I get a lot of emails about Adobe Creative Cloud and whether it’s right for people. A lot of the questions have been answered by Adobe, but they’re hard to find.
I came across The 10 Most Common Myths About Creative Cloud at ProDesignTools that answers many of the most common questions. By far, the most asked concern seems to be about having a constant Internet connection in order to use the Creative Suite applications. This simply isn’t true. In fact, you only have to be connected once per month for the software to ping the Adobe license server in order to verify your subscription.
[zilla_alert style=”yellow”]Other than the way you pay for the Creative Suite Master Collection, there is no difference between Creative Cloud and the standard perpetual license versions we’ve been buying for decades. Well, other than Adobe will send black helicopters to your office to remove the software from your computer if you stop paying for it.[/zilla_alert]
Disclaimer: I don’t know if Adobe owns any black helicopters, but I’m pretty sure I made that part up about coming to your office.
Another question I get is why Adobe has chosen to offer freebies to Creative Cloud subscribers that aren’t available to standard license users. The answer isn’t as simple as you might think. Of course it’s a great way to entice users to subscribe to the Creative Cloud, but the reality is that the accounting methods used by software companies to claim income don’t allow Adobe to “add value features” to standard license users. You can read more about the situation here.
As for my take on Adobe Creative Cloud; I think it’s the future. Adobe wasn’t the first company to offer software on a subscription basis, but it was probably the first (and certainly the largest) in the design industry to do so. Microsoft has since announced Office 365, a subscription-based Office Suite. It won’t be long before all major software is offered as subscription only.
Got an opinion about Creative Cloud? Share it in the comments below.
The Creative Cloud is the greatest thing ever. I have access to all of Adobe’s software and all I pay is $50/month. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper then if I were to pay for each program on it’s own at like $500 each. (Estimate)
Since the Creative Cloud is legal you don’t have to worry about cracking a pirated copy of Photoshop, and you get all the software updates for free!
It’s also a great tax deduction at the end of the year. Get it now! =)
Thanks for this post. I have been curious about doing it because I wanted to find out more about Muse since it’s only available via CreativeCloud. I get the reasoning. With MS and others following that model, it’s ineveitable. For $30/month for first 12 months (with 1 yr contract discount), I may try it out. I just paid over $400 in 2012 for CS6 upgrade though. That part burns me. If I had sloughed off and not upgraded since CS3 or 4, I would have been farther ahead.
Well, you would have been paying for a CS6.5 upgrade in the next month or two anyway, so consider it an advance payment I guess. As for the service itself, I suspect that Muse and some of the other web apps are gearing up to replace Dreamweaver and Flash in the next few years—so it’s probably worth getting on board now.