Dear Adobe: I've Changed My Mind. Please Reconsider Creative Cloud.

When Adobe's product managers first described the decision to switch away from perpetual licenses for what was Creative Suite and to rename it Creative Cloud, I thought it was a good idea. For those who buy every Adobe update, Creative Cloud would reduce the cost. Even those who purchase only alternate upgrades would save a bit. Those who update less frequently would pay more. It seemed like a good idea. But so did the "New Coke" in 1985. So now my message to Adobe is this: Please reconsider.

New Coke was the reformulation of Coca-Cola to replace the original formula of its flagship soft drink. The company positioned it as "the new taste of Coca-Cola", but buyers hated it. Within a month, Coke was in retreat. “We did not understand the deep emotions of so many of our customers for Coca-Cola,” said company President Donald R. Keough. Coca-Cola brought back the old formulation as Coke Classic and evenually renamed the new formulation Coca-Cola II.

In more recent history, Microsoft eliminated the Start Button from Windows 8 and people who felt they were being forced to do something rebelled. Microsoft is bringing the Start Button back, but in a most illogical way. I suspect that we haven't heard the last of that particular fiasco.

What I neglected to take into account in Adobe's case is this: Some of the people who use Photoshop and the other Adobe products at home or in very small businesses update the applications infrequently—perhaps every 8 to 10 years. I also didn't take into account people who might retire and, although they see no need to keep the latest version of the software on their computers, would still like to continue using what they had when they retired.

Creative Cloud locks users such as these out and the push-back shows signs of turning into an outright revolt. More than 30,000 people have already signed a petition that calls on Adobe to reconsider and to continue making the Creative Suite available with a perpetual license.

For nearly a decade I've referred to Adobe as "a humble company" with all the best meanings of humble: Meaning that they took their products and their mission seriously but that they were sufficiently open that they were willing to listen to customers. Now that seems not to be the case.

Why "humble"? Because in 2006, when I wrote a review that said InDesign was clearly the future of publishing but the feature set was still lagging behind what Ventura Publisher users had, I received a call from the program manager. On a trip to Seattle a few weeks later, I met with a dozen InDesign developers and explained what was missing. I'm sure that the developers were already working on many of the features I talked about, but they had the patience to hear me out and today InDesign includes most of those features. That's what I mean by "humble".

Today's Adobe essentially owns the communications market. If you need to prepare something for print, Adobe InDesign and Illustrator are the best choices. Adobe's Dreamweaver powers the development of a huge number of professional websites. Premiere and all of the ancillary video applications are commonly used to create television productions. Audition, besides being used to edit video soundtracks, is a key application for audio producers. Adobe is everywhere.

Maybe the company has become a bit less humble in the process of becoming so successful and so large. Successful people sometimes lose objectivity about their own intelligence and sometimes they decide that whatever they want is what the market will want, or at least accept. We've seen this with companies such as General Motors and Toyota. Wordperfect once owned the word processor market, but now most people probably don't even know that it still exists as part of Corel. NASA's long-standing attitude of invulnerability led to two shuttle disasters. Sears and Penneys were so big that they nearly drove themselves out of business.

And on the topic of driving, who is driving this change? I suspect that it's not Adobe's program managers. This is the kind of decision that usually can be traced back to the marketing department. Has the Adobe marketing staff lost touch with how people react to being told that they no longer have any choice? "It's my way or the highway" has never been a popular rallying call and clearly it's not popular now.

Adobe is not too big to fail. Students of ancient history know that empires that become powerful often overextended themselves—in effect their success sowed the seeds of their own destruction—and then they are swept into history's dustbin. Is this where Adobe is going?

It's true that Adobe owns the communications market today, but that doesn't mean they will own it forever. Adobe's applications are well made and every Adobe product manager I've met or talked to is sincerely trying to create the best applications possible. Adobe's pricing, whether for perpetual licenses or Creative Cloud, are fair. But Adobe is pushing the market toward a software rental model much faster than the market wants to go. And even if the market does someday conclude that renting applications is the best possible option in most cases, there are still people who will prefer to have a perpetual license.

