*** From the Archives ***
This article is from July 17, 2009, and is no longer current.
Do You Expect to Upgrade to CS5 in Summer of 2010?
I just read this little tidbit from an email sent to me from a financial company (I’m still not entirely sure why I’m on their mailing list, and I’m too lazy to remove myself):
Secular trends remain as robust as ever. Although ADBE may face some near-term economic speed bumps, we believe the company remains well positioned to monetize its longer-term growth drivers (digitization of content, mobile, etc.) and gain a greater wallet share on a go forward basis.
New product releases bode well. Management noted that it remains committed to its normal release-cycle (18-20 months) for CS and Acrobat. We believe there will be a lot of pent up demand for these solutions and when coupled with hardware upgrades stemming from new OS releases, we expect very strong growth for CS starting next spring
Still plenty of leverage in this model. We believe ADBE has done a solid job of managing expenses to protect its bottom line and expect this to continue. However, while we believe there is still material room for margin expansion in 2010, we note that the pace and size is dependent on revenue growth
Raising CY10 estimates. While we are leaving our CY09 estimates unchanged at $1.49, given our more bullish stance on the company’s upcoming product release cycle, we are increasing our CY10 EPS to $1.72 from $1.70
Valuation. At $29.89 in AHs, ADBE trades at 18.0x our CY10E of $1.72, which is a premium to its large-cap peers, but below its historical levels. While the stock could take a pause after its recent gains, given the leverage in the model and ADBE’s overall market position, we remain buyers of the stock.
(Copyright © 2008 Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. is a Member of All Principal Exchanges and Member SIPC)
Yes, the email really did say copyright 2008, even though it just came out. Someone forgot to update something somewhere. Here’s another blog post with positive comments about Adobe’s 2010 future.
Anyway, what struck me was the comment about the next version of the Creative Suite coming out 18-20 months after CS4… which would make the ship date around June, 2010 — less than a year from now.
No features have been announced (except the dropping support for all print options and interactive features, of course). ;)
But what do you think? Are you currently using CS3 and will likely skip CS4 and upgrade to CS5? Are you a CS4 user and can’t wait to upgrade to CS5 (assuming it’s going to be a reasonably cool upgrade)? Are you going to stick with CS2 for as long as you can? Do you think their optimism about “strong growth” is warranted? Let us know in the comments section below.
 |
I was thinking about this a few days ago. I’ll probably skip CS4, since I still haven’t had the budget to buy it, and at the office, even though the Financial Dept. could afford it for my Dept., they’d rather not. With CS5, I’ll probably have some leverage to convince them. As for my personal computer’s CS5 upgrade, we’ll see…
For most people it will really determine what the new features will be. If they deliver a bunch of new features, increase stability and speed then I think it will be a worthwhile upgrade.
Also, I don’t know if it would be next summer. I thought that their cycle is 18-24 months which means it could be anywhere from June – Oct of 2010.
Personally for me, I will pretty upgrade even if the only new feature was a more advanced butterfly game. That way I could blog about how great the butterfly game is.
If you don’t know about the butterfly game. On a mac (InDesign menu > about InDesign) PC (help > about InDesign) then type in butterfly. Personally I hope they add a scoring system to keep track of how many evil butterflies and aliens you kill.
HAHAHAHAHA!
If you heard mad cackling laughter drifting on the wind a few moments ago, that was probably me. I’m in textbook publishing. We just got our first client willing to allow us to use CS3. Yes, CS3, not CS4…
Having just upgraded from CS to CS4 at home and CS2 to CS4 at work, CS5 is not likely.
I really doubt I can get the penny counters to splurge for another $25,000 upgrade at the office so soon after the last one… (covering all users in the company).
So, CS5 is a out, but CS6… we’ll have to see.
I wonder how many bug will remain in CS4 while CS5 sucks away the development teams…
-mt
I’m still on CS2.
Adobe needs to really think about their upgrade strategies and price more aggressively if they plan on continuing deep product penetration.
As it stands, it’s pretty painful to upgrade, especially since the upgrades are marginal at best. Most new features feel gimmicky and ultra-narrow in their use.
I do, however, hope Adobe continues the trend that began in CS4 to speed up the program as a whole. I love Lightroom, mainly because the architecture of the software allows it to be quick and lightweight.
I know John Nack’s talked about the disadvantages to starting from scratch. Well, if you don’t want to start from scratch, don’t charge me as if you were.
