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Technology’s here!

My copy of Photoshop CS6 arrived today. Yes, physical disk in the mail, if you please. For that kind of money, I want something made of atoms AND electrons. Why they chose to illustrate the box with an alopecia sufferer covered in Stridex acne pads, I have no idea.

This might be my last upgrade, depending on the direction Adobe goes.

To recap, for anyone interested, Adobe products have always been a bit expensive (but generally worth it). About ten years ago, they decided they wanted people to buy their products in whole suites, rather than individually. So they started giving individual packages eye watering prices.

So let’s say you’d pay $600 for Photoshop and $600 for Illustrator and $600 for Flash, but you’d only pay $1,500 for a suite that included those three products and three or four others. Great deal — provided you needed all that stuff and $1,500 wasn’t a whole shit-ton of scratch to you.

Then, a couple of years ago, they had a new idea. Instead of buying software, you could rent it. Yay! You’d pay a fee every month (currently $29 a month if you sign for a year), in return for which the software package (or suite of packages) on your computer was continuously updated as they improve the software. It’s called the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Does anybody like this? I don’t know. I sure don’t. I won’t have it.

Anyhow, they’ve made another change. Used to be, you could get the new software at the upgrade price for three versions. That is, if you had Adobe Shitmonkey1 you could buy Adobe Shitmonkey4 at the upgrade price. Now they’re saying they’ll make you make the jump every time. Every time. Honestly, there’s a new version every 18 months, and not a whole lot changes even in most major releases.

Adobe must be banking that thousands of sales to big fat corporate clients at ass-raping prices will make them more money than millions of sales to individual schmoes. I hope they’re wrong. Painfully wrong.

So. Upshot. I had until December 31 to upgrade my CS3 to CS6, after which I’d have to buy the full version at the full price. English prices are no joke (it’s the VAT, people!): upgrade £196 ($314), full version £608 ($973).

Ow.

Feel free to keep talking about video games, anyhow. That’s a lot more interesting than software upgrades. It’s the last weekend of 2012! Let’s get this evil fucker of a year over with, hm?

December 28, 2012 — 11:10 pm
Comments: 65