Should we start an Adobe Customers pressure group?
|
- This topic has 17 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
There have been so many complaints about Adobe charging us all $600/year and not giving us anything in return, and the gist of them all seems to be “they have a monopoly so there is nothing we can do.”
What about forming an organization of Adobe customers? Does anyone have the enthusiasm and energy to take the reins and run such a group? I’d definitely join and participate, but I don’t know if I’d be a good choice to run something like that.
I can imagine what would happen if we got thousands of people to join, and make our wishes and concerns known to Adobe, and then if they did not respond, we might do something like have everybody cancel their memberships at once for a 30 day period. Or, turn Adobe MAX into a demonstration of user’s frustrations.
What do people think of this? Is there such a movement already afoot elsewhere?
-
I’m retired but do have a “business”–design and layout for foreign language professional organizations, including a student magazine, conference programs, and editing a professional journal. I use InDesign and Photoshop and totally balk at the prices. My current job doesn’t bring in much money because I’m dealing with educational groups–non-profit.
I think your idea is spot on!
-
I no way could I turn off subscription for even 1 day.
Adobe do listen, and they have done so in the past.
There’s a good read here on the process https://creativepro.com/michael-ninness-answers-indesign-cs5-critics.php
That being said – I don’t like their approach. They’re asking business owners what they want to see.
If you say iPad, HTML5, <buzzword> to a non-professional they jump up and down like a kid in a sweetshop.
If you say footnotes, endnotes, long documents, etc. then they are less excited.
Adobe really should open a public arena so that users can upvote their ideas.
Perhaps present publically on a website things they are working on – what people like to see and what people are most excited about.
And list off the things they are definitely not considering improving, and let users tell them they are wrong.
I really feel a public webpage were people sign-in using their Adobe ID – then they can read the items and decide which are important to them to improve on.
-
Eugene – turning off subscription is just one option. Going on strike is expensive for the strikers, and is usually a last resort when negotiations fail. I’m not saying we should do that first.
I would much rather have Adobe listen to its users and respond by creating value for the $ we pay each month.
-
Thing is that not everyone feels the same, and arranging a mass exodus of CC or an App for a month is logistically a nightmare.
I still maintain that Adobe should offer the platform they deliver key notes to their stakeholders on what they’re working on and what they want and what they don’t want.
That way the general InDesign public get a say too.
-
Matt, I respect you and your great work, but this comment made me both laugh and shake my head: “charging us all $600/year and not giving us anything in return”
What on earth are you talking about? You get to use over a dozen pieces of incredible software all you want, plus many services which make work more pleasant and easy, and have the option to use hundreds of fonts and other cool things for $50 per month, which is literally less money than a Starbucks coffee each work day.
Yes, I know that people who don’t make money with these apps find this difficult. But you, Matt, you make your living with these tools. I used to spend more than $50/month on just printing laser prints!
Are you saying that it truly is not worth $2.50 per day to you to have access to tools that can make you hundreds, or thousands of dollars?
And as for an “adobe pressure group”… um… they have millions of CC members now. Even if several thousand people stopped their memberships, would Adobe even notice? And more importantly those thousands of users would suddenly not be able to get their jobs done. Or, they’d find they can get their work done with other tools, and that would be great information, too.
I’m not trying to be a downer. As you know, I am constantly trying to get Adobe to do better. But this is not the right way to do it.
-
As with Quark, time will tell.
It was huge when the shift from Quark to InDesign, massive move for a lot of companies. But people moved to InDesign because it is better and Quark was too slow in moving along.
I don’t know of another alternative that is better than InDesign. If Scribus starts making waves then maybe, if Quark all of a sudden gets better then maybe.
But it will take a mountain to move a mountain. I don’t think people are prepared to move again. At least not this decade.
-
I completely agree, Eugene. People did not stop using QuarkXPress because of QX’s polices (for the most part). They were willing to put up with the company until there was a better alternative.
I also want to be clear that there is no doubt that “pressure” from the community does work. Adobe does listen and they really do try. A number of prominent designers pushed for better typographic features last year and Adobe is now actively working on new typographic features! I just think that saying “we’re not getting hardly anything for our money” is not the way to apply pressure. :-)
-
You’re right, David, I do make my living using Adobe software. 95% of it is InDesign, a little Illustrator, and a little Photoshop. What used to be called Design Standard. And, how I wish I could decide whether to pay for the next upgrade cycle, or just keep the one I’ve already paid for (several times over).
When they rolled out the Creative Cloud subscriptions, Adobe promised us that, inexchange for a nonstop infusion of cash, we would get new features more often than the 18-24 month upgrade cycle. Right off the bat, we got a few upgrades. But now, it has become clear that Adobe views InDesign as a “baked” product; they are bored with it and if they do anything at all with it, it will just be trying to find ways to use it on a watch.
