Adobe Bows To Pressure and Cuts Australian Prices 159
An anonymous reader writes "Software giant Adobe has bowed to public pressure and slashed the price of some of its products for Australian customers a day after being ordered to front a parliamentary committee hearing to explain its excessive charges."
About darn time (Score:3, Interesting)
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I'd like to see what these compulsive updaters think they can do with CS6 that they could not do with CS2. 95% of users of Photoshop do the same fucking things with the current version that they did with it in 1998.
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95% of users of Photoshop didn't pay for it either.
Hardly surprising, considering how blatant some of the warez sites are getting nowadays:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html [adobe.com]
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"95% of users of Photoshop didn't pay for it either."
Maybe, but don't get cause and effect reversed.
Research over the last decade and a half has consistently shown that the majority of people who infringe software copyright do it precisely because they can't afford the high prices.
Those and similar studies have shown that when software products are offered at prices people feel are reasonable, more people buy and fewer people copy.
There is simply no factual basis for the idea that high prices are caused by copyright infringement. Statistics have cons
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Other then using an application with an acceptable UI.
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Other then using an application with an acceptable UI.
i find the newer photoshops confusing..
gimp isn't that bad nowadays, it even ships with a all in one window option.
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I guess something about free software made easily available bothers some people?
Im going to hazard that most people who have used The Gimp have some familiarity with Linux, and no problem with Linux.
At some point youre going to have to stop and ask why of all OSS apps, The Gimp is the most consistently slammed for having terrible design.
Paint.net has always been far, far superior in my eyes, and costs roughly the same. That I cant view the source code really is no incentive for me to use a terrible, painful to use UI.
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The Gimp's UI is a joy next to Blender.
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The main failing of the GIMP IMO is that it takes the approach that the best way to design a UI is to present every option, widget, and tool to you at once, and hope that eventually you will get used to it. The reality is that I immediately close it and go to something that I dont have to study to use, because life is too short to have to use a manual to use a photo editor once in a blue moon.
Specifics?
For one, the decision to have all the parts of its GUI as free-floating items that can fall under other d
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Actually, I did most of my graphics learning with GiMP and Inkscape. I did take some classes which involved the use of Photoshop and Illustrator (and others in the creative suite) but I found what most people find as a problem in GiMP and others. It comes down to what one is most comfortable and familiar with. While I was able to quickly adapt what I learned with GiMP to Photoshop, most people don't have the same general ability to adapt knowledge to other platforms. (Say, Windows to Linux.)
I'm not sure
Re:About darn time (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see what these compulsive updaters think they can do with CS6 that they could not do with CS2.
How about run on newer operating systems? How about open files created by someone else who uses CS6, with all effects in place?
95% of users of Photoshop do the same fucking things with the current version that they did with it in 1998.
But they don't run it on Windows 98.
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How about open files created by someone else who uses CS6, with all effects in place?
Ah, yes... the wonderful new advertised feature that everyone is scrambling for!!
Upgrade to CS6! So you can open CS6 files (because we broke backwards compatibility so you'd be forced to upgrade)
Hi. This is FUCKING BULLSHIT you MORON. That's not a feature... that's EXTORTION.
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EXTORTION.
You keep using this word....
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1. Open pictures taken with a Nikon D300s without having to use something else to convert them to a format that PS recognizes.
2. Run on a 64-bit OS and use the available memory.
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I work indirectly for Adobe, but I dont speak as company rep, but rather as a nerd.
Mercury engine - uses GPU in many operations. It's especially good in blur and many other plugins. Speed boost is noticable.
Many new tools are making many operations from CS2 easier and faster. Basically it becomes somewhat smarter, for better or worse. All advancedoptions remain as far as I can see.(i have big gap in potoshop usage)
Don't even get me started on Premiere Pro. OpenCL is what video editor users were crying for a
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The "smart autofill" function is effectively magic; that wasn't added in until at least 2010. If you were hanging out on CS1 or CS2 that would be an easy incentive to upgrade.
Re:About darn time (Score:4, Informative)
The "smart autofill" function is effectively magic; that wasn't added in until at least 2010. If you were hanging out on CS1 or CS2 that would be an easy incentive to upgrade.
