With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions).At the time, Adobe placed a 20% discount on all upgrade software through the end of the year, and today they announced that through November 29th, you can get a 30% discount on upgrades. Seems plausibly reasonable, right?
But this is what bugs me about this:
Adobe previously voiced they were dropping flash support for mobile platforms altogether. You may think that this shouldn't really affect developers since they're still supporting desktop browsing, but if you're a developer - and a lazy one at that - you'd prefer to develop an asset once, and use it for multiple platforms...scaled accordingly. If you buy CS5.5, you're not going to be using Flash; you'll end up using either XML, HTML5 or a scripting language to accomplish your Flash-like work, through some nice GUI / SDK, right?
Even with the discount, you're buying a software suite that includes one piece of software that is already irrelevant. In the case of the Design Premium suite, I see it as 1/7th -- 14% -- of the whole suite is now worthless. That 30% discount isn't such a great discount, when you know that come next Spring / early Summer, you'll have to pay to upgrade to CS6 with its new dynamic web creation software that replaces Flash.
And you don't have much of a choice.
Once CS6 is announced, the retail partner channel for Adobe upgrades from earlier CS versions to CS5.5 will heat up until all boxed products are gone.
It's all about greed, as Adobe tries to push its GAAP operating profit margin back up to over 30%. First, they are forcing people to upgrade, but second, they're pushing high-priced subscriptions. That's 1% thinking -- a self-serving thought process that destroys jobs for the benefit of corporate officers, the board and large stockholders.
Makes me angry.
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