Users Worry That Microsoft Will Follow Adobe To Subscription-Only Pricing

Many Microsoft Office users are concerned that Microsoft might ultimately follow Adobe's lead into subscription-only pricing, even though Microsoft has announced that it won't do so in the near future. Meanwhile, Adobe customers are already up in the arms that they will no longer be able to buy Photoshop and other Creative Suite (CS) products as packaged software.

After Adobe announced plans last week to abandon development of the packaged edition of CS, a Microsoft official went on record to say that Microsoft will continue to give Office users a choice between Office 365 and the boxed version of the office suite -- for some time, at least.

"Like Adobe, we think subscription software-as-a-service is the future," wrote Microsoft's Clint Patterson, in a blog post. "However, unlike Adobe, we think people's shift from packaged software to subscription services will take time. Within a decade, we think everyone will choose to subscribe because the benefits are undeniable. In the meantime, we are committed to offering a choice -- premier software sold as a package and powerful services sold as a subscription. "

The controversy started last week, when Adobe announced that Creative Suite (CS) and the high-end content creation applications included in the suite -- Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Premiere, InDesign, and others -- will no longer be available as packaged software past CS6. From now on, subscribing to Adobe's Creative Cloud (CC) service will be the only means of upgrading the software.

Photoshop CS6 is list priced at $699, and the Master Collection of the suite at $2,599. Subscriptions to CC run at $50 a month with a one-year commitment, or $75 month to month, although Adobe also throws in 20GB of cloud storage, plus all of its Edge services. Subscriptions to a single product are priced at $19.99 monthly each. Discounts are also available. Adobe is offering users of CS versions 3 to 5.5 a reduced rate of $30 per month for the first year. Current CS6 users are able to subscribe for $20 for the first year.

While Adobe's pricing has been very steep for subscriptions and packaged software alike, subscriptions to CC can be financially advantageous under certain circumstances. Some Adobe users actually prefer the subscription model.

"Personally, I'm slightly ok with the subscription thing. [It] means a lot of money overall but at least it's affordable. No way I could have ever bought a full suite outright, I've only once had that much money in my bank account," wrote a user named October, on the bit-tech.net forum.

Adobe Users: Subscription-Only Pricing Unfair

Yet Adobe's move has kicked off consternation among many customers that the lack of a packaged software option is unfair to consumers, students, small businesses, and anyone who either doesn't need to update often or who uses the software only once in a while.

"I'm hit by this. At home I still use Photoshop CS3 for a number of reasons. Not only is Photoshop expensive, but I haven't had a need to upgrade to a newer version. I'm one of the people who upgrades very infrequently, so in my case a perpetual subscription model would make Photoshop more costly in the long term. The next time I look for new tools, I may take a harder look at some of the cheaper alternatives," said supermonkey, in the same forum.

"The Adobe subscription model in this case would seem to be targeted towards 'frequent usage.' If a company wants to capture 'infrequent' users, it uses the 'by the minute' model. A charge of $50/month isn't going to attract much casual usage," wrote Paul in a Google Groups forum.

Microsoft released Office 2013 in late January, at the same time as the subscription-based Office 365 Home Premium and Office 365. Since then, more than 25 percent of consumers buying Office have chosen Office 365, according to Patterson. However, this also means that close to 75 percent are opting for Office 2013.

Microsoft User: 'Subscriptions Are a Hassle'

"I don't like subscriptions, because they're a hassle. I have about a dozen applications I use regularly. If I had to pay a subscription for each one of them, it would drive me crazy," acknowledged paulej, in responding to Patterson's blog post.

"I also don't like subscriptions because there are times when I just don't want to get new versions of the software. That might be due to the fact I don't want to continue using a particular product any longer or it might be due to the fact that my budget is a bit tight. When buying software, I can upgrade on my own schedule and I can manage my expenses."

Subscriptions to Office 365 can also be financially advantageous, under some circumstances. List priced at $139.99, Microsoft Office 2013, Home & Student Edition, includes Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It runs on Windows 7 and Windows 8 only. Priced at $8.95 per month for up to five PCs or Macs, Office 365 Home Premium adds Outlook, Access, Publisher and Lync. It also comes with Office Web Apps, editions of these same programs with somewhat limited functionality. The Web Apps can be used from remote locations -- such as while a user is on the road -- without any need to download software.

Many Microsoft Office users, though, are still using earlier editions of the suite.

'NO WAY That I'm Joining the Pay Monthly Club'

"There's NO WAY that Office 365 paid for monthly (or even annually) is cheaper than Office 2007 -- which I got (and 2010 too) via a Use at Home type of program and the Office 2007 Home and Student editions were very cheap and allowed use on 3 computers," wrote Coke Robert, on the Windows 8 Forum.

