
Creative Cloud outage leaves Adobe users unable to work - danso
http://www.macuser.co.uk/9015-adobe-creative-cloud-outage-leaves-adobe-users-locked-out
======
nnq
My recipe for dealing with "cranky" proprietary software like this:

Step 1. Buy CC subscription and install what you need.

Step 2. Look for a good patch/crack that makes everything work ofline, and
that still allows you to update.

Step 3. Make peace with the risk of having installed some possible malware on
your machine with the patch/crack (ie. do the sensible thing of doing you
shopping and ebanking on the other dedicated machine you only use for this).

Step 4. Stop caring that step 2 is illegal and get on with your life, you paid
for the damn thing and nobody will really sue you for using it in a way that
breaks the damn EULA anyway...

~~~
abalone
My "recipe" is this:

Uninstall and switch to Sketch.
[http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/](http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/)

I have been so, so happy. Not 100% apples-to-apples of course but it's been
great for my UI design needs, way better than Photoshop/Fireworks.

For bitmap editing I supplement with Pixelmator (only $15!). I used to say
Photoshop couldn't be beat because of insanely hardcore features like content-
aware fill, but then this is happening:
[http://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2014/04/17/sneak-peek-at-
pixe...](http://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2014/04/17/sneak-peek-at-
pixelmator-3-2-sandstone/)

~~~
wishinghand
I do wish there were better alternatives for each and every app in the CC. The
only one that's competently matched is Premiere.

Pixelmator is good, but Mac/OSX only. It also doesn't have adjustment layers,
meaning that if I want a layer to be black and white, I'd have to open it up
separately, desaturate, then import it back in as a new layer, delete the old
one and rearrange.

They finally have a 16bit color, and apparently the content aware fill is
coming.

~~~
Keyframe
Wait, what... where is Premiere matched? I am tied to Windows because of CC.
Namely, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects and AME - all Adobe.
If Adobe only ported their stuff to linux then I could switch completely.
Autodesk already has me covered with Maya and other tools, The Foundry as
well, FadeIn is a great alternative to Final Draft (although I bought both)...
I only need Adobe CC alternatives, especially Premiere - or AVID to port
MediaComposer.

~~~
nitrogen
Sony Vegas Pro is decent.

~~~
Keyframe
Edius is decent too, not close to MC or Premiere though, but neither Vegas or
Edius have Linux versions. Only, close enough, app that is on Linux is
Lightworks - yet it is cumbersome to work with.

------
e12e
And this is why I won't trust SaaS that doesn't provide a _viable_ self-host
solution (which for practical purposes tends to mean Free software, although I
suppose "binary" only self-contained jars might be a realistic alternative).
And also why I can't see myself selling/working on such a solution without
providing some form of _viable_ / _realistic_ exit strategy/alternative.

With traditional apps, you run the risk of eg: your laptop crashing/being
stolen -- but if you _need_ to work, you can just go and pick up a new laptop,
burn an hour or so reinstalling your application(s) -- and hopefully get your
work done by the deadline. With a self-hostable SaaS, you can spin up a
vps/dedicated server and install, maybe even in less time -- but with "closed"
SaaS -- you have no option.

Of course, with all (high-bandwidth) SaaS-solutions, network access becomes a
single point of failure.

~~~
DenisM
We've learned to live with centralized water and electricity and banking, all
outside of our control, rather than rely on on-premises solutions. SaaS, too,
will win out after a few hiccups.

~~~
Udo
In a very real sense our data is an extension of ourselves, a part of our
minds. In contrast water, electricity, and banking are by-and-large anonymous
basic services that have no further properties.

I get that cloud storage people think of themselves as the utility providers
of the future, after all it makes instinctive sense to want to own something
which consumers will spend their whole lives on. I've been in meetings where
SaaS people gave presentations saying stuff like "...and in the near future
the average person will spend 60% of their total income on cloud services;
let's make that future happen!"

The difference is of course that after a power outage or after changing your
utility providers, everything is back to normal - but after a little "cloud
accident", all your stuff is simply gone. Worse, suppose in that glorious
cloud future a person might end up in a situation where they can't make those
substantial payments to their cloud providers for a time. All their stuff will
be gone, as well. It turns out, we're being re-educated to accept a world
where _everything_ is just rented, not only including the stuff we "bought",
but also the right to keep our very own creative output. Let the severity of
that sink in for a minute.

We're drifting into a setting where basic properties of our digital lives are
taken and then rented back to us at a horrendous markup.

~~~
Fuxy
Exactly and the analogy with the utilities is bad for another reason too.

