Adobe has taken a small step back in successfully annoying all of its customers by offering the chance to install older versions of the software via the new ‘Creative Cloud Desktop’ application.
Adobe has released the information as part of its new release notes dated 27/05/2014, which clearly state ‘You can now install older versions of Adobe products straight from Creative Cloud Desktop’.
The press release also highlights a number of patch improvements including:
These are your run of the mill patches, which are definitely required based on the feedback from those who have made the jump to the Creative Cloud.
The big news is the fact that you can now use previous versions. The release continues to state ‘these are installed side-by-side with existing versions’. This news will be useful to some, but it seems to undermine the big Creative Cloud applications push.
Creative Cloud customers now have the ability to use previous versions of Creative Suite software alongside the Creative Cloud applications. This is great for those users that require the older version, but if they have already moved up to the Creative Cloud and are using the newer applications is this something they’ll actually need? At the moment my guess is no as there haven’t been any significant updates for the Creative Cloud applications, but this feature will be important for a certain period of time to those users who still require the older versions.
This seems to be neither a long-term, nor short-term solution to the Creative Cloud problem. Those customers that have already moved to the Creative Cloud have probably already spent time and money training staff and making changes to their environment to accommodate the new Creative Cloud structure. Those that haven’t moved to the Cloud may be interested in the move, but my guess is that it won’t make any customers sitting on the fence fall over into the Creative Cloud garden.
To make use of this feature you need to already be part of the Creative Cloud model, so unfortunately nothing has really changed in that respect. However, if you are thinking about making the jump to the non-existent cloud (it’s only the storage!) but were worried about the fact you couldn’t use previous versions, then this feature release may be something of interest to you.
The question is why would you? You already have a perpetual license for the previous version, so why then start paying a subscription to continue to use the software alongside the newer applications? Only move to the Cloud if you will make use of the new features and applications, otherwise you’ll end up paying again for something you already own.
As always with Adobe it was a very low-key announcement. The feeling seems to be that they do not want their customers using older version of Creative software as they put so much effort and time into convincing all of their customers to move to the Cloud based model. However it looks as though they have been forced to make this move to appease its customers. We only have a line from a press release, but it seems like it will be useful to some customers should they still have requirements for using the older versions. The older versions will not have any updates, but if it’s offered as part of the Creative Cloud model you can be sure Adobe will provide security patches for the older applications, especially with their recent issues with security.
I have doubts that this feature will have the legs to be successful long term, as with all software the older versions will quickly become out-dated. Any features that you wanted to use in the older versions will soon be incorporated into the new applications anyway, so it appears that this is merely a stopgap for those unhappy customers who have been forced to ride high in the clouds.