An Open Letter to Adobe About the Premature End of Adobe Touch Apps

25 thoughts on “An Open Letter to Adobe About the Premature End of Adobe Touch Apps”

1. 

   Fireboy 23 December 2012

   “Let them sub­scribe direct­ly with­in the Touch apps’ UIs.”

   Could you imag­ine them pay­ing 30% to Apple from a in-app pur­chase of the cre­ative cloud. NOT.

2. 

   Fireboy 23 December 2012

   “Let them sub­scribe direct­ly with­in the Touch apps’ UIs.”

   Could you imag­ine them pay­ing 30% to Apple from a in-app pur­chase of the cre­ative cloud. NOT.

3. 

   Buck Sommerkamp 2 January 2013

   And some­where in there (to add to your list) – Adobe FINALLY made Photoshop Touch avail­able to those of us with Nexus 7 devices who had been very dis­ap­point­ed (for many months) that Photoshop Touch was not avail­able for this sparkling new tablet. Now that it works on the Nexus 7, it seems that my hope for oth­er Touch apps has been dashed by this sud­den dis­con­tin­u­ance and (as usu­al) ter­ri­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Adobe. It’s like the mid­night vote on the fis­cal cliff – way to qui­et­ly announce some­thing over the hol­i­days. I’m glad I nev­er real­ly trust­ed Proto; it looked so promis­ing but nev­er real­ized its poten­tial. Wow, Adobe…here’s a pota­to gun. Feel free to shoot your­selves in the foot.

4. 

   Buck Sommerkamp 2 January 2013

   And some­where in there (to add to your list) – Adobe FINALLY made Photoshop Touch avail­able to those of us with Nexus 7 devices who had been very dis­ap­point­ed (for many months) that Photoshop Touch was not avail­able for this sparkling new tablet. Now that it works on the Nexus 7, it seems that my hope for oth­er Touch apps has been dashed by this sud­den dis­con­tin­u­ance and (as usu­al) ter­ri­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Adobe. It’s like the mid­night vote on the fis­cal cliff – way to qui­et­ly announce some­thing over the hol­i­days. I’m glad I nev­er real­ly trust­ed Proto; it looked so promis­ing but nev­er real­ized its poten­tial. Wow, Adobe…here’s a pota­to gun. Feel free to shoot your­selves in the foot.

5. 

   Kevin Stohlmeyer 2 January 2013

   I agree that these apps did not get a fair shake in the mar­ket­place. Many of them were not even released on the iPad until much lat­er than the orig­i­nal May release for Creative Cloud, so how can they say that they were not viable? Also the $9.99 pric­etag for Proto was a bit steep. PS Touch was a great val­ue at $9.99 but the oth­er apps were not as hefty. Debut did­n’t even make it to the iPad!

   I am sad to see that Adobe has EOL the major­i­ty of these prod­ucts instead of phas­ing out the 1–2 prod­ucts that were not need­ed (Kuler and Collage) and pro­mot­ed the remain­der (Proto/Debut) with a new price point and more aggres­sive mar­ket­ing. I for one loved Debut and the abil­i­ty to view native/raw Creative Suite doc­u­ments with­out hav­ing to con­vert to a jpg or PDF to view on my tablet.

6. 

   Kevin Stohlmeyer 2 January 2013

   I agree that these apps did not get a fair shake in the mar­ket­place. Many of them were not even released on the iPad until much lat­er than the orig­i­nal May release for Creative Cloud, so how can they say that they were not viable? Also the $9.99 pric­etag for Proto was a bit steep. PS Touch was a great val­ue at $9.99 but the oth­er apps were not as hefty. Debut did­n’t even make it to the iPad!

   I am sad to see that Adobe has EOL the major­i­ty of these prod­ucts instead of phas­ing out the 1–2 prod­ucts that were not need­ed (Kuler and Collage) and pro­mot­ed the remain­der (Proto/Debut) with a new price point and more aggres­sive mar­ket­ing. I for one loved Debut and the abil­i­ty to view native/raw Creative Suite doc­u­ments with­out hav­ing to con­vert to a jpg or PDF to view on my tablet.

7. 

