update photoshop without CC fees

[pgk]

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2 hours ago, zeitz said:

Paul, you don't buy software; you pay for a license to use a particular piece of software.  The vendor is under no obligation to keep the software that you licensed current or even usable.....

Fair enough. But all digital cameras run on software which is I assume 'licensed' to the owner of the camera. I wonder how long camera manufacturers would last if they decided to require a subscription to enable photographers to use their cameras?

[zeitz]

8 minutes ago, pgk said:

Fair enough. But all digital cameras run on software which is I assume 'licensed' to the owner of the camera. I wonder how long camera manufacturers would last if they decided to require a subscription to enable photographers to use their cameras?

When is the last time there was a firmware update for the M8?

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[Anbaric]

4 hours ago, zeitz said:

Consider scanner and printer drivers; how we wish Nikon would update the drivers for Coolscan scanners for even recent OSs.  Won't happen because of the perpetual license business model Nikon used. 

That's really nothing to do with the licence model. Nikon doesn't update Coolscan drivers for much the same reason that Adobe doesn't support TWAIN drivers or the peculiar NEF files that Nikon scanners generate. This is old hardware that is no longer sold and isn't worth the bother of supporting for either company. The best you can hope for is raw support for old cameras, but only because it's trivial to include this if you are supporting similar files from recent cameras. Otherwise, Adobe doesnt win many points for supporting older hardware with either type of software licence. Macs contemportary with those Coolscans are now orphaned because you can neither install CC on them nor the early versions of CS you bought at the time because Adobe refuses to activate them or provide the activation workarounds they have now deleted from their website.

[marchyman]

6 hours ago, pgk said:

I am perfectly happy to pay for adjustments so that it will work under newer OSs

I don't think you would.   Pretty much everyone outside of the industry underestimates the cost of software maintenance -- keeping old products alive -- by orders of magnitude.   The smallest change still takes many man hours of verification and testing to minimize the chance of delivering a product that with new bugs.   Add in the tendency for most to want the latest and greatest stuff.   The result is few people available to pay the large cost of keeping the older product up to date with current operating environments.

[zeitz]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

That's really nothing to do with the licence model

I think it could.  If Nikon could have continuously gotten $3 per month for each Coolscan sold, Coolscans might still be viable.  Nikon is in trouble and should be looking for new sources of revenue.  Many companies are turning into service providers to insure profits with declining sales of new hardware.  Apple and Microsoft are strong into becoming service provides.    Meaningful space on Apple, Microsoft and Adobe clouds cost money and bring in a steady flow of payments every month.  Everyone wants to be in the streaming business with a monthly fee.   

[Anbaric]

20 minutes ago, zeitz said:

I think it could.  If Nikon could have continuously gotten $3 per month for each Coolscan sold, Coolscans might still be viable.  Nikon is in trouble and should be looking for new sources of revenue.  Many companies are turning into service providers to insure profits with declining sales of new hardware.  Apple and Microsoft are strong into becoming service provides.    Meaningful space on Apple, Microsoft and Adobe clouds cost money and bring in a steady flow of payments every month.  Everyone wants to be in the streaming business with a monthly fee.   

One reason Adobe can get away with charging a subscription is that they have a near monopoly at the high end. Few print shops or graphic design studios are going to use anything else. If Nikon were to try charging an annual fee for their firmware, they'd be slaughtered in the market by Canon and Sony (even more). It's irritating enough when HP try to push their optional printer cartridge subscriptions. Microsoft are at least sweetening the deal by including a respectable amount of online storage at a competitive price - pay £5 a month for a terabyte of OneDrive, get a free office suite. And you can still buy a perpetual Office licence if you choose.

[Anbaric]

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1 hour ago, marchyman said:

I don't think you would.   Pretty much everyone outside of the industry underestimates the cost of software maintenance -- keeping old products alive -- by orders of magnitude.   The smallest change still takes many man hours of verification and testing to minimize the chance of delivering a product that with new bugs.   Add in the tendency for most to want the latest and greatest stuff.   The result is few people available to pay the large cost of keeping the older product up to date with current operating environments.