It makes sense for the utilities to be centralized generating electricity for
every house separately is inefficient and has only become recently viable with
solar panels. Where possible people tend to switch to that for independence or
a combination of both.

Getting water to every house in a city is impossible without it being
centralized.

SAAS on the other hand is not necessary. We can do the same thing without
requiring constant connectivity or by building and app that requires
connectivity only when absolutely necessary for it to work.

However we can't ask for rent if it's not a service. I for one avoid all SAAS
like the plague.

I don't mind one time payments hey if i get enough value from the product I
wouldn't mind the option of donating extra however monthly payments make me
look twice at how much value I'm getting or if i can get it from a product
that requires a one time payment instead.

------
aeberbach
And this is why proprietary lock-in is wrong.

Adobe seem to do all they can to screw up the computer their software is
installed on. On a Mac you are supposed to drag an app into the Applications
folder; to delete it, drag it to trash. Adobe software doesn't work like this.
To install a trial of their software you have to install multiple apps, that
can't be easily removed, and put up with their stupid Adobe logo in the title
bar even when you're not using their software. You can't even use a trial
without signing up for a "Creative Cloud" account.

Adobe's "Creative Cloud" is a great example of how to alienate and annoy your
customers.

(Don't get me started on Flash)

~~~
narrator
What's funny is this is what Quark did in the 90s and then they got their
market share stolen by Adobe. The same thing will happen to Adobe at some
point. There will be so much user frustration that people will pack up and
leave to the first reasonable tool that comes along.

~~~
aeberbach
If you're one of those, I highly recommend Pixelmator - download at
pixelmator.com. My choice for a really simple, easy image editor is Acorn from
Flying Meat Software -
[http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/](http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/).

It's like Apple's Numbers compared to Microsoft's Excel - there are things
that the most sophisticated couple of percent of users will miss, but for most
people it's a great alternative.

Adobe can't die quick enough to make me happy.

~~~
crag
I second this: Pixelmator is great. But most heavy Photoshop users won't leave
Photoshop unless dragged away. It's all they know. Sure they'll kick, scream,
bitch. But suggest something like Pixelmator you get excuses like "But
Pixelmator doesn't have [insert obscure filter that they've only used once in
their life]".

In the end, they'll still stay on Adobe's CC.

~~~
coldtea
Actually Pixelmater doesn't have tons of NON obscure features, professionals
(and image editing enthusiasts) use day in, day out.

We don't just crop, resize and apply some blur.

------
bitL
I find it funny that my graphics card is now faster than the world's fastest
supercomputer in 1997, yet I am forced to "offload" stuff to cloud.

I bought CS6 suite as it became clear Adobe is moving full steam ahead with
CC. I think it is one of those examples where the move serves only company's
interests and doesn't make much sense to users (except for continuous updates
that might accidentally break things as well). The initial pricing might have
been competitive for some packages, for many users however caused substantial
increase if they used to skip one cycle for upgrades. I understand Adobe needs
a predictable revenue stream though I consider this as a flop.

------
abandonliberty
Could this be grounds for a class action?

> Adobe had categorically assured users and journalists, when replacing
> Creative Suite with Creative Cloud in May 2013, that apps only needed to
> check in with the server every 30 days, telling MacUser in a written reply
> that products would continue to work for 99 days in the absence of a server
> connection.

------
codeshaman
Cloud computing is a great theoretical idea, but extremely fragile in the face
of serious crisis, like economic meltdown, wars, sanctions or even natural
disasters.

All the websites, always-on apps, mobile operating systems, etc will be
worthless if (when) the shit hits the fan. In case of global economic
meltdown, the companies would be unable to pay for the huge data-centers, the
providers will go belly up and it would be next to impossible to restore or
recover the data stored in the 'cloud'.

Imagine waking up one day and not having access to the Internet. Try it and
see how much you can do with your computer.

And with Russia under KGB dictatorship (read: insane, evil people), that shit
can hit the fan as soon as this year.

That's why it is imperative to create an offline database of important things
which would be available even when the clouds evaporate.

