Or "Don't want to pay for", which includes me. The feature set that I use in my daily driver - Illustrator - has pretty much remained constant since CS2 or thereabouts, but I have to maintain a subscription solely to ensure that I can load files from clients without any concern about incompatability or breakage.

It's quite annoying paying good money for old rope for years and years on end.

You'll hate to admit it but I know for a fact that a lot of the tools introduced after CS2 have become indispensable and allow you to get work done faster and more efficiently than back in the day.

"For a fact"? Only if you presume to know what I do and how I work, I suppose.

I'd not be so bold, personally.

- ed: I wondered perhaps if Smart Guides were newer than I remembered, but nup, having checked - they were there in CS2.

Like what?

From western world perspective, $85/month for a whole suite of powerful apps is absolute peanuts if they are used in a professional setting. An average carpenter probably spends more on tool upgrades each year.

It's just "1 man hour" for a random experienced freelance dude. It's crazy when you think you wouldn't hire this guy for just an hour but 70 hours for just an epic feature. That's already $5950.

$85 / (30 * 24 = 720) hours. Wow so cheap! Now we have some sense of how business is working.