Tragically, I’m still using CS at home. Maybe I’ll finally be able to upgrade next summer when CS5 comes out.
I too have CS at home and CS4 at work. Had to turn down a CS2 freelance job and can’t find a cheap upgrade on eBay to save my life. CS5 you can forget unless someone pays me enough to make it worth while, and in this day and age that isn’t likely.
As a note to the above, do that many CS users have G4 Macs (like me) that need CS2? The prices for used copies on eBay are most times higher than CS3, for crying out loud!
I start with CS3 2 years ago. Then, last year arrive CS4, next year may be CS5.
Please, stop the upgrades almost every year!
Develop the plug-ins! :)
I upgraded to CS4 on my own machine as soon as it was released and we upgraded the company’s machines from CS3 last month. There are some useful new features and an improved interface and the integration of Flash into the suite has moved along. But, there are a lot of rough edges and serious bugs in InDesign CS4 and I shall be very hesitant to upgrade to CS5 unless I’m convinced that stability has been at the top of the ID team’s list during the development of CS5.
LTM
I never fell into the “Creative Suite” trap so I can afford to keep CS3 licenses of Illustrator and Photoshop and still upgrade InDesign for a relatively low price.
I can’t wait until CS5 and to see what kind of great new features Adobe has in store for InDesign. I have never regretted paying the $170-$199 for the upgrade; it has always been well worth the money.
I am planning a complete renewal of my hardware for summer 2010. Seeing as I have already budgeted a CS4 Master collection for that I will definitely be going CS5…
Since I have a variety of clients using different systems, I have to have everything from Quark 6.5, CS3 and CS4. Almost none are on Quark, but they have legacy files (for which I use Q2ID plugin from Markzware).
Oh, I’m a happy upgrade sucker — bring it on! :-) And hey, it’s only $600 for upgrading a WHOLE Design Premium package. I actually think that’s a great bargain. Whoever gripes about the upgrade prices and/or frequency should be horsewhipped — er, butterflywhipped?
As a freelance graphic designer I had to upgrade the entire premium design package from CS2 to CS3, and it wasn’t cheap. I felt it was worth while at the time and wasn’t disappointed, but most certainly cannot afford to upgrade to CS4. As for CS5 next year? I will have to be persuaded that it truly is a ‘must have’ upgrade for me to do so but I will seriously look at it. I feel upgrading at least every second version is more practical for me. Of course one can get sucked in with the hype of one or two new ‘must have’ features, but I tend to weigh up ‘wants’ against ‘needs’. :)
The cost of upgrades is significantly more in my country than the US which doesn’t help.
We’ve always been early adopters of the new versions in hopes of seeing a savings via productivity, but with the way things are looking financially I’m betting this will be the one time we won’t jump too quickly. Budgets budgets budgets. It’s just too expensive in these economic times and there isn’t enough of a move on Adobe’s part to take e-book production seriously. Digital Editions is a nice idea, but as a textbook publisher we need more from Adobe on that front. The trend is to repackage and repurpose the content we already have and ADE is nothing to write home about unless you’re into making e-books that look like they came directly out of Word (only worse). Sorry Adobe. We love you but it probably won’t happen this time.
Do you know price of CS4 Japanese version?
Design Premium upgrade price is 1 258.6392 US$ (118 650Yen)!
If Newly purchasing then 3 163.3056 US$ (298 200Yen)!
This corresponds to my monthly salary of one month.
We are not rich in an economic crisis now.
Adobe Life cycle is toooooo early!
Yes, CS6 in definitely coming.
I realised a few years ago that Adobe is a simple company when it comes to money. It wants a 1,000 simoleons (VAT included) a seat every two years.
So I bought a single CS3 Master Collection Transactional License with upgrade plan. Now I renew the plan every 2 years in order the keep the cost to minimum and upgrades rolling.
-Tommi
Upgraded from CS2 to CS4, but the gains weren’t really worth the expense, particularly at Adobe’s ridiculous non-US prices. Give us a yell if you hear of anything useful in CS6 and maybe I’ll think about it. But CS5? Naaah.
I have ID CS3 at home and work and am not planning to upgrade at home; I agree with all the contributors to this specific post that Adobe looks at users of their products as endless money pits. Upgrades are to Adobe as planned obsolescence is to the life cycle of Macs. Giant sucking sound. Suggestion to Adobe: If you want to increase market share and build customer loyalty, have major upgrades every 5 years and updates every year. Give us all a break: transactional licenses are just a gimmick to keep the gravy train flowing endlessly.