Or just use GIMP, which already had that feature. [linuxers.org]
Magic? FYI: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from FLOSS.
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While it's great that GIMP has had that functionality for yeas in the form of a plug in, it's useless if the community doesn't know about it, and worse that it's still stuck in purgatory as a PITA 33rd party plugin rather than part of the core program (as it should be). I've used gimp for over 5 years and have never bothered to install a plugin, most tutorials will assume the same.
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"The "smart autofill" function is effectively magic; that wasn't added in until at least 2010. If you were hanging out on CS1 or CS2 that would be an easy incentive to upgrade."
But other products do the same thing, cheaper. Check out Xara for instance. It also does it faster.
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Just looking at various PR photos from back then and now, this statement is easily proven false.
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I'm not a power user, but there are hdr and photo stitching functions that make my life easier.
there's some 3-d type effects that coworkers (who are much more power users than I) use.
text and vector handling is much improved
I don't know about the various Layer types, but I don't think all of the effects style layers ere there back then (nor the entirety of even what I do with non destructive editing).
The selector in cs6 is VASTLY improved.
The various healing brush type tools are better than in 98.
I am not a
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Yes, perhaps 95% of what I do now existed then (probably more), but the remaining few percent saves a lot of time, and I suspect someone that uses Photoshop a couple hours a day would save over 100 hours a week
You must work some long weeks. "This day feels like an eternity!" I've heard of satellite offices but are you an outsourcer on Jupiter or something?
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Thanks for asking. I've only been in the game since CS4 but here's the list of things I couldn't do with CS4 that I can now do with CS6.
Premiere Pro:
Stabilize footage (taking into account rolling shutter from the new HD sensors)
Edit and preview RED scarlet footage in real-time with rgb curves and other effects applied (without a RED Rocket or 3rd party plugins)
Edit and preview AVCHD footage in real-time with rgb curves and other effects applied
H264
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Premiere pro - adjustment layers. Saves a LOT of time applying effects to video clips on the same track. Also, when using a compatible video adapter the software (mercury playback engine) offloads many intensive tasks such as special effects to the GPU (CUDA cores, actually) and that really speeds up the workflow. Native capture/ingest of new high-def video formats which previously required third-party plugins. Plug your camera into a laptop running Prelude/OnLocation and you can watch various lighting/colo
WHARRGARBL (Score:1)
But wharrgarbl government coercion wharrgarbl the Free Market wharrgarbl!
World of WHARRGARBL (Score:2)
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"Actiblizzard is a private company and has every right to charge for World of Wharrgarbl in different countries!"
They probably do have that right. It often costs more to operate overseas than it does at home. But that doesn't explain gouging.
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About time! (Score:5, Informative)
It's much cheaper to buy games on Steam through a proxy - as in about 50% cheaper. It's just completely unfair and I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it.
Creative...Suite? (Score:1)
I hope the other vendors follow suite
I see what you did there.
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actually, I'd say it's cheaper to buy a VPN package.
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I strongly suspect that the US cc helps a great deal.
It isn't this way across the board(obviously, for 'free'/ad-supported services your credit card won't save you at all, and some retailers enforce geographic shipping restrictions); but it is often possible to purchase as an American, so long as you have a US issued cc, even if your IP at that moment suggests that you are abroad. Unless it absolutely can't be avoided(because of some regional licensing deal or something), why would a merchant who sells to A
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>It's much cheaper to buy games on Steam...
As someone earlier said about extortion, "You keep saying that word...."
I think the term you want is closer to "lease". If Steam gets its back up, it can cut you off from the products you "bought". And finding out that you live in .au but bought as if you were in .us might do it.
Steam is only the lesser of two evils when you consider that the greater one is "always connected" DRM.
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It's ridiculously expensive to buy anything in Australia
There, fixed it for you.
I live in London and I find Australia expensive. My wife is from Melbourne and claims she can't afford to move home.
I bought a book from Amazon.co.uk when I was living in Melbourne a few years ago. $45 to buy locally, $33 of which half was the postage to have it flown literally halfway around the world.
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Yeah, tout suite!
Re:About time! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what added protections does Steam grant to a European that aren't granted to an American?
Re:About time! (Score:4, Informative)
You can legally get a refund for a game that does not work. You can legally sell your games. You can legally sell your account. All of these things are impossible in America.
