I use a lot of different types of software. I’m a designer so much of my daily life is spent staring at some application created by Adobe (Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). However I am not on of the uber snooty designers that for some strange reason thing that if you are not using a box that has bitten piece of fruit on it (pronounced “Apple”) on it that you are just a nobody. I believe that in getting the best for my money. Being that I can get a PC with windows on it that runs all the applications that I need, and then some (Games to help me waste time). Plus it’s easy to upgrade and customize a PC. Not to mention that it costs like 1/4 to 1/3 the price to get to the same hardware level that Apple gets away with charging I figure I will forever be a PC user.
That being said I saw today that two companies that keep my work going – Microsoft and Adobe – are releasing or in the process of trying to pump out new versions of software for which they are best known for. Adobe with the CS4 and Microsoft with a new version of Windows, currently called Windows 7. Now as I sit here an contemplate these, I of course have to wonder if it will be worth it to delve into either of these products when released in the coming weeks/months. You see, I really like CS3 that Adobe released a while ago (it seems like just a couple of weeks ago to me, but time flies I guess). And to be honest I have truely yet to get up to speed with using Flash 9 and AS3 (the programming language for Flash 9 for those of you not familiar with that abbreviation – meaning ActionScript 3). I also am so busy that I don’t quite feel that I have found all the great things my Photoshop CS3 Extended can do, and I don’t really use many of the features new to Illustrator CS3 – upgraded from CS2. I do however use a lot of the new features in InDesign CS3, so I am very glad that I am not using CS2 just because of that, since I spend so much time in InDesign now…Â So with that in mind I will have to give CS4 a seriously hard look because there could be something new that could make my life so much better in upgrading. We will see though…
As for Microsoft and a new version of Windows, I really would like to have this be a good OS. But is seems like there are hits and misses with it comes to operating systems and versions of operation systems. If you’re some uber geek you may dabble in Linux and Unix and some other kind of ‘nix, but there are so many “distrobutions” of Linux that I gave up on ever trying to make sense of that strange world. As for the fruit company that decided to get into computers, they put out some supposedly “NEW” version of their OSX every 25 minutes or so (that’s just my perception, do not take that as fact), and I have to go with out food for something like a year to get the money together to buy one of their fancy-pants computer boxes. Plus I have spent many hours at my “day” job waiting on my OSX snail to know that is not my chosen path of computing. So that leaves me with the windos OS, not perfect, but just good enough for my needs. In reading about this 7th installment to the Windows family I have to wonder if there will actually be an operation system that will be more useful to me than my current Windows XP. Windows Vista seems to be an outcast, I haven’t used it much but it seems to have fallen victim to bad press and to Microsoft rushing to get it out too soon. I am sure that if more time was taken to develop it in the first place then it would have lasted as long as the trusty XP has and MS wouldn’t be already ready to move on to other things. So I will not be living in Vista land. Just as I (thankfully) was never a regular user of Windows ME. Now Windows 7 may become to Windows Vista what Windows XP was to Windows ME, a child that Microsoft can be proud of (ME, why can’t you be more like you’re brother XP, he’s such a good son…). We will see.
So that brings me to this point. I remember when I was using Photoshop 6, it seemed like there was a much longer period of time between versions of Adobe applications. Now they are putting out completely “new” versions of their whole suite of software titles like every year. The question is, what really denotes a new version? If you take Photoshop 10 and add a new filter and slap a Photoshop 11 label on it, is that really Photoshop 11? To me that would be like Photoshop 10.0.2 or something like that. So really from what I see I am probably using Photoshop 8.1.3 and Illustrator 10.2.4, but I am actually using InDesign 3, there have been 3 true versions of InDesign. Windows 7 will probably be Windows Vista 1.75 (almost a full new verion). So if we’re not getting completely new versions of software why do we have to pay the price of a new version? I say that for each “Version” we should only have to pay the percent of the cost of the previous version that the version is actually new, as compared to the previous version. So if Windows 7 is only 50% new it should only cost 50% what Windows Vista costs. With this in mind Photoshop CS4 (11) should probably cost $10 instead of $1000, because all they are doing is retreading the old versions of Photoshop and they add one new feature.
Seems fair…