Klaus,
>And hey, it?s only $600 for upgrading a WHOLE Design Premium package.
That’s in the US. In Britain it’s 600 pound sterling. With an exchange rate of 1.6 dollar to the pound, that’s US$ 960. Same sort of story in the rest of the world. I know that pricing is not the point of this thread, but Adobe’s ludicrous pricing policy should be rubbished at every opportunity.
Until the pricing for upgrades become more realistic… CS4 will be my last for at least 2-3 years!
I paid a lot of money to upgrade, and most clients want Cs1, sometimes CS2 rarely CS3… I have one client who is planning CS4… So all in all, I wasted a lot of money for software that I barely use… Do I feel like a sucker?
YES!
Just a note to those of you still on CS.
CS is currently the earliest version eligible for upgrade pricing. If the current policy continues you’ll be out of the upgrade loop when CS5 ships.
As for the 18-24 month cycle, CS4 shipped in October of 2008 so that would put the window from April to October of next year.
I upgraded from CS3 to CS4 fairly quickly, and have been pretty disappointed in the upgrade feature set.
It seemed that the first upgrade cycles in the ID2-CS-CS2 era were huge, with the product improving by leaps and bounds. I especially think this was true for its typography features and its drag-and-drop user interface.
CS3 and CS4 upgrades were pretty nominal, I think. I was especially disappointed in Adobe trying to add a ton of interactive features to InDesign in CS4. Cross-platform publishing = great. Interactivity = whole other product class.
I prefer Adobe to focus on features that make print design faster and easier.
What about developing the Data Merge function beyond what it already does and truly making it a robust feature that handles variable data better?
What about focusing on XML and making those features easier to learn and use?
What about developing a feature within InDesign that makes exporting 501-compliant PDFs much easier?
Until Adobe makes some major breakthroughs on some of those fronts, or again starts introducing truly innovative software tools/solutions, you can count me out of CS5.
Christopher, A few years ago, I might have agreed with you. But I think you’re losing sight of what’s happening in the industry today. This is not a print-only world, anymore.
And while it may not seem like it to everyone, Adobe is not developing its applications in a vacuum. They’re doing it with with very keen eye on the real world and that means they must focus on all things. Of course, that means print, but it also means interactive PDFs as well as more development in Flash features.
The items you mention are worthy but asking for them here won’t do you a whole lot good. Fill out Adobe’s feature request form. They do look at them:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
For those who are over 30 years old (me) an updatecycle of 2 – 2.5 years seems fast enough ;-)
Seriously: he update cycle should at least be 2 years – its too fast, too costly, too difficult to maintain in companies
I am done with Adobe upgrades now. I went to CS4 and for what I do it is as far as I will need to go. I think now Adobe – I get the Suite- really need to incorporate all the best added plug-in functionality to make it viable for new versions. Adding just a few bells and whistles won’t cut it anymore – especially when a lot of the needed functionalty these days comes from third parties. They should take a close look at the best plug-ins and incorporate those features into the program if they want to stay ahead of the sales-game.)
Maybe more complete free video instruction for extensive revisions to programs in the future as it gets too expensive to keep updating with the video training sites out there. They probably make a killing on the Classroom books which really are not worth the price of the paper they are printed on. Same caveats on new versions as for the video training sites.
In the interest of transparency: Is any individual associated with the production and/or distribution of the indesignsecrets pod/videocasts a shareholder in Adobe stock or in any way compensated for promoting the purchase of InDesign or any other Adobe product upgrades?
Just curious.
I am not affiliated with Adobe in any way other than the fact that I am an Adobe Certified Instructor. But I don’t get a kickback or anything when you upgrade if you are curious.
In regards to Adobe Stock. I have a few different mutual funds, so their might be a chance that I have .05% of Adobe in one of them. Since most peoples stock portfolios are in the toilet, I would guess that at best I have about 50¢ worth of Adobe Stock currently. If everyone that reads InDesign secrets upgrades to CS4 Master Collection I might get that up to 51¢.
I don’t receive anything from anyone to promote any product. I write whatever I feel like writing. I just geek out on this stuff and it’s fun for me.
If someone asked me whether to buy or upgrade, I’d tell them to try and figure the return on investment (including the cost of not upgrading), and be guided by the numbers.