   Jeremy H 2 January 2013

   Well said. As an Adobe UGM and a devot­ed Adobe user, I am actu­al­ly get­ting scared off by Adobe’s seem­ing lack of sta­bil­i­ty these last few years. There have been a lot of changes, no clear direc­tion and their mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in gen­er­al is being run as if they were a small start-up soft­ware com­pa­ny. I am hold­ing off on imple­ment­ing Business Catalyst and the Creative Cloud for my com­pa­ny because I am not cer­tain that either will be there in 12 months. As a busi­ness own­er, why would I invest in a prod­uct that I can’t be sure will be there in a few months.

8. 

   Jeremy H 2 January 2013

   Well said. As an Adobe UGM and a devot­ed Adobe user, I am actu­al­ly get­ting scared off by Adobe’s seem­ing lack of sta­bil­i­ty these last few years. There have been a lot of changes, no clear direc­tion and their mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in gen­er­al is being run as if they were a small start-up soft­ware com­pa­ny. I am hold­ing off on imple­ment­ing Business Catalyst and the Creative Cloud for my com­pa­ny because I am not cer­tain that either will be there in 12 months. As a busi­ness own­er, why would I invest in a prod­uct that I can’t be sure will be there in a few months.

9. 

   Pariah Burke Post author2 January 2013

   Interesting per­spec­tive, Jeremy.

10. 

    Pariah Burke Post author2 January 2013

    Interesting per­spec­tive, Jeremy.

11. 

    Worajedt Sitthidumrong 2 January 2013

    Thank you for your valu­able opin­ion and for every com­ments here also.
    I’s one of the Adobe UGM and know how hard to do the same tasks as Pariah with many app announce­ment like this.

    Jeremy’s opin­ion is very inter­est­ing. I’m feel­ing in the same boat. Many time I feel like Adobe Product upgrade isn’t worth over­all. Photoshop may be good. But look at what hap­pen with Flash Catalyst and how much fea­ture upgrade for Flash Pro, and don’t event have to men­tion about Dreamweaver that can’t catch up with the world that changed to web frame­work. Most of the top web design­er nev­er use DW any more. Sublime TextEditor or IDE + good frame­work (that adobe did­n’t sup­port like Bootstrap, Less, Retina Web Support etc..)

    And Proto, one of the app I use fre­quent­ly event it’s not the best. EOL now..

12. 

    Worajedt Sitthidumrong 2 January 2013

    Thank you for your valu­able opin­ion and for every com­ments here also.
    I’s one of the Adobe UGM and know how hard to do the same tasks as Pariah with many app announce­ment like this.

    Jeremy’s opin­ion is very inter­est­ing. I’m feel­ing in the same boat. Many time I feel like Adobe Product upgrade isn’t worth over­all. Photoshop may be good. But look at what hap­pen with Flash Catalyst and how much fea­ture upgrade for Flash Pro, and don’t event have to men­tion about Dreamweaver that can’t catch up with the world that changed to web frame­work. Most of the top web design­er nev­er use DW any more. Sublime TextEditor or IDE + good frame­work (that adobe did­n’t sup­port like Bootstrap, Less, Retina Web Support etc..)

    And Proto, one of the app I use fre­quent­ly event it’s not the best. EOL now..

13. 

    Anthony Sherritt 2 January 2013

    This is pure BULL SH%T! Why do they keep doing this to their com­mu­ni­ty?! I showed every­one in the office Proto and Collage. They were all excit­ed about it. Now, once again like after Flash Catalyst got pulled, I look and feel like a moron. I love Adobe prod­ucts. I pay for them. It is how I make my liv­ing, but now you are real­ly screw­ing with me. Whats next?! You are a huge com­pa­ny. If Steve Jobs could com­mu­ni­cate with his com­mu­ni­ty, why not you?! I’m sick of this. Where can I complain?

14. 

    Anthony Sherritt 2 January 2013

    This is pure BULL SH%T! Why do they keep doing this to their com­mu­ni­ty?! I showed every­one in the office Proto and Collage. They were all excit­ed about it. Now, once again like after Flash Catalyst got pulled, I look and feel like a moron. I love Adobe prod­ucts. I pay for them. It is how I make my liv­ing, but now you are real­ly screw­ing with me. Whats next?! You are a huge com­pa­ny. If Steve Jobs could com­mu­ni­cate with his com­mu­ni­ty, why not you?! I’m sick of this. Where can I complain?

