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Monday, May 27, 2013

Who's really feeling Entitled?

Adobe's decision to move to an all-subscription model with the Creative Cloud is still creating headlines - at least on the internet. 

In an article titled The Entitled Filmmaker | NextWaveDVTony Reale takes on those complaining about the extra cost they'll be paying, and labels them as the entitlement generation, suggesting they are pretenders to the title of "pro." He even goes so far as to label them as thieves as well:
I promise you there are people complaining about Adobe’s change to Creative Cloud that have never paid for a single copy of Adobe software ever.
Actually, that's a bit of a theme for Tony:
Tony Reale ‏@TonyReale 21 May
I'm very curious how many of the #CreativeCloud naysayers are currently pirating their version of @Adobe software. #justsayin...
Now, he's not suggesting everyone complaining has never paid retail for Adobe's software, but obviously he thinks there's a high statistical likelihood that this is the case.

And for the record, I actually bought Production Premium CS5.5 when Adobe was offering the 50% discount for users of "other" systems and I also paid for previous versions of Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Director and even Premiere. And I didn't buy them from eBay either; some of those were bought before eBay existed!

When challenged if Adobe's products are intended exclusively for pros (and by pros, I'm assuming his definition of a pro is someone who doesn't need to care what things cost) Tony answers "In a way, yes." Adobe, meet Abercrombie & Fitch. #justsayin

Now, I know it's dangerous to make broad assumptions and statements about various demographic groups, but I'm curious; several pros have already said that the Creative Cloud is a great deal for them; it will be cheaper - at least under current pricing - than buying the full suite and upgrading each time. Which begs the question; assuming Adobe plans to continue to make the same amount of money as they are currently making, then someone must be paying more.

Under Adobe's new pricing model, it appears that the non-pro market Tony dislikes will actually be subsidizing his software.
Makes you wonder who's really acting entitled...
One problem this created was a sense of “entitlement” among some novice, no-budget filmmakers. Everything should be cheap and anything that cost money was a “rip-off”. A $3000 jib? Rip-off. A $2000 monitor? Rip-off. A $800 light? Rip-off. And so it continued. In fact, when Canon was getting ready to announce their first professional, large-sensor video camera, there were a large number of people who expected the price to be under $4000.
The Entitled Filmmaker | NextWaveDV

2 comments:

FocusPulling (.com) said...

Well said, Michael.

AnticipateMedia said...

I found his comments outrageous, and I actually like Tony Othewise. We laughed about it all on this week's podcast.