[abalone]

This post is superficially about bad support but the underlying issue is the move to subscription-based pricing (Creative Cloud).

Slightly in Adobe's defense, a subscription model would avoid this particular issue, where the customer needed support for a 4 year old version. Subscriptions just get everyone on a recent version always. The problem of course is that the subscription price is so much more expensive for casual/budget users. Casual users used to skip upgrades because they don't need all the latest features (some would say bloatware). Now they have to pay a minimum of $240/yr (1 app) and as much as $600/yr.

Adobe has essentially screwed these less profitable but very loyal and evangelistic customers in favor of extracting more revenue out of those that depend on Creative Suite. Wall St. responded favorably to this revenue pop but I fear this has (further) damaged Adobe's brand in the long term.

Interesting fact: the folks responsible for the Flash Platform fiasco were rewarded by being put in charge of Creative Suite. It's like the CEO said, sure, Flash worked out great, why not hand them the crown jewels and a shotgun?

BTW I 100% agree with the Sketch recommendation. It's much better than Fireworks or Photoshop for UI-related design.