Exclusive update release for Adobe Cloud customers

Question

Excuse me, Adobe.
Don't get this wrong, I personally have nothing against Adobe. Please know and realize that Adobe probably don't realize this, or simply don't have a heart to realize this by now. Adobe actually losing some valuable registered lifetime 'diehard' Adobe customers like other creative professionals and myself.
Yesterday I learned that Adobe released exclusive update release only for Adobe Creative Cloud customers with Illustrator's new package update. I find that very ironic approach, because I know that diehard Adobe Illustrator customers have request for it for years. Adobe basically ignored us, creative professionals, instead of us, focusing on Adobe Creative Cloud customers.
Rest assured, Adobe Master Collection CS6 is more likely my final upgrade purchase. It was a big slap in my face. I know that it is not just me, knowing that many other creative professionals are upset as I am.
Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly am (now was) a lifetime diehard Adobe customer.
Dear Adobe, just tell me if I am wrong. I just cannot justify the cost benefit analysis on advantage of Adobe Creative Cloud, where it is more of "renting" while many other creative professionals including myself prefer traditional way of upgrading through Adobe online store just as in the past and at present time. Many of us prefer "traditional" way of "owning" Adobe Creative Suite apps rather than 'renting' apps. In a long run, by owning traditional app/purchase do have super duper advantage over Cloud in terms of real cost of doing business. While traditional customers like myself still own Adobe apps even if when Adobe decides no longer support, we still own the legacy versions regardless.
So, what happens if one day, out of blue, I fear that Adobe eventually realize that Adobe Creative Cloud is not viable or feasible to continue. That will certainly make some customers not happy. What happens to traditional customers like creative professionals and myself spent huge amount of investment in traditional qualified upgrades, and then switched to Cloud.. then one day Adobe decide not to support Adobe Creative Cloud.. what does this means to traditional customers like myself owned versions of serialization numbers over the years - down in the drain and Adobe Creative Cloud 'temporary' annual serial number no longer viable, and force us to pay FULL traditional license all over again. In that case, that is where I am dealing with this concern. I just cannot possibly trust Adobe on that one. I do have huge benefit of doubt on that one.
For example, with Adobe decided to invest some of its resources developed new applications such as Adobe Flash Catalyst and few others in Adobe Creative Suite CS5. When Adobe released CS6, Adobe dropped Flash Catalyst. That is one of example on why I do have benefit of doubt on long term viability and feasibility of Adobe Creative Cloud.
Please listen to us, creative professionals out of our concerns.
If Adobe refuse to listen, include us in that respect, so be it. It is possible that Adobe eventually be losing many lifetime, diehard Adobe creative professionals.
To be honest, I am very disappointed with Adobe's attitude toward creative professionals' being diehard lifetime support and invested lot of our time, tools, and skills and everything... time and money. It is all down in the drain. Thanks!
Have a fabulous day!