A lot of people I know feel this is a breach of Adobe’s contract with its users. If InDesign is a “baked” product, why keep charging us for it? Why not allow us to “opt out” and keep the version we have now, which we have already paid much more for than for any previous version?
As you say, “Even if several thousand people stopped their memberships, would Adobe even notice?” That, right there, is the problem. They do not care about those of us who use InDesign any more. To paraphrase what Eugene said, it is not sexy, and does not wow people who buy Adobe stock.
I work primarily as a subcontractor for other designers. Several of them still use CS 5.5. My clients at Harvard University use CS 5. An organization with $30 Billion in the bank can’t justify paying for the upgrades. 90% of the designers for whom I work are NOT on the creative cloud, because they simply do not see that there is enough increased value for print designers to justify the cost. I have to have CS 5, 5.5, 6, CC2014, and CC 2015 installed to support my various clients. I have tried for 2 years to get my designer clients to upgrade, with little success. Now, if anyone asks me “what will I get that I don’t already have?” I cannot honestly recommend that they upgrade. A perpetual license for CS6 would be a much better deal for most.
I get the feeling that perhaps you underestimate just how strongly people dislike the way Adobe has treated those of us who use InDesign for print work. We feel abandoned, tricked, cheated, let down. Ripped off. Victims of a massive bait-and-switch. in short, VERY unhappy with the direction of the company. Kinda like a major league ball club who just paid $75 million for a player who no longer feels he has to try. He’s got the money, why should he work?
The downside to the subscription model is that if you make people keep paying you every month, they will keep expecting something new for their money or they will feel cheated. I don’t think Adobe understood this very well, or perhaps they did but just decided it was worth ticking people off to bring in cash on a monthly basis.
We have seen this before. As the saying goes, “Adobe is the new Quark.”
As an InDesign expert for hire, I made the decision to buy the Cloud subscription and keep up on the newest features. But, I have been seriously unimpressed with the upgrades. For print designers, Adobe simply has not kept their part of the bargain. I think they are too large, and print design is such a “been there, done that” to them that they don’t see any point in improving InDesign.
So, as I said, if they are “done” with improving InDesign, why can’t we be “done” paying for it?
I don’t seriously expect people to cancel their subscriptions. That idea was born of frustration — I simply don’t know what anyone can do to make Adobe listen. If only there were an alternative, as Adobe was when we were being ignored by Quark.
-
I have the last version of CS that can be installed to my machine and I plane to run that for ever. I even still have a copy of Photoshop 4 and even a copy of cs3 production suite.
Did you know and you might be surprised to know that there are many, many companies even quite large companies who are still running Windows XP and Server 2000. Mostly because they object to being hijacked by software manufacturers.
Frankly I’m looking forward to the day when somebody steps up to claim that share of the unhappy market. Big shoes to fill but on the other hand there’s a lot of money up for grabs
-
My take is that Adobe has become the new Quark – arrogant and deaf to its customers.
All of their development goes into “sexy” tools that, as Euguene said, sound exciting to non-professionals. I was told, bluntly, by an Adobe product manager that they decide which features to include based primarily on how it will impact their stock price. Footnotes, kerning pairs, widow/orphan control, and other typographic features are never going to appeal to non-professionals or impact the stock price. If they won’t even recognize the value of such basic productivity tools as graphing tools, they’re not going to care about typography.
It appears to me that Adobe sees InDesign as a “been there, done that” product. They are bored with it, and now are more interested in trying to find ways to use it on a watch than for making useful improvements.
It’s sad to think that Adobe started out as a typography company. But now, they have as much in common with a type foundry as Amazon does with a bookstore. I would love to find some way to communicate this to them and try to get them to re-focus their priorities on the users, and let them know how many of us feel abandoned by them.
-
Matt, I completely agree that it’s important that Adobe know how you and other people feel. And Adobe does listen. They’re not deaf, they’re just listening to a lot more people/constituencies than you (or me). I, too, am extremely frustrated by a number of the teams at Adobe. We need to keep telling them what’s wrong (and what’s right!). But I just want you to get your facts right in the argument.
Adobe has been rolling out new features several times a year. They’re just apparently not the features that you want them to be working on.
By the way, the whole “roll out features more often” thing has a huuuuge problem when it comes to InDesign: Most big new features require a file format change. Most users don’t realize this. Would you like Adobe to change InDesign 4 or 5 times a year so that the January version couldn’t open the March version? Reality got in the way of a good idea. If they could be sure that 90%+ customers upgraded every month or two, then it would be okay, but as you pointed out, that just doesn’t happen. So they’re trying to compromise and have 1 big format-changing release per year. Make sense?