By 'important' things, I mean open source code (eg. offline github), wikipedia
and other encyclopaedias, scientific works, books, music, movies. From this
angle, I consider thepiratebay to be the most important archive of art that
humanity has collectively produced. I've even started working on some sketches
of a distributed read-only filesystem based partly on the concepts in the
bitcoin blockchain, but I guess a simple solution using torrents plus a
distributed offline index, can do the job just fine. Anyone else thought about
this ?

~~~
rwallace
A simple solution that works now tends to beat a complex solution still on the
drawing board. I'd say go ahead with the torrents plus distributed off-line
index.

------
peterkelly
"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't
even know existed can render your own computer unusable."

\- Leslie Lamport

~~~
pestaa
I consider this quote tounge in cheek. A properly distributed system will keep
your system functioning even when remote components are down.

~~~
cronin101
Unless you require both consistent data and partition-tolerance ;-)

[http://www.slideshare.net/alekbr/cap-
theorem](http://www.slideshare.net/alekbr/cap-theorem)

------
ISL
Does anyone have access to GIMP download statistics for the past ~10 days?

Edit: Answering my own question... Not the main repository, but it's
something.

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-
win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-
win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20GTK%2B%20%28stable%20release%29/stats/timeline?dates=2014-05-01+to+2014-05-16)

~~~
thirsteh
Too bad GIMP is such a crappy alternative.

~~~
tragic
Ehh...depends what you're doing.

99% of the time, I just need to crop an image to a certain size. GIMP is
actually much _better_ than photoshop for this particular exact task. Nice UI
for resizing the selection box in place. Other simple tweaks -
brightness/contrast etc - are handled perfectly competently.

It certainly isn't a drop-in replacement for the sort of magic 'proper'
photoshoppers do. But for a semi-competent web-monkey like me, it suffices
perfectly well on those occasions when imagemagick is too blunt an instrument.

Vector to bitmap conversion sucks, though. Seriously, if IM can do this
without pixellating everything to buggery, why not GIMP?

~~~
bitL
Lightroom is far better for the tasks you mentioned than GIMP. IrfanView or
XnView would be also perfectly adequate for your simple tasks.

Forget about easy skin retouching in GIMP, no 16-bit/channel in official
release yet, forget about high-end fashion photography with GIMP. It's still
not there :-(

------
jacquesm
When I had to go out to buy licenses a few months ago for an intern at our
company and found out that it is no longer possible to buy the regular Adobe
licenses for the latest products we solved this by using competitor products
and open source projects to give us a patched together set of tools.

The money was not an issue, what was an issue is that I think that tools
should not be shoehorned against all logic into a pay-to-play model, they
should just work. Imagine your c compiler or your editor failing to work
because some third party service is down. To me that is not an option.

I hope Adobe learns their lesson and re-instates the licensing model they used
in the past and gets rid of their 'Creative Cloud' nonsense asap.

And if they don't then I hope some competitor will realize this is a huge
opportunity and will jump into the gap opened up here.

Adobe is good, but they can be beaten, especially if they shoot themselves in
the foot (repeatedly).

------
rgrieselhuber
As a result of this outage today, I found myself switching Pixelmator and
Sketch. So far, so good.

~~~
flixic
Best of luck! I have been using Sketch for my job for 3 weeks now. It has its
bugs, but Adobe already lost me as a customer.

------
kbatten
I have a hard time understanding why anyone would lease a service that is
vital to their job, or at least without a backup. If your livelihood depends
on something then spend your money appropriately. Even if you did sign up for
CC you can still have an older version ready to go in a pinch.

~~~
kevingadd
Adobe is increasingly forcing you to do it.

EDIT: For example, can you figure out how to _buy_ Photoshop from this page? I
can't. I've been trying for a couple minutes.

[http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/software._sl_id-
conten...](http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/software._sl_id-
contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_mostpopular.html)

~~~
WebSearchingPro
You have to find it here, I've had this page bookmarked since they started
pushing CC, just in-case.

[http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id-
contentfilt...](http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id-
contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_creativesuite6.html)

~~~
thenomad
Wow! I didn't even realise it was still possible to buy Adobe products the
old-school way.

This is extremely good news.

~~~
uptown
Yes - but it's old versions that will no longer be updated. You can usually
find older versions directly from resellers at Amazon at prices below Adobe's
direct prices.

~~~
dublinben
The older versions also will not accept files created in the newer Creative
Cloud versions. This has been a constant source of frustration at my office.
It's an excellent way for Adobe to encourage/force everyone to buy CC.

------
lotsofmangos
Complete non-hacked photoshop CS2 is freely available with serial -
[http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-
cs2.h...](http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html)

It works pretty well in Wine as well, if you fiddle with the settings.

~~~
taspeotis
If you Google around Adobe released a statement saying that those CS2
downloads and provided serial number are for customers who bought CS2. Adobe
switched off their activation servers but made the serial numbers available to
mitigate that.

~~~
lotsofmangos
They are undoubtedly for those customers, but legally you have to enforce
copyrights to keep them. There is no way that Adobe could argue that they are
still enforcing copyright restrictions on the binaries of CS2.

~~~
nandhp
You're confusing copyright with trademarks. Trademarks must be defended if you
want to keep them (this is logical: if other people are using them, they are
no longer a mark of your trade). That doesn't apply to copyright; it's an
entirely automatic process.

