[massysett]

Some users do not want updates.

I understand that updating software takes manpower. Same for running servers for sync or online information or similar.

But I might rather pay once for something that works on my machine as it is now. I need no servers or sync. If I need an upgrade later, I’ll buy it.

I do buy some software as a service but for other software if there’s a subscription I just don’t buy.

[irrational]

Photoshop 6 does everything I ever want Photoshop to do. I wish Adobe would continue to sell a one time purchase copy of PS6 instead of forcing everyone to SaaS. Fortunately I own a physical copy of the PS6 disks that I purchased years ago, so I don’t have a problem acquiring PS6 on any new machines by various means.

[lylejantzi3rd]

A little off topic, but, if you'll indulge me: Why do you think nobody has been able to make a successful alternative to Photoshop? Everybody I know complains about it constantly, and yet it's still the industry standard.

[vunderba]

There are plenty of successful alternatives to Photoshop (Affinity, Pixelmator, Krita, etc). The issue as always is vendor lock-in - when everyone you're doing business with is expecting to be able to collaborate using Adobe then it becomes a huge pain point.

[thayne]

Because Adobe photoshop is what people are tought how to use. It is the same thing with excel. It isn't enough to have a superior product, you also have to overcome the momentum of the prevailing software. That's not to say it is impossible, but Photoshop has a significant advantage.

[SideQuark]

Photoshop isn’t on top simply because people know how to use it. There’s simply no better tool for most users who need that level of photo editing tool.

I’ve never seen a superior product to either Photoshop or Excel. Have you? Maybe they’re on top because they really are good products.

[sys_64738]

I find Excel a clunky piece of junk so use Apple Numbers for my spreadsheet needs. The majority of people probably don't need to pay the M$ or Adobe monthly tax.

[neverartful]

To be fair, you have to pay the Apple tax to use Apple Numbers. It's not monthly (or even a subscription), but it's not a one-time payment if you want the ability to use it over a long period of time.

[herbst]

Googles spreadsheet is much more performant, useable and shareable for me. I also never got warm with excel weird and heavily limited language, no matter how much I tried to.

For Photoshop I agree that no software has the same amount of tools built in. However I have been Happy with gimp ever since, and know plenty of people who prefer Krita or something because their interesting is in drawing and not design.

[SideQuark]

Sheets lags at 1000 rows. Excel allows 1 million. Excel has incredible optimization capabilities, it's numerics are vastly faster (and more accurate, thanks to Javascript being terrible for accurate math). While Javascript (sheets) is decently performant, it's no match for C++ and hand tuned assembly making Excel work. I tried but cannot find a single performance benchmark where Sheets outperforms Excel.

And the first time you need sheets to interact with any of the zillion excel spreadsheets running on the planet (all of finance and pretty much all of corporate America) and it fails and it costs you a contract, you'll switch immediately.

I'm guessing you really don't push either much at all.

Despite Sheets having a free version for almost 20 years, Excel sales are at all time highs. Go figure.

[GoblinSlayer]

I know mspaint better, it starts faster too.

[sneak]

Pixelmator was a wildly successful Photoshop competitor.

Their company was successful too; Apple recently purchased them.

The speculation is that Apple will now compete with Adobe’s subscriptionware.

[trimethylpurine]

Gimp works great. The worst thing about it is the lack of high end YouTube video tutorials. That's what you're really paying for with Adobe, I think.

[araes]

Having used Gimp and Photoshop fairly extensively, I'd agree that Gimp works, and it has the features that Photoshop has (for the most part). However, there's quite a bit of user interface issues with Gimp that make somewhat simplistic activities rather irritating.

Gimp kind of has the Open Source issue where it has tons of features, yet there's a large wall of complexity, zillions of little fiddly knobs to tweak on almost every process, and the interface makes you feel like you need to, because they're all exposed immediately.

Photoshop (personal opinion) is better about having an initially functional feature, with relatively "what you expect" defaults, and then layers of fiddly knobs you can tweak if you "really" want to or need to for a project.

[herbst]

Every time I've used Photoshop the whole UI/UX changed. Buttons are moving around, getting renamed. Some functions are hidden in submenus of submenus, etc.

IMO Photoshop is just simpler because people are usually used to it. In reality Gimp always had a much more reliable UI

[irrational]

I have all the keyboard shortcuts for photoshop in my muscle memory. Those same keyboard shortcuts don't work in, say, Gimp.

[Gigachad]

You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Everyone at every stage is quite happy to make breaking changes without long term backwards compatibility other than a transition period because it’s understood that everything can be quickly updated.

Every time I updated macOS I find that some program stopped working and I just have to update it and it works again.

As well as the fact that most software these days has an online component that has an ongoing cost to provide.

[BenjiWiebe]

Windows is pretty good with backwards compatibility. We bought some software back in the early '00s and it still runs fine on Windows 10. You do have to install the manufacturer's update after installing it off the CD, though. Even though the update says only for win2k machines. :)

[araes]

Frankly, I may have serious issues with Microsoft, yet backwards compatibility is one of the few areas where there's almost nothing to criticize, and MS is almost off the deep end on the other side. You can install stuff from the 90's and it will still have the hardware drivers. It's really kind of ridiculous.

I tried compiling modern software in Visual Studio, and the number of includes for historical support was mind boggling. "Holy s*t, I think MS just added every printer for the last 30 years to my project. There's like a 1000 includes on a 5 file project. Doesn't even print." (maybe a teeny bit of criticism)

[hulitu]

> You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast.

Maybe some engineering course will help. If you make a product that breaks in 6 months, i won't buy it from you. This really means that the amount of testing is minimal and, instead of fixing bugs, you just rewrite the "app" keeping the bugs.

[satvikpendem]

You misunderstand, it is not the application code that changes, it is the code of the environment that the app lives in that changes, macOS is one of the most famous examples of breaking APIs.

[GoblinSlayer]

That's just Apple life: users must constantly pay to keep their stuff working. But if you evade the system API entirely with SaaS, you don't need updates for broken system API. Might as well go with PWA, java or wine.

[bruce511]

The OS is part of it (Apple bad, Microsoft good) but the bigger part is integrations.

Web APIs, import and export file formats, external resources (maps etc) are all part of the equation.

[satvikpendem]

Depends on the size of the company. Perhaps you're simply not the target customer for that company, you self-select out of their customer pipeline which makes it easier for them to handle costs, as it is more expensive to maintain separate SaaS and one-time versions (essentially on-premise, which is often much more expensive and for enterprises who can afford them due to said hassle). However, some solo devs and smaller companies do exist that make only one-time purchase products, because they don't have much overhead.