15. 

    Mitch Kloorfain 2 January 2013

    And where does this leave those of us who made the invest­ment on faith that the rela­tion­ship between devices would grow?

16. 

    Mitch Kloorfain 2 January 2013

    And where does this leave those of us who made the invest­ment on faith that the rela­tion­ship between devices would grow?

17. 

    Pariah Burke Post author3 January 2013

    A col­league of mine summed up this sit­u­a­tion by point­ing out that Adobe has val­i­dat­ed it’s crit­ics asser­tion that Adobe does­n’t com­mit to any­thing, that Adobe “dabbles,”–it dab­bles in ser­vices, it dab­bles in mobile, it dab­bles in dif­fer­ent things with­out com­mit­ting to them–and that seri­ous busi­ness­es need to be very wary about align­ing them­selves with Adobe’s dabbles.

18. 

    Pariah Burke Post author3 January 2013

    A col­league of mine summed up this sit­u­a­tion by point­ing out that Adobe has val­i­dat­ed it’s crit­ics asser­tion that Adobe does­n’t com­mit to any­thing, that Adobe “dabbles,”–it dab­bles in ser­vices, it dab­bles in mobile, it dab­bles in dif­fer­ent things with­out com­mit­ting to them–and that seri­ous busi­ness­es need to be very wary about align­ing them­selves with Adobe’s dabbles.

19. 

    Stephen Burns 3 January 2013

    Hey every­one,

    Interesting news.

    I would like to hear more from Adobe as to their rea­sons for dis­con­tin­u­ing some of the touch apps. I am not sure if there is more to the blog post about the EOL announce­ment but it seemed unin­for­ma­tive at best. 

    Pariah, you are cor­rect that it takes time to mature a good appli­ca­tion in devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion and that too many apps to focus on can and will throw off devel­op­ment on per­fect­ing the few apps that we should give atten­tion to. I feel that you could merge the func­tion­al­i­ty of sev­er­al of the apps into one like make Kuler an inte­gral part of Adobe Proto and/or Photoshop Touch & Adobe Ideas. Or make the func­tion­al­i­ty of Adobe Ideas inte­grate with Photoshop Touch. 

    I feel that the func­tion­al­i­ty of what should be one or two apps have been seg­ment­ed into many for the pur­pos­es of more income for the com­pa­ny but at the sac­ri­fice of cre­ative flex­i­bil­i­ty of the user.

    I agree that the touch apps should be rethought instead of giv­en the EOL sta­tus. Now I am curi­ous as to oth­er respons­es to this announcement.

20. 

    Stephen Burns 3 January 2013

    Hey every­one,

    Interesting news.

    I would like to hear more from Adobe as to their rea­sons for dis­con­tin­u­ing some of the touch apps. I am not sure if there is more to the blog post about the EOL announce­ment but it seemed unin­for­ma­tive at best. 

    Pariah, you are cor­rect that it takes time to mature a good appli­ca­tion in devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion and that too many apps to focus on can and will throw off devel­op­ment on per­fect­ing the few apps that we should give atten­tion to. I feel that you could merge the func­tion­al­i­ty of sev­er­al of the apps into one like make Kuler an inte­gral part of Adobe Proto and/or Photoshop Touch & Adobe Ideas. Or make the func­tion­al­i­ty of Adobe Ideas inte­grate with Photoshop Touch. 

    I feel that the func­tion­al­i­ty of what should be one or two apps have been seg­ment­ed into many for the pur­pos­es of more income for the com­pa­ny but at the sac­ri­fice of cre­ative flex­i­bil­i­ty of the user.

    I agree that the touch apps should be rethought instead of giv­en the EOL sta­tus. Now I am curi­ous as to oth­er respons­es to this announcement.

21. 

    Sally Cox 3 January 2013

    I whole­heart­ed­ly agree with Pariah on this issue. As a train­er and ACP, I have tire­less­ly pro­mot­ed these tools from Day One. I ad access to them and the Touch Tools team long before their release. I devel­oped a video train­ing series on them and worked to cre­ate work­flows that made sense for design­ers. I demoed Proto for Bay Area Mobile short­ly after the release, and maybe peo­ple pur­chased it that evening. Now, with no notice, these tools are being dis­con­tin­ued and we are left to answer our clients’ questions. 

