This is a fucking trap. Monthly subcription is a bait to force you into monthly but commit annuall subcription. And you got to pay the fine if you cancel.
So, it is basicly lock in unaware user.
I wonder what if a user use adobe for 13 months and cancel ? Do they have to pay the fine too ? Got to cancel the percision moment to avoid fine ?
I hate Adobe as much as anyone but they make it pretty damn clear that it’s a 12 month commitment and you obviously get a cheaper price for that.
Of course they want to discourage people from committing to 12 months and then cancelling after 6 months. So you have to pay a fine of half of what you committed too.
A normal rental company would be equally pissed if you promised that you were gonna pay them for 12 months and instead cancelled after 6.
If people can’t be bothered to read what they are buying or any of the multiple warnings, then imo that’s their fault. It’s not like they bury this in their TOS or something, it’s prominent on and before the checkout page.
It seems that they don’t mind the fee it’s the cancellation process that they take issue with. It has been a while since I last used Adobe products but I can’t recall that it was so bad. But maybe it’s still not legal.
They are probably entirely within their rights to offer no refunds but I suspect that would anger people even more.
50% refunds on the normal monthly wouldn’t make sense, because the plan doesn’t cancel until the end of the month anyways. So they would offer 50% refunds for essentially nothing.
It’s software. There’s literally no reason to treat it like a car lease. There is no overhead or cost on their part which justifies an early termination fee.
Every annual discount plan I know of (at other companies) is paid once per year. If you pay monthly, then you get the higher monthly price. If you stop paying, then your access stops. No extra fee to pay.
I started a free trial of Adobe stock. I forgot to cancel after the first month. They charged me $30 for the next month, ok, that’s on me. But when I tried to cancel during that second month, they said I had signed a contract to pay them for a year (I didn’t, all I did was sign up for the free trial) and I now owe them $165 to cancel the subscription. So in essence they were going to charge me $195 for one month of Adobe stock. That’s insane.
If you get a $5/ month discount on a $30lmonth plan and decide to cancel after 6 months, you shouldn’t be fined $150 for the remaining 6 months.
You should be fined $30 for the $5/month you saved on the 6 months you already used. They would try and charge you for the rest of the term instead while removing your ability to use the product for that time, making it pointless to cancel.
By my calculation it’s actually cheaper to go with the annual plan (creative cloud all apps) and cancel after 6 months and pay the fine than it is to just go with the monthly plan. (The discount is 30 USD per month)
I was an Adobe customer years ago, but due to things like the above, they inadvertently pushed me to Open Source alternatives and I have not looked back. So I guess, Thank You Adobe is in order. Hope the fine is actually big as they really played dirty.
I remember suggesting alternatives like GIMP to photography pros years ago simply because I could see where Adobe was heading when they changed to the subscription model.
Don’t get me wrong, they were innovative a long time ago however now they are structured purely on greed and add nothing deserved my of their services nowadays.
Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus were terrible to use after using Adobe for years. Get Affinity suite instead and save yourself the rage and frustration. It’s one-time payment license (not a subscription) and they have deals. I got the license for the three of them for $90. They are way closer to Adobe products and definitely worth the one-time cost.
I love the concept of open source, but you can only make so many compromises in quality and usability, especially if you’re likelihood depends on it. Gimp, etc just aren’t there.
(On the other end of the spectrum, Blender is so amazing I can still hardly believe it.)
You need to check your reading comprehension. I never said there’s any such dichotomy about FOSS as a general concept. I specifically named Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus before and after that sentence. Just because a FOSS “alternative” exists, doesn’t mean it actually is an alternative, or at least an acceptable one. Each software has to be evaluated individually. In the case of Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus, they would not be acceptable in a professional creative space.
Not surprised. I have been using Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher for 5 years and don’t miss Adobe at all. People should check them out if they haven’t found their own good alternatives already.
Last major version before it went to subscription I believe. And I have a working crack, no need to look for a new one, nothing in the new versions I use anymore.
I haven’t found it too tough to remove all Adobe products from my workflow. And not even just by going full Richard Stallman, underpants-on-head raving Free Open Source and subsisting on pinecones and berries in the forest, either.
There’s basically nothing Adobe software does that some other company doesn’t also offer (or a FOSS alternative, if you don’t need to do anything heavy duty). CorelDraw and PhotoPaint are comparable options to replace Illustrator and Photoshop for 2D vector and bitmap manipulation, respectively. DaVinci Resolve or even OpenShot can replace Premiere for the majority of users. And sure as shit nobody needs Acrobat or Reader or whatever the fuck they’re calling their PDF package these days; everything supports PDF’s natively. The days of Adobe having a stranglehold on that are over.
The only viable excuse for being locked in to Adobe products anymore is if that’s what your workplace or school uses and you’re stuck with it. Otherwise, they can just fuck off as far as I’m concerned.
Clip Studio Paint has mostly taken over the small time/independent illustration industry, unless you’ve got an ipad and use procreate. Krita seems ok, too, though after testing both briefly I preferred CSP.
I cancelled my credit card which incidentally was used for a photoshop and lightroom subscription I had used for an intro period. They sent me threatening emails for about 4 months before they gave up.
