Adobe Creative Suite going strict?

Published by neil on January 7th, 2005

Think Secret (yup, those guys recently nailed by Apple for using bribes to tease out pre-release Apple secrets recently), reports that Adobe CS is due for an imminent upgrade to V2 - containing Photoshop 9, Illustrator 12, etc.

The new apps are expected to use ‘Bridge’ a cross-application file browser and also to include ’stricter product activation’.

The Microsoft obsession with controlling licensing and product activation seems to be bleeding out elsewhere. Although I entirely agree with the principle of securing legal use of software applications, I do feel that these large organisations are getting a little fixated.

I have worked in countless design and production companies and the vast majority are a good 90% legal in their software usage - the missing 10% being down more to bad management than illegal intent. The vast majority of software piracy, particularly graphics applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator, are by low-level, consumers who would be very unlikely to spend the full professional price on a software application in the first place.
Without the money spent on developing anti-piracy techniques, we may have slightly cheaper software prices in the first place.

On another note, Illustrator 12 is reported to be a ‘complete rebuild’.
Those of you remembering the last time Adobe did that with Illustrator (version 7.5 if memory serves me correctly) will quake at the possibility of another disaster. ‘Complete rebuild’ also means ‘complete rebuild for Windows and a port over to Mac OS X’ of course. Just feels a little dirty…

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