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Valve is incorporated in the United States, and are not bound to those laws, hence you can do none of those things.
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Except that they're not offering services in the EU. They have a website from which people anywhere can buy things, but that does not make it "offering services in the EU" any more than me typing this comment on a website which is viewable from Saudi Arabia makes me subject to Saudi law.
Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a taxation issue - it's an extortion issue. This is pure and simple that (predominantly) American companies double, triple and sometimes a lot more than that the price of digital downloads when destination ==
Considering they're all assembled in China, which is closer to Australia, I don't buy that's it's a freight cost, either. It's long been known that IT companies just jack up the price massively if they're dealing with Australia because we've allowed ourselves to become accustomed to it.
Re:About time! (Score:4, Informative)
>Apple does it with iTunes, Steam does it with games.
I think you're trying to say "Valve does it with Steam", and even in that case, you're not right. Valve leaves the pricing on Steam up to the publishers, as long as they get their 30% cut. Valve's own games on Steam are pretty cheap.
The publishers, in turn, say they have to rip off Aussies because they have legally binding contracts with brick-and-mortar stores (e.g. EB games) promising not to undercut them. If they went against that, they'd likely find all their physical discs dumped in the sea. For now, they still make most of their money from physical disc sales. What they'd really like to do is reduce the price by a fraction and sell vastly more copies to Australians, and they can't do that until the contracts expire or physical sales become irrelevant. At the moment, their main loss is savvy Aussies importing legitimate physical copies of the game from the UK for less than it costs to buy it in the shops.
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So what you're saying is it all points back to the United States (Gamestop Inc)?
Surprise surprise.
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While software isn't quite as bad, I do know that physical goods can be doubled in price in Canada when the company in question is in the US, even when the company in question manufactures and/or ships from Canada.
This tactic is used to "subsidize" the price for Americans by making every other country pick up the slack. I quote "subsidize" since, in the end, it just means "We can maintain our very high profits while still pricing the competition out of existence within our very large domestic market."
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What youre talking about there is corruption, not socialism. Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal are corrupt to the core; states like Germany, UK etc are not. Hence the 'PIGS' states cant control their economies, since half of it is black market.
It's got nothing to do with socialism, and everything to do with common sense. All european states have the same consumer protections and they dont all have their hands in the till.
It is rather ironic that the places that more or less invented political science as a discipline in the west(Greece) and reasonably competent large-scale administration(Rome) are now so feckless about it; but they are.
If it were a 'socialism' thing, you'd really expect much of northwestern europe to be living in corrupt, dystopian hellholes and bribing one another with bags of dried herring passed under the table. Apparently, that hasn't panned out...
I'm Surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm really surprised that they "bowed to pressure". When last I checked, Australian companies could set the price of their goods as they choose and parliamentary testimony had as much authority as the dog and pony shows of the U.S. congress.
The whole thing seems odd to me.
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Australia has a government that desperately needs some wins in an election year. Given Australia's previous form on matters of importation this may well be an attempt by Adobe to head off further weakening of parallel import restrictions. This is a token gesture - note that it only seems to apply to a few mostly consumer grade products.
Australia has already removed parallel import restrictions on quite a few things and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says that any attempt to enforce DV
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But when all vendors are doing it, then there might be suspicions of cartel-like price fixing.
It is of course off and the whole case seem to set new precedent for the global market.
P.S. I wonder if WTO and other trade agreements come into play.
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I'm really surprised that they "bowed to pressure". When last I checked, Australian companies could set the price of their goods as they choose and parliamentary testimony had as much authority as the dog and pony shows of the U.S. congress.
The whole thing seems odd to me.
Most organisms of nontrivial size in Australia are virulently venomous. Adobe is quite used to dealing with toothless legislators(and, indeed, found that the Australian ones were no more toothy than their counterparts elsewhere); but there are a number of venom-injecting structures found in nature that are not classified as 'teeth'. Lobbyist boot-camp doesn't train you on how to respond when a parliamentary committee starts making clicking noises and waving their palps at you.
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I'm really surprised that they "bowed to pressure". When last I checked, Australian companies could set the price of their goods as they choose and parliamentary testimony had as much authority as the dog and pony shows of the U.S. congress.