Regarding Adobe stock, I don’t have a single share, but I kind of wish I did. Some analysts are saying now is the time to buy, as it’s expected to rise with the approach of CS5.
https://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/07/15/adobe-looking-ahead-to-cs5-kaufman-says-buy/
@Doug: Because I like Adobe, I choose not to buy their stock. You see, whenever I have bought tech stocks in the past, the company tends to tank.
By the way, my post above had nothing to do with trying to get people to buy Adobe stock; I just thought it was an interesting segue into the topic of upgrading.
I used to buy the .3 upgrades along with the .0 upgrades, but that time’s over. The upgrade price for just Acrobat is too high and while Acrobat might be evolving, the settings offset printers want used just stay the same.
Will I upgrade to CS5 when it comes? You betcha, but that’s more of a matter of ego than necessity as I proud myself in always having the newest Adobe Creative Suites while the upgrades often mean such small benefits it’s really not worth the asking price.
I don’t think it would hurt anyone if Adobe did stretch the time between upgrades to 24-30 months so they can better test the software and add or refine maybe one or two more features per program. For example:
– for InDesign: data merge from an Excel (XLS) file and stop it from choking on blank lines, add back the ability to set a preset for a metadata template to use on new documents.
– for Photoshop: start up with the (normal) arrow tool selected, not the marquee tool.
My first thought was: Adobe will never be able to finish work on CS5 till June 2010. They have to more or less rewrite it for Cocoa (Mac version). Second thought: They have to finish by then, because if not — they have nothing to sell. That’s the negative aspect (for Adobe) of bundling all applications into one suite. The suite on the one hand urges us to update all at once (making us spend more money than we would normally do, assuming one would just update one or two apps regularly). But on the other hand, I guess that Adobe sales are more focused around CS release dates. They just can’t say “Uh, CS5 will take another year”, because sales would simply drop to zero (literally). Possibility: Release Win version first, Mac version later. Happy lynching ;) Possibility 2: Release both versions mid-2010, with the Mac version being cr… unfinished.
10 bucks on possibility 2. I’ll definitely upgrade to CS5 whenever it’s released, but this time I’ll have an even closer look on bug reports before using it for production.
Expense aside, I hate upgrading. There are several CS4 features I’d love to have, but I never got my Flash CS3 loaded. It seems that every upgrade on Windows causes problems and I eventually have to remove everything and reinstall. I might wait for CS5 as it will be about time for a new computer anyways.
Probably not. Still waiting for permission to move to CS4 enterprise wide. I got CS4 6 months ago to test and figure out intending to move the whole dept. a few months later, but financial concerns have scuttled that plan. So . . . who knows?
If my company upgrades to CS5 from CS3 then I’d consider it. But I have CS4 at home and while it’s great and all, I don’t see any real ROI from upgrading. People will have to consider upgrading from CS3/4 when CS6 comes out though.
YES! I would upgrade now from CS4 to CS5 if they had some of the features (even just a couple) that I’m hoping for in the next release.
I’ll be happy to have a job. I don’t think I’ll even ask the boss to upgrade.
I need to have CS3 Standard (I think) on two MB Pros on the Windows side, but on the Mac side, I have ID CS and AI CS. I also had PS 7, but that won’t run on OSX 10.5.5. I haven’t been able to swing the upgrade to CS4 yet.
Parallels is not an option, as I’ve had too many issues with it. I’m thinking of checking out Fusion in the future, but in reality, I’d prefer CS4 on the Mac side.
I do own some stock (and have for quite a few years) but not nearly enough for me to think I’ll get rich if I can convince someone to upgrade. Like the others here, I get the same treatment if you upgrade or don’t.
I just happen to love this stuff and enjoy sharing the knowledge.
And this is why Adobe having a monopoly on the design/layout market is so dangerous.
We’re shackled by them.
I’m not as much concerned about their upgrade strategies (although it is pissing me off) as I am about their complete lack of support for backwards compatibility. That is the real trap here!
Angela Snyder wrote:
‘We?ve always been early adopters of the new versions in hopes of seeing a savings via productivity ? there isn?t enough of a move on Adobe?s part to take e-book production seriously. Digital Editions is a nice idea, but as a textbook publisher we need more from Adobe on that front. The trend is to repackage and repurpose the content we already have ?’
I’m afraid I have to agree with this. I think I see where Adobe hopes to go with Flash, Flex, the Text Layout Framework and so on but integration of this with ID is rudimentary, at best, at the moment and we are being asked to buy into (literally and figuratively) a pretty broad range of technology that is quite unproven as a medium for complex, lengthy publications.
