Adobe CC

So this is interesting. Do any of you think that this move might send some people back to fcpx?

Just like apple took away fcp7, adobe is taking away everything but creative cloud. For businesses I think this will work well, but for contractors this might be a little much if you don't need all the tools. I graduate school this month and was planning on getting PP, but that's not even gonna be an option, I just can't add any more monthly bills like this right now, so I won't even be able to learn it.

Fcpx seems like a great deal for the next generation of editors. $299 once? Or a monthly fee that never ends? It's just bad news for the casual user.

Adobe has never been an option for me, single payment or monthly payment does not matter. I stay with my trusted FCPX

If Apple is smart, they use this timing to give another marketing push to FCPX, and maybe extra development push.

I hear a lot of people who left FCP7 for Adobe saying *now* that because of this paying model, they are willing to check FCPX again. If Apple is smart, they take advantage of that.
A lot of people took the bait when Adobe took advantage of the FCPX-launch mess when they launched their switch campaign.

It works out cheaper to rent the full suite year for year, than it would be to buy it and upgrade every other year with the previous way of doing it.

The upside is that you can just rent After Effects or Photoshop for a month when you need it for a specific project. Seems pretty interesting when you start to think about it.

BTW, they are not taking everything away but creative cloud; you still have all the apps on your computer same as before - you just need to log on to the internet to auto confirm your license every so often depending on your plan (if you are on a month to month plan you need to log on once every 30 days (with 7 days grace), and if you are on an annual plan you only need to log on to the internet once every 180 days). Otherwise the actual apps are completely the same.

Exactly. I did the math and decided to go the CC route last Fall. Unfortunately, it was at just about the ONLY time when I had to pay full price. I'd just missed a "switch" promotion, and couldn't wait for their NAB push. Oh, well... it's a promotional price anyway. In the end everyone will pay $50/mo.

As to whether Apple will try to take any advantage of the ruffled feathers that some are feeling. I dunno. As per usual Apple has it's schedule, and I doubt there's a lot of wiggle-room to release the next update early even if they wanted to.

Let's not start a 10.0.9 pre-release thread yet... but late June [around the time CC gets launched] is potentially when the next FCPX update would come our way anyway.

I don't think Apple cares a lot about what others do or not ((-:

For our company adobe CC is a good thing, but not for adobe I'm afraid. For many years we have purchased quite a lot of expensive perpetual licenses just for the sake of having AE and Photoshop in our toolset. After what I saw at NAB they really have nothing else that can appeal to me, so now I'm just going to rent AE for a couple of months while we fine-tune our FCPX/Smoke 2013 workflow. This will be much cheaper for us than having to pay full licenses again for what they call "next". In a few months we will see what Apple does with FCPX and Motion integration and then, if everything goes as we expect, it will be bye-bye adobe for us.

That's a really remarkable thing to consider- some companies walking away from Adobe. But honestly, they have stood without any realistic competition in certain sectors for almost 2 decades. Small, competing products like PixelMator and Acorn have growing feature-sets which I think in another few revisions will meet the needs of a great deal of people who previous HAD to buy Photoshop & Illustrator.

I think we're going to look back 6 years from now at this decade and be amazed at just how things have shifted. It's literally impossible for me to imagine where things like content creation and content delivery are going to end up. We could make giant leaps forward, as competing companies move into each-others businesses, or we could be stifled by the legacy companies who refuse to tamper with 50 year old revenue models.

I guess for us it's a fairly logical step. We started using AE in our broadcast department as an excellent on-the-job companion to our Avid NLEs, but for serious compositing and finishing we always turned to our Flame bay. This workflow was continued when FCP replaced Avid as our main NLE tool.