The whole thing seems odd to me.
Yes, this is clearly Julia Gillards fault.
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Why so high? (Score:2)
Re:Why so high? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they thought they could get away with it. For a long time they were right.
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"Get away with" as fancy-speak for "people were willing to pay that price".
You know, that old fundamental of economics 101.
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Thats like saying "its unfair that Lexus charges $35k for a luxury car. I want a lexus, and I dont have a choice about how much to pay."
Unless you can show something like collaboration (not sure if thats the right term) between Adobe and competitors, thats not how it works. Adobe offers a product that you want, and there are alternatives-- some free-- in this market. According to econ 101, they will set whatever price the market can bear, and if people pay that price then Adobe is providing a service to
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The USD used to be worth a hell of a lot more than its worth now. Even compared to just recently. One of the many fun side effects of the collapse of empire.
About 10 years ago the conversion from USD to AUD was darn near 60 cents to the buck. So a "$600 USD" thing really should cost "$1000 AUD" because of currency conversion rates. Today the ratio is very near 1:1. But if you've trained the kangaroos or whatever to expect to pay darn near twice as much in AUD as USD, then why not keep doin it if they'r
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The devaluation of the dollar has nothing to do with empire collapse and everything to do with fiscal policy by the Fed, they're trying to prime the pump by dumping ridiculous amounts of money into the system (both through zero percent interest rates and through their t-bill and other bond purchasing programs). This will necessarily devalue the USD, which is actually a good thing when you're trying to raise employment and exports (not so good if you're a saver, but there aren't that many of those in the US
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Annoyingly all the partner countries see this as a bad thing and scramble to crush their own economies into dust to help exporters (fucking New Zealand! The $0.85 exchange rate is the only reason petrol is only $2.17 a litre!)
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You sir have hit the nail on the head.
The Australian public was/is conditioned to see these prices from the days when the Australian dollar was less than parity and the software companies just kept asking the same price AU and getting it. Would you really expect the company to adjust the price to every currency exchange fluctuation, especially when it is such an easy way to add to your bottom line?
Don't get me wrong I agree that is gouging when it is to this extent but some of it is understandable when curr
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the aussies might fight back by not selling us Crocodile Dundee sequel movies or WTF they sell us.
Try beef [mla.com.au]. I hear 2012 saw some impact in beef livestock [usda.gov] in US to the point of US seeing an estimated 11% growth in beef imports.
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Quite simple. Higher base wages and a more effective social welfare net leave more money available for general spending. Not having to worry about medical expenses means Australian can spend on other things. So products were priced for not what they are worth but the maximum the market can sustain with the required turnover. It's greed 101 folks wakeup to yourselves. A products value has nothing to do with the price in the current psychopathic corporate market, it is all about the maximum that can be charg
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
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good strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was just thinking that this won't end well. They have just blatantly stated that there was nothing preventing them from doing this before now. I wonder whether owners of the software are eligible for some sort of refund.
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Now what about region locked products ? (Score:2)
It surprises me that there is no inquest into DVD charges as well .. They have more control over these than with software, and they strongarm their way into the supply chain, pretending that there is a compelling reason to have to charge more :(
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It surprises me that there is no inquest into DVD charges as well
At least a few cents of the price difference is compulsory classification. The United States has no compulsory classification scheme; it's legal to put a "not rated" movie in stores as long as the retailer trusts the movie's publisher to self-assess the video's target audience. Australia, on the other hand, grants a monopoly to the Australian Classification Board and bans the distribution of any film or video game that it hasn't rated. And in general, these classification boards of smaller countries don't g
Long-term exclusive distribution contracts (Score:2)
they strongarm their way into the supply chain
Part of the problem is that motion picture producers tend to be committed to exclusive distribution contracts with distributors who understand the cultural, legal, and logistic peculiarities in a particular market. These long-term contracts tend to have begun before 1997 when DVD came out. And because they're exclusive, it would be a breach of contract for a film's copyright owner to allow anybody but that distributor to distribute copies of the film in that market.
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"And because they're exclusive, it would be a breach of contract for a film's copyright owner to allow anybody but that distributor to distribute copies of the film in that market."