"I have more than enough software (and hardware) to last me for YEARS yet -- assuming I live that long -- so there is NO WAY AT ALL that I'm going to join the 'Pay Monthly' Club."

Adobe hasn't yet announced a move to subscription-only pricing for other products in its lineup, such as the consumer-oriented Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements.

A move like that, though, could spark defections to any of a number of competing photo editing and video editing software packages, including Corel PaintShop Pro and VideoStudio Pro.

Microsoft Office, on the other hand, faces few rivals on the packaged office suite side. However, beyond sticking with older versions of Office, consumers can opt instead for free online office suites such as Google Docs.

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Google BigQuery update aims for enticing Hadoop users

Hoping to lure more Apache Hadoop users to its own data analysis services, Google has outfitted BigQuery with the ability to query multiple data tables.

"Joining terabyte-sized tables has traditionally been a challenging task for data analysts, requiring sophisticated MapReduce development skills, powerful hardware, or a lot of time -- often all three," wrote Ju-kay Kwek, Google BigQuery product manager, in a blog post announcing the update. "Today with BigQuery you can get directly to business insights using SQL-like queries, with far less effort and far greater speed than you could before."

[ Andrew C. Oliver answers the question on everyone's mind: Which freaking database should I use? | Keep up with the latest approaches to managing information overload and compliance in InfoWorld's Enterprise Data Explosion Digital Spotlight. ]

Google also argued that using BigQuery instead of a Hadoop deployment will save users money, because they only pay for the queries that are processed, rather than pay for the computational costs of running individual Hadoop supporting components.

Launched in 2010, BigQuery has been marketed by Google as an interactive service for parsing large amounts of data. With BigQuery, a user submits a data set to Google, then can query the data through the BigQuery API (application programming interface).

The new updates expand capabilities BigQuery already has in place. Most notably, a new JOIN clause that combines the results of a query across multiple data sources. Prior to this update, BigQuery's JOIN clause could only work with a data set less than 8MB in size. The new clause, JOIN EACH, has no limit on the size of the data.

As a result, the service can now be more effectively used as a replacement to Hadoop's MapReduce. Many Hadoop jobs are designed to bring together large amounts of data from two or more data sets. To do this however, developers must write MapReduce processes from scratch, which can be time consuming. JOIN EACH can produce a single result set from two large database tables that share a common key.

"With these capabilities, you will now be able to join and perform aggregate analysis on multi-terabyte datasets using SQL-like queries or integrated [third] party tools, instead of having to initiate complex coding projects," wrote Michael Manoochehri, Google's cloud platform developer programs engineer, in a technical blog post explaining the update.

BigQuery also now offers a better way to group query results as well. The GROUP BY EACH statement increases the number of distinct entities that can be grouped in a result set, though at a potential cost to processing performance.

The BigQuery update includes a couple of other new features as well. The service has more supports for timestamps: BigData can now import timestamps from other systems, as well as query timestamp data. Users can now add columns onto existing tables. Users can now also bookmark the specific datasets they have access to, as well as receive automated emails when they have been given access to a new dataset.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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Oracle sale of Lustre welcomed by HPC users

Oracle has sold assets related to the Lustre parallel distributed file system to high-performance computing storage vendor Xyratex, which has pledged to lead further development of the software in its current collaborative open-source environment.

Xyratex has acquired the original Lustre trademark, logo, website and associated intellectual property. Xyratex will also support Lustre customers.

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While the U.K.-based Xyratex, founded in 1994, is a fraction of the size of Oracle, industry observers have heralded the acquisition as good news for Lustre users, and for the HPC (high-performance computing) community.

"Oracle wasn't really supporting Lustre very well," wrote Earl Joseph, program vice president of high-performance systems at IDC, in an email message. "In technical computing, Lustre is very popular, but like any software, it needs constant updating, improvements and serious support. Oracle was doing a very poor job in all three of these areas."

"Xyratex's knowledge of Lustre, and ability to deploy and support it, is of tremendous value to the Lustre community," said Tommy Minyard, director of advanced computing systems at the University of Texas' Texas Advanced Computing Center, in a statement. "With Xyratex continuing to play an active role going forward, we have the utmost confidence that the Lustre community will continue to produce significant innovation, for the benefit of everyone."

Oracle acquired Lustre as part of its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010. Although users of the file system expressed worry that Oracle would abandon the technology, Oracle publicly asserted after the purchase of Sun that it would continue to develop the file system.