Answer 1

And customers fall for it like suckers.
Software development during the emergence of a new category has always been lucrative. A small handful of developers with a good idea sweat blood for a couple years building the core application. Once it exists, delivery is cheap and profit-per-sale is high. Users buy licenses for several hundreds of dollars each. Each new license sale costs next to nothing to replicate in terms of manufacturing. It's all marketing, packaging, and distrubution. Disks are copied and printed for less than $1 each. Printed manuals, of course, may cost $20 or so, depending on color, quality, etc. There is real overhead, of course, in developing good content for manuals.
When all this stuff was new software titles used to cost less, but shipped with installation disks and thorough printed manuals, and a set of added-value extras, like utilities, fonts, clipart. And new version improvements were quite significant and innovative.
But once the software category "matures," with each version, the prices go up; the bundled "extras" become fewer. The focus shifts toward continually look for ways to cheap-out on the customers in order to "improve" the margin for the stockholders, and "milk" the increasingly archaic and mundane software for all that can be got out of it. One way this is done is by turning real value into mere perceived value. Adobe is the worst offender in this regard.
Print manuals have become pay-extra, or non-existent. It astounds me that in the much-ballyhooed age of "information at your fingertips" the ondisk local help has become increasingly difficult and tedious to access. Now, the default behavior of the Help menu has even been modified to disuade users from accessing local PDF versions of the documentation to coerce them to go online for help files access (this from the company that is highly dependent upon PDF). Slow, tedious, and non-contextual as it is, PDF was bad enough. Having to go to Adobe's crappy "community help" system is ridiculous.
This is all promoted, of course, as "immediate access to continual improvement." And customers fall for it like suckers.
Look at the increasingly innane questions that occur  daily in this Forum. Newcomers ask the most basic questions, making it obvious they haven't even tried to read page one of the documentation. I've been at this stuff since the beginning. It didn't used to be this way.
Are they all lazy dolts? No. Documentation has become less accessible and less thorough.
Next, Adobe turns the online documentation essentially into blogs. "Live feedback"? "Continual improvement"? Baloney. Beginners clutter what should be authoritative documentation with innane comments. Questions get transferred to the User Forums, where Adobe sluffs off its responsibility for product support to its users; which more often than not turns into a time-wasting process of the blind leading the blind.
Of course, only a mere mention of the term "tech support" will suffice. Everyone knows what thas become.
Once you've eliminated the costs of printing, packaging, and delivering disks and documentation, and turned everything into electronic downloads (causing each customer hours of downtime--often even days futzing around with Adobe's horrible installers), what's next? Stockholders still want increased margin.
Software by subscription and web-centric automation--while still increasing prices, of course--has long been the holy grail of software developers. This is true of all the biggies, including Microsoft, and of course Adobe. But how do you pull it off? How do you convince the suckers?
Releasing new features to the buzzword "cloud" before making them available to perpetual licensees will be Adobe's attempt to "sweeten the pot" to con those who buy into the software subscription scheme. Time will tell how successful the ruse is for Adobe.
The truth is, though, in terms of actual quality of the product, (especially Illustrator) nothing has changed for the better. Look at the very features that we who choose to stay with the relative safety of a traditional license are so upset about: Bundle for output? Export embedded images?
People, how archaic, how old, how yesterdecade's news is that? This is "quick development" that can only be delivered by the "cloud"? Give me a break.
It's utterly laughable, as Illustrator's cobby, clumsy, over-glorified, under-delivered, decades-late-to-the-game delevery of practical functionality always has been. So what's the big rush anyway for features that are already literal decades late? Sheesh, guys, Illustrator is not the only game in town.
Consider: Since the release of CS6, how many posts have you forum regulars seen expressing excitement over the precious few actually new features, like grads-on-strokes? How many stunning examples of use of that feature have you seen users post?
By comarison, how many posts have you seen on complaints about performance and buggy behavior? And proportionally how many are still the endless stream of repeats of the same old questions from newcomers trying to make sense out of Illustrator's uncomparably unintuitive, cluttered, and confused interface? I see the latter largely increasing. And I take that as clear indication that Adobe's treatment of "newfangled" documentation is not working. (And, of course, that Illustrator's interface is still as hideously unintutitve as it has always been.)
Meanwhile, for the first time in too many years, I actually experienced again that new-purchase satisfaction of money-well-spent when I opened the Corel Graphic Design X6 Suite package to find a full-color manual with a hard-bound cover no less! Upgrade cost for anyone with a copy two full versions old? $200. Comes with 1000 OpenType fonts, huge clipart collection, truly useful utilities, and alot more.
I still get a thrill out of every new release of Xara Designer Pro. So much elegant functionality, such clean-running speed, so stunning results possible from that tidy, inviting, intuitive interface in so affordably-priced and fun-to-use application.
Meanwhile, Adobe upgrades have become more burden than pleasure. I actually dread them, especially having been suckered into the whole "Master Collection" thing. CS6 still sits on my desk uninstalled. I just dread having to mess with it.
Oh, but James! That's why you should buy into "the creative cloud"!
Well, don't hold your breath, bucko. If I decide to let CS7 or whatever just slide right by, I'll still be able to keep running the version I've got--without sending a monthly check to Adobe.
These days--when so many younsters who have never swung a hammer at a nail actually try to rationalize renting over home ownership; and when so many middle-agers rationalize making perpetual interest payments for the instant gratification of driving a new car every year--who knows; the "creative cloud" sham may actually succeed.
But not with me. Instead of watching money automatically fly out the window by itself, I'll be chuckling away, using whichever of my usual collection of 2D vector drawing programs I feel most advantageous--or most fun--for the task at hand.
JET