-
One point to back up David here is that I wrote an email to David about how PDF Interactive option is wrong, and there was option for spreads.
I know David ended up talking to someone from Adobe face-to-face (correct me if I’m wrong, David) about this and I know it’s a privilege few of us will ever get.
But look now – the option is there.
I made a valid point and it was rectified. https://creativepro.com/interactive-pdf-from-indesign-cs5-always-has-spreads-on.php
https://creativepro.com/interactive-vs-print-pdf-in-indesign-adobes-frustrating-mistake.php
-
Re: Adobe listening, I am really baffled by what they decide is worth fixing.
The Illustrator graphing tool has not been updated since 1988. Seriously. I was at PepCon in Washington DC, I believe (or was it Austin)? and asked the Adobe Product team about graphing, and the product manager (Terry, I believe) asked the room, “who would like charts and graphs in InDesign?) LOTS of hands shot up.
Nothing was done for years, and just recently Adobe has been tinkering with the CC Charts tool in Illustrator, which allows you to make a bar chart that uses shapes, instead of bars, so you can have a graph showing 10 different sized trees, or light bulbs, or whatever. This is a BAD information design; it’s a completely wrongheaded thing to fix. Meanwhile, all of the basic graphing tools malfunction exactly as they have since Illustrator 88. You cannot enter a number with a comma, or % sign. You can’t use years as category labels unless you put them in quotes. When you update a graph the tick marks go all over the place, etc. All of this makes me feel that the people at Adobe who tell the engineers what to work on simply do not understand what it’s like to use the applications to do work. They are listening to the wrong people.
It has always seemed to me that if administrative office workers could use Adobe software to make attractive graphs, they could get a lot more corporate subscriptions. It would free us all from the tyranny of PowerPoint and Excel, which are currently the only viable option in corporate environments. So, Adobe is missing a huge market there and I simply cannot understand why they don’t address that, except to think that basic graphing is not sexy enough, while being able to resize a car is more impressive in a demo.
As for typography, I did get a conference call with the Adobe InDesign product team, and they showed me a few upcoming features that I cannot discuss. But I can say that again, they were way off the mark in terms of productivity. One or two were OK, but most were weird tweaks that didn’t seem very useful, and the things I and others have been asking for for years, such as kerning pair editor and orphan control, were not even on their radar.
So, what can you do when they refuse to listen? Once they have got you paying $50/month in perpetuity, it feels like we the user are trapped. No way out, and nobody listening. And that is very frustrating.
-
My $0.02:
I’ve been an Adobe InDesign user since its release. I wasn’t always a fan, but was finally converted by CS2. Compared to other programs such as Quark Xpress, Scribus or Pagemaker, I know what application I would rather use.
That said, I am frustrated and bemused at the lack of improvements or innovations that were introduced to InDesign in the revisions in the past few years that address what I would like to see as a prepress operator and graphic designer primarily in the print medium. There have been improvements to produce content for on-screen media (whether publish online, HTML5 or epub) but features other users have been requesting for years on end, such as an improved footnotes and endnotes feature, are still yet to be adopted.
I was present at PEPCON 2015 where the Adobe InDesign team had an open Q&A with the attendees, and can tell readers who weren’t at the session that the people that need to hear our concerns have certainly heard them. There will be another chance in Denver in November 2015 during the InDesign Conference.
Given that PEPCON 2015 was three months ago (at the time of writing this post) I don’t expect our wishes and requests to be implemented immediately in the next release. Knowing that our requests have been heard, taken seriously, and perhaps working towards implementation would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Eugene’s suggestion in his first post in this thread does already exist, and it is the bug report/wishform page: https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html . As someone who has filed many reports and requests, it is easy to feel as if the reports lob straight into a trash-can… until they are dealt with and answered. I’d filed a bug report (among others) concerning the delete function not working correctly in the last release… and in this release it is fixed.
It is important for Adobe to be reminded why InDesign became the success that it was over Quark Xpress, and that was because it was a better product with innovations that had been ignored or disregarded by its competitor. I believe that to remain as the better product, it has to constantly innovate, improve and be better than not only its historical competitors, but new ones as well (e.g. Affinity Publisher).
-
Yeh my idea doesn’t really exist.
What I’d prefer to see is a place you login using your Adobe ID, and you can see what everyone is upvoting.
Adobe posts updates on what’s high on their agenda (maybe 20) and people vote on these.
