HOW MANY PEOPLE HATE ADOBE NOW? raise your hands

Question

How many of you love all this confusion and new pricing. I have used Adobe products since 1990!!!!  This must be a late April fools joke.
[Edit: a portion of this post was removed. Please do not personally attack anyone, including Adobe employees.]

Answer 1

Ian C. Matthew wrote:
I have not posted on the Adboe forums for MONTHS as for one thing I don't like the new forum layout. And I used to be a fairly regula poster! Another reason, and I suppose this is good a thread to announce this, I have recently become ann EX-ADOBE user. That's right, no more mainstream Adobe programs for me, other than Flash Player.
Same for me here: long time Adobe user (since Photoshop v3), and nine months ago I decided to jump of the Adobe bandwagon. Funny thing is, I also only use the Flash plugin and that is the only software on my machine that crashes on a daily basis, often multiple times a day.
It is quite amazing how many loyal Adobe users have decided to leave for new pastures. I would have NEVER left, if not for the stupendously irrate and insane decisions by Adobe Corporate management in the last five years or so.
What do I use now? CorelDraw X6. I bought the upgrade at a good price and took advantage of Corel's CS4 or higher upgrade policy. What this shows I guess is that as much as Adobe thinks it's CC is a good idea, others such as Corel will will see this as an opportunity to poach former Adob users such as me. 
For me, Photoline has been an eye-opener to me. None of the 3d or video bloat, and a strong focus on professional image editing features with a layer stack system that out-performs Photoshop in many ways. It's workflow is just better, in my opinion. Together with Anime Studio and Manga Studio I get superior painting and animation capabilities. For 3d work Blender and 3DCoat out-pace Photoshop by light years.
Honestly, Dreamweaver and Flash have been lacking and lagging compared to the competition for years now, and can easily be replaced by open source, free and commercial alternatives. Lightworks, Avid, Vegas: all great Premiere alternatives.
So do I HATE Adobe? Not really sure if hate is the right word. However, I do feel disapointed in them and indeed also a distinct lack of trust and goodwill towards them as a company and as a brand. If others feel the same, then this could be just as serious if not more so than just a matter of Dollars, Pounds, Euro, Yen, Rupees, Dinars, Rands and Rubles!
Long term, a loss of goodwill can do a lot of damage to a brand even if the business behind it is still doing well financially in the short term. People who use Adobe products may well feel less loyalty and as a result will jump ship as soon as a viable alternativepresents itself. I did with CD X6. Others may do the same with Xara, Gimp, Ikskape and so on.
Adobe's lack of a true justification or explaination of it's brave new world is also rapidly fuelling the anger and disquiet towards them. Not good.
Don't hate the brand name, or the hard-working developers and grunts of the company - the current negative mood is mostly caused by the corporate heads of Adobe and the shareholders. Their first allegiance is to the God of Money, not to Adobe's customers. This has caused Adobe to become a soulless glutonnous behemoth on a road to self-destruction.
There is no good or evil in this: it is the natural outcome of a wisdomless greed for more and more money. So the best approach to starve the "Beast" is to take away its source of power: money. Vote with your wallet, and invest in alternatives.
I foresee the good in the long run : all in all, this move by Adobe Corporate Management forces the market to open up again to alternatives - which can only be a good thing!