A guy from Adobe replied in the comments. Apparently Adobe is a bit uncomfortable with the advice that their support rep gave about downloading a pirated copy of the software:<p><i>Hi, your blog post was brought to my attention. After reading this post, I want to apologize for the way that your issue was handled. Our tech support agent provided you incorrect information as far “that its OK to download pirated software”. This is not a company policy suggestion and should not of been suggested. We prefer to provide you a link to download the Adobe software from an Adobe server. Downloading pirated content can contain viruses and cause security issues. I can help you with downloading the software from the Adobe’s server. I have sent you my email via a private message on your contact page. Please contact me at your earliest convenience<p>Thank you<p>Scott V<p>Adobe Customer Care<p>Follow us on @AdobeCare</i>
I find it interesting that despite Adobe (and many other companies) fixating on the idea that really what you're buying is the -serial-, not the binary, they don't continue to offer the binary.<p>It runs at complete odds with the claim, and also what is clearly the expectation of the OP.<p>I think we, as humans, have issues with buying 'permission' to use a good, even a digital good; what we want is to -buy- the good. Not license it. And since when we 'buy' it, it's now ours, it's free for us to share (or so the logic goes).<p>It also seems rather amazing that Adobe's fix would be to tell you to download the software from an illegitimate source, given that the frequent anti-piracy scare tactics are that such downloads are ripe with malware, and will steal your serial, your bank account passwords, your soul, your little dog too, etc etc.
> <i>Me: So you’re telling me I should download an illegal copy of your software, and use my legal serial with it?</i><p>> <i>Support: Yes Sir, that will work.</i><p>Seems to me if they tell you you can do something with their product, you aren't pirating. You're following their instructions, though I'm no lawyer.
Yet another Adobe story:<p>I paid for CS4, infrequent user, after a couple of hardware changes (SSDs etc) it wouldn't install anymore. Long Skype call to US (over an hour), treated like criminal.<p>Forget it, I'm your customer taking the burden of your business problems. Happy Acorn user now.<p>So many dollars over the years on PS/Macromedia/etc, never again.<p>So tired of companies treating honest customers like criminals.<p>Edit: how many times have I bought a movie on iTunes to show my kids how to do it right, and then torrented it as I couldn't wait for the download, too slow.
This post is superficially about bad support but the underlying issue is the move to subscription-based pricing (Creative Cloud).<p>Slightly in Adobe's defense, a subscription model would avoid this particular issue, where the customer needed support for a 4 year old version. Subscriptions just get everyone on a recent version always. The problem of course is that the subscription price is so much more expensive for casual/budget users. Casual users used to skip upgrades because they don't need all the latest features (some would say bloatware). Now they have to pay a minimum of $240/yr (1 app) and as much as $600/yr.<p>Adobe has essentially screwed these less profitable <i>but very loyal and evangelistic</i> customers in favor of extracting more revenue out of those that depend on Creative Suite. Wall St. responded favorably to this revenue pop but I fear this has (further) damaged Adobe's brand in the long term.<p>Interesting fact: the folks responsible for the Flash Platform fiasco were rewarded by being put in charge of Creative Suite. It's like the CEO said, sure, Flash worked out great, why not hand them the crown jewels and a shotgun?<p>BTW I 100% agree with the Sketch recommendation. It's much better than Fireworks or Photoshop for UI-related design.
I had a HORRIBLE, cumulative 7.5 hours with their tech support, trying to get them to provide the promised-on-the-package supplementary license keys to provide full support for the CS 5.5 Suite on 32-bit Windows XP.<p>(The supplementary keys are required to activate/validate a couple of included installers for older versions of a couple of products that are compatible with 32-bit Win XP whereas the 5.5 versions are not.)<p>If this hadn't been for a close family member, I would have given up.<p>Adobe will NEVER get another penny out of me -- nor them, for that matter.<p>---------<p>By the way, when it came down to it, all it took was for a "supervisor" -- to whom the support associates kept going while they put me on hold -- to understand, acknowledge, and attempt to use a system <i>already available to them at their desk</i> to look up the specific scenario and product package and have that system generate a key.<p>I ended up repeatedly explaining this to various support associates. Finally, one with a bit more gumption actually went back to their supervisor and prodded them to have a second look. 10 minutes later (while I sat again on hold), I finally had the license key or keys (I forget; 2 products were involved in the 32-bit older-version downgrade, IIRC).<p>THE ENTIRE 7.5 hour struggle was to learn for myself what their validation system was like and to repeatedly call and prod and follow through on ineffective suggestions in order to appease them, until finally a rep pushed back against their supervisor and that supervisor deigned to get off their duff and actually look in their system.<p>I tend to try to restrain my vitriol and particularly public expression of same, but in this case I will say: Die, Adobe, die!<p>P.S. Also, the support reps would promise to call back and check on the result of procedures they would insist I first try. I think once, one actually called me back. All the other call-back promises: Nothing.