And they post an update on what they’re definitely not considering… and similarly people can vote to agree or disagree with not updating that feature.For example, the Foonotes feature has not been updated, ever… I believe. Yet I’ve a thread here since 2010 https://forums.adobe.com/thread/619776
-
I am not quite on message here as I am not highly techie but I have been a (PageMaker, then) InDesign and Photoshop user since 1989. Now, at the age of 67 and thinking about scaling back in the next year or two, it would be lunacy for me to move to subscription only system which becomes unaffordable as soon as you stop earning. That way lies the abyss. The lack of an option to upgrade by any other method means I am beached on CS5.5. For video work I have switched from Premier to Sony but there is currently no equally good alternative to InDesign or Photoshop, so nowhere to go. I would upgrade my Acrobat but for the predatory pricing.
I know this is old ground.
However, this week I received an email from Adobe saying:
“Adobe values your opinions and would appreciate your feedback on potential new product offerings Adobe may introduce in the future. Your participation is very helpful to our efforts, and your responses will remain confidential.”
Perhaps this is the ‘listening’ David Blatner refers to.
Somewhat against my better judgement I took part. They gathered my email address, age, occupation and the products I use and then the survey stopped. Not one single question about my ‘opinion’. My views remain confidential! but I doubt whether my personal details do.
I love InDesign and Photoshop – they have a history and an evolution almost unparalleled in the computer age. But I have come to detest the company. I feel dirty in having any dealings with them. I feel that they see me as prey, and not very juicy prey, given my age.
I recognise that I am not ‘the future’ wherever that is. I suspect that at some point Adobe is going to fall flat on its face – not because of the products but because of its business model and marketing.
The really sad thing from my point of view is that these are not only ‘business’ products. InDesign and Photoshop are products that should last a lifetime for anyone with an interest in design, communication or photography; craft tools that should follow us into retirement, where they can be used creatively without having to worry about commissions and briefs.
And Adobe would still make money from us – because every now and then, for a treat, we would upgrade.
But that would be a different company altogether…. -
Hi All,
I’m predominately a print designer/Art Director.
Old school – started in the business when everything was done on a drawing board with Bull gum and Letraset! Worked in the Ad Industry in NZ and AUS for most of my career – the last 15 years I’ve been freelance.
I’ve used Quark, Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat since 1996.
I made the decision to stick with CS6 for many of the reasons Matt Mayerchak has mentioned but I recently had an experience which has made me quite concerned for the future.
Everyone I know in the Graphics business is struggling to make a living. There are too many suppliers chasing a smaller pool of work due to the rise of digital publication. And with access to cheap suppliers around the world pressure on fees is considerable. As a result, creative work has been devalued. Clients appreciate good work but they look to the bottom line and will usually opt for the lowest price – regardless of their wealth it seems. For the small operator every dollar counts. Every change in software is usually accompanied by extra hardware costs. I need my tools to be reliable and equal to the task – and no more.
So here is my problem with CC.
I have always appreciated the graphics software which has revolutionised print production. However, I’ve always regarded the software as a ‘tool’ to help me produce my ideas. It is my talent which creates the work which is ultimately owned by the client who pays me.
CC allows me to access the work I have created as long as I pay the subscription.
If I stop paying I have no way of opening those files again – Ever!
The file type presumably cannot be edited by any other software – in most cases.
So in effect Adobe owns the access to my work!This really hit home when I recently (and foolishly) allowed my system to upgrade to Win 10.
After checking that all CS6 software was compatible. Everything worked well for about six weeks.
Then one morning InDesign would not open – a Win 10 problem it seems.
I tried everything to fix the problem. I paid my IT guy several hundred dollars – to no avail. In the end we wiped the drive, reinstalled Win 7, CS6 etc and 4 days later I could access my files again. During this time I had to fend off clients who were looking for updates, corrections etc. – it was very stressful and made me realise how vulnerable I would be with the CC scenario.I’m not arguing against the value of the subscription (access to all those programs and extra features is great) but I don’t need them to do most of my work. InDesign is my main program, PS and AI are used less frequently and I would use a fraction of their potential – but I note the pricing to access them individually is similar to the all in price.
With CS6 I can open and edit files which I created several years ago. I can edit them to my client’s specs and output for production. With CC this will not be possible if, sometime in the future, I stop paying the subscription.
As Adobe have managed to gain a monopoly over most creative industries I will have no choice – and all this from the land of the FREE!
So it makes sense to stay with CS6.My concern for the future is – how much longer will CS6 be compatible with evolving operating systems as it is no longer supported. When Win 10 supplants Win 7 I will have to move to Adobe CC
I assume this is the same for Mac users.Hopefully we will have some competition in the industry before that occurs.
Although, by then, print will probably be dead and I will be fishing!
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
 |