When Adobe Systems announced last week that it was charging $99 to registered users to upgrade to InDesign 1.5, I wasn’t the only publisher whose jaw dropped. What? The nerve. Who do they think they are, Quark?
Yes, Adobe Systems surely seems like it’s pretty big for its britches these days, reminding me more and more of the company we all love to hate from Denver, Colorado. Quark’s customer service has long been legendary for its ability to frustrate customers. In the last year, however, the company has made a great effort to change that image (do you have your own story about working with Quark? Use the Vox Box at the top of this story to tell us).
Adobe’s stock price has been climbing steadily since late 1998-following Quark’s failed attempt at a hostile takeover-and the company has been recording record revenue for three quarters in a row now, including $282.2 million in the first quarter of 2000, ended last week, or 24% year over year growth.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Adobe. There’s a reason that so many of their technologies and products are the de facto standard in today’s publishing environments. PostScript revolutionized prepress production, and there’s not a graphic designer today who doesn’t use Photoshop on a daily or even hourly basis. The company makes robust, workhorse technologies that interact as seamlessly as any products do, and I know that I, for one, wouldn’t be where I am today without them (the fact is they’re a current client, and I co-authored a book published by Adobe Press, so their money is definitely in my pocket).
Now Adobe has it too!
But I’m puzzled. Adobe’s technologies are often introduced to the market after other companies have pioneered equivalent features in other products. Take layers. They were introduced in Photoshop 3.0 after FITS Imaging’s Live Picture and Micrografx’s Picture Publisher both had layers and multiple undos. And Adobe Acrobat was initially designed to offer portable documents for cross-platform business communications. Only after prepress professionals saw the potential for its clean PostScript, editability, and page-independent workflow did Adobe finally accommodate their needs with Acrobat 4.0 last year. (And if you may recall, Adobe initially charged for the Acrobat Reader, which can now be downloaded free on the Net. According to Adobe, there are 120 million Reader users-and that number is growing by 100,000 downloads a day-making it one of the most popular software applications in the world).
And now the big push, the big opportunity, is Web design and imaging software. If you read Adobe’s press releases and news stories about Adobe’s record earnings in the last few quarters, you’ll find that everybody likes to attribute the company’s incredible growth to the Web. (A Reuters news story last week even tried to tie Adobe’s increased Acrobat sales to the release of Stephen King’s e-book, “Riding the Bullet,” which can be read as a PDF-don’t get me started.) There’s some truth to that: what’s selling are Photoshop and Acrobat, but both of these are used in print as well as online publishing. According to a recent market study that I saw, very few Web designers are using ImageReady, the-I must say, excellent-Web imaging product that comes bundled with Photoshop 5.5. Adobe’s $999 (list) Web Collection is popular, but folks are buying it for Photoshop and Illustrator, not for GoLive.
Which brings me to the dirty family secret that no one likes to talk about: Adobe’s two graphical Web layout programs-GoLive and PageMill-are pitiful sellers, faring much worse in the market than competiting products: Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage, respectively.
How do they do it?
But what’s even more amazing is that Adobe didn’t even release any new products last quarter, and according to many dealers and resellers that I’ve talked to, InDesign sales are much slower than expectations, especially considering all the Quark-killer hype that surrounded the product’s release last summer. (Dealers also complain that Adobe isn’t providing enough training and marketing resources, hampering their ability to sell InDesign.) The page-layout program’s slow acceptance shouldn’t be too surprising, really, given that publishers must be careful when introducing new software into a production workflow, and most probably wanted to wait at least for InDesign 1.5, if not a later version, so that bugs get fixed and the product is even more fully integrated with PDF and capable of “round-tripping,” which is Adobe’s new buzzword.
The company’s test of customer loyalty last week backfired, but to its credit, it retracted and announced that the upgrade would be free-and therein lies the secret to Adobe’s success. Sure it’s a big corporation, bogged down by its own bureaucracy and always striving to increase profits, but it also truly wants to serve its customers. (I’m not sure the same can be said for Quark.) The result is that Adobe products do what designers need done, with the features that they really need both to unleash their creativity and to be productive. And even if their products are a little late to market, it’s worth the wait because you know the interface will be familiar and the products will integrate well. More important, you’ll be able to achieve efficiencies that you couldn’t before, and the software will take you in directions you didn’t even know you needed to go.
During this second quarter, word is that Adobe will be making several significant product releases. The one I’m waiting for is an upgrade to GoLive, but I won’t hold my breath. Given the company’s recent history, however, I’m awed to imagine how a quarter marked by aggressive product releases and upgrades will drive up its revenues and stock price.