This large cost seems to be something particular to the Apple world. Even apart from three major changes in architecture, it's regarded as perfectly normal for applications to be incompatible with OS upgrades. MS, for all its faults, has been pretty good about backwards compatibility. Adobe didn't have to spend a penny to make that 18 year old copy of Photoshop 7.0 run under Windows 10 - it just works, with some minor tweaking of the compatibility settings. CS2 and CS3 are also fine, provided you have the (now discontinued and unavailable) activation-free installers.

[roydonian]

Zeitz wrote "you don't buy software; you pay for a license to use a particular piece of software".

If I go into a camera store, and pay for a new camera - it's mine. If I go into a hifi store and pay for a new amplifier - it's mine. If I go into a record store and buy a new CD - it's mine. I don't care what the small print on a software package says. If  I go into a computer store and pay for a software program - I regard it as mine, so will install it on my current computer, and on my future computers, as I see fit.

Three of minor programs on my current computer are product-activated products made by companies that no longer exist, so there is no longer an activation service. But I wonder how Adobe justifies withdrawing the activation service for some of its older products such as CS2. However there are probably enough copies of the activation-free versions around to make it relatively easy to find one.

This business of product activation all seems a bit reminiscent of the copy-protection schemes that plagued the computer-game industry some four decades ago. When I first learned to use a computer in the early 1960s, I was taught that the original copy of a program (on punched tape in those days) was to be used for only one purpose - making working copies and backup copies. It should never be used as an operational copy. When I bought an Apple II in 1981 I was shocked to learn that I could not adopt this principle - many software diskettes were uncopyable. But many users tackled this problem by 'cracking' the protection scheme, and making the diskette copyable. Specialist disk-copying software was developed for this task, and there was even at least one 'underground' magazine devoted to 'cracking' methods.

Most software users in the photographic world are not programmers with the skills needed to circumvent product-activation schemes, but the technician who looks after my computers is old enough to date back to the 'cracking' era.

The problem with older software not being compatible with current operating systems seems to affect the Macintosh community more than Windows users. Most apps that will not run on today's Windows are probably 16-bit software from the era of the 80286 processor. Today's 64 bit Windows seems compatible with all my older 32-bit stuff.

With regard to older scanners, the best solution is VueScan, which is compatible with a huge range of current and obsolete devices, including Nikon scanners.

Edited November 26, 2020 by roydonian

[Anbaric]

I expect it wouldn't be difficult to find the activation-free CS2 installers from an 'unofficial' source. But the equivalent installers for CS3 were only made available to those who could produce their licence information (which would be perfectly understandable if Adobe hadn't discontinued this service without warning after quite a short period). Not sure if they had individual keys (the CS2 versions had the same key for everyone). All the way back when CS(1) came out there were concerns about what would happen if the online activation service (first required in that version) were discontinued. Now we know.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Anbaric

[wda]

On 11/24/2020 at 2:49 PM, pgk said:

Why can we not have simply, straightforward pricing? I feel that we are constantly being sold things in ways which have ulterior motives somewhere along the line. Natural cynicism probably.

Paul, why not keep your old OS just for image processing? I do that with Windows XP. It enables me to use unimproved drivers for film scanning, thus maintaining a little-used facility when needed. I could easily use my CS4 Photoshop on the same computer. The machine does not have to go online for anything. Scanned files are stored on a removable storage medium which easily feeds into my current computer for uploading, as needed. Windows XP is no longer supported but still works perfectly for my modest needs. Likewise with Windows 7 and LR6. While it does what I want, why get caught up with subscriptions I do not need?

I realize we are all different, but we do face similar problems. We just find our own solutions.

Edited November 26, 2020 by wda