Back in the day there used to be a patch that could block the app from communicating with adobe’s servers to verify the subscription.
That might still exist in some form, but with all of phthoshops new AI features I’d imagine that you’d need constant communication with those servers for the app to actually function.
That takes me back…I used to work at a computer training company where we would build PC images with the trial versions of everything on them, and every 30 days we’d reimage the machines. The president of the company was shady af. I got out of there just as Adobe was making the transition to subs. I do not miss explaining to the class attendees why everything was watermarked as trail versions.
There is an “Adobe Master Collection 202X” crack (where X is the current year) that includes all the current Adobe programs and a custom installer made in the style of the old Creative Suite installer. I believe it’s by m0nkrus, or at least that’s who uploads it to the private tracker I use. They release several new ones throughout the year so you can keep the programs up to date, and obviously the installer lets you choose which of the programs you want to install.
I use Photopea all the time, I love it because the UI is almost an exact copy paste of PS, my only complaint is I wish they had a lifetime license to get rid of that side bar ad, the only options are all subscriptions/monthly. And I know the donate page literally says they don’t do subscriptions, but what else do you call a one time payment for 30 days of ad free?
Ad block works to block the ad, but I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.
I haven’t found a way to get that screen space back.
uBlock Origin’s element picker is probably what you’re looking for. Install the addon, click the uo icon, towards the bottom click the eye dropper icon, select the element on the page you want gone, then click create the button. So long as the underlying name of the element doesn’t change, you should be all set!
Apple sold comply. Needing 2 years is BS. If they are producing say that iPhone 11 in India, just solder in a usb c port instead of lighting. How hard can it be? They are the same size.
The pcb footprint isn’t the same. Changing the port isn’t as simple as just soldering this one instead of that one. The pins are in a different order. Changing the port requires redesigning the PCB that the port attaches to. In a larger device, maybe you could create some kind of internal adapter that can solder to the lightning footprint but provide a usb-c port, but there’s just not enough room in a modern phone.
Plus, even though the USB portion of the circuitry may be the same, the port does more than just provide a usb interface. There’s also headphone functionality and other things on there that have to be adapted too, or the phone will have less functionality than it did and people with bitch that apple broke their headphones when they changed the port over.
Surely it can’t be that hard to re-engineer? Can’t they take the port from the existing 15 and adapt it to the older models they are still building new? Even if it took 1 month to adapt, surely that would be enough time?
If I’m understanding what you wrote, I think you actually are bound to Apple. Most people in the Apple ecosystem aren’t going to leave it, because there’s too much inertia to overcome to leave it.
What I mean is I configure everything so it works for me and everything is portable/exportable and contingencies are in place so if they ever start screwing around again to an extent I can’t tolerate or mitigate, then at least my data isn’t hostage in the process while I reassess.
I don’t allow any of their defaults to stand before I start breaking in whatever product/service.
NO
iCloud Photos/Notes/Backup/Calendar/Reminders/Contacts/anything not e2ee in relation to iCloud
Keychain
most stock apps
No storing recovery codes with Apple
sign-in/HideMyEmailwith Apple
PrivateRelay
iCloud CAPCHA thingie
Definitely no iMessage
FaceTime
Avoid Safari except for authenticated things (bank etc)
Cuz it does lots of other cool shit that keeps me reeled in and it has some irreplaceable apps and other functions I rely on to manage my life. I just like to have custody and sole access to my data and they don’t pay me for said data so its need to know basis.
IMO it’s a bit unreasonable to demand them go changing the design of older models aswell. I’m happy that they were forced to switch to USB-C on future models, but I’m with Apple on this one.
Exactly. They can do whatever they want. Force them to either stop doing business or fix their shit now. And don’t get started insulting the mushrooms or cows because even they know better than to feed on them.
Well, that’s not exactly the demand. The demand is simply that if they wish to sell a product in the country, it meets their regulatory specifications by June 2025. Apple doesn’t have to upgrade their older models, they could also simply stop selling them.
But if they wish to sell a product, it must meet the manufacturing requirements of the region in which they wish to sell. Hardly a big deal if you ask me.
How many do they really sell in India though? It doesn’t matter how old and crappy your iPhone is, there’s a cheaper Android phone. Android is like 95% of phones out there.
Apple’s marketshare in India is (1) tiny and (2) largely driven by older models. I know 2 people who have iPhones. I know 4 people who have Jiophones (Firefox OS).
I think you’re absolutely correct here. I’ll point out that they are a luxury product and among the wealthy, highly popular. And while they don’t capture a large portion of the units sold, they capture a large portion of revenues. On top of that, Apple’s market share has grown by 1/3 year over year while cell phone sales were flat.
None of this changes anything and think Apple should comply, but I see why they might. I guess I don’t see a situation where they wouldn’t complain. These companies are so emotional.
Apple just wouldn’t do it, it makes no sense. They are just pissed because cheaper, older models sell in India and that would leave only the newer models.
This isnt demanding apple to retrofit usb-c to old phones. This is telling them to stop producing new phones with lightning, and instead use USB-C.
This is highly relevant for India as it’s a price conscious market, and Apple sells a lot more older models than elsewhere, specifically Europe who passed a similar law but on new models only.
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