The following is being preserved in its original form as a reminder to myself that I need to think before I post something that I might regret later, in particular in the comments section:
First of all, let's start off by saying Adobe Photoshop is a grossly overpriced product, considering a significant number of its targeted consumers are students or cannot otherwise afford a $199 or more price tag. Adobe knows this, which is why when you click on the Buy link on their website they only show you their upgrade prices by default, not the price of the full standalone product, which is currently $699. You don't get the upgrade price unless you've got the previous version, bear in mind, so if you forgot to upgrade your Adobe Photoshop 5.0 and you're trying to switch to CS6, good luck. I've noticed that pretty much anyone who pirates software has a copy of the latest Photoshop in their collection. That should probably be an indicator of a complete disconnect between Adobe and their customer base, or maybe Adobe and reality.
So enough about the price. You want it; you buy it. Some of you folks out there may pirate it (note I didn't use the word "steal"), and I wish to take a moment now to discourage this behavior, especially when there are excellent free alternatives available to you. Piracy doesn't help anything. It would be wiser to just not be dependent on the product in the first place. Vote with your wallet and use alternative products. You weren't trained on alternative products? Boohoo...get on the internet and learn how to use them.
So it seems like everyone is now up in arms because Adobe is being a vile evil greedy corporate organization by recommending you buy the latest version of Adobe Photoshop, CS6, in order to avoid your computer getting hacked by a known security bug in Photoshop CS5. "Why can't they just issue a patch?" you might say.
Microsoft built their entire business on this model.
"What are you talking about?" you might wonder.
Every release of Windows, following version 1.0, has included a series of fixes and security upgrades or improvements to its predecessor. Furthermore, certain releases of Windows had subsequent releases that were available for purchase only, such as Windows 95b and Windows 95c, Windows 98 SE and Windows 7.
"What? Windows 7 isn't a subsequent release."
Sure it is. Windows 7 is a bugfixed, optimized Windows Vista. If you think you bought something completely shiny and new, you didn't - Microsoft took Windows Vista, gave it a new paintjob and cleaned up the mess left over from 5 years of over-engineering.
None of these releases were free, they all required some form of purchase, be it in an upgrade, retail or OEM package. Windows XP also started the process of multiple versions of the same product, with Home Edition and Professional Edition including different amounts of features and therefore being available for different prices. Home Edition was actually Professional with features stripped out after the fact in order to create an artificially cheaper product. That's right, Microsoft spent extra effort diminishing their finished Windows XP Professional product in order to create a lower cost product to target the home user market, instead of just sticking with one product type for everyone as they had done with previous releases of Windows. Vista increased this phenomenon to the point of insanity.
So what am I getting at exactly? These products are marketed in such a way as to generate the maximum amount of revenue for their companies. Period. End of story. Do they care if you don't upgrade and your computer gets hacked? Not in the slightest - as far as they're concerned the odds are 50/50 that you even paid for their product in the first place. There are so many people out there who pirate their product, the rest of you who pay for it are actually paying twice - once for yourself, and once again for your asshole neighbor who torrented a cracked copy of the software over his cable broadband connection.
Yes, you read this correctly. Adobe charges $699.00 for its Photoshop CS6 product because it expects piracy and has offset their expected "losses" (which is bullshit, but that demands another article) by charging everyone who does the right thing a piracy tax.
So again, I implore you to vote with your wallet. Don't buy this shit. Use LINUX, use GIMP, and save yourself a shit-ton of money.
If you're too lazy to learn how to use them, then pay the piracy tax.
If you're pirating...well you're just a dick, but I think you already knew that.
