I have long had a beef with companies that set up troublesome policies that inconvenience their loyal customers for the benefit of some perceived product marketing necessity.

Today, I have Adobe’s Creative Cloud product in my sights. I’m reminded of John Oliver’s HBO segment, “Why is this a thing?”

Just about two years ago, Adobe ditched individual product sales for a monthly subscription licensing model. The product most of us are familiar with is Creative Cloud, which (depending on how you configure it) includes Photoshop and a bevy of powerful Adobe creative applications.

Given how hugely expensive the individual Adobe apps were and the value each provides, a monthly subscription actually made the products accessible to a wider audience.

Adobe sweetened the deal, giving Creative Cloud customers additional features, including CC-only features in many of the big apps (I seem to recall the wonderful Puppet Warp being a CC-only Photoshop feature).

Adobe also added cloud services, including a shared file area (similar to Dropbox, but for Adobe-related assets) and the ability to share settings so when you jumped from one computer to another, your settings follow you.

SOURCE: zdnet.com