Last year we made the complete switch to FCPX in our two post houses, without any regret so far. At the same time we set up a test system with FCPX as primary editor and Smoke 2013 as a fast and extremely powerful finishing tool on the same system. I am extremely happy with the results, and with the excellent integration between both apps. Being able to make last minute changes to our FCPX edits inside Smoke is a godsend. So replacing AE with Smoke 2013 is an absolute no-brainer for us, and as we have perpetual licenses for the CS6 Master collection and we don't depend on renting we can still use Photoshop CS6 and other CS6 apps for many, many years without ever caring for updates. Now if Apple can also add a fully integrated "Motion X" to this setup I think we will have a very enviable editing and finishing system.

" think we're going to look back 6 years from now at this decade and be amazed at just how things have shifted. It's literally impossible for me to imagine where things like content creation and content delivery are going to end up. We could make giant leaps forward, as competing companies move into each-others businesses, or we could be stifled by the legacy companies who refuse to tamper with 50 year old revenue models."

I don't think we even need to go six years down the road to be amazed at how things have shifted. The last two have blown the doors off of the hinges in my opinion. What I'm anxious to see is how the open and crowd sourced projects grow and what kind of projects they develop going forward. I think Editshare is going to cause some noise with Lightworks, the Blender folks are sort of making their own swiss army knife video tool and the GIMP gang could turn some heads with the 2.10 release (which purports to be a node based image editor).

Will any of those apps dominate the market in the next five years? I doubt it, but they have opened the door to even more alternatives than the 3 A's and they might, in concert with the low cost offerings from Apple change our idea of what our tools should look like and cost and that excites me.

As long as there are more options becoming available it will be a good thing. The threat of competition is always a good thing, but then again, as an FCPX and Apple fan, I know they don't really care what other people do and will continue to march toward their own goals, but I respect that.

I really love FCPX, and if this CC thing can even just get a few people to even just try FCPX, that's a win in my book.

It always comes up in discussions with pessimists about Apple that making an NLE has no impact on their bottom line and ending it would make no difference to their business whatsoever.

Well, this argument only makes sense if Apple as a company only does things for sheer profit. And as any idiot analyst has said over the last 10 years, Apple has left a lot of opportunities behind by NOT doing the obvious thing, like selling a cheap computer, or licensing their OS to 3rd party hardware. Things that certainly could have increased their marketshare in the short term, but in the long term would harm the brand.

Even relative insiders I know don't know WHY Apple continues with the Pro Software that it does. They only know that the team is truly dedicated to the products. 10 years ago, Apple probably developed their Pro software to avoid getting their legs cut out from under them if AVID or Adobe decided to abandon the platform. Creatives were the last and strongest user base for Apple hardware in it's darkest days.

Today, perhaps Apple Pro apps are part of a larger initiative meant to transform filmmaking from both the production AND distribution side [independent movies released via future AppleTVs?].

But while on one side, you could argue that because Apple business doesn't depend on FCPX sales, that it's users shouldn't depend on any commitment from the company. The flip side is what we have seen, which is a willingness to take chances and make bold changes. 5 years down the road the short term stumbles will be forgotten if a powerful next-generation tool is the result.

I think that Apple does things because there is a need for them. But they are going to fill that need in the way they see fit.

I'm a bit obsessed with Apple, not necessarily buying all their products, but trying to understand the way the company functions. I've read way too many articles and the Isaacson bio and here are my thoughts on why they do pro software and will continue with pro hardware.

First is the quote about arts and technology from Steve.

The reason Apple resonates with people is that there’s a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.

If Apple was just in it for profit, I don't think the people that work for them would sacrifice as much for the end result and in turn the products would not be as good. But because there is this sense of art that is incorporated into the work, the sacrifice is worth it and the final product is much more rewarding because of it.

Steve Jobs was Buddhist. After I learned about impermanence, I realized that in a way, Apple functions under the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence.

Impermanence basically means nothing lasts for ever. The Buddhist sand Mandalas are "destroyed" as soon as they are completed. Here's a quote about it.

"'That things change' is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. [But] when you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason you enjoy your life."

That quote can be directly applied to the jump from FCP7 to FCPX... and basically everything else Apple does.

