Hacker News Reader

Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

Find me a perpetual license for a version of Adobe Lightroom that has a 64-bit installer and I'll pay for it. But I'm not going to upgrade to a leased tool. Luckily the perpetual Lightroom licenses work on Windows too, so when Mavericks loses support I'll probably migrate at least the photography workflows to wine (on not-macOS though).

View on HN

Mavericks has been out of support for 3 years JFYI

Mavericks has been out of support for 3 years JFYI

Sorry I meant Mojave or whatever 10.14 is called.

What perpetual license? If you buy a copy of something like CC suite, it was for that current version. If Adobe updates a major upgrade (not point releases), they charged you again for the upgrade. That was usually 12-18 months. That was also $999 for those upgrades. Sure, you could stay on that version, but as the OS upgrades, that code becomes unusable forcing the upgrade. The "lease" licenses is $50/month or $600/yr (usually comes with a discount for the 12month purchase). You get access to the upgrades as they come so you're always current. Where's the evil? Oh, and with that $50/month, I can run it on 2 separate computers simultaneously. The original license was for one computer.

The perpetual license to use the software in the version you bought. Few people truly needed every single version, but instead only upgraded when it became necessary or there was a killer feature they wanted.

You're simply forgetting the fact that as the OS upgrades, the software that is not upgraded cannot be used without also upgrading. What's the last OS that CS6 could be installed?

Also, anyone using Adobe software in a professional setting (meaning actually getting paid for using the software) can easily pay the monthly fees. Staying on an antiquated version of software means they can no longer open files that are created on recent versions of software (thinking Premiere). I have not met one professional that is still holding on to the perpetual license fallacy. The maths just don't add up.

Also, anyone using Adobe software in a professional setting (meaning actually getting paid for using the software) can easily pay the monthly fees.

Even if I were getting paid for my photography, why would I want to pay extra fees?

Staying on an antiquated version of software means they can no longer open files that are created on recent versions of software (thinking Premiere).

In the case of Lightroom the only thing that's going to "upgrade" your file format is a new camera body, and that's not something I do all that much. I don't need to open files from people with newer cameras. And, let's face it, if I really need to open newer raw files I can use Adobe's DNG converter.

Lightroom 6 is a 64-bit app with a 32-bit installer. Newer versions of LR offer up a ton of cloud shit I don't want, bundled with more seamless integration for newer cameras I don't own. What am I getting out of monthly payments to Adobe?

The past few upgrades to Lightroom that I've bought were around $80. Well less than a year of the cheapest CC subscription.

I’d love to see professional licenses switch to a “maximally fair to the user subscription model”.

If you use the thing in a given month, you autopay the monthly subscription fee — if you don’t use it at all in a given month — you pay nothing.

people who use the software regularly pay basically the current subscription pricing model — but if you only use it very occasionally — you pay much less.

I think this kind of pricing model could really help drive adoption of subscription pricing for professional tools ... I’d be willing to maintain a subscription to several expensive infrequently used by me tools with this kind of pricing model — and I might occasionally use those tools which would be better for the developer than me never using their tool at all ...

I'd like that too, although the pricing steps are an interesting challenge: You want to make the full amount of regular users, but don't want the casual users to think "if I click this icon now to touch one file, it's gonna cost me 20 bucks", so you might need even more granular steps. E.g. a month costs the same as 1/10th of a year, a day costs the same as 1/8th of a month -> if you use it >8 days in a month it caps to the month, if you use it >10 months it caps to the year. Kind of like some public transport network cards work.

at least Photoshop CS6 runs perfectly fine on a current Windows 10 (I suspect it wouldn't do good with a high-DPI screen though), but I agree that going all the way back to that today is not really something you'd do for regular professional use. Of course, not everyone is a professional user.

That said, freelancers I know using Adobe software have to keep old versions around because clients don't upgrade. People are even now skipping or lagging versions, because they'd rather stay with a version they know works than invite new bugs by upgrading.

> at least Photoshop CS6 runs perfectly fine on a current Windows 10

And on Mojave, by the way. It's only this stupid 32 bit thing that's killing it in Catalina.

> but I agree that going all the way back to that today is not really something you'd do for regular professional use.

Why? Adobe hasn't added anything particularly significant since CS6.

(And I don't think it's a coincidence that they moved to a subscription model around the same time they stopped making significant improvements.)

I think it goes without saying that not everyone that buys software is a professional, and instead wish to use it a few times per year for job adjacent functions or as a hobbyist. For the "few times a year" folks, maybe "one month at a time is annoying but reasonable enough."

Hobbyists, though, are in a bad spot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com