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.