Adobe, as a long-time fan of your applications and as one who appreciates the company I've known over the years, I have to tell you this as a friend: You're on the wrong path. Now is the time to restore standard licensing to Creative Suite.

The Response from Adobe

I provided a copy of this article to Adobe via the company's well known public relations firm Edelman (the world’s largest public relations firm, with 67 offices and more than 4,800 employees worldwide) and Alex Moriconi asked for clarification: "Sure Bill, to clarify, does this sound like your question: Please describe why Adobe chose to transition to Creative Cloud despite the potential pushback from customers?"

Thanks, Alex,

I find it difficult to reduce an 800-word observation to a 16-word question for which Adobe has perhaps already created a carefully written, thoroughly rehearsed reply.

Ideally, someone at Adobe would be provided the opportunity to read the entire 800-word item (reading time for an average reader would be less than 3 minutes) and then to respond to the entire article.

But if this must be reduced to basic PR-vetted questions, here they are:

1) Adobe has been accused of abandoning small businesses by providing no choices about how to acquire the company's products. How does Adobe respond to this charge?
2) Others have charged that the sole motivation for the change, given Adobe's already dominant market position, is to provide better results for Wall Street. Please explain why this point of view is incorrect, if it is.
3) How does Adobe respond to allegations that the change represents "deception and greed"?
4) More than 30,000 users of Adobe software have signed a petition calling on the company to continue selling standard licenses. When will Adobe have a response for these users?
5) The comment underlying much of the anger I've seen on the change.org website seems to be that Adobe has become arrogant and that people will refuse to be coerced into paying a monthly rental fee for software that they have, in the past, purchased licenses to use indefinitely. What is Adobe's response?
6) What consideration has Adobe given to people who may retire and no longer need Adobe software on a regular basis, but who might like to have the ability to revisit work they did while employed?

So there are 6 starter questions.

Bear in mind that the deadline for a response must continue to be 3pm Eastern time on Friday, 28 June.

Thanks for your help, Alex!

The Response from Adobe?

Frank Bauch at Edelman responded by saying that not all of the questions could be addressed in the time available, but he did make the following information available:

1. On accessing files after you’ve retired/no longer use the software: “With regards to file access, Adobe completely agrees that customers should have access to their files if they choose to stop their Creative Cloud membership. Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.”
2. On abandoning small businesses: “For photographers, we are looking at potential offerings that recognize the photography community – because it is so broad – has some unique needs.” It’s also worth noting that CS6 products will continue to be sold as they have been through Adobe.com and all reseller partners for those who prefer that option.
3. On motivations beyond financials for this shift: “We want to start off by reinforcing that we continue to believe that the move to Creative Cloud will benefit the wider creative community because of the constant stream of innovation that we’re able to deliver. Creative Cloud also allows us to explore new areas in mobile apps, helping you collaborate better and build a meaningful worldwide community to share work and find inspiration.”

If Adobe follows through by providing meaningfull access to applications when a user no longer needs them on a daily basis and offers a less costly program that addresses those who need just the photographic products, that will go a long way toward addressing the most serious concerns.

As I told Frank, I agree that there are real advantages to the new system, but there are always people who will prefer to own cars instead of lease them and it would seem that this distinction applies to software (even though a perpetual license doesn’t bestow ownership). There is some very real annoyance out there.

You Want Your Own Website. Now What?

There's no shortage of options: You can hire someone to create the site or you can do it yourself. You can pay for website hosting or you can get it for free. And there's no right or wrong when it comes to answers because it all depends on what you need, how much work you're willing to do on your own, and what your budget is.

Angelfire and GeoCities have provided free websites for many years, usually with attached advertising that you may not want. Angelfire still exists; GeoCities doesn't. And the free sites have generally been mundane in terms of features. This has changed, though, and if you're a do-it-yourself type, the number of choices you have has increased substantially.

One of the first things you need to decide is what you want the website to do. I was sitting in on a meeting recently with a website designer and a team from a large corporation that will remain nameless. The corporate team wanted to start with the look and feel of their proposed site and determine the operational mechanics later. I'm delighted to say that I'm not involved with this project in any way because it's doomed to failure unless the designer can convince the corporate team to stand their plan on its head.