If the price difference is large enough, the film's copyright owner doesn't have to 'allow' anything, they just have to not have any recourse when somebody in country A buys a containerload of cheap DVDs and ships them to country B. First sale, no unauthorized copies made, etc.
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If the price difference is large enough, the film's copyright owner doesn't have to 'allow' anything, they just have to not have any recourse when somebody in country A buys a containerload of cheap DVDs and ships them to country B. First sale, no unauthorized copies made, etc.
Perhaps these long-term exclusive distribution contracts require the film's copyright owner to do its best to grant such a recourse to a regional distributor.
Problem for companies competing internationally (Score:3)
If your business has to pay more than offshore competitors for the tools it uses then you have a major problem.
Strong case could be made that any company that sells it's software at lower cost in other countries should be legislatively compelled to match that within your country, but would need someone powerful (like EU or WTO) to make it happen.
Re:Problem for companies competing internationally (Score:4, Insightful)
Software should be sold as a commodity not licensed.
If country A and country B both had furniture business, and exporter Z arbitrarily sold wood at twice the price to country A, in the medium term the price of wood in country A would approach the cost of country B's cheap wood plus trucking wood from B to A, no huge deal.
But if you licensed fine grain furniture grade oak by the individual plank and certain planks could only be used in certain countries... this is the software license problem...
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Australia and software are not unique (Score:5, Interesting)
While digitally-delivered software is an egregious example of price gouging, it's hardly unique. Sure, Australia is a long way away from most places and it's a very small market (about 22M people). So it's understandable that some goods will cost more, especially if they need local parts and supports: think cars, or even computers (but not bits). But, despite the pervasiveness of the internet, price differentials still exist FAR in excess of those caused by local taxation and tariffs and market sizes.
The US has it very, very good indeed. Why does, say, an Audi cost 30-40% less in California than in Germany, after you remove taxes? Same car (modulo some safety marks molded into some of the parts and other minor differences), same warranty, same service. The only difference is that it spends a few weeks on a boat instead of a few hours on a truck getting to the dealer. Why do the same Chinese-manufactured clothes cost, in some cases, 3-5x more in Switzerland than at Macy's anywhere in the US? How come that Japanese cameras are 30% cheaper in the US than in, say, the UK, or even in Japan?
I think that part of the answer is cultural. As an emigree to the US (22 years ago), one of the things that I first noticed was the national obsession with getting the best price on everything, almost regardless of personal wealth. Americans simply won't put up with price gouging. The clerk at Macy's will take some time to stack coupons and discounts for you to give you the lowest price. People actually negotiate the prices of many things with the seller, e.g. cars. In the UK, a favorite phrase was "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it", which was a not-so-subtle tactic to make you feel somehow inferior for wanting a discount. And I will always remember the look on an American friend's face when, at a UK breakfast place, she asked for a refill of her (tiny) coffee cup and was told that it would be an extra 2 pounds. Try that at any restaurant in the US and witness the riot.
The internet simply causes resentment and envy when people in less fortunate places browse US sites. A lot of people simply order from the US and deal with the customs and shipping hassles (and, sometimes, the lack of local warranty). My Swiss friends bring empty suitcases on trips to the US and fill them up at Best Buy and Macy's; the Swiss tax on bringing stuff in for personal use is very low. I saw one billionaire (literally) friend from Switzerland buy a box of batteries at Best Buy because they're so expensive in his home country.
Mod this guy up! (Score:2)
This is the most insightful, objective item that I've read on this topic in a very long time.
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Re:Australia and software are not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American, I'm proud of the fact that most prices here are negotiable. Sure, it means a little more work to buy the thing you want at a reasonable price. And honestly, it intimidates a lot of people who were raised to be non-confrontational. Whatever, they can pay the full asking price if that's what they want.
You're right, it is cultural. There's a downside to having a low cost of living, however. You still hear just about everyone in the U.S. complain about the price of just about everything. Even while the poorest of our poor still have a higher quality of life than most of the rest of the world. Even if you're homeless and don't have a dime to your name, most cities have shelters where you can sleep and eat for free. (And even these cost too much to run because we effectively have _no_ public mental health treatment system, which is a damn shame. But that's a topic for another day.)
