Some SaaS "hostings" are paper-thin, like Adobe or Steam. They are glorified FTP sites.
The file hosting is handy, but we already use Dropbox and Google Drive. The other features seem like they could have been incorporated into the desktop apps but were pulled into the cloud to make it appear more worthwhile.
I can see how moving shrink-wrap software to a subscription can be good for the company – reliable income streams, no longer having to worry about headline features to get people to buy the next version – but (especially in Adobe's case) it's hard to see it as anything but a cynical attempt to milk customers for every last drop before the whole thing crumbles.
Whereas the "cynical attempt to milk money out of customers" angle is, IMO, not nearly as relevant as people expect. I mean, everything a for-profit company does is an attempt to milk money out of customers in some sense, so when Adobe (or JetBrains) sold shrink-wrapped boxes I assume they set the prices at whatever their models showed was the maximum people would pay, and presumably they chose the subscription prices the same way. I expect it's much of a muchness.
As for the SaaS stuff (storage, etc), I just see that as little extras that become possible once each install is tied to a user account, so the company tries them out to see if they work. But it's not like they're supposed to be so amazing that they justify the switch. (views my own, not those of my former employer, etc.)
... they didn't have this wonderful option of bashing customers on their virtual heads and break their products if customers forgot to pay rent. It just wasn't an option, when it all started. Now it is, and here we are. The internet sometimes is just bad for people.
Are there any alternatives to adobe on the horizon? I'm asking because I'd like to know. All I know of is affinity designer and pixelmator.
For Photoshop alternatives there's Pixelmator, Acorn and Affinity Photo.
For Illustrator there's Sketch, iDraw and Affinity Designer.
All we need now is a good InDesign alternative.