I was pretty specific about what I said. In the US it's $15 dollars a week for the software and $1000+ a week for the user. It's not a big cost if the software provides that individual with much value.

Sure, they are clearly ceding a chunk of the market to other companies. I don't think it's obvious that this is a bad business decision...

Relative to buying software outright, yes, it's a big cost. Any it's also annoying. You don't own the software, which ends up effecting you negatively in a myriad of small ways.

This argument is always brought out like a standard bearer. Adobe software was NEVER a buy it once, own it for life. Sure, that particular version, maybe. But nobody stays on that version forever. Pre-subscription days to CS bundles, the bundles were $1200-$1500USD. They would release a new version of software each year, and they would charge $600USD for the upgrade. So, your $1200 in, plus an annual $600 in upgrades. Pre CS bundles, it was $800 for Photoshop alone. Premiere was even more.

Yes, but you could skip a version easily in the old days!

If you worked alone that might have worked. Sending/receiving files from someone with newer versions caused problems. I suffered through this once when doing 32page magazine layouts, and I was a version behind the printer. That experience alone convinced me to upgrade.

In my experience the printer was always a good few releases behind the current version. No-one wanted to upgrade unless they absolutely had to. The switch to InDesign from Quark was particularly drawn-out, and even then no one took Quark 5 files.

It’s very different now it’s all done by PDF - as long as it’s formatted correctly it doesn’t matter what program created it or how old it was.

I always just send a PDF or IDML file to the printer. So far that worked out well

You'd send InDesign files to the printer? Why when there are various export formats printers accept..?

Going further back to Aldus Pagemaker. Plus, I come from a time of Quark and SyQuest drives to move data around. Things were different in the stone ages. PDFs were not a thing people used.

When I worked in print design, we’d typically send two things to the printer: a zip of the Quark or InDesign “collect for output,” and a PDF for reference.

Later, though, I seem to recall some printers accepting PDF/x-1a files – I don’t know if the industry has transitioned to that now, or if some still prefer a collect for output.

Yes, not to mention the inevitable downtime when some cloud service can't authenticate. Not an improvement on working with local software.

I think Adobe at least gives you a 30 day grace period of no internet access.

Maybe get a locally-priced alternative?

Massive? Oh come on, $600 is the cost of a moderately expensive chair.

A chair lasts 10-15 years, so it's more like $40-60/year. $600/year chairs are pretty much the best chairs you can buy for money.

A chair will last many years, lets say 5, so amortised we are talking about a $830 x 5 = $4150 chair for every user.

That's massive in my book. Subscription software is a scam.

Chairs are not replaced every year, plus that capital expenditure, not opex.

For a design house, licensing is not an insignificant cost of business. Its justifiable because thats the fastest tool for their workforce.

for a small company without a design team, it probably makes sense to just use the cheap/free stuff and style it out.

Go try and get your employer to buy you a new chair. In most places, that is like pulling teeth

I managed to get a new chair once. It took an ergonomics expert visit. Everyone was filled with envy from vp's down the line. In the end management pushed me into full time remote so they could take the chair.

And it wasn't even $600.00

It is frankly amazing to much how much office politics wind up revolving around chairs in some places.

Or you can pay a one time $99 fee for Sketch which in most cases has all you need.

I took that route and haven’t missed Adobe at all.

Not all designers (creative work really) work on Macs!

I went to sketch.com and it said $99 annual subscription. Do you mean we can use the software even though we don’t subscribe anymore?

If the moderately paid person is inefficient or unproductive because they don’t have a $600 piece of software, management is egregiously misguided about where to spend money. I mean if an add’l $600 spent on a position or role is the balance between being profitable and bankruptcy then something is seriously wrong in that company.

Sure they can have the user use a $0 piece of SW, but if it’s costing more than $50 a month in productivity via frustration, unfamiliarity or shortcoming (90% of the value at $0), Thats misuse of that person’s talent and detrimental to the success of the company.

If $600.00 a year is peanuts to your company I would invite them to send me $600 dollars a year.

It is not like $600 dollars is going to bankrupt your company. Their would be something seriously wrong if your company couldn't send me the money.

I have a hard time seeing how sending you $600 has anything to do with the productivity of a tool. Most people design PCBs using Altium which is $10,000 per license. Are you saying companies should send you 10k because they could use Eagle instead?

I wonder the number of PCBs designed with Altium ($$$$), Eagle ($$), and KiCAD ($0).

$600 is a budget item that will be available next year to spend. If you never expense me you will never create the budget room for when you really need it.

If the size of your company allows for $10,000 software purchases I would expense me for 2 copies. Next year you can use that budget for post covid grow.

It depends on that $600’s ROI. Are you going to make it worth it, the user productive or contribute to the goals of the company?

The idea is to pay me today to create budget room for you in the future for when you need that budget. By paying me $600 you create a budget increase that carries forward annually. Simply pay me yearly until you are ready to spend your free $600 budget.

The idea is you're spending $600 to use software that directly or indirectly contributes to the co's revenue. If you do it right, you make that $600 back and then some.