LTM
I understand that times are hard these days ? and yet: What are the costs of our main instruments per day? If we upgrade the Premium CS every 18-20 months, please calculate: 600 bucks/600 days = 1 $/day&man!
Means: Our coffee budget is more important than our main software.
@edraant said: »Please, stop the upgrades almost every year!« And his/her voice is the voice of many here. Sounds to me like: »Please stop development, please stop progress.« Yes?
Is our layout software really ripe enough? Is there no more need for betterment?
Just learnt to understand GREP-styles. All you who are working with CS, CS1, CS2 or CS3 ? are you aware of the fact that GREP-style is offering the first time in the history of Publishing software automatic kerning pair correction INDEPENDENTLY of specific fonts?
Yes, if I would run my own company I would be eager to upgrade to the next version ? since EVERY upgrade was a huge step forward, out of the mud of those »please do not change to much« QXP-3/4 epoches.
Go ahead, Adobe, and tell the people that your work is as cheep as one coffee per day. (BTW: In Europe you will never get a coffee for one buck, anywhere.)
It?s not the question of 600 or 900 bucks. It?s a question of a small reserve every month: 30-50 bucks/employee is good enough. Not possible?
? and, Mike?s words are true for me too: »I don?t receive anything from anyone to promote any product. I write whatever I feel like writing. I just geek out on this stuff and it?s fun for me.«
Jochen, you said it all, man! The per-day cost of the CS upgrade is a pittance! And *every* CS upgrade has entailed *significant* improvements to our tools. When ID CS4 came out last fall, I grumbled a bit here about it not having any new killer features — but it has turned out that the “small” feature of Smart Guides alone is probably saving me dozens of work hours per year, in addition to reducing the mindless tedium we had to go through before, with manual guides and numerical placements.
So hooray for all Adobian Progress: whether it comes in big or small chunks, we all win! And the one-two bucks per day we have to pay for this is nothing to gripe about, it’s an amazing bargain.
@Jochen F. Uebel
Before you sprout off about the price of CS’s being 600 dollars I suggest you do some research and you will discover that only applies inside the US.
Try this on for size and you’ll see why everyone is upset out the frequency of upgrades.
https://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e276/marcusstringer/Picture1-8.png
If they did one major upgrade every 3 years, then perhaps… but with each minor upgrade nothing in the program that helps anyone has changed these is no must have feature….
Then add a 20 seat license…it’s a damm sight more the the price of coffee per year
@Marcus: Yes, in Austria the CS4-Premium-Upgrade is ? 898,00. Means: One »Kaffee Melange« per day (Wiener price). Sure: per seat. But every seat is producing daily, at least a bit, isn?t it?
https://tinyurl.com/njz3ga
I will probably upgrade my personal copy of CS4 in 2010, but not till the end of the year. My workplace may upgrade to CS4 in 2010. I’m the CS “go-to” person there, so I need to be ahead of the curve, and I upgrade early so I can get the experience before it arrives in the workplace.
Cost? I’d like it if it were less expensive, but it is what it is. If we want the programs, we pay the price. I don’t like writing with cheap pens, so I pay the money for good ones…
@Jochen F. Uebel “»Please stop development, please stop progress.« Yes?”
Do you honestly think people want the folks at Adobe to take the extra time they would like to see between upgrades to sit on their thumbs or go on vacation? Of course not. They (Adobe) could use the time to iron out the bugs they always leave in the software, or to refine features.
You do have a great point in your cost per day post. One which I also use when people complain about other “expensive” items such as TVs (how many hours do you use your TV before it breaks?) and videogames (nearly all are cheaper per hour of entertainment than going to the movies), and those are things we don’t even use to make money.
Sure, Adobe has some weird pricing issues going on across various countries, and they should do something about it to at least make the differences smaller when people are buying the same software in the same language. But I seriously doubt they ever will and I therefore simply expect to pay around ?1000 to upgrade to CS5. If it turns out to cost less I’ll have a little head start for my “CS6 upgrade fund”.
I will probably upgrade to CS5, skipping CS4. I?m using CS3 now.
