 file from a client or vendor shows up and spikes a $5000 hole in my wallet. My UPGRADE price is nearly $1000, and then there's the new computer to run it on...

And of course, Apple antagonizes Adobe at OUR peril. It's been an uneasy partnership since OSX was introduced, and Adobe had initially bet that the Mac would quietly die and went Window-first. But Quark saved them on the mac by being even SLOWER to support OS X.Quark 5 & 6 were stability nightmares in Classic mode, largely handing the field to the vastly improved InDesign 2. As a result, Adobe got to eat Quarks lunch....

... for breakfast.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

What about Indesign Intechange Format .inx or InDesign Markup Language (.iml)? Doesnt this work?

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6d4da.html

Not acceptable in my world. Back-saving has issues we can't afford to risk. It handcuffs us from using newer features, creates version confusion amongst client list, and possible embarrassment when things go wrong with clients. We believe in matching workflow to minimize issues.

Cunning enough? You mean brutal enough!

Adobe changes their document standard in a .5 update release?? Idiocy. My free 5.5 update is on the way but now it turns out I won't be able to use it since I can't interchange 5.5 documents with 5.0 coworkers.

HA! Yes, I was trying to be sarcastic with "cunning". Greedy might be the obvious word.

If you look at it that InDesign will upgrade again, assuming all suite apps will in 12-months with CS 6.0, you have in effect 3 upgrades on just InDesign in just over 24-months... THREE UPGRADES IN JUST OVER 24-MONTHS! For those that have to upgrade, that is about $1,600 in upgrades for one license in 2 years based on current pricing. Your upgrade costs basically just went up 33% over the same period.

The squeeze is on.

 

[macstudent]

I know that people don't like the answer, but every time there is a new feature added to InDesign, the .indd file will not be compatible with older versions. The reason for this is because .indd files are basically databases.

The good news is the exporting your .indd file to IDML (InDesign Markup Language) is able to be opened by any version of InDesign CS4 or later. Ex, CS7 exported to IDML would be able to be opened by CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6, etc.

This does cause problems for people using CS3, but going forward this issue be be less of a problem. Prior to CS4, INX was the interchange method and it was only good for 1 version of back-saving. The other problem with INX is that the file itself was unreadable by humans. IDML on the other hand is a very robust XML format that can be "hacked" or modified by hand or by a wide variety of 3rd party tools.

Back to the CS5.5 update. The reason for this targeted release was to help people who work with ePUB which is how you create books for iBooks and other ebook readers. If you don't need these features, don't upgrade to CS5.5. If you frequently work with ePUB, CS5 and earlier was a royal pain in the butt and the upgrade price is well worth the time saved.

I also feel the pain with the frequency of updates and I wish they would hold back somewhat. However, they are hardly the only company to release new versions of their software this often. In fact AutoCAD and SolidWorks releases a new version every year!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidworks

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

I know that people don't like the answer, but every time there is a new feature added to InDesign, the .indd file will not be compatible with older versions. The reason for this is because .indd files are basically databases.

The good news is the exporting your .indd file to IDML (InDesign Markup Language) is able to be opened by any version of InDesign CS4 or later. Ex, CS7 exported to IDML would be able to be opened by CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6, etc.

That's fine if you don't use any of the new/updated features you've paid for if you need to back-save (export) to IDML. Things fall apart going backwards. IDML is a work-around, not a solution in the professional realm.

Back to the CS5.5 update. The reason for this targeted release was to help people who work with ePUB which is how you create books for iBooks and other ebook readers. If you don't need these features, don't upgrade to CS5.5. If you frequently work with ePUB, CS5 and earlier was a royal pain in the butt and the upgrade price is well worth the time saved.

I also feel the pain with the frequency of updates and I wish they would hold back somewhat. However, they are hardly the only company to release new versions of their software this often. In fact AutoCAD and SolidWorks releases a new version every year!

I do understand the need to advance an app to meet user & market needs. Some apps need a faster cycle to do so. While it's a cost of doing business, it reduces the advantage of buying into a suite because one key app is upgraded and the others are nice but not necessary. A better method of deploying a mid-cycle upgrade for select apps is to offer them both as stand-alone upgrades that don't break your suite license or as a Suite upgrade. Give your users the option. I would rather buy the stand-alone InDesign mid-cycle upgrade now, and wait on the other app upgrades with the full-cycle. I think users and businesses would have been more receptive to mid-cycle upgrades if this were the case.

 

[jtara]

Well, Adobe removed one objection I had to this upgrade. They just released the 3 iPad companion apps and they work with CS5. Prior information suggested that these were only going to work with CS5.5, but they will work with CS5 as long as you have the latest updates to CS5.

 

[sarah3585]

I'm waiting on Amazon to get these stock. I am a part time student so qualify for that edition. The master version is £70 cheaper than Adobe want for it directly. I've been checking everyday.
I don't think we'll see cs6 until at least next spring but I can see why this isn't a major release for most to consider.

 

[glossywhite]

Great software, terrible ethics. Never paid for Adobe suite in my life, and not planning to,

 

[beejam]

terrible ethics.

You might say the same about yourself, since you seem to have no problem using stolen goods.

 

[glossywhite]

You might say the same about yourself, since you seem to have no problem using stolen goods.

Whoah! That's quite as assumption you're making there, considering you have NO IDEA who I am, nor how I use Adobe software; I should have predicted some idiotic comment would pop up

How do you know I don't work for a company who provide me with a machine with it pre-installed? What do you know about me, or what I do? Sorry, but last time I checked, I said *I* would never pay for it.

I hope you're going to be a man, and apologise, retracting that statement? That was a VERY rude thing to say.

 

[beejam]

Whoah! That's quite as assumption you're making there

I do have to apologize to you, glossywhite. I just get tired of some people (usually in other website forums) that proudly proclaim that they pirate every piece of software and wear it like a badge of honor. But you are absolutely correct that I know nothing about you and I jumped to conclusions. It was wrong of me to make assumptions. I take back my insinuation that you stole software and I hope you accept my apologies.

 

[glossywhite]

I do have to apologize to you, glossywhite. I just get tired of some people (usually in other website forums) that proudly proclaim that they pirate every piece of software and wear it like a badge of honor. But you are absolutely correct that I know nothing about you and I jumped to conclusions. It was wrong of me to make assumptions. I take back my insinuation that you stole software and I hope you accept my apologies.

Accepted, thank you.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Do most photographers now need CS 5.5 or 6

I currently use CS5 on my Intel Macs and CS4 on my Dual G5 Powermac. However I have noticed recently that I am using them less and less for my Photography. I take 99% in DNG/RAW and have used Phase One's Capture One for years as my RAW processor. Initially, that was pretty much all it did but as each new version has come out, it has incorporated more and more of the functionality of Photoshop. On colour management, the latest version, C1 V6.2.1 Professional, now surpasses PS CS5 by some margin. If they could just add in a decent layers system, I could manage without PS CS6 completely. I may change over to PSE-X rather than the no doubt horrendously priced CS6 update. As for the monthly fee; sorry Adobe, I don't have MUG tattooed on my forehead. I wonder how many have been stupid enough to fall for that ploy.