Seems the latest trend these days with software is to rapidly chase the next release number of a software product without ever fixing existing bugs. Must be some kind of race on between the software companies or more than likely it’s driven by marketing departments seeking to boost those sales figures.
Adobe is a classic example, they seem to be releasing a whole new product suite almost yearly now and at a great cost to the consumers of their products too. Sure they do introduce some nice new features with each release but to have to fork out a few thousand dollars almost yearly is getting a bit ludicrous now especially when you’re paying that few thousand dollars for only a “few” new features and a new look.
Some people are willing to pay for a few new features but they also expect bugs from the previous versions to be completely sorted out which does not always happen. But why should those who DID buy the previous version be forced into upgrading? Why are existing versions merely dropped by the way side as soon as work on the next version begins? There was only ever 1 yes 1 update to Adobe Photoshop CS4 and there are still bugs inside Photoshop CS4 with regards to GPU accelaration from your Graphics Card. Has the bug been address for existing owners of CS4 … NO it has NOT !!! Has it been fixed in CS5 ?? Oh yes it has. I downloaded a trial of Photoshop CS5 to verify it and it has been fixed. Now WHY must I have to pay for a new version to get a bug fix that should have been addressed for existing owners of CS4?? It’s daylight robbery I tell you. My video card is an Adobe approved (and tested) video card for CS4 yet GPU processing inside photoshop performed like a sick puppy, my card is still the same and now it works with CS5, this proves that there is diddly squat wrong with my graphics card but something very wrong with Adobe’s view on customer satisfaction.
Another trick that Adobe employed to force sales of their products was to catch the photographers. Adobe has something called Camera Raw which is a plugin to adobe Photoshop and also comes inside Photoshop Lightroom. A year ago Adobe released a new version of Camera Raw which could read files from all the new camera’s coming onto the market BUT there was a catch, the new version of their Camera Raw would only work on Photoshop CS4, this forced every camera owner with a new camera model to ugrade or seek an alternative. Now that CS5 has been released I have a sneaky suspicion they will do the same in the near future to force people to upgrade to CS5 … let’s just say, based on their past, I put nothing past Adobe.
Camera Owners do however have a slightly cheaper alternative and that is to rather buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom which overall is a complete all in one package for photographers, a great application by the way which not only gives you a developing environment but also full databasing and management facilities for your photograph collection. This product is now in Version 3 and it’s come a long way but sadly like with Adobe’s modus operandi, they keep stringing users along with promises of “it will be fixed in the next release” I’ve been using it since version 1 and there is still bugs that have NOT been addressed and there are thousands of users out there who have voiced the same problems. People are eagerly awaiting the release of the 3.1 update to Lightroom which again promises to fix the “promise of speed” which was the primary goal for version 3 but let’s say I have my doubts and I expect to be dragged along until version 5 before this application can be used in a production environment. On the other hand right now there is just nothing else out there that comes close to what Lightroom can do so you can say they have us by the short and curlies. I personally think it’s a great application but I hate idle promises from developers and I hate being forced into spending money for things that are not fixed. I know Adobe has the money and resources to make it happen but I cannot understand why it is taking so dreadfully long to fix the speed issues in this application.
At least with Microsoft we still have product support for quite some time after a new version is released. Windows 7 is nearly 2 years old already and Microsoft is still committed to those who paid for Vista and will still release security updates for the product until a certain date. The same goes for virtually all their applications. Just wish I could say the same for Adobe who literally takes the previous version and hides it in a deep dark closet where they can forget about it.