Anita Dennis is a freelance writer and editor who has covered electronic publishing, including Web design and digital printing and prepress, since 1993. Her work has appeared in numerous industry magazines, including Publish, i/o, Red Herring, and TrendWatch and she is the co-author of Web Design Essentials (Adobe Press, 2000).
This article was last modified on March 10, 2025
This article was first published on March 22, 2000
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Having purchased indesign as a replacement for quark 3.3 and 4.0 it didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Adobe is crazy if they think they’ll get my software dollars for an upgrade now. Especially since I still use quark 99% of the time. Wasted money the first time, not twice. Adobe is still trying to penetrate the market for layout software and not in a position to charge outrageous prices to fix their problems with the original version, in my opinion.
To hell with them. I’ll use the $99 towards buying the $300 Quark competitive upgrade. I won’t pay for Adobe Magazine either. They’re as arrogant as Apple, and I wish them just as much ill.
This move by Adobe is just more of the same kind of treatment the design and publication industry seem to get at the hands of software developers. We need the programs to do our jobs, and they know this, so they just charge us whatever they like. I find it very irritating. We just bought 15 copies of InDesign in December. Now I have to shell out another $1500 to upgrade? NOT.
John Zimmerman
Less than 6 mo. after I buy v1.0 they want $99 for 1/2 upgrade – some nerve! They must think they’re pretty special. They had to have known at the time I bought v1.0 that they would be releasing their first upgrade in less than 6 months. Why didn’t they do the right thing and offer a free upgrade for users who purchased v1.0 by a certain date. The unreasonable upgrade costs for Quark were one of the reasons I considered going to InDesign in the first place.
It’s best to wait to get a few upgrades out before purchasing a new product. Fewer bugs.
I have found the pricing on all graphic programs to be out of line. Smaller companies like the one I work for can’t afford to purchase the most current programs or upgrades. It’s a purchase we won’t make for quite some time because we already have Pagemaker and Quark. I don’t see the need to purchase yet another layout program. We have too much money laid out already for the programs we have.
For an Individual to purchase all the programs needed for a work at home situation you nearly have to put another mortgage on the house.
I prefer Pagemaker and am not fond of Quark to begin with, I only use Quark because other companies send their jobs to me in that program.
(By the way Adobe better get on the ball with colleges and 2nd level schools. The schools only use Quark and say that Pagemaker will go away shortly leaving Quark as the only layout program.)
With Adobe’s home page a person cannot find help or make comments on their products.
I am also concerned with the attitudes at Adobe. As a registered user of ImageStyler I was greatly looking forward to the next release. Well, the next release is in Public Beta right now, but Adobe has changed the name and is apparently NOT providing an upgrade path, though it is CLEARLY based upon the same program. They are now calling it Live Motion and have added FLASH type effects to the package.
I can understand changing the name of a product, especially if it adds some radically different capabibilities (like the Flash animations), but I don’t believe in changing the name of a product so that the original purchasers have no upgrade path.
Darren Addy
Internet Specialist
University of Nebraska at Kearney
Slowly but surely, Adobe is sliding down the path of so many before them… Quark, Microsoft, etc. Why do they think that InDesign was initially so popular anyway. It was not the features. It was the strong desire to dump anything with Quark’s name on it. Now Adobe’s proven that they are no better. It will prove to be a total marketing blunder. Quark has to be laughing their rears off.
Sure enough Adobe never release anything bad. This time they released InDesign 1.0 just not good enough. I think the functions in 1.5 should have been there from 1.0. Still, people working in pre-press do a lot of swearing when trying to RIP InDesign jobs. Till these things run smooth I’ll have to stick to the old Quark and keep InDesign for future needs.
If Adobe chooses to adopt the very policies that made me want to bail from Quark at first opportunity, I’ll go back to Quark in a heartbeat. While you can’t think of Quark without thinking of “jerk”, Adobe’s “now that we have you, you’re going to pay” mentality will send me running back in a heartbeat.
What nerve!!!!!
The fact that Adobe basically released a beta program at a discount rate doesn’t release them from the basic fact that I, as a professional pre-press persson, could not use the program. Now, being asked to pay an update fee (even if it were $1.00) is nothing short of outrageous.
Adobe, if you’re listening: give your 1.0 buyers a free update (remember those?) If it works, we’ll be behind you all the way.
i depend very strongly on adobe’s competence for my income, and am extremely intolerant of their lapses. when InDesign and GoLive were announced, i bought them immediately, thinking that they would be indispensible and useful tools. far from it. it’s kind of like the decline that happened at extensis except slower. i think what happened is that too many mba types started taking control of product development and the short term bottom line became more important than having quality product.
instead of using InDesign, i still use Quark, or less often PageMaker. instead of using GoLive, i use the BeyondPress Quark Xtension and give the files to a html freak to make into something useable. i do remember the six hundred dollars i paid adobe for useless code, and i do plan to ignore the next new product aimed at me that they launch.