Because luxury goods are so cheap (big houses, big cars, big computers, loads of cheap entertainment), most of the middle class spends money like they're millionaires. As a result they live paycheck to paycheck and don't save enough for retirement. And then they get outraged that social security is paying out less and less because hey, how are they going to afford to retire now that companies don't do pensions anymore? I'm looking out over the parking lot of the corporate building next door and about 10% of the cars are gas-guzzling sports cars while 40% of the cars are SUVs and pickup trucks. I'm betting almost none carpool. These people are burning up huge chunks of their paycheck before they even get it.
Over the past few years, I've been listening to political news on the radio and it floors me how many otherwise normal, sane people seem to think that it's the government's job to provide them with stable employment and retirement. I'm all for social welfare progams that help the poor, but for christ sake, the middle class needs to wake the fuck up and start spending less while saving more. Instead of asking the government to knock on their door and give them even more money to waste.
Re:Australia and software are not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's another thing that I noticed when I came to the US: people have an enormous amount of stuff in their enormous (by UK standards) houses. Even after 22 years in the US, I still can't get over how much stuff is available, and how little it costs. Don't get me wrong: I like stuff. But it's overwhelming how much stuff there is.
You highlight a real US problem, though: people not understanding the time value of money. It's not taught in the schools, AFAIK. This leads to living on credit (which is astonishingly expensive, if, like most people, you use credit cards) and living for "now" versus "the rest of your life". Try explaining to the average person that waiting a few months to save for something saves you 10-80% of the long-term cost (depending on how indebted you are). The classic symptom of this: a car dealer asking you what monthly payment you're looking for when you walk onto the lot. And there are insidious money-sucking prices in the US, too: what the average home spends on healthcare, mobile voice/data and cable/satellite is just incredible. And every marketing genius has figured out the recurring revenue model and many households fall for it, e.g. Sirius/XM for your car(s).
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Very well said. As an American, I have grown up with Stuff, and I, a single woman, have too much stuff for just me. But I also understand that value of my income. I used to max out Credit cards when I was very young, and I learned really quickly how much money I wasted on interest payments for little crap. Now I only put something on Credit card that I know I can pay off that month, or maybe two months to help keep a revolving credit check mark for my Credit scores.
I drive a small car, and if I could saf
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There are a couple of reasons your stuff is so cheap.
Your wages for service workers is crap. It starts at 2.80/hr for waitresses who need tips to survive and is $7ish per hour for Cleaners. Australia is $15/hr for a min wage.
Your cheap food is factory produced high fructose crap making you a nation of obese diabetics and you are now printing money Weimar style after outsourcing all your low IQ work to china and Mexico.
Is it sustainable? Probobably not, but you have a uncanny ability to kick the can down th
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It's culture but it's also the fact that it simply costs more to do business in places like the EU. Not to mention the fact that they have a habit of suing companies left and right and instituting huge fines. These things have a cost and you WILL pay for them at the register. You will never have prices that match the ones in the US for this reason.
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You're right, and a large part of the additional cost of doing business in the EU is because.......everything costs more; businesses buy stuff and services, too. Like Adobe software! How's that for getting back to the topic?
It's a vicious circle. There are large costs of doing business in parts of the US, too, such as in California. Regulations and taxes push up prices there, too, compared to much of the rest of the US. I just got my water bill here in NC: $28 for the month. Same usage in CA used to cost $1
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California does have more regs than NC but that's not the real reason you pay so much more for water. Water is abundant and readily available in NC and the land to process it is much cheaper. California (southern anyway) gets most of its water from Colorado and land and (pretty much everything else) is more expensive by far.
Flash and Reader (Score:2)
Does that mean they have to start paying customers to use their free products?
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If I went out in my backyard and sold pine cones for $6,000 each, we could all agree that's a bit of a high price. The fact that no one would buy them at that price, or at least v
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If you think the price is too high, you don't have to buy it.
So Australians could just turn around and buy a US copy of the product. What? You say they can't? Some sort of market monopoly where Adobe restricts their right to do business which whomever they want?
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The terms of service on the US version are illegal in Australia.
So if an American were to move to Australia and bring their Adobe software with them, what would happen?
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There will still be plenty of others dropping hundreds of dollars on your overpriced software.
Then it's not overpriced as far as Adobe are concerned, really.
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