The Vector Doctor
Chief Bezier Manipulator
The new creative suite and cloud software is being introduced today. They are doing away with the CS suffix and replacing with CC I'm sure to highlight the direction they are heading
It not just the shrink wrapped box but also the decision to upgrade every few years. You won't have that option. They are making the entire suite a monthly/yearly membership only (cloud). You either stick with cs6 and below for eternity or adopt the creative cloud. There is no "cs7"
My feelings are pretty mixed about this.
On the positive subscribers are getting quite a few new tools not even included in the "Master Collection" creative suite. Services like Typekit cost a good bit of money on their own, but are bundled in a CC membership. That's great if you're building web sites using web fonts. Adobe has rolled out a few CC-exclusive features for the tent pole applications like Illustrator and Photoshop. The applications seem to get updated more often (bug fixes, security issues, etc.).
The downside is those extra tools in CC are only good if you use them. A $49.99 X 12 months subscription is $599.88 per year, roughly equal to the cost of upgrading a Master Collection CS license every year. You're paying to upgrade every year, even if a given year's upgrade is a real dog. Not every CS release has been stellar. Lots of users have had good reasons to skip an upgrade cycle or two. On that note, just how big an upgrade will Illustrator CC be above Illustrator CS6?
Another downside is the act of downloading all that application data. Something happened a couple months ago that wiped out all my Adobe 64-bit apps. Illustrator CS6 was the first to crash, but then I noticed I couldn't open the 64-bit version of Photoshop. No After Effects, Premiere Pro, etc. I ended up having to do a factory reset on my desktop PC, which didn't take long at all. But downloading and installing all those CS6 applications and more than 1GB of updates was a real chore. It wouldn't have been quite so bad if I had a few DVD-ROM discs.
we have 3 seats of creative cloud team edition. 100 gigs of online storage per user... Its awesome! one of the best moves we have ever made.
Leave the option there for people to pick and choose what they want to have.
FYI, the new type kit allows downloading of all typekit fonts to the desktop for use.
I think the reason they abandoned this idea was that they were expending too many resources on too many different incarnations of their software.....By concentrating on a key suite of products that works for most of their clients they can deliver a better product at a more reasonable price....
At 30.00 a month it is a "steal"...
Even at 50.00 per month it is such an insignificant % of my annual sales to worry about......
I think the reason they abandoned this idea was that they were expending too many resources on too many different incarnations of their software.....By concentrating on a key suite of products that works for most of their clients they can deliver a better product at a more reasonable price....At 30.00 a month it is a "steal"...
Even at 50.00 per month it is such an insignificant % of my annual sales to worry about......
I've noticed a trend here. People that say it's just $50 dollars a month (or whatever it happens to be per month) don't really see it as a cumulative affect and it is. You need to look at it over the life span that you intend to use it over.
I right it off as the cost of doing business.
IMO as this service develops, the CC versions will be far better that the CS versions.....So even if it does cost more, it will be worth it......
In any event, Adobe has made the "gamble" that enough folks will like the new way of doing business.....For those that do not, they will have to search out other alternatives....And I do not think there are any real good ones at present......