Until recently, Adobe software was SOLD to customers and downloaded or installed from a CD. The customer bought the product (typically for hundreds of dollars as part of a software bundle) and owned that version forever. However, the Adobe pricing model for its new CC (Creative Cloud) version can only be RENTED. It cannot be owned by customers. Is this a precursor of the future for software pricing?
As reported by David Pogue for the New York Times: The new “Photoshop is the biggest-name software that you can’t actually buy. You can only rent it, for a month or a year at a time. If you ever stop paying, you keep your files but lose the ability to edit them. You have to pay $30 a month, or $240 a year, for the privilege of using the latest Photoshop version, called Photoshop CC. Or, if you want to use the full Adobe suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere and so on), you’ll pay $600 a year. And Adobe could raise the rental prices at any time. Every year, if it chooses. Microsoft is conducting a similar experiment with the latest version of Office. An Office 365 subscription is $100 a year. But there’s a big difference: renting Office is optional. You can still buy it outright if you prefer.”
Click the image to read more from Pogue.
Illustration by Stuart Goldenberg
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I think so Adobe has taken this step due to security or privacy concerns. This will make their system more flexible and secure. Although several users can oppose this but there might be certain important parameters followed by Adobe otherwise they would not have done this. Anyway, thanks for letting us know about this news.