Re: I used to be a customer
@Trevor_Pott
"So fuck everyone else? They're irrelevant? On behalf of everyone else, fuck you too!
Well, yes. Isn't that exactly the attitude that we are all complaining about?
What I am saying is that those people who are responding to this, as the original poster was, with "well, I'll just keep my old version, then - ha!" are manifestly not the people who Adobe are interested in.
Yes, they would love all the casual users to sign-up to their monthly-reaming but the reason they are able to make this rather extreme move is that the most profitable part of their userbase is more-or-less locked in.
That part is the professionals for whom every job ad they respond to requires familiarity with Adobe products. There will always be people who have not worked with professional designers who will blurt out progams like "GIMP", "Inkscape" and "Scribus" but, while those programs are really very good*, the simple truth is that the Adobe CS applications are the industry standards and proficiency in them is ESSENTIAL for designers.
I'm sorry if that makes you or anyone else unhappy but it's not my opinion - it's the truth. Remember - it is never about which product is better; it's about which one is the standard. Refence my discussion elsewhere on this site about Libre Office; a great product which is the equal of MS Office but it is not the standard.
This is even more important in design because professional users of these programs rarely work in an isolated environment. They have to pass files back and forward between different internal designers, off to clients, across to the web team and out to printers. In those environments, time is money** and fidelity and consistency of output is paramount. If you are using a program that can't manage colour separation (Inkscape) then you are wasting time and money and risking the output.
That doesn't even go into the efficiencies of having InDesign natively understanding layers, alpha channels and clipping masks created in Photoshop.
I don't support what Adobe is doing - I am just pointing out what they are doing and why they are able to do it.
* - And I fully recommend all users take the time to learn how to use these products.
** - If time is not money for a designer then they are not in really Adobe's target market.