If you don't know what the webiste is supposed to do, you're not going to be able to design a successful user interface. This is analagous to jumping into your car at the beginning of a vacation and driving without bothering to figure out how you're going to get from Columbus to San Francisco. You might eventually get there, but the outcome is more likely if you have some plans.

Once you've defined some goals, then it's time to determine how you want to build the website and where you want to host it. At the same time, you'll need to make some decisions about how much to spend.

Where the Website Will Live

Professional website hosting varies in price from around $50 per year to $300 per year for basic services. In other words, it costs Google a bit more than $300 per year to host its many services but people who host a few domain names on a site that's somewhere below the 1000 most popular sites on the Web, you'll expect to pay $50 to $300. Advertising-supported hosting, on the other hand, is "free", but you'll have to allow the hosting service to place ads on your page.

Paid services include operations such as GoDaddy (around $50 per year), BlueHost (around $100 per year), and Newtwork Solutions ($150 to $450 per year). Most hosting services offer extra-cost add-ons.

You'll also need to rent a domain name. TechByter.com is an example of a domain name and it's the one that I've rented. And it is a rental, not a purchase. I pay the registrar a fee every year to continue using the domain name. In most cases, the rental fee is modest—$10 to $20 per year—although some domain types carry much higher fees.

In some cases, the company that provides site hosting will also provide domain name registration, or vice versa. My preference generally has been to separate these functions, though, because some unscrupulious operators have been known to register a domain in their name and then hold it for ransom if the user wants to move the site to a new host. Most of the companies that used this tactic are no longer in business and reputable hosting companies can be trusted to play fair.

Free services such as Angelfire are still around (the other big free site provider, GeoCities, no longer provides free sites), but now it's possible to create a website using free services that provide some surprisingly powerful website development tools. You can also choose to buy software to develop your site, or (in the case of Adobe) to rent the software on a month-to-month basis.

I decided to try some of the options ...

• My test site on Angelfire.
• My test site on Wix.
• About.me offers social media buttons and makes your site available to mobile users. I was able to create a site but in my self-imposed 10-minute time limit, I wasn't able to figure out how to add text to the page.
• Weebly says that it's surprisingly easy and I agree. It took less than 2 minutes to create this site and Weebly offers a lot of cool templates. Weebly offers more than 100 templates, some are better for coprorate sites; some are for individuals. Weebly regularly adds new themes and removes old themes. This looks like a winner to me.

That's not all, though. There are lots of other website development tools. Investigate them to see which ones suit your needs. Visit Carbonmade (primarily for portfolios), Flavors.me ("The digital you"), Breezi ("The World's First Design Remix Engine", but the site never did load on the day that I was looking at these sites), and Zerply (another site that seems to be primarily for arists) to see what they have to offer. If you want a website, you'll find a way to create one for free, for a little, or for a lot.

Short Circuits

Office Intrigue Rumored in Redmond

Persistent rumors continue to predict major upheavals at Microsoft. Windows 8.1 was revealed at the annual Build Conference this week in San Francisco. Next week, the Worldwide Partners Conference gets underway in Houston. The question is whether some of Microsoft's top executives will still be with the company.

Reports suggest that CEO Steve Ballmer has been meeting with a tiny group of executives and that has managers who haven't been invited to participate in the inner-sanctum discussions pondering their futures.

Wall Street has repeatedly questioned Ballmer's management capabilities in light of the company's lackluster performance, but the stock's performance has improved through much of this year. Bloomberg News says that Ballmer's plan will consolidate Microsoft's 8 divisions into just 4 business units: Enterprise, hardware, applications and services, and operating systems.

Late last year, Ballmer's annual letter to stockholders said that the Microsoft of the future would be less a software company and more a devices and services company and this change is seen in Microsoft's entry into the hardware market with its Surface tablets for Windows 8.