I was hoping this would be about how annoying the pricing is for Creative Cloud. If I was a designer then I could justify paying that kind of monthly tariff, but as primarily a developer who needs infrequent access to Photoshop or Illustrator the pricing options are just highway robbery. At least in the old days I could pay up front and stretch it out over time to get my money's worth by deciding when and if to upgrade. Adobe is really pushing me as hard as they can towards the competition, and I've been using Photoshop for over 20 years now, so it's no light decision to give up such a familiar UI.
Adobe does practically nothing to deter piracy except put the token lock on the shed. Their copy protection has always been trivial to break. They seem to have worked out that it's better for someone to pirate their tools than it is for them to use a competing, cheaper product. Their bottom line would probably take a huge hit if they were to ever make it less than trivial to pirate.<p>Not sure if this strategy is starting to take a back seat with their new subscription offerings. Seems like they might be trying to bring the pirates into the fold. Time will tell.
A better, more insightful article than the stupid title implies. The author is dealing with the problem of how to install software he's already paid for.
Hate to say it, but I pirate Adobe's software for real. I use Pixelmator and Sketch, which are superior products at one tenth of the price. However, I often need to open files in Adobe's legacy formats, and since they do not provide any sort of converter software, I must take the only option available to me.
About a decade ago I bought some OCR software. I used it for a few years, then flattened my OS and had to reinstall it.<p>No dice. It was not supported any more; I even had the license, but the company's activation servers no longer worked. I could pay $400 or so to buy a new version or do without.<p>I did without. I refuse to buy that company's products.
You can find the CS5 trial downloads here:
<a href="http://prodesigntools.com/all-adobe-cs5-direct-download-links.html" rel="nofollow">http://prodesigntools.com/all-adobe-cs5-direct-download-link...</a><p>All you need to do after that is insert your Student and Teacher serial number.
Installing old-school, shrinkwrapped box software onto computers that lack disk drives is a real pain point for a lot of people.<p>I made a little video[1] explaining how to install MS Office Mac 2011 onto a MacBook Air -- for my own use, in case I ever needed to do it again -- and it's received over 36,000 views.<p>LOTS of people have trouble with this. The Microsofts and Adobes in the industry don't appear to realize the difficulty their customers face.<p>1: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz3hloQl_qs" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz3hloQl_qs</a>
I have an issue with the car analogy. First, warranty isn't forever. Second CS5 was released four years ago, which is a really long time in software, to make the analogy more accurate you'd need to take a really old car that doesn't have replacement parts being made for it anymore to the dealer and claim they need to fix it.<p>There's also the issue of Student/Teacher edition means you can't use it except for educational purposes, and it seems like the author was going to use them for professional work, which means he needs a different license, legally speaking.<p>Finally, it's not up to Adobe to provide you with installers just because you can't be bothered to go get a disk drive. They're not that expensive. The problem exists solely on the author's side, not Adobe's.
How is it adobe's fault that the OP no longer has a optical drive? He purchased physical media in the first place, Adobe, nor any other vendor, is under no obligations to provide convenient access to him for years down the road. Sure, it'd be nice if they did, it is completely understandable that they don't. CS5 is four year old software.<p>Also, we're talking about an academic version of the software, which retails for about $200, not the full $799 for one App, or $2200+ for the full suite. They sell it to students so some day they'll buy the real thing when they do commercial work, which the academic license doesn't allow.
I don't think Adobe has actually cared too much whether or not individual customers pirate their software. From what I've heard, piracy has actually helped the popularity of their products so that more companies and schools, who account for the bulk of their revenue, will buy their products en masse.
The problem is just: "You have old software, which was distributed on CD/DVD and have no drive anymore."
The solution: get a drive or use another Mac's drive via Remote DVD.