    Adobe has a long-standing rep­u­ta­tion for lis­ten­ing to cus­tomers and that seems to have been aban­doned in recent years. Clearly, no lessons were learned from the deba­cle of last year. I plead with you, Adobe, don’t aban­don tools that i urged so many peo­ple to pay $9.99 for less than a year ago. This under­mines my author­i­ty and cre­ates yet anoth­er dis­con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ty who so cher­ish your products.

    It is wide­ly assumed apps you pur­chase in the App Store will con­tin­ue to be sup­port­ed, and not aban­doned less than a year after their release. All the work I have done to pro­mote them, my video train­ing, all of it is garbage now. That is very dis­heart­en­ing, indeed.

22. 

    Sally Cox 3 January 2013

    I whole­heart­ed­ly agree with Pariah on this issue. As a train­er and ACP, I have tire­less­ly pro­mot­ed these tools from Day One. I ad access to them and the Touch Tools team long before their release. I devel­oped a video train­ing series on them and worked to cre­ate work­flows that made sense for design­ers. I demoed Proto for Bay Area Mobile short­ly after the release, and maybe peo­ple pur­chased it that evening. Now, with no notice, these tools are being dis­con­tin­ued and we are left to answer our clients’ questions. 

    Adobe has a long-standing rep­u­ta­tion for lis­ten­ing to cus­tomers and that seems to have been aban­doned in recent years. Clearly, no lessons were learned from the deba­cle of last year. I plead with you, Adobe, don’t aban­don tools that i urged so many peo­ple to pay $9.99 for less than a year ago. This under­mines my author­i­ty and cre­ates yet anoth­er dis­con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ty who so cher­ish your products.

    It is wide­ly assumed apps you pur­chase in the App Store will con­tin­ue to be sup­port­ed, and not aban­doned less than a year after their release. All the work I have done to pro­mote them, my video train­ing, all of it is garbage now. That is very dis­heart­en­ing, indeed.

23. 

    Pariah Burke Post author3 January 2013

    @Stephen Interesting per­spec­tive there, that maybe the Touch Apps should have been few­er in num­ber but indi­vid­u­al­ly more capa­ble. I can cer­tain­ly see that position.

    Either way, there is… was… a tremen­dous poten­tial in the Touch Apps that went unre­al­ized. They were too ear­ly in devel­op­ment. I bought mine–out of pock­et, no reimbursement–because I saw their val­ue increas­ing with lat­er releas­es. I saw them get­ting more capa­ble indi­vid­u­al­ly as well as offer­ing tighter inte­gra­tion with each and the desk­top applications–that IS the whole point of Creative Cloud Connection. I think many others–both those that already obtained the apps as well as those watch­ing the Touch Apps’ futures–felt the same way. The poten­tial was abort­ed too early.

    The man­ner of the abor­tion was decid­ed­ly un-Adobe-like… At least, it’s not like the Adobe that was pri­or to the last 2 years. Maybe this is just anoth­er sign that Adobe has indeed changed.

24. 

    Pariah Burke Post author3 January 2013

    @Stephen Interesting per­spec­tive there, that maybe the Touch Apps should have been few­er in num­ber but indi­vid­u­al­ly more capa­ble. I can cer­tain­ly see that position.

    Either way, there is… was… a tremen­dous poten­tial in the Touch Apps that went unre­al­ized. They were too ear­ly in devel­op­ment. I bought mine–out of pock­et, no reimbursement–because I saw their val­ue increas­ing with lat­er releas­es. I saw them get­ting more capa­ble indi­vid­u­al­ly as well as offer­ing tighter inte­gra­tion with each and the desk­top applications–that IS the whole point of Creative Cloud Connection. I think many others–both those that already obtained the apps as well as those watch­ing the Touch Apps’ futures–felt the same way. The poten­tial was abort­ed too early.

    The man­ner of the abor­tion was decid­ed­ly un-Adobe-like… At least, it’s not like the Adobe that was pri­or to the last 2 years. Maybe this is just anoth­er sign that Adobe has indeed changed.

25. 