When I worked at an Apple store helping people setup their new equipment it became blatantly obvious that almost everyone hates change. If people weren't forced to change, humankind would never move forward. Steve Jobs knew this. Personally, I believe this is one of the reasons Apple completely kills off older products when new ones are released. If given the option to continue using what one is comfortable with, they will never try something new. But if you force people to change, most people will do so, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes not at all. But the ones who are willing to accept change and move forward will always be the ones better off in the future.

I know this is pretty far out, but it makes perfect sense. Apple has never had profit as the number one goal, the EXPERIENCE is their number one goal, if you have a good experience with their product the money will always follow. Now, obviously they are also in it for a profit and know how to handle their money really well, but first important priority for them is the experience, and all of us being FCPX users, we know it's a great experience and will only get better because Apple knows how to focus on the little details.

Perfecting the small details makes all the difference. I was talking to someone in the Apple store once who had just received an iPhone from work, previously he had been an Android user. I asked him what he liked/didn't like about the iPhone compared to Android and it came down to the "rounded corners". Since the first GUI Apple has included rounded corners on everything, but he wasn't talking about the hardware, he was talking about the software and explained that, when he would be listening to music on his Android and he would get a call, the music would instantly stop and the phone would ring. What he really loved about the iPhone was that when his phone would ring, the music would fade out and the ringing would fade in.

It's that attention to detail that keeps Apple in the pro market, that drive for absolute perfection that no one else comes close to, not even Apple, but they come closer than anyone else. Have you looked at the volume buttons in the music player in iOS6? Did you notice how as you move the phone, the shadows on the button change as if real light was reflecting off of it? That is attention to detail.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my crazy thoughts on Apple.

I think a full-on move to the cloud was inevitable for Adobe. Frankly, I love having the full Adobe suite accessible from anywhere and not having to worry about paying for upgrades, pirating, etc.

I'm willing to give Premiere another shot, too, if for nothing else but the After Effects/Photoshop integration. I love FCP X for short projects, but it gives me just enough trouble to not rely on it as my only NLE. I am fighting with it right now over a mysteriously corrupt project that I spent a lot of time working on...and it's just disappointing. This just isn't up to the Jobs-era standard of user experience.

More competition is always a good thing, IMO.

First, Adobe's apps are not as expensive with download versions. They save tons of money not packaging, which makes PS only worth $300 instead of $600. Probably much less, but I'll use that as a round, realistic figure. Even at $20/month, 1.5 years it is paid for, and you KEEP paying.

Adobe is copying the App Store model with free, smaller updates on a faster schedule, so paying for updates is not a factor anymore. And if updates are a factor, they're going to be WAY cheaper and very rare. So figuring the cost of a "boxed" product is not realistic in analyzing this subscription. You have to look at the download/free updates pricing model both Apple and Adobe are now using.

It is the App Store exactly, except with a subscription.

Here's what I'm thinking; I've used PS and Illustrator since version 1 (until I switched to Pixelmator and Sketch 2 years ago). That was a long time ago. Had I been paying a subscription for them all of these years, do you seriously think I'd be financially ahead? Nope, I'd be super deep in the hole.

Subscriptions will work great for some folks, they'll love this model. It won't work for everyone, and those other folks will go to Final Cut, Media Composer, Edius, Vegas, whatever works for them. No big deal.

No model or NLE or "suite" works for 100% of the market. Good for Adobe, they'll be very successful with this model, they just won't win over "everyone". No single company ever will.

Just random thoughts.

Call me old fashioned but I think having to log in to confirm that your subscription is up to date is a nightmare waiting to happen

Like imagine one of those projects of a life time that goes on for ever and the client drags his feet with respect to payment. He needs you to make one more change to the final, final final version and your stuck! Your Software is broken because your subscription is finished and you are broke. Then the client get mad and threatens to Sue you.

Or anther scenario, you are editing something that does not make certain powers that be very happy. eg a government in a bannan republic. Your computer gets hacked and your edit gets mysteriously corrupt or what ever...