The 18-24 month upgrade cycle may serve Adobe?s ends, but it doesn?t work for me. It is not just the cost of the upgrade, but the lost productivity during the learning curve process. I upgrade for features that will make my workflow more efficient and for the ability to do things I couldn?t before. Learning the new features requires two things, actually learning how to execute and figuring out where they will be useful in my projects. For me, at least, it takes about a year to become proficient with the new features and pull ahead of my previous creativity/workflow benchmarks. I prefer to have two years to offset the loss in efficiency during the learning cycle and to actually make some gains. With the 18-24 month cycle, that peak period of productivity can be as little as 6 months, and no more than a year. I don?t know if its true, but I feel like I?m losing ground under that scenario.
With CS5 on the horizon, getting CS4 doesn?t make much sense, from either a workflow or economic standpoint.
@Roland: You are right: Folks at Adobe will work in between of upgrades anyway. And that?s again IMHO an argument again PRO 18-20 month intervalls. CS4 is a good example. How long does it take to digest and really use all the new features? Now think of a doubled intervall: Potentially you have to face the double amount of changes and enhancings!
That?s IMO also an argument against the point @Mitch Osborne is rising: The learning curve ?
Three years are not compatble with the pace of progress in our indstry ? not only in regard to software but to hardware too.
@MarcusStringer: Ooops ? I?ve read «Austria» instead of «Australia». But Australia seems better off, if I am calculating correctly:
1 US-$ = 1,23 A-$ ? but 0,70 ?!
Anyway ? it?s the amount of some small drink per day, here as down under.
Adobe! Take heed! Jochen makes a point about the cost-per-day and I don’t know why people like Adobe, Autodesk, et al, haven’t taken it up and run with it yet. It seems like a lack of imagination on Adobe’s part when it comes to selling software.
Why not pay-as-you-go? Or as we use to call it, time payment plans? This idea is as old Singer sewing machines. If my upgrade of $600 is spread out over, let us say, 18 months… I could comfortably pay $35-45 a month. $1750 for full Suite at $97-107 a month. Adobe would get a far greater cash flow by catching more who can afford time payments rather than one, indigestible, lump sum, and one that was a steady flow of income also. Since quarterly earnings would be more stable than the boom and crash that it has been, long term stock value may go up just on that alone. And I would be productive right now and be earning more with this better productivity rather than squeezing the last juice out of two year old software. That is how I pay for many large ticket items now, why not software?
@Mark Hebert ? and industrial coherence would grow, with the result of huge reduction of costs.
Has anybody checked out the costs of incoherent software versions around the world? All those CS, CS2, CS3 installations ? aren?t they like huge spanner in the works for CS4 purposes? Same is true for all this hotchpotch, salmagundi of QuarkXPress 3 (yes!), 4, 5, 6 and 7 for QXP 8 purposes.
Waiting for a worldwide initiative aiming at coherent, harmonized Operating Systems, softwares and workflows.
@Mark: It’s not exactly what you are talking about, but I believe Adobe does have maintenance plans for site licenses where you pay a yearly fee to stay up to date…
Jochen, don’t knock my still-working-fine-thank-you QuarkXPress 3.12! What was good enough for my Grandfather is good enough for me.
The debate is all well and good for the single user license…
25 seats come in at a pretty penny…
I did however just read about the subscription option which I think may work out better…
Until they stop supporting PowerPC and only go Intel.
Then I’m going to have to chance 25 G5’s… Arrgghh the joys of running a business….
give us a break! the cs4 package has just barely been opened around here and you guys are talking about an upgrade? chefs don’t upgrade their knives; nor do mechanics upgrade their tools as often as we seem to be upgrading ours! seriously, in most aspects, cs4 does most things so far. what other bells and whistles could be added?
Jochen, you have a great point about features and people getting overhelmed, having to re-learn too much if they skip an upgrade, which is about the same as if Adobe were to really increase the period between upgrades, only it would no longer be the user’s fault.
@colin flashman: Why do chefs keep using the same knives? Why don’t mechanics upgrade their tools? Because knives, spatulas, hammers and spanners don’t get new features that enhance their productivity.
I always like to compare my prices to those of hair dressers when someone says I’m asking too much: I pay lots of money every year to keep my software and hardware up-to-date, yet people don’t want me to charge them the same amount per hour as (or less than) a hair dresser who buys a new hair dryer or pair of scissors every couple years? Because, let’s face it, you’ll easily pay $20 for 15 minutes in the chair to get a haircut that lasts 4 to 6 weeks, but $80 an hour to get a custom made flyer/brochure/corp. id/card/whatever is too expensive?
Surely all Adobe’s applications are now perfect and no further releases are necessary.