    Anthony Sherritt 3 January 2013

    I see the mod­el Adobe is going for like with the Edge prod­ucts. Test new prod­ucts in small releas­es, per­fect them, then fold them in to a larg­er prod­uct. Great. But they aren’t charg­ing $10 a piece for those. And how can they yank func­tion­al­i­ty with­out pro­vid­ing a replace­ment? So Proto was­n’t right? Fine. It’s already built. Continue to sup­port it, let it out for free if need be, while you fig­ure out how to put it into a Dreamweaver touch app, etc. That short para­graph which amount­ed to “We’ve decid­ed to go a dif­fer­ent way,” was a real betray­al and slap in the face. What way could they pos­si­bly be going next?

26. 

    Anthony Sherritt 3 January 2013

    I see the mod­el Adobe is going for like with the Edge prod­ucts. Test new prod­ucts in small releas­es, per­fect them, then fold them in to a larg­er prod­uct. Great. But they aren’t charg­ing $10 a piece for those. And how can they yank func­tion­al­i­ty with­out pro­vid­ing a replace­ment? So Proto was­n’t right? Fine. It’s already built. Continue to sup­port it, let it out for free if need be, while you fig­ure out how to put it into a Dreamweaver touch app, etc. That short para­graph which amount­ed to “We’ve decid­ed to go a dif­fer­ent way,” was a real betray­al and slap in the face. What way could they pos­si­bly be going next?

27. 

    Stephen Burns 3 January 2013

    Thank you Pariah for the response. I have a feel­ing that Adobe should start see­ing apps as a more sophis­ti­cat­ed tool instead of just mini appli­ca­tions. Adobe has the abil­i­ty to change the mean­ing and appli­ca­tion of touch apps by get­ting them pret­ty close to the func­tion­al­i­ty of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver from a touch per­spec­tive. That is what I would like to see hap­pen. In addi­tion keep the price low under $9.99 or if pos­si­ble as was put “make them free”. With this being a sol­id deci­sion by Adobe I sus­pect that they have a myr­i­ad of rea­sons that has yet to be shared. It would be good to share them and get thoughts or solu­tions from the community.

28. 

    Stephen Burns 3 January 2013

    Thank you Pariah for the response. I have a feel­ing that Adobe should start see­ing apps as a more sophis­ti­cat­ed tool instead of just mini appli­ca­tions. Adobe has the abil­i­ty to change the mean­ing and appli­ca­tion of touch apps by get­ting them pret­ty close to the func­tion­al­i­ty of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver from a touch per­spec­tive. That is what I would like to see hap­pen. In addi­tion keep the price low under $9.99 or if pos­si­ble as was put “make them free”. With this being a sol­id deci­sion by Adobe I sus­pect that they have a myr­i­ad of rea­sons that has yet to be shared. It would be good to share them and get thoughts or solu­tions from the community.

29. 

    Rachel Luxemburg 3 January 2013

    Hi Pariah,

    Just to let you & the com­mu­ni­ty know, there was a tech­ni­cal glitch on the Creative Cloud blog that sent all the sub­mit­ted com­ments straight to a spam fold­er. This has been fixed and the sub­mit­ted com­ments are now live on the site. Apologies for the issue and we do appre­ci­ate the feedback.

    -Rachel

30. 

    Rachel Luxemburg 3 January 2013

    Hi Pariah,

    Just to let you & the com­mu­ni­ty know, there was a tech­ni­cal glitch on the Creative Cloud blog that sent all the sub­mit­ted com­ments straight to a spam fold­er. This has been fixed and the sub­mit­ted com­ments are now live on the site. Apologies for the issue and we do appre­ci­ate the feedback.

    -Rachel

31. 

    Pariah Burke Post author4 January 2013

    Hi, Rachel.

    Excellent! Thank you for mak­ing sure that hap­pened and for let­ting us know all those pend­ing com­ments have been published.

32. 

    Pariah Burke Post author4 January 2013

    Hi, Rachel.

    Excellent! Thank you for mak­ing sure that hap­pened and for let­ting us know all those pend­ing com­ments have been published.

33. 

    Pariah Burke Post author4 January 2013

    Earlier today Adobe updat­ed Jill’s post. I don’t feel the update was wise. My rea­son is explained in the com­ment I sub­mit­ted on Jill’s post; it has­n’t shown up yet on Jill’s post, so I’ll reprint it here:

    Thank you for the update, Jill, though it does­n’t real­ly say any­thing among all those words. I real­ly hope that isn’t the final, offi­cial word on the subject.

