I get absolutely positively outraged when a paid for product such as Operating System or MS Office starts bombarding me with ads.
I get that this was entirely predictable (see XKCD exhibit 1), and that once we allowed it in websites and webapps there were no real barriers left to downloaded installed native local apps, and my outrage is too little too late.
And I get that saying "I'm now installing Linux on my laptop" is... nice but irrelevant. 0.01% of userbase doing that will make laughably no dent.
But it's really really getting too much. Grumble Grubmle everybody get off my lawn! :-/
That's how Adobe got to where they are. People pirated their stuff (and bought legitimately), got their stuff trapped in their formats. Then they turned the screws and locked people out of their own content. Autodesk did the same exact thing too, with Inventor and Eagle.
Your personal data is too important to be used as some ransomware (read: proprietary programs). Cause then, it's not just the finding an alternate program, but figuring out how to export.... if they even let you.
I do both. If I get legitimate use out of an app, I purchase it, but I also pirate a copy and store it on the NAS. I bought it and I will own a copy forever. They can just get over it. They were paid.
* Locked-in (for various reasons) userbase moved in to subscription model en masse, begrudgingly and complainingly
* Now, as soon as you stop subscription, your software stops working, and your catalogue will not work with pre-subscription files
We can debate semantics of "turned on the screws" and "screwed over", but take it on my word that most of us are feeling thus :). Yes we were hoisted by own petard and choices.
I'm not criticising that. I'm saying if you have a copy of the version you bought (or pirated!) then you aren't locked out of your content back in the day.
That's not locking you out of your content, though. If Adobe vanished then we wouldn't say that they locked us out of our files when a new chipset came along. I don't think they have a mandate to deliver future changes to their software for nothing that maintain chipset support for anything we might buy.
Didn't they go well beyond CS2 though? Why did you pick such an old version? We ran Adobe on Intel Macs well before SaaS. In fact, we were running Adobe Premiere before Final Cut was released.
They do, but compatibility isn't perfect and fixing anything requires huge reverse engineering knowledge or prior knowledge.
See:
"... PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an insult to other bad formats...
If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those. PSD makes inconsistency an art form...
Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination..."
I get that this was entirely predictable (see XKCD exhibit 1), and that once we allowed it in websites and webapps there were no real barriers left to downloaded installed native local apps, and my outrage is too little too late.
And I get that saying "I'm now installing Linux on my laptop" is... nice but irrelevant. 0.01% of userbase doing that will make laughably no dent.
But it's really really getting too much. Grumble Grubmle everybody get off my lawn! :-/
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/743/