Following the Windows 8 launch, the man who was widely credited with converting the failed Winodws Vista into the successful Windows 7, Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows division, was unceremoneously booted. Sinofsky and Ballmer reportedly had disagreed on the future of Windows and Ballmer is generally known not to appreciate advice that runs counter to his conclusions.

Ready to Buy Another Wi-Fi Router for Your Home?

In the old days modem speeds changed. We could replace that 300-baud modem with a 1200-baud modem, or the 1200-baud modem for a 2400-baud modem ($400, as I recall). And then came the faster modems, lower prices, and then broadband, which eliminated the need for modems but made it possible to share a single broadband connection with a variety of devices in our homes. All that's about to change.

Now the next generation of Wi-Fi is on the way and it's likely to improve connectivity in addition to making the connections faster.

Get ready for 802.11ac. If you have the latest technology (802.11n) at home, the new Wi-Fi routers could be 4 times faster. Of course, you'll need devices that can accommodate the new standard, but you'll find compliant smart phones and computers in stores already. The Wi-Fi routers are there, too.

Why do we need this? A research firm says that the number of Wi-Fi-connected devices in US households has doubled in the past 5 years. Now, instead of just a notebook computer, you may have one or more phones that can use Wi-Fi connections, an e-book reader, a tablet, maybe something that's connected to your television. And although your broadband connection may provide enough speed to handle all these devices, the Wi-Fi router might not.

Wi-Fi now runs in the 2.5GHz section of the radio spectrum. The new routers can fall back to that crowded part of the spectrum to handle existing devices, but new devices will run in the 5GHz part of the band. The result: More concurrent connections, higher speeds, and fewer disconnects. Also, less interference from wireless phones, garage door openers, and baby monitors.

You might consider these new Wi-Fi routers expensive (at $150 instead of $50 or so for current technology). If so, just think back to the days when you paid $400 (in late-1980s dollars) for a 2400-baud modem and thought it was fast.

The current batch of 802.11ac routers in stores now will be replaced by Wi-Fi-Alliance-certified versions late this year. If you wait until this time next year, the prices will probably be down to about $100.

The last big Wi-Fi upgrade happened 6 years ago with the 802.11n standard. Previous versions included 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g. So now you'll need to watch for 802.11ac.

You may find this article about modems, from 1987, amusing.

Making Advertisements More Identifiable

The Federal Trade Commission would like search engines to more clearly identify paid advertisements in search results. The commission says that it has noticed that search engine operators are failing to comply with guidelines issued more than a decade ago.

Advertisements should have text labels that are placed in front of an ad or in the top left corner of a search box. The request was sent to Google, Bing, and Yahoo, along with a variety of smaller, specialized search sites that are used to advertise businesses and that support the travel industry or are used by shoppers who are investigating prices.

The FTC's Associate Director for Advertising Practices Mary K. Engle told the search engine operators that consumers must be able to easily distinguish a natural search result from advertising that a search engine delivers.

Currently, the big 3 search engines and most of the smaller ones, place a shaded background behind paid ads, but Engle says that the shading is often so light that consumers might not notice it.

Shaping Up as the Year of the Tablet, 2013 May Be the End of the Color E-Book Reader

Barnes & Noble this week announced that it will no longer manufacture color versions of its Nook reader, but will continue to make monochrome versions.

The problem with color e-book readers is that they serve a single purpose while tablets, although more expensive, can serve as e-book readers in addition to offering all the advantages of a handheld computer.

The monochrome versions of readers are inexpensive and still have some market share, but it seems increasingly likely that readers as a class of electronic devices are nearing their end of life.

Barnes and Noble has a free version of the Nook Reader that runs on PCs and tablets. Some people, including me, consider the Nook Reader on a tablet to be even better than Amazon's Kindle Reader on a tablet. But Barnes and Noble is under intense financial pressue. The company's 675 stores are in jeopardy as the company continues to lose money.

The company has been looking for a buyer and has been in talks with Microsoft about a possible investment in the company's digital products. The company's inventory of digital books may well be its most valuable asset. How that will affect the company's future as an independent business or as a division of some other company, is not at all clear.