~~~
lotsofmangos
You are right. Thinking it through you can of course put a restrictive license
on stuff that is publicly available, otherwise of course open source would not
work. What Adobe may have done is confused their original license terms by
posting a download with key, so a court is very unlikely to award more than
nominal damages should Adobe get annoyed with it being used, but you are
perfectly correct, their copyright still holds up.

------
girvo
I'm a developer, and I only use Adobes products to pull images and the like
out of Photoshop/Illustrator files given to me by my design team. I don't want
to use Adobes software, as its entirely wasted on me. But I don't think any of
the other apps handle PSD's (a horrid file format) well enough to allow me to
replace them :( Anyone in my position that _has_ replaced them? What should I
look at?

~~~
e12e
I've had fair success using Gimp for similar use-cases -- with the caveat that
that is mostly for design mock-ups made in photoshop (no vector graphics to
speak of).

There's definitely a learning curve, and Gimp still has a long way to go --
but it's passed into "usable" quite a while ago for my uses.

[edit: if anyone knows of other alternatives (preferably that runs on Linux
and/or under Wine, preferably Free software - but also closed source -- I'd
love to hear about it]

~~~
lucaspiller
I used to do this until somebody sent me an Illustrator file. GIMP or any
other free alternative (e.g. Inkscape) I've found won't handle those
correctly.

~~~
schrijver
I recently had to open a simple Illustrator file in Inkscape and it worked
well enough. But yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if it choked on more complicated
stuff. You can of course always ask your clients to save as SVG.

~~~
tripzilch
I found that SVGs between Illustrator and InkScape aren't fully compatible
either. Sometimes objects wouldn't get filled in the same way. Most problems
seemed to be on the Illustrator side, though, not InkScape. Or maybe the other
guy didn't quite know what he was doing, but still that's a real problem, and
he isn't dumb either.

I bet you'd get all sorts of minor glitches and artefacts with even more
complicated vector imagery.

------
vetrom
It really is the moments like this when I look at my stack of Gimp, Inkscape,
Scribus, and Darktable, and am glad that I invested in the alternate solution.

~~~
schrijver
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this: I’d say you’re allowed your
little moment of schadenfreude after having invested all these time in tools
many designers won’t yet take seriously!

The real catch though, is that design work is almost always done in
collaboration—so that it’s not just enough to switch yourself, you need to
find other people to work with who use similar tools.

------
thejosh
Was just restored an hour ago apparently, with no compensation for the
downtime of the people affected....

------
cageface
Bohemian Coding has finally fixed the grid snapping bug that plagued all
previous versions of Sketch so I will definitely not be renewing my CC
subscription when it expires. CC feels like it has much more do with Adobe's
needs than mine.

------
Mandatum
And this is the sticking point for cloud-focussed systems. It's too early to
implement an "always-on" attitude in so many parts of the world. I hope the
backlash to this 24-hour outage (which in some cases will lose clients over)
acts as the poster-child for would-be cloud-only services.

------
pasbesoin
7.5 hours worth of repeated (and I mean _repeatedly_ explaining the situation
to each new contact) tech support calls over a licensing issue that was,
ultimately, a 10 minute fix (allowing for included administrivia) that was
_already sitting available for access /correction on the computer in front of
a "supervisor"._

That left me swearing Adobe would never see another dime from me or people I
advise. And it leaves me repeating this anecdote every time the news surfaces
another story about their cr-p administration systems and support.

And these are the people who are going to be involved in e.g. EME DRM in _our_
browsers? I sincerely hope not.

------
ShaneOG
What should happen due to this outage:

Adobe Management: Oh no, our users cannot work. Let's remove the requirement
for our software to phone home _just to open /work_.

What will probably happen:

Adobe Management: Hmm, maybe let's try to make our servers more available?

~~~
mcmillion
The phone home is apparently periodic. I worked in Photoshop and Illustrator
multiple times yesterday with zero problem.

------
theFletch
I have CC and was able to work fine all day. I wasn't able to sign in but that
has no bearing on me doing my job. Was this something that affected the
licensing servers and I just happened to be lucky?

------
bane
One of the issues with the move to the cloud with formerly desktop software is
exactly this. I used to use the analogy of an army using guns, except instead
of a magazine holding bullets they had a long hose feeding them rounds. It
sounded great to the generals, because instead of carrying around 20lbs of
munitions, the soldiers just needed to carry around their guns. Of course all
it took is for somebody to put a kink in the hose to put them out of the fight
completely.