InDesign locked up my computer and I have been too busy to troubleshoot the problem. Guess I just continue to use Quark.
Microsoft did it with Windows 3.0 by selling buggy and unstable software, then sold various iterations of Widnows 3.1x. Windows 95 was bad, so they came out with SR2 and then Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition. Please, Adobe, you have an excellent reputation, please don’t sully it by stooping to charge for a bug fix. Otherwise you may become known as Adobe, Stunts like Microsoft
Rob Tyler
robtyler@islandnet.com
i tried to talk to adobe about this problem and my other problem also. they, for some reason choosed not to respond to either question. maby the government should step in again looked into their operations..
It seems every time I turn around, Adobe is extracting more dollars from my pocket in the form of upgrades. Each time I get used to Illustrator, another one pops up, costing yet more money in upgrades and training and revised procedures. Although Quark takes forever to issue updates, at least they’re worth the trouble (at least after the first one or two service releases).
I’ve always been uncomfortable with Illustrator, prefering FreeHand. I am going to start migrating my department back to Macromedia products, including Dreamweaver. I’ll keep Photoshop for the time being, but I wish Macromedia would bring out a version of Fireworks geared to print.
Adobe has granted a free upgrade buyers after 2/13/00. The special upgrade from PM6.5 was announced at $299, until 12/31/99. I bought it. The program was unstable & slow. The $299 offer was extended. That was unpleasant enough. To have Adobe now require me to pay even $29.95 feels like punishment, though mild, for having accepted the early upgrade offer.
It is silly to buy a version 1 of a product, and then whine and moan about both its functionality (or lack of) and the cost of an upgrade.
Since anybody who’s been in this business for more than a year knows how much “release” version software is actually “beta”, and since we all got along without whatever the new whizbang product is before it appeared…why not simply NOT BUY it?
If we all just refused to buy the newest versions, the makers would be forced to make sure that what they’re selling is actually READY for USE, not just ready to market.
i just want to say, it is true about what you say in the article.
i being keeping eye on adobe regarding their financial money making.
From reading a couple financial reports about adobe i notice they are making
a huge amount of money. you mention the new about new product coming
out, watch it will be adobe illustrator 9.
I think Quark is going to new this battle now
Indesign hasn’t even fits it printing problem yet this all real sad that had their chance and thae lost.
Do your homework!, Read the message boards!
Adobe is giving the update to those who purchased InDesign at full price(all two of them). If you gave them your support by placing an advanced order, you are S.O.L..
Their introductory price, was to lure customers from Quark’s campsite, and get a decent size initial userbase. I showed my support, placed an advanced order. Adobe shipped me an unuseable piece of software and then expects ME to to pay them to correct the problems.
Adobe should be thanking many of us for giving them our support in an application that wasn,t even shipping yet. Adobe should be thanking us for putting down our hard earned cash when many already have a considerable investment in XPress. Many of us don’t NEED a second layout app, but we showed our support just the same, and now were being thought of as second class citizens.
I agree with most of what you are saying. I like Adobe’s products very much, but this fiasco leaves a bad tast in my mouth. We are still waiting for Adobe to make things right.
I am an avid PhotoShop/ImageReady and PageMaker user and couldn’t live without them. The new web enabling features built into 5.5 have saved me a lot of time and money? And I have been using PageMaker for several years.
The one thing I don’t get about InDesign is, what is it and why should I switch from PageMaker. And why didn’t they just call it PageMaker 7 instead of InDesign. I think that’s the million dollar question.
Adobe is definitely King, but they need to do a better job of asking their subjects before making decisions. They have a database with a lot of our emails. It seems only smart that they would survey us.
Adobe is getting too big, all thier products are so sloppy now.
Adobe’s focus is out of whack they spend all thier time making Illustrator
and GoJive look like Photoshop, instead of improving the user’s experience.
There’s nothing holy about PS’s UI metaphors. They should make it lean and mean.
and get rid of stupid marketing elements like the Online button.
The one thing she didn’t mention is that if you bought the competitive upgrade, which I’ll bet most people did, the upgrade is not free.
Adobe is blowing a chance to take Quark out. We have been very frustrated in our introduction of InDesign to newspaper production.
Also, we are replacing GoLve for Dreamweaver. We can’t wait for an upgrade.
I’ve had a generous supply of Quark’s hard-to-deal-with phone support over the years, but recently I contacted them via e-mail about an incompatibility with Type Reunion and Action Menus. Not only was I personally repsonded to the same day (via e-mail), 2 days later I received a full report indicating their testing and results (both programs will probably never work well with Quark 4.1).
Although that wasn’t the answer I was looking for, I was thoroughly impressed by the experience.