Depending on how many programs you are renting (from different companies) you will need to set dates for when they expire in your calendar and need to check for reductions. Some software companies are currently offering reductions because of “Mother Day” or what about the “April Fools Day”

I work a lot with a combination of Open Source and Paid Extensions. Often I have to plan what I am doing according to what my Paid Support options currently are... This raises the question who is working for who! No for me. Thank you. :blink:

Logging in to confirm your subscription should not be an issue in reality. If you are on an annual plan you only have to do it once every 180 days. On a monthly plan you only have to confirm once every month. Your average smartphone can be set up as a wifi proxy - if people cant manage to figure a way to log on to the internet then they probably shouldn't be working with computers in the first place.

The actual apps are the same as before and live on the computer. There seems to be some misconception that the apps are in the cloud - but fundamentally the only thing that has really changed is the pricing structure.

Paurray; If you do a project with Premiere, and then a couple of years later you need to revisit the project; easy just renew the subscription for a month and do it. If you're bankrupt just file for bankruptcy, and they wont be able to sue you. If someone hacks into your computer they will hack into your computer - the way you pay for your software is irrelevant in that scenario.

Overall the cost of the software has gone down for people; assuming that they would upgrade the program regularly in the first place (if you are the kind of person that only renews every 5 years and you're still working with Adobe CS2, then yeah you're going to find it more expensive in the long run). But this software is designed for working professionals; so they should be up to date. Who still uses FCP5 these days?

I have a job in September on FCP 6

It is a long form documentary project!

The guy does not want to change horses in mid project which is fair enough. He is a camera man and not really interested in editing software as such. (Started in 2008) Just wants the Job to get done. And spend his money on lenes rather than NLEs & Co.

If all goes according to plan we will be finished mid 2014 in FCP 6!

(que the germans who will correct me for breaking German Grammar rules )

"ausnahmen bestätigen die regel"

Which kind of means

No Rules without exceptions

or losely translated

Horses for courses.

:ohmy:

Well there will always be the odd exception to the rule; but generally at this point there is nothing FCP6 can do that X cant (except 6 might not be able to handle some of the more modern codecs, will be slower, no support, might not even work with modern OS, hardware etc). For most professionals, keeping up to date will be more important in the long run than continuing to work with legacy products.

For all the furor over the non backward compatibility that FCPX caused, for most X users it was not such a big deal in the end.

Anyway; back to Adobe and the CC.

Dont believe that it is that off topic Simon.

I used DVD SP last month on my 2011 laptop because I was able to install it from a DVD. Even though it was discontinued centuries ago. The irony.

Look at Fireworks

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks_adobe

"On May 6, 2013, Adobe announced that Fireworks would be phased out."

That is like the day before yesterday in my Time Zone.

Lets say I was a budding Dreamweaver freak and I never owned an Adobe product in my life and I jumped onto the Cloud and Adobe made a similar move as in the example above. And I had all my Sites set up with Dreamweaver. I could find myself up a creek with out a paddle very fast. Never having owned an Adobe product I would potentially not even have water wings. :ohmy:

Further I wonder how it would work if I had owned an earlier Adobe product. i.e. could I get down from the Cloud if I needed too or would I be forced to bail out. :dry:

I for one will be very curious to see how Adobe handle the first program that they discontinue from there Cloud system. Fingers crossed that they will not make the same mistakes that Apple made.

ps with respect to julian original Q

"So this is interesting. Do any of you think that this move might send some people back to fcpx?"

I believe yes and for many of the reasons I have outlined above!

Perhaps this answers your question Paurray:

"Do Creative Cloud members have access to previous versions of Creative Cloud apps?

Yes. Creative Cloud paid members have access to a select set of archived versions of the desktop apps. Starting with CS6, select older versions of the desktop creative apps will be archived and available for download. Archived versions are provided "as is" and are not updated to work with the latest hardware and software platforms."

www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html