------
camus2
That's what you get when a business has a monopole on a market.You're now free
to go to competition... not.Put the industry itself is responsible for this.

------
edj
Here's a list of Mac OSX alternatives to everything in the Creative Cloud:
[http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the-
best-...](http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the-best-
alternative-apps-to-everything-in-adobe-creative-cloud/)

------
Mister_Snuggles
Never outsource your core business.

Never outsource critical infrastructure that your core business requires to
operate, unless you have a backup plan. If GitHub goes away, you can switch to
BitBucket. If Digital Ocean goes away, you can switch to Linode. If Adobe CC
goes away, what do you switch to?

------
derengel
I just bought acorn and idraw but everyone here is recommending pixelmator and
sketch :(

~~~
DanHulton
FWIW, I moved from Pixelmator to Acorn and prefer Acorn immensely. Don't feel
so bad.

~~~
zimpenfish
For what little I do that doesn't require spinning up Photoshop on the Windows
beast, I use Acorn on the MBPr. It just feels nicer than Pixelmator to me.

------
blueskin_
Meanwhile, sensible people who don't rent their software are laughing from
CS6.

~~~
gagege
Until CS6 stops being supported by some operating system or processor
architecture in the future.

~~~
blueskin_
x86_64 will never die, it's too pervasive, and as much as mobile fans think
the future is underpowered ARM with the actual processing being done by a
third party sifting through your personal data (who generally use x86_64
anyway), reality isn't following their expectations.

~~~
gagege
I don't know about that.

And anyway, I've had 2 expensive pieces of software meant for professional
production, that just stopped working over the years for various reasons.
"Old" versions of Vegas Video don't work in anything past Windows XP. Same
goes for "old" versions of Pro Tools. Also, with the old Pro Tools, make sure
you don't have a dual core processor, because that breaks it too.

My point is, there are many factors which can suddenly render software
obsolete. I wouldn't expect CS6 to run on anything but really old unsupported
hardware in 5 - 10 years.

One of the best things you can do for your career is to remain flexible about
the tools you use. Always be on the lookout for alternatives.

~~~
blueskin_
Then virtualise it - by the time it doesn't, someone will have Linux-style
containers working in windows.

------
lifeformed
Wait, do you really have to have a constant internet connection to run
Photoshop now?

~~~
DrStalker
Australian here. Using the subscription version of Creative Suite avoids the
$4000 fuck-you-Australia markup they add onto the price of the full version.

So yeah, we don't get to edit photos when the internet is down or Adobe's
servers fail.

------
jawngee
You can still use CC software, you just can't update or have access to their
shitty sync software.

But all the apps work, they don't require an internet connection (for 30 days
at least), so it's not the disaster everyone is making it out to be.

~~~
binarycrusader
No, if you read the very fine article, you'd see that users specifically were
encountering problems running apps. Some users were unable to run the apps
getting unexpected errors when trying to do so despite what you say.

------
l0stb0y
I wasn't a fan if CC at first but it's turned into an incredibly good deal for
me at $30 per month. A little downtime from time to time can't be avoided.
People just love to complain.

~~~
smtddr
_> >A little downtime from time to time can't be avoided. People just love to
complain._

If you feel this way then image-editing isn't your core task in your job.

Imagine if the github.com maintainers had your attitude. _" Meh, some downtime
here 'n there. Whuchagonnado?_" A github outage for __OVER 24 HOURS__ would
freakin' wreck me and my coworkers. The image-editing department for a high-
fashion magazine in New York or Paris with those already near-impossible
deadlines losing 24hrs is going to make some execs somewhere very angry.

~~~
sureshv
I would think git's distributed nature would make this a lesser issue. You
would just have to set up another remote target and push/pull from that (say
on AWS or some other provider).

~~~
e12e
Sure. But not having access to the tickets database might cripple a team
pretty badly.

One reason I'm still toying with the idea of trying fossil[1] "for real"
and/or find/make a tool that distributes issues within mercurial/git like
[http://www.bugseverywhere.org/](http://www.bugseverywhere.org/)

Note-to-self: looks like hattawiki might be a nice companion on the path to
"distributed everything":

[http://hatta-wiki.org/Install](http://hatta-wiki.org/Install)

[1] [https://www.fossil-scm.org/](https://www.fossil-scm.org/)

~~~
pedrocr
For a distributed wiki try gollum. It's the wiki engine behind the github
wikis and it's basically a wiki where the database is a git repo. I love it
for family use. I can put up a nice web interface for everyone else to edit
and yet I use git push/pull and my normal text editor. Works great.