Oracle, however, has never focused on the scientific HPC market, where Lustre is chiefly used. Created in 2003, the file system is used in 60 of the 100 largest publicly known HPC systems, according to Xyratex.

Lustre is what is widely known as a massively parallel file system, meaning that it can be used for storing vast arrays of data across multiple nodes, by using a central index of where all the data is kept. It is particularly well-suited for large-scale compute and I/O-intensive applications.

In addition to managing the further development of Lustre, Xyratex will continue to use Lustre for its modular ClusterStor storage systems.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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Apple set to focus on "power users" with 10.9, but whither the regular folks?

Apple set to focus on "power users" with 10.9, but whither the regular folks? | iMore.com Skip to main content Android BlackBerry iPhone / iPad Windows Phone webOS SIGN UP|LOG IN iMore Forums Apps Games Accessories Reviews How-To Podcasts Contests iPhone iPad mini iPad iPod touch Apple TV iOS iCloud iTunes Mac Hot: iPhone 5S Guides: iPhone buyers | iPad buyers | iOS users Free: Wallpaper | iPhone apps, games | iPad apps, games Shop Online Cases Chargers Screen protectors Headsets & More Free shipping on orders over $50 Apple set to focus on "power users" with 10.9, but whither the regular folks? By Peter Cohen, Monday, Apr 29, 2013 a 6:29 pm 13

WWDC will bring with it the first developer's looks at new versions of OS X and iOS; Apple VP Phil Schiller said so when the company announced WWDC's dates. According to Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, OS X 10.9 will tout features geared toward "power users," among them better Spaces management for multi-monitor systems, tabbed browsing and more.

As a power user, I'm encouraged by the idea that Apple is dedicating time and resources to helping me get more out of the OS X user experience. That's a good start, but I hope Apple doesn't lose the forest through the trees. As intuitive as it is for many of us to use, OS X can still be daunting for new users, especially the new users assimilated by the "halo effect" of iOS devices they're already using.

Macs are supposed to "just work," but as the operating system has evolved so has the complexity of the Mac's interactions with the world around it. iCloud is still subject to random outages and problems - I spent hours last week trying to figure out why my wife's calendar and e-mail weren't synching, only to find after all that that my calendar had fallen out of sync as well. I've worked with users new to the platform that have absolutely no idea how to get their iPad to synchronize with their Mac.

iTunes is a horrible, bloated beast, and while its upgrade cycle isn't implictly tied to the operating system update schedule, that seems like a good time to deconstruct things a bit. iTunes has become this massive digital cloaca through which all information flows to iOS devices, and, oh yeah, it plays music and videos too. Maybe it's time for Apple to start breaking apart these features into separate applications, or just figuring out a less unwieldy way to let iTunes manage it all. And don't even get me started on iPhoto.

Jony Ive is responsible for the direction of Apple's Human Interface teams, and is apparently putting his stamp on iOS 7. I hope he's doing the same with OS X, because his minimalist sensibility is definitely needed in areas where OS X has become anything but minimal.

Source: 9to5Mac

Peter Cohen

Senior Editor of iMore, Mac and gaming specialist, co-founder of The Loop, co-host of Angry Mac Bastards, and all-around technologist. Follow him on Twitter @flargh

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2 10 79 0 More of: News
More of: Mac Os X, Os X, Macintosh, Apple, 10.9, os x 10.9, Mac ? PreviouslyTodoMovies for iPhone review: Get notified of release dates, track watched movies, and more Next up ?Microsoft makes Windows Phone commercial, sells iPhone instead There are 13 comments. Add yours. nolhayes says: Apr 29, 2013 at 8:04 pm - 1 day ago

iPhoto is so complicated. I've only used it on the iPhone and iPad and i've stopped immediately. I'd love a Mac but my Vaio with 4gb ram and 320gb hard drive is still strong and kicking. What I'd really really love is if they could make iMessage work on desktops but that's a big wish.
In regards to the story, catering to power users has the recipe for making things more complicated with adding features/shortcuts etc that normal users will never learn/use.
However if its available people may use it, so might as well make enhancements available.

SN: the new iTunes column browser was a downgrade!

Reply Galley says: Apr 30, 2013 at 7:09 am - 23 hours ago

iMessage runs on the Mac, and iPhoto on the Mac is totally different (and easy to use).