I remember thinking Photoshop 4 was the ultimate version, and now we’ve had 7 improvements since then. When is it going to end? I may as well just wait a few decades and save myself a lot of money.
@colin: Regarding what more InDesign could do, check out Things You Can’t Do in InDesign. and at DearAdobe. There’s plenty of work to keep Adobe busy for years!
@Harbs: I knew Adobe had one, but it is not a far stretch beyond that to go to a payment plan approach.
IMO if Adobe held off for maybe very second release instead of every 18 months, and then include something substantial I think people would then upgrade happily.
The is with CS4 there was nothing notable included in the version, it should have almost being an update instead of a version release…
@Marcus: SmartGuides? Smart Text Reflow? GREP Style? Link Paanel? Preflight Panel? Cross References? Please stop kidding. https://tinyurl.com/dexwgg
If you forget about real features just for a minute and think only about work-flow and productivity improvements, I would upgrade to CS4 over and over again. CS4 is like a well-oiled machine – it works, seamlessly. Not that there aren’t problems.
When I read the feature list of CS4 i wasn’t too impressed and hesitated on upgrading. But I enjoy keeping up with new software features and learning, so I upgraded. I have never regretted it and I have found so many new features and tricks that have done nothing but increase my productivity and efficiency. The software is also much more enjoyable to use.
This alone is worth it. You have to think about it from a business perspective – increase efficiency and eliminated workarounds, polish workflow — all leads to greater profit.
There are those who say “if it works, don’t fix it” but how do you know what you are missing? Are you progressing in your skillset? your talent? your offerings to your clients?
Quark 3?! You are doing yourself and your clients a disservice – don’t mean to be disrespectful but InDesign 1.0 was better than Quark 3 and our team was relieved to ditch that buggy behemoth that cost us time and credibility with our projects. The world has changed a lot in the last couple years and Adobe is keeping up with that.
Every technology upgrade costs money and some are beter than others, but I have to say that every cent we put into tools and always pays back in dividends.
Upgrading 25 seats is painful, and it is too bad Adobe doesn’t have better (cheaper) upgrade paths for volume clients, but if the tools make you money and are the basis of your income, is this the place to scrimp?!
Think we should read this too: just found ?
https://www.glgroup.com/News/Risks-for-Adobe-CS5-as-CS4-Upgrade-Gets-Lukewarm-Reception-41679.html
@Jeremy: »But I enjoy keeping up with new software features and learning, so I upgraded.«
Yes! Yes! Yes! This is my favorite argument too ? espacially in regard to companies (because it seems to be an argument only for individuals). Everything else is boring.
The quote from a financial company was funny. It’s filled with the magisterial “we,” as if they were the lords of all they survey rather than outsiders with nary a clue about what either Adobe or its customers will do with CS5. And dropping the “o” to repeatedly call Adobe by its stock market abbreviation ADBE is typical of the jargon that comes from too much ‘inner circle’ chatter. “I’m so into the stock market,” it seems to say, “I don’t think ‘Adobe,’ I think ‘ADBE.'”
Whether I upgrade to CS5’s InDesign depends on the features it offers, but as someone else has noted, spread over two years, keeping with the latest version costs about 50 cents a day. That’s not only less than a latte-a-day at Starbucks, it’s less than making your own coffee. Adobe has always added more than enough features to justify that small charge.
What features would I like? I’ve already told Adobe that they need to make linking frames less clumsy with a pair of features that could be called Named Frames and Smart Frames. You’d give a frame a name when you create it and all frames with that name are automatically linked. (You can still create the old sort of frames.) Smart Frames then links them in an order that applies 99% of the time: top to bottom, left to right and in page order. It’d be marvelous for magazines and newspapers and also save me time as I create books. No more manually linking. I hate linking.
As a writer, editor and publisher, I’m also becoming concerned about being able to create once and release in many formats. Until the ebook market settles on one or two standard formats, I’d love to see InDesign smart enough to export in all of them and not just Flash and ePub. Keep in mind that most are so crude, exporting in them wouldn’t be nearly as hard as exporting to ePub or PDF.
New formats often mean new page sizes, and InDesign needs to make changing page sizes easier by creating a feature than makes doing it more obvious. I’ve managed to change the size of books without making hash of them, but the process was so unintuitive and riddled with the ‘black arts,’ that every time I do it, I have to figure it out again. It’d be better to have a Change Page Size window where we could specify the new size and check off various options.