    You did­n’t address the main issue of the dam­age the deci­sion and method of EOL does to Adobe’s cred­i­bil­i­ty. In fact, the update exac­er­bates the sit­u­a­tion by being unapolo­getic and imply­ing Adobe would end of life future apps in the same man­ner if these apps, regard­less of cus­tomer opin­ions, aren’t liv­ing up to an arbi­trary inter­nal stan­dard you don’t appar­ent­ly see fit to reveal.

34. 

    Pariah Burke Post author4 January 2013

    Earlier today Adobe updat­ed Jill’s post. I don’t feel the update was wise. My rea­son is explained in the com­ment I sub­mit­ted on Jill’s post; it has­n’t shown up yet on Jill’s post, so I’ll reprint it here:

    Thank you for the update, Jill, though it does­n’t real­ly say any­thing among all those words. I real­ly hope that isn’t the final, offi­cial word on the subject.

    You did­n’t address the main issue of the dam­age the deci­sion and method of EOL does to Adobe’s cred­i­bil­i­ty. In fact, the update exac­er­bates the sit­u­a­tion by being unapolo­getic and imply­ing Adobe would end of life future apps in the same man­ner if these apps, regard­less of cus­tomer opin­ions, aren’t liv­ing up to an arbi­trary inter­nal stan­dard you don’t appar­ent­ly see fit to reveal.

35. 

    Sean Corfield 5 January 2013

    I’m sur­prised to hear you say this sort of behav­ior is a recent change at Adobe, although I’ll agree it’s got­ten much worse late­ly. I left Adobe in ear­ly 2007, after six years with Macromedia, because of their inter­nal bureau­cra­cy and “consensus-driven” approach to doing any­thing. Adobe is so risk averse that it con­tin­u­al­ly chops and changes its prod­uct line­up at the first sign of “fail­ure” and has been clue­less about the via­bil­i­ty and pric­ing of prod­ucts for years, cer­tain­ly dat­ing back to when I still worked there. Part of their stat­ed rea­son for buy­ing Macromedia was to improve how they worked with their com­mu­ni­ty, by learn­ing from Macromedia, but that effort seems to have been com­plete­ly aban­doned over the last half decade and they seem to con­stant­ly shoot their com­mu­ni­ty in the foot with lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and bizarre / ran­dom prod­uct direc­tion changes. Last year I real­ized I no longer used any Adobe soft­ware – I’d switched to cheap­er and/or bet­ter alter­na­tives for every­thing. It felt very strange unin­stalling Creative Suite and all their stand­alone soft­ware after it had been such a sta­ple in my dai­ly work­flow for so many years pre­vi­ous. Strange, but also very lib­er­at­ing. I cer­tain­ly would­n’t bet my busi­ness or my rep­u­ta­tion on Adobe these days…

36. 

    Sean Corfield 5 January 2013

    I’m sur­prised to hear you say this sort of behav­ior is a recent change at Adobe, although I’ll agree it’s got­ten much worse late­ly. I left Adobe in ear­ly 2007, after six years with Macromedia, because of their inter­nal bureau­cra­cy and “consensus-driven” approach to doing any­thing. Adobe is so risk averse that it con­tin­u­al­ly chops and changes its prod­uct line­up at the first sign of “fail­ure” and has been clue­less about the via­bil­i­ty and pric­ing of prod­ucts for years, cer­tain­ly dat­ing back to when I still worked there. Part of their stat­ed rea­son for buy­ing Macromedia was to improve how they worked with their com­mu­ni­ty, by learn­ing from Macromedia, but that effort seems to have been com­plete­ly aban­doned over the last half decade and they seem to con­stant­ly shoot their com­mu­ni­ty in the foot with lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and bizarre / ran­dom prod­uct direc­tion changes. Last year I real­ized I no longer used any Adobe soft­ware – I’d switched to cheap­er and/or bet­ter alter­na­tives for every­thing. It felt very strange unin­stalling Creative Suite and all their stand­alone soft­ware after it had been such a sta­ple in my dai­ly work­flow for so many years pre­vi­ous. Strange, but also very lib­er­at­ing. I cer­tain­ly would­n’t bet my busi­ness or my rep­u­ta­tion on Adobe these days…

37. 

    jack Whidden 5 January 2013

    I agree with Steve Burns that Adobe needs to see apps as sophis­ti­cat­ed tools rather than mini apps.