The problem is not only with Adobe, but with others too. Like there is no MS Office download, AFAIK.<p>Yes, Adobe has a ridiculous pricing policy, especially if you live outside the US (yeah, translating from English to English is expansive, UK version, AUS version, I get that </irony>). But that is a different point, I think.
wow, quit your bellyaching and borrow an external cd-rom. Or, buy one for $30 (or less?). I don't know how you value your time, but surely $30 is worth it for the amount of time you've spent thinking about this, writing about it, on the phone, and now responding to people about it.<p>also, hilarious that in my chrome, the obnoxiously massive adobe flash banner on your blog is crashing: <a href="http://snag.gy/FEVCV.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://snag.gy/FEVCV.jpg</a>
There's no such thing as "pirating". "Pirating" is just a buzz word that some use as a ignorant epithet and others hold as a badge of honor.<p>The question is, "Am I breaking copyright law by downloading this software?"<p>Here's a flow chart so you can check for yourself:<p><pre><code> Did you purchase said software?
a) Yes
-> Then you are not breaking copyright law.
b) No
-> Then you are breaking copyright law.
</code></pre>
Distributing the copyrighted material, as many torrent clients do for you automatically, is another matter altogether.
Obviously, if you use proprietary software, you do not control it, it controls you. The FSF message rings true as usual (not as always, I don't think the world is black and white).<p>Many people have these stories. How you got screwed over by some proprietary company in some way. The only solution is for the company to guarantee their trustworthiness by respecting software freedom i.e. being FLOSS.
For all those stating in the comments they only need to use Adobe products for an hour a month and can't justify CC.<p>You can download Adobe CS2 for free.<p><a href="https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?pid=4485850&e=cs2_downloads" rel="nofollow">https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?pid=4485...</a>
It seems to me that if you're planning to apply your serial to a piece of software that you download off The Pirate Bay then that software is not an illegal copy. It's only illegal if you breach your licensing agreement.
> Me: So you’re telling me I should download an illegal copy of your software, and use my legal serial with it?<p>If you have your legal serial number for the software...it isn't pirating.
As long as we're griping about Adobe. Why the hell can't I install Photoshop or any Creative Cloud product for that matter on a case-sensitive HFS+ drive!<p>There is a hack you can run to trick the installer into thinking the drive is case-insensitive and after that everything works without any problems. No further hacks or workarounds needed until you have to install again on a clean machine.<p>I know it is not their most common use case but it can't be that hard!
I remember than after downloading Spore (the game) and finding it to be very poor quality I checked the forums. No official EA people were there but literally the advice everyone got was "here's an illegal version, it runs faster and doesn't have most of these bugs, don't worry, it's just as good but much better". Goes to show that pirated software is rarely an inferior product at all.
I had a similar issue with Apple accessing my download for an old version of iWork (this was before the App Store was launched). Took me an hour on the phone and a few hours waiting for them to get back to me via email, but I did eventually get a download link to some internal server...<p>I was amazed they didn't have a real procedure for it, but that's how a real support team handles the issue.
Microsoft told me the same thing. When I didn't have a disc for windows they told me to "borrow it from a friend".<p>My friends on tpb had it.
Just do the localhost hack and you can use it all for free. Takes 1 min. <a href="http://theflashblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-active-master-suite-cs4-using.html" rel="nofollow">http://theflashblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-active-ma...</a>
I don't mind their new subscription model but:
1. why do i have to pay 50% more because I am in Europe?
2. why do I need to keep running a 500mb service just to keep adobe's apps licensing working?
Again, this goes back to the old adage that people pirate software because companies make it inconvenient to use their product. Look at how Steam, iTunes, etc... have changed media distribution...
Got this when I visited your page: <a href="http://imgur.com/ulQuiSe" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/ulQuiSe</a><p>Seems like your overlords got the memo. ;-)
>It all started with my new Macbook Retina. A gleaming beacon of self-worth, and productivity (Yes, Mac IS more productive).<p>I stopped reading after this.
I just don't get such people, how can someone be so persistently annoying instead of just downloading the damn software somewhere else?<p>Or maybe connecting an external DVD drive/using Apple Software to connect to some DVD drive over network.<p>Instead this guy wastes his time calling hotlines and writing a pointless blog post - I guess that's what it means to be more productive on a Mac. (Of course, there are people that don't know how to solve such an issue, but this person is probably not one of them)
Downloading software is not piracy. Using it is. After all you are entitled to personal backup of your install media. The fact that the backup is distributed and cloud based is irrelevant.