Adobe also needs to sort out the mess that’s been created by trying to market their product as parts of a Creative Suite. For design firms, that may make sense. For the Rest of Us, it creates pressure to make more upgrades than we want or none at all. I upgrade InDesign every time, but only upgrade Photoshop when my right to an upgrade is about to expire. The rest of their products seem to offer so little, I resent the few features that Adobe puts in them that pressure me to buy.
Why, for instance, do I need Acrobat to make a PDF so reviewers can comment on it? It must be little more than a flag in the PDF. I should be able to do that in InDesign. And why can’t InDesign do ’round trip’ PDF editing? A document created in InDesign would create a PDF that reviewers could comment on and return. InDesign could then import and present those comments on the page where they were made. It’s something Acrobat already does with Word documents. Why not do the same with InDesign and from within InDesign? That’d save a lot of time.
–Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
If I have the hardware by then (we’re still a PPC shop) and the features are compelling enough I will upgrade (We’re skipping CS4).
What would I like to see in CS5?
? How about text in tables treated like any other text. Why can’t footnotes be in tables?!? At least the text now shows up in the editor. (For that matter, why do endnotes require a plugin? Are endnotes too new and trendy to make in the app yet?)
? Fire the CS4’s interface designer. As a Mac user, why on earth would I want the Windows interface? Wouldn’t I just use a PC if I wanted that? And please, for the love of pixels, bring back CS3’s interface artwork. CS3’s interface design makes me happy just launching the app (I’m not kidding. It’s beautiful.). CS4’s is hideous (and what’s with ALL THE YELLING in the interface text?). Shouldn’t a design apps interface look like it came out of a design house, not Redmond, WA circa 1995 (What’s next, tool bar buttons for New, Save, Cut, Copy, and Paste)?
? More sophisticated table layout tools. I haven’t given any thought as to how to make it better (I’m not a programmer), but I’d like a more definite way to layout table than the tab-stop dragging method, shifting sands way that all apps use today. Maybe something with a layout grid and guides to form the cells?
? Why do I need Acrobat to do forms? I realize most full-time designers have the whole suite, but I don’t. Just Photoshop and InDesign. It seems an arbitrary and silly distinction to make to force people to buy Acrobat to do forms when InDesign already does so much with tables. Especially with all of the interactive tools Adobe keeps adding to InDesign from other apps.
I think the real problem Adobe faces is that while there are some cools additions to its flagship apps from version to version (yes, the alignment guides, something that CAD has been doing for decades, and GREP styles are cool to me, but not must haves), they’re already pretty mature products. There isn’t a lot they can add that will blow people away. That’s why my little company has been only getting every other version of Photoshop for years now. That, and Adobe, Apple, and M$ all getting on the bandwagon with coding only for high end machines and “letting the hardware catch-up.” (aka, “let’s shift everything to really expensive video card processors” for one.) It gets a little expensive for really small companies to keep up, if you have to keep replacing all of your hardware and peripherals just to keep up with what, from the outside, appears to be minor software updates. (Note: I use InDesign and PhotoShop as adjuncts to what I do for my company, and are only a part of the end result.)
Sorry for the cranky rants, don’t really mean it sound hostile. I haven’t had my caffeine today.
I do some lightweight InDesign work but mostly I use Photoshop. I upgraded from CS2 to CS4.
Was the upgrade to CS4 worth it for me? Definitely yes. After working with it a while I definitely saw a time savings in masking. The improved dodge and burn, improved zoom, etc also saved time. I enjoyed additional savings in more filters being non-destructive. Bridge was an improvement as well. Again, for me, it was well worth the upgrade.
So I will probably be upgrading to CS5 once I know it plays well with my Mac.
Not affiliated with Adobe in any way.
I am happy to upgrade to CS5 as long as they incorporate some really good features, eg, track changes, better XML support and faster performance. Otherwise buying CS5 will be just a waste of money as buying CS4 was for me.
I am on CS4. I have to upgrade because I teach the software. If it wasn’t for that, I would skip CS5. Trying to keep it is getting a little irritating.
I have Macromedia Studio 8 in the closet, CS3 3.0, 3.3, BLAH
I’ll definitely upgrade. I’m writing two books on InDesign CS…er…Next as well as a ton of material on Illustrator CSNext, Photoshop CSNext, Fireworks CSNext, and InCopy CSNext.
FWIW, I can tell you all that Creative Suite 5 is a MUCH better upgrade than was Creative Suite 4.