Personal Computers: Windows Mac University-. Adobe CC is available to download, and on any Georgia State University managed computer. Here's whyFor Faculty & Staff.It's not the fact that Creative Cloud has a yearly fee. Even though I promised myself I wouldn't, I signed up for yet another year of Creative Cloud.I have been cranky ever since Adobe moved Creative Cloud to mandatory subscription. But at the final hour, muscle memory won out over frugality and semi-righteous indignation. The best VPNs for iPhones, iPads, and iOS in 2021I tried.
![]() You're allowed to run Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, and other supporting apps on up to five machines. The Office 365 Personal plan is $69.99 per year. Wow! Compare that to Office 365Now, compare that to Microsoft Office 365. There is a Black Friday deal on now that reduces that to $39.99 per month, but that's still costly.If I wanted to run Creative Cloud on my four machines, I'd be looking at $1,200 a year or so, and increased inconvenience. That's over $600 per year. Adobe Suites Price Install The OfficeAnd before you tell me that you can't use applications from the Office 365 Home plan to do work for work, I checked. Both are deep applications that have been used in work and at home for years. But really? Photoshop and Illustrator. If you pony up for the Office 365 Home license, you can install the Office apps for up to six people in your family - and each can have up to five installations on five machines.I know that some argument might be made that Photoshop, say, is more complex than Word. What was new was my plan for dealing with it.As many of you know, I just upgraded my main work machine to a spiffy new 2018 Mac mini with all the fixin's. In 2015, I complained that Creative Cloud's licensing was stuck in the pre-cloud era. My plan to switch off Creative CloudCreative Cloud costs almost as much per month as Office 365 costs for a year - and even at that price, I can't run it on all my machines.This is not a new complaint from me. In the past few years, Microsoft's market value has tripled, and, according to The New York Times, on Friday it replaced Apple as the world's most valuable company. Yep, when Photoshop first came to market, it was bonusware for a high-priced slide scanner.I am still not an extreme Photoshop expert, but I have the muscle memory. I've used Photoshop since it was distributed with the Barneyscan, back around 1990 or so. In fact, I was so happy with the change that I decided to go all in on Macs in large part because of the enormous productivity benefits I've been gaining in Final Cut compared to Premiere.Photoshop and Illustrator are the two other main applications I use in Creative Cloud. I've been using Final Cut Pro X and haven't looked back. But I've long used Illustrator to tweak illustrations, move a line here or there, delete elements, and change colors. I don't create illustrations with Illustrator. After all, if you do anything for almost 30 years, you kind of develop some level of proficiency.I've actually been using Adobe Illustrator longer than Photoshop, but in less depth. I just sit down and do it. I would no longer have to be peeved. Instead of paying $600 a year and delicensing and licensing programs every hour or so, or paying $1,200 a year to avoid that inconvenience, I'd pay $100, once, and just have the Affinity programs on my machines. They are quite functionally comparable to Photoshop and Illustrator.My plan was simple. Affinity has no restrictions on the number of machines you can use, as long as they're all on same Apple ID.They're both exceptional programs, deep, and powerful. I bought copies of Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for fifty bucks each. Every time I had to de-license one machine to enable the license on another, I took it personally.So that's why, when setting up the new Mac mini, I decided to switch. Vlc for a macThe images we were provided just wouldn't display properly. It was a work emergency.There was a problem with the images in one of my projects, a project that had to be completed and delivered by 9am the next morning. I had General Tso's, and she had something else hot and tasty. My planIt was about 8:30pm and my wife and I were having dinner at the local Chinese restaurant. It did not survive a week. It would take 30 seconds per image, max. I knew exactly how to do what was needed in Photoshop. I needed to repair the problematic images right away.I needed Photoshop. But each new feature took an hour or two to figure out, and more time to develop proficiency. I'd been using the program for about a week, and during that week I'd learned quite a lot. While my wife took the pooch out for a walk, I shot upstairs to my office to get to work.Also: Adobe XD launches free starter plan, starts $10 million designer fund, aims to boost ecosystemI did not know how to fix the problem in Affinity Photo. I could remain peeved and Adobe abstinent, or I could get my job done on a tight and unyielding deadline.In other words, I could cheap out on principle, or I could pay up, rely on my decades of muscle memory, and do what needed to be done.So, I broke my solemn vow. You have to make the big decisions, choose what's right for the moment, and have integrity at the moment of choice. I'd gone cold turkey on Adobe.There are times in everyone's life when you have to practice #adulting. My leftover Tso's would still be warm.But I didn't have Photoshop anymore. It's also an asset that vendors often squander. When it comes down to it, we have developed a relationship tied to a vendor's interface and product features that's irreproducible, even though cloners often try.This is an enormous asset that vendors have. Even if you go out of your way to learn multiple, competing tools, the main tools you know are the main tools you know. That's when you need to be able to call on your years of experience and skill, and just get the job done.That proficiency, that muscle memory, is a monopoly that application vendors have on us. The value of a muscle memory monopolyWhile there are certainly days when you can take your time and learn new skills, there are also days when you have to perform at the speed of work.
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