    For some decades now (I go back to PS v.1.0) I’ve felt that Adobe has suf­fered from “larges­sos­i­ty.” If a com­pet­ing prod­uct looks like it’s actu­al­ly mak­ing some real mon­ey, Adobe just tries to buy it out to get it off the mar­ket or if unable to do so, just bring in some soft­ware geeks and add the com­pet­ing fea­tures to its exist­ing prod­ucts. If a small pro­to­type prod­uct isn’t a real­ly super-big win right out the gate, it seems that bottom-line-watching man­agers feel that some VP upstairs is hun­gry to exer­cise his or her pow­er and so the man­agers fear los­ing their jobs and become all too will­ing to throw the fledg­ling prod­uct under the bus. And, frankly, things like apps are just “lite” for tru­ly seri­ous macro-thinking prod­uct man­agers and VPs whose life work is to “climb to the top.” It seems that Steve’s use of the notion of an app being a “sophis­ti­cat­ed tool” might well be a tag that will allow Adobe man­age­ment to see apps in a more prof­itable light.

38. 

    jack Whidden 5 January 2013

    I agree with Steve Burns that Adobe needs to see apps as sophis­ti­cat­ed tools rather than mini apps.

    For some decades now (I go back to PS v.1.0) I’ve felt that Adobe has suf­fered from “larges­sos­i­ty.” If a com­pet­ing prod­uct looks like it’s actu­al­ly mak­ing some real mon­ey, Adobe just tries to buy it out to get it off the mar­ket or if unable to do so, just bring in some soft­ware geeks and add the com­pet­ing fea­tures to its exist­ing prod­ucts. If a small pro­to­type prod­uct isn’t a real­ly super-big win right out the gate, it seems that bottom-line-watching man­agers feel that some VP upstairs is hun­gry to exer­cise his or her pow­er and so the man­agers fear los­ing their jobs and become all too will­ing to throw the fledg­ling prod­uct under the bus. And, frankly, things like apps are just “lite” for tru­ly seri­ous macro-thinking prod­uct man­agers and VPs whose life work is to “climb to the top.” It seems that Steve’s use of the notion of an app being a “sophis­ti­cat­ed tool” might well be a tag that will allow Adobe man­age­ment to see apps in a more prof­itable light.

39. 

    Albert Peña 7 January 2013

    @Pariah. Thank you for post­ing on the Linkedin Adobe Illustrator Group. I read through a major­i­ty of all the respons­es. Agree with a mul­ti­tude of you on here. Using Adobe prod­ucts since 1996? I believe? and since that day ONE of my first Photoshop class at the Art Institute of Dallas.
    I have noticed how Adobe reck­less­ly changes soft­ware like NOBODY ever pays atten­tion. So my hope is that this and oth­er dis­cus­sions and respons­es are fruit­ful. Look for­ward to read­ing more and see what tran­spires on this par­tic­u­lar top­ic. THANKS AGAIN! Pariah for your post­ing. Regards!

40. 

    Albert Peña 7 January 2013

    @Pariah. Thank you for post­ing on the Linkedin Adobe Illustrator Group. I read through a major­i­ty of all the respons­es. Agree with a mul­ti­tude of you on here. Using Adobe prod­ucts since 1996? I believe? and since that day ONE of my first Photoshop class at the Art Institute of Dallas.
    I have noticed how Adobe reck­less­ly changes soft­ware like NOBODY ever pays atten­tion. So my hope is that this and oth­er dis­cus­sions and respons­es are fruit­ful. Look for­ward to read­ing more and see what tran­spires on this par­tic­u­lar top­ic. THANKS AGAIN! Pariah for your post­ing. Regards!

41. 

    Pariah Burke Post author7 January 2013

    I just got off a call with some peo­ple at Adobe, includ­ing Jill Soley, the author of the orig­i­nal Touch Apps EOL blog post. There’s noth­ing con­crete to report yet, but a lot of poeo­ple with