Reply vianar says: Apr 29, 2013 at 9:01 pm - 1 day ago

What constitutes a power user?
I use my computer for document creation, photo storage and editing, video storage and editing, image creation (photoshop), presentation creation, spreadsheet/statistical analysis, as well as the day to day surfing, email, reading, streaming,...
Do I qualify? I don't think I am a power user visa vie programming or blogging, are these people power users you are referring to? I think making a classification like "power user" has to be defined so that people following know if the changes coming down the pike are applicable to them or the user may feel abandoned by the change in focus/development. I am just being picky. Good post, I am liking your contributions to the site, keep it up!

Reply nolhayes says: Apr 29, 2013 at 9:24 pm - 1 day ago

your a power user.

Reply Irelandjnr says: Apr 30, 2013 at 12:50 pm - 18 hours ago

*you're

Reply SockRolid says: Apr 29, 2013 at 9:03 pm - 1 day ago

Re: "Jony Ive is responsible for the direction of Apple's Human Interface teams, and is apparently putting his stamp on iOS 7. I hope he's doing the same with OS X, because his minimalist sensibility is definitely needed in areas where OS X has become anything but minimal."

Agree. But I think from here on out, iOS will lead the way and OS X will follow. At least in terms of OS "family resemblance." Not necessarily in terms of unification of features or functions.

And yes, I fully expect Apple to continue to patent their work in UI design.
And to continue to defend their patented work against all the copycats.

Reply RicharDeanAreMe says: Apr 29, 2013 at 9:40 pm - 1 day ago

Glad that Apple is adding more "Power user" features to OSx. Better multi monitor support is at the top of my list. However Jony Ive seems to want to minimalize the OS I love. I just hope he's not going down the path of Windows 8. Colored tiles are in my nightmares. OSx is after all a Desktop environment right know. Sckeumorphism is still cool, within reason. Its what sets OSx apart from everything else. Look at an Apple computer screen and you would instantly know it's Apple. Apple should just be....Apple. By the way, I say put the optical drive back in and make it Blu-ray. My 3 monitor 27" iMac system would love it. (Just Saying)

Reply SockRolid says: Apr 29, 2013 at 10:31 pm - 1 day ago

Re: "OSx is after all a Desktop environment right know. "

Except when you use apps in full-screen mode.

Re: "By the way, I say put the optical drive back in and make it Blu-ray."

Don't hold your breath.
Never. Going. To. Happen.

Reply RicharDeanAreMe says: Apr 29, 2013 at 10:56 pm - 1 day ago

I realize there will probably never be blu-ray in any mac...ever. But I do use an external, on my iMAC. With some third party software it works pretty awesome. I'm a realist, but, also an optimist. There are new people running Apple now. It can change. Regardless of what industry experts say, Blu-ray still has a long shelf life. Just look around at peoples libraries. DVD's and Blu-rays. PS3 is Blu-ray. The next Xbox will be Blu-ray. Blu-ray may not be in Apples plans, but, it isn't over yet. Not by a long shot. Sales may be down, but they are not going away. Bandwidth in the country is insanely expensive, and capped. Until that changes, optical media is here to stay for a while. Even Windows 8 still Plays Blu-ray natively with Windows Media Player. So maybe if I hold my breath long enough, Apple, will change its mind. I know Apple's iTunes is a big part of no Blu-ray. But, in my opinion Blu-ray would make an iMac much more attractive. Especially with a 27" iMac screen. Bet ya iMac sales would go up....

Reply richard451 says: Apr 30, 2013 at 10:52 am - 20 hours ago

OSX is a dead man walking. Hopefully Apple is devoting little to no resources on it

Reply Irelandjnr says: Apr 30, 2013 at 12:52 pm - 18 hours ago

It's not dead yet by any means.

Reply MacBook Pro says: Apr 30, 2013 at 1:35 pm - 17 hours ago

"Better Spaces management for multi-monitor systems" and "tabbed browsing" are not power user features.

There are numerous unsupported statements without any analysis in the article. The author is simply regurgitating common themes (that have been demonstrated as ridiculous when context is added).

"iCloud is still subject to random outages and problems;" while true, even the most advanced and expensive enterprise solutions have outages. We only need look to Google Apps Status Dashboard for a comparison. Google Apps appears to have as many issues as Apple iCloud despite Google Apps being an enterprise solution with the expectations associated with such a solution.

"iTunes is a horrible, bloated beast;" why and how does Apple solve the issue practically and reasonably? Should Apple split iTunes into nearly one dozen applications as on iOS devices? Do consumers want that? Do consumers really have major issues with iTunes and where is the survey to support such a claim?

"... don't even get me started on iPhoto;" don't even get me started on this statement.

Reply asuperstarr says: Apr 30, 2013 at 6:47 pm - 12 hours ago

Any improvement is always a good thing.

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