back to article Graphics pros left hanging as Adobe Creative Cloud outage nears 24 hours

Adobe is struggling to correct a global outage that has already locked customers out of its Creative Cloud online services for nearly 24 hours. The Photoshop maker first tweeted that users were unable to login to their Adobe accounts at 2:22pm Pacific time on Wednesday, and the service was still offline as of 1pm on Thursday …

COMMENTS

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  1. andreas koch

    SaaS

    Fuck that.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: SaaS

      But the cause has been identified!

      1. andreas koch

        @ Destroy All Monsters - Re SaaS

        . . . and fuck the cause, too.

      2. Gray
        Happy

        Re: SaaS

        And they did apologize!

        (bwaaaa-haaa-ha-ha ... and they'll do it again the next time, ya betcha!)

    2. Cliff

      Re: SaaS

      Just a really, really poor implementation of it, it's not like the actual installed binaries need to phone home for anything other than checking up on your payment status - whereas the system could be designed to have some fail over/exception management as opposed to just terrifying and alienating business power users (the pirates were of course still unaffected)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cloud

    There is no reason for these apps to be in the "Cloud" other than Adobe using it as a DRM and a way of extracting money from peoples wallets every month.

    As a long time user of Creative Suite I am clinging on for dear life to my copy of CS6. No double Adobe will hobble it at some point when it stops working after an OS update and they refuse to patch it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Cloud

      I never have any problem running GIMP or finding my files on Debian.

      1. rh587

        Re: Cloud

        Which is fine if you only need RGB support for digital/web media or desktop printing. Show me the industry-standard Open Source CMYK solutions for commercial print.

        No one in Open Source land has got around to cracking CMYK yet (there's Separate+, but if CMYK matters that much to you, then it's not up to snuff - yet), and until they do Adobe will retain their strange hold on the industry

  3. Crazy Operations Guy

    Why not have a short grace period for licenses?

    Wouldn't it be possible for them to re-configured the licenses to last for 48-72 hours or so? So when (not if) their cloud fails again, users will not be forced to just sit on their thumbs while waiting for the cloud to come back online. Then there are the other reasons a user might not have an internet connection: Working from the road, flying, or even just their internet connection going down.

    This is one of the reasons I try and steer customers away from 'The Cloud', if there is a break in your connection, now you have almost all your workers sitting around doing nothing until they can connect again, especially if you are using something like Google Apps or Office 365. I've always felt that clouds should only be used by those who couldn't otherwise run these services.

    1. localzuk Silver badge

      Re: Why not have a short grace period for licenses?

      They do have a grace period - 30 days.

      The service that is down here is the cloud aspect, ie. syncing files and the like. People can still use their applications (I've been using them fine).

      1. Alistair Dabbs

        Re: Why not have a short grace period for licenses?

        Grace period is not relevant. Some of Adobe's services are strictly cloud-based, such as Adobe DPS. This means no DPS-based iPad and Android editions of magazines or newspapers can be being published at the moment - hugely expensive for some, a financial disaster for others. Some national newspapers were unable to publish this morning.

    2. Tim Ryan

      Re: Why not have a short grace period for licenses?

      They actually have a tone of grace all of my CC apps ran just fine thru this outage. This article is a load of crap and does not represent reality. The login servers may have been down but the apps all ran without issue!!!

  4. JayKay

    No cloud for me.

    I'm still using CS3 on a Snow Leopard partition. It works perfectly and I can still send my work to printers and get it produced.

  5. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Trying hard

    Realy I am. I'm trying to be surprised

  6. ecofeco Silver badge

    Surprise!

    Is anyone here surprised?

  7. LaeMing

    Something about...

    ...eggs and baskets.

  8. William 3 Bronze badge

    Can't say I've noticed.

    Thanks to my HOSTS file and a .dll

  9. Mintyboy
    FAIL

    Another reason to use open source software and stop lining the pockets of Dick Turpin (robber) type companies providing SaaS.

    FAIL for Adobe doing yet another fail on their products and yes I do use them as and when I have to as part of my job.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Excellent and your Open Source equivalent is?

    2. Alan Bourke
      WTF?

      What?

      You mean there's an free open source equivalent of InDesign that's functionally comparable and binary compatible? DON'T TAKE MY DAMN MONEY!

      1. localzuk Silver badge

        Re: What?

        I love OSS, but there simply aren't equivalents to Adobe's software. Photoshop runs circles around the competition. InDesign is better than anything else I've used. Illustrator same. Adobe Edge Animate? Excellent.

        The only one that I'd question the need of is Dreamweaver, but then I do more web coding than design, so Notepad++ suits just as well for me. Or Vim.

  10. Dave 126 Silver badge

    >But although Adobe is adept at creating industry-leading creative software...

    If they had some competition, they might sort out their software for high DPI displays on Windows. There has been a fair few high DPI laptops arrive on the market in the last year, but no reviewer will recommend them until 3rd party software behaves itself.

    I'm only picking on Adobe because one would have thought that people working on photographs would be the first to adopt high res displays. FFS, even niche software like Solidworks allows the user to select 'large icons' as an option.

    This application [Photoshop Elements] is the worst example of usability on a High DPI system that I’ve seen. Adobe has even replaced the file menu with a custom UI, meaning every single element of this application doesn’t scale at all.

    The biggest travesty of Adobe applications not scaling is that their intended market is often media professionals, who are frequently early adopters of things like 4k displays and ultra-high resolution laptops

    - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7939/scaling-windows-the-dpi-arms-race/4

  11. Lost in Cyberspace

    Thanks a bunch

    I drove 30 miles to a client to help them set up Photoshop - they couldn't even download and install Teamviewer or my own VNC app - just to find that I couldn't even create an Adobe ID.

    So I've effectively driven a round trip to install some remote support software so I can attempt the install later. Ffs.

    1. jubtastic1

      Re: Thanks a bunch

      Not being funny, but if your client can't install Teamviewer under direction, you're going to have a bad time.

      1. Oli 1

        Re: Thanks a bunch

        longest record for guiding a user through installing teamviewer, 2 hours.

        i wanted to die.

  12. -tim
    FAIL

    Do they know their customers?

    Most of the Adobe users I know all work to tight deadlines and graphic artist types aren't well know for their outstanding time management. I wonder how many jobs won't get paid because they were too late resulting in much anger towards Adobe.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Do they know their customers?

      I smell a tidal wave of lawsuits.

      Really, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. How could it not?

      1. hypernovasoftware

        Re: Do they know their customers?

        I would be willing to bet that the legal terms you agree to when you buy Adobe products precludes suing them for services that are unavailable.

  13. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

    Adobe cloud spotted.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this any indication of the reliability we can expect from the new Firefox DRM by Adobe?

    1. Tom 35

      Adobi DRM

      If it's anything like their ebook DRM it will be a steaming pile of crap, even when the cloud is working.

  15. Jan Hargreaves

    A storm in a tea cup

    People saying that apps should not be in the cloud really should read up on what they are talking about before making complete fools of themselves. The apps are not in the cloud, they are installed on your machine.

    The subscription part is in the cloud. I've been a little low on cash lately and my payment failed. I finally had enough to top up my credit card and even after the subscription expiring I have been given an extra five days grace period to sort out my billing. You are given plenty of warning and it's only your own fault if you cannot sort out your own finances.

    I love that I can pay £28 monthly and have the full creative cloud with all the bells and whistles (inc 50GB of cloud storage). I could not afford the £3000 or whatever it was for the master collection on dvd while it was still around. I thought a subscription model would be great in about 2008, at least for small businesses. And finally Adobe now provides that.

    And finally, for people saying I should just use some other software... they have not heard of the killer features in the CC editions. One example is Content-Aware. I did a club flyer this week and had to clean up bits of an old newspaper. I remember doing this years ago with the cloning tool and it would take hours and still not look right. Content-Aware did it perfectly for me in about 5 seconds. Do that in GIMP......

    1. AlexS
      Holmes

      Re: A storm in a tea cup

      > "I love that I can pay £28 monthly"

      They have you well trained...

      > "GIMP"

      Yup.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: A storm in a tea cup

        >> "I love that I can pay £28 monthly"

        >They have you well trained...

        All other issues (reliability etc) aside, £28 per month makes it possible to just use the software for one job if you don't use it all the time (product designers, for example, might only have use for it at certain stages of a project); It is more manageable than an initial outlay of £hundreds.

        >> "GIMP"

        >Yup.

        Right up to the point that you want to manipulate EXR or other HDR files for environment lighting maps. Or use use free transform to quickly mock-up a three-quarter view packaging design. If you are chasing a deadline, these niggles are worth spending a quid a day to avoid.

        You might find that the GIMP fulfills your needs 95% of the time, until you require a feature it lacks. At which point, being able to rent Photoshop by the month becomes attractive.

        1. Jan Hargreaves

          Re: A storm in a tea cup

          I do not know wat EXR or HDR files are so forgive me. I just use the main CC apps.

          I don't use GIMP.

    2. andreas koch

      @ Jan Hargreaves - Re: A storm in a tea cup

      > . . .

      inc 50GB of cloud storage

      . . . <

      Which is, of course, fully accessible offline? But who'd leave his work exclusively on other people's drives?

      Oh, wait . . .

      1. Jan Hargreaves

        Re: @ Jan Hargreaves - A storm in a tea cup

        I don't have a single file on the cloud storage. I would not use it as the only location for files but it is useful for some people nonetheless.

    3. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: A storm in a tea cup

      Jan, not all of Adobe's CC products are installed on your machine. Some of them really are cloud-only and really have been utterly unavailable during this outage. Some of these are mission-critical, core business apps, not just graphics packages.

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A storm in a tea cup

      "I love that I can pay £28 monthly"

      Good for you.

      By the way, you probably forgot to read the small print on your bargain £28 price. You can look forward to it being £46 a month on a 12 month contract after 12 months.

      Still feeling so smug?

      1. Jan Hargreaves

        Re: A storm in a tea cup

        I just renewed for another year today. It cost me £28 monthly.

    6. Don Dumb
      Boffin

      Re: A storm in a tea cup

      @Jan Hargreavees

      I love that I can pay £28 monthly and have the full creative cloud with all the bells and whistles (inc 50GB of cloud storage). I could not afford the £3000 or whatever it was for the master collection on dvd while it was still around. I thought a subscription model would be great in about 2008, at least for small businesses. And finally Adobe now provides that.

      That's great for you, and there's nothing wrong with offering a subscription model. The problem that upsets people is that there is *only* a subscription model being offerred. You have your choice but unfortunately other people only have that choice too, especially as you have pointed out there are no real alternatives. Remember 1 choice is no choice.

      I haven't voted you down but I'm guessing the sizable down voting is for assuming people haven't understood, when you haven't understood their complaint.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: A storm in a tea cup

      The GIMP resynthesizer plugin does the same thing as Content Aware. It also did it before Photoshop did.

  16. Mitoo Bobsworth
    FAIL

    Greed is good...

    Greed works - Greed.... ooops!

    I never completely trusted the cloud concept - now I'm definitely staying with CS6!

  17. Chairo
    Coat

    As usual - Adobe's customers...

    have been gimped.

  18. Sir Barry

    Tell me again, what is so good about cloud computing?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry I just can't resist...

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ..............

    <This is a massive FU to all the sleazy salesmen peddling the cloud>

    <Yeah I know the numbers look good Mr Salesman but your service sucks>

  20. james 68

    This...

    This is why I will never update to a cloud based service (especially for job critical tools like MSoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite).

    Also why I always talk companies out of cloud services - though in that case it also often involves schools as the services cannot ensure data security for childrens details etc both in transmission and storage same goes for business data and bank details for companies.

    Disambiguation: Cloud = A puff of methane erupting from the "talking hole" (re: arse) of an insane salesperson. The purpose of which is to provide amusement when someone strikes a match...

  21. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Security

    I've never felt happy in the idea that the tools people need to use are rented from the supplier, at whatever price they want to charge. Let alone in the idea of keeping the product locked in their store.

    But that's just what cloud computing is, With the added bonus of breaks in service continuity and security.

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