back to article Users grumble after Adobe cancels Acrobat X Suite

Adobe has cancelled its Acrobat X Suite – launched just 18 months ago - and now recommends its customers acquire a more expensive product. The company has buried slipped a statement about the cancellation of the suite into its FAQ for Acrobat. The suite bundled Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Designer ES2, Photoshop CS5, Adobe Captivate …

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  1. Antoinette Lacroix
    Joke

    I always thought the price tags are pure decoration, so one can say: "Look what I've saved by pirating that crap". People actually give Adobe money ? Really ?

    1. JDX Gold badge

      If a product takes as long to develop as MS-Office but has 1/10 the user-base, it stands to reason it will cost 10X more.

      This is the case with most pro creativity tools... look at Quark Express, Maya, 3DSMax, etc. I don't know if any of them ever tried dropping the price massively to see if many more started buying, it's not hard to imagine even normally moral folk would struggle to pay £2k for a software tool especially a freelancer.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "If a product takes as long to develop as MS-Office but has 1/10 the user-base, it stands to reason it will cost 10X more."

        how did you come to link user-base with cost (price, presumably)?

    2. J. Cook Silver badge
      Boffin

      Yes; businesses and freelancers who want to be legit...

      Something about businesses deciding it's worth paying the ~$2,000 USD then paying thrice that, plus damages, plus the negative PR about finding out they were pirating it...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    or was it the Media Encoder?

    coincidentally they cancelled the suite the same day Kaspersky went public on mini-Flame and the whole of the 'Flame suite'

    what with dodgy MS certs and subsequent Adobe flaws, one can only wonder why?

  3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Lock-in + segmentation is old news

    The suprise is that people are still falling for it.

  4. Hoagiebot

    That's some expensive software, even for Adobe!

    Amusing typo alert! To quote the article:

    "An upgrade to eLearning suite 6.1 from from Acrobat X Suite is US$599, and a full version of the former suite is US41799, according to this Adobe page."

    While in this day and age I almost wouldn't be surprised to see Adobe charging a price as ridiculously high as $41,799 for one of their bloated software suites, I think that what happened here is that Mr. Sharwood neglected to hold down his "shift" key on his keyboard when he went to type a dollar sign, and thus typed a "4" instead. So in other words, "US41799" probably should have been typed as "US$1799." So attention to the appropriate El Reg editor-- you need to correct your "APAC Editor," because apparently on this particular article he didn't do quite enough editing! :D

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That's some expensive software, even for Adobe!

      I've got $5 on your not having submitted a correction within 5 minutes of this post. That's what they're for.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mostly, their pricing seems criminal.

    But Adobe Lightroom has actually become almost indispensable to me. I'm actually considering paying for it. I probably won't though, because of their generally evil pricing and licensing policies. AC for obvious reasons.

    1. El Presidente
      FAIL

      Re: Mostly, their pricing seems criminal.

      Freetard: (n.) One who firmly believes in not paying for e.g. software, films, music.

      Example: "Lightroom has actually become almost indispensable to me but I'm still not paying for it because (lame excuse, usually blaming The Man)

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: Mostly, their pricing seems criminal.

      You, sir/madam, are the criminal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Mostly, their pricing seems criminal.

        Indeed I am, and I don't disagree with you. This is the only example of my copyright infringement that I feel guilty about.

  6. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    I think I will stick with pdflatex

    not to everyone's taste, but sufficient for my needs.

    And, yes, I know the acrobat suite can do a great deal more than just generate pdfs.

  7. Psycho Flump
    Unhappy

    This is par for the course for Adobe. I've just had to buy Creative Standard CS6 (no more "free" versions now I'm properly freelance), reading up on Adobe's T&Cs I see I'm going to have to buy every upgrade whether I want it or not; failure to buy one will mean I'd have to buy a complete license again. I'd love not to be beholden to Adobe but there are no other reasonable alternatives, it's about fitting in with other people's workflow as much as anything. Someone needs to come in and do to Adobe what Adobe did to Quark. Until they have some proper competition there's nothing to stop them acting in this high-handed way.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Adobe, Autodesk, the Mafia...

    All offering the same service:

    You livelyhood is valuable to you, huh?

    This year, we say you should pay... hm..... new Bugatti Veyron looks nice.... ah.... house in Monaco.... $11eleventythousands. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! You're all my BITCHES!

    DANCE little doggies! DANCE! HIGHER! FASTER!

    Oh, complain will you? How about... MOAR DRM! LESS Backwards compatibility! A NEW File format NO-ONE else can read! Another 54GB of software to install! A completely redesigned interface, AGAIN! SUCKERS!

    Sigh, must go, this caviar smeared on a supermodels buttocks won't lick itself you know!

    Oh, and if you could also just sign over your kidneys and liver to us as well, that would be great. Why, YES, it is in the T&C, didn't you read that bit? Just above where we made you sign in blood?

    ---

    Very A.C. - my livelyhood depends on the crap that the 'Big A's' shovel us.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Adobe, Autodesk, the Mafia...

      Nobody is stopping you from using open-source alternatives. Hell, nobody is stopping you starting a project. If you all put your $1000 into a pot, that would buy some great developers.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OK, you asked...

    I explained the situation as it currently stands on Adobe's forum (link in the article). Acrobat X Suite was launched at a time when access to the other products required purchase of each one at retail prices, so the bundle offered a discount for those who needed to work with specific types of documentation. It wasn't aimed at the target Acrobat customer, and the arrival of Creative Cloud means there's now a better option to get access to Photoshop, Media Encoder etc. as well as things like Illustrator and Bridge, which were never in AXS (though personally I think they should have been). Adobe wants people to migrate to Creative Cloud - I'm not saying if I agree, but it's how things are.

    Acrobat X Pro (and Suite) customers on Windows who upgrade to Acrobat XI Pro get a free upgrade to LiveCycle Designer ES3, so in effect that product is still in the 'bundle', just not in the same download. Again, very few customers ever used it, so it makes sense to reduce the install footprint by slicing it off into a separate line item.

    eLearning Suite is also not aimed at typical Acrobat users, it's for people who create courseware for deployment to SCORM systems. As such it includes specialist tools (Captivate and Presenter) that aren't in Creative Cloud, and other stuff Acrobat X Suite ever had. It's also available on subscription, but I don't see eLS as a 1:1 replacement for AXS. Yes, the product pages need changing to better explain all this.

    Expect lots of downvotes, but you asked for an explanation so I'm giving you one.

    Dave M

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2 things...

    First; isn't going from version X ('10') to version 6.1 basically a downgrade? ;-)

    But even so; I can understand why people get upset over Adobe certainly dropping support in its entirety but I also fail to see the problem. Its not as if the software suddenly stops working or anything; you will still be able to use it for which you intended to use it....

    So what's the problem ?

    1. Tom 13

      Re: 2 things...

      Let's assume I'm a home user and I wanted to legally own the suite. So I've been saving my pennies for the last 6 months to finally be able to buy the product. And now, with no fanfare, the price has tripled.

      And you don't see a problem?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    $1799... That may be the price in the US. If I order Adobe E-learning Suite 6 on-line and get it shipped electronically (i.e. download) the cost is $3234.60 + 10% GST (about a 90% makrup over the US price). How can this "Australia Tax" markup possibly be justified.

    It is no wonder people pirate this software.

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