http://www.macuser.co.uk/news/254173/

Cocks.

Mark

Despite the fact that it's already 50% more expensive than the US?

This is why piracy is rife.

WAREZ FTW!!!

I commented over in the old place on this. It's made me angry.

Right. That's decided me. Pixelmator instead of Photoshop, I'll resurrect my copy of FreeHand, and I shall investigate cheaper alternatives to InDesign. I shall do with Adobe as I have done with Microsoft - ban their software from my Macs as soon as suitable alternatives are available.

Greedy b*ggers. I am fed up with being taken advantage of by big corporations like this. Canon have done the same with their high-end DSLRs and lenses.

</grump>

I doubt very much I shall be upgrading the Adobe stuff I use. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact I can legally install a works copy on my laptop, I'd still be using older versions of the software now instead of CS3. It's very unlikely we'll be moving to CS4 any time soon.

I forgot, in my rant, to mention that ghastly heap of bloatware called Acrobat. What a mess that's become, a sort of bulging toolkit of every knick-knack and doodad, rolled up in a foul and bug-ridden interface. Okay, Acrobat 4 was no picnic, but at least it was easy to use. We use Acrobat Pro 8 for the odd thing in the Batcave, and I wince every single time I have to launch it. If I was responsible for Adobe's Acrobat QA department, I'd have tendered my resignation long ago.

And I've just noticed the irony of calling that bloated mess after someone who is light and agile on their feet. I bet they chuckle over that in Adobe's boardroom.

Hmm, hasn't the pound dropped more than 10% against the dollar? I guess the execs are seeing their bonuses shrinking...

Completely agree there. Acrobat has become so bloated, it needs an extra bit of resident software to launch it more quickly!

I've stopped using acrobat and use foxit reader. I don't need to edit PDFs so reading them's more than enough for me.

Well we are now removing Adobe Acrobat from ALL our works machines due to the continued security flaws in it.

I'm sure I read a few weeks ago on a microsoft forum that they recommend not using Adobe Acrobat at all until Adobe get off their behinds and fix it!

Acrobat!? I stopped using it about three years ago, I didn't know it still existed

What exactly does Acrobat Pro do? I have CS3 on my machine. Apart from reading the odd PDF, I haven't really used it.

When I loaded it up, there didn't seem to be any way to edit existing PDF documents and I couldn't actually seem to create anything...

That's a very good question, Dave.

In older versions, I used it to add or delete pages, shuffle the order, add hyperlinks to documents, correct typos and so on. I'm sure you can still do that, but to be honest it's been hidden behind a most user unfriendly UI, and generally gives errors if you try to do something sensible. To compound it, Adobe have added loads of office-related stuff for editing, marking up and so on. It's the most confused and buggy piece of rubbish I have the displeasure to use on a daily basis. Why would I want to add movies or audio notes to a PDF, FFS?

For preference I use Apple's Preview.app to read PDFs. It's what Acrobat used to be before the bean counters got at it.

Not being rude mind, but as a Mac user myself (and PC User) I can firmly state that Apple are probably worse than MS or Adobe, well probably not Adobe, in taking advantage of people.

True, but at least we have the choice whether to use Apple or not. With Adobe, there's hardly any competition at the high end of things and they're treating their licensed users like dirt. It stinks, frankly.

I agree with HeatherKay, No one is able to compete with Adobe. I think they should take do what Microsoft have done with Office, different price levels dependant on the people buying it. I know they do the elements series, but that's beyond useless.

If you're tired of Apple "taking advantage" of you then you're free to sell your Mac (I'm sure it's retained its resale value quite well) and switch to an alternative manufacturer. After all - no one forces you to use a Mac (and one would question why you bought one in the first place if Apple takes so much advantage of you). You're a little more stuck, however, when you need to use Adobe products because there really is no credible competition - except in a few areas, where the competition comes from **gasp!** Apple.

Are Apple responsible for the GIMP then? Oh wait...

He said credible.
Actually, it's been about 3 years since I used the GIMP. Or tried to. Then I gave up. I trust it's improved since then, since it was awful to use.

Thing is, for a lot of stuff, Adobe CS is the market leader for a reason. It's pretty good.
I guess you've got Quark for an InDesign replacement, FCP for Premiere, Aperture for LightRoom. Pixelmator is getting better with each release, but still has it's foibles. I'd hesitate to call it a Photoshop replacement.

We used Acrobat at Activision for tracking changes and annotations amongst the group. I hated it as well. On XP, on an underspecced Dell, it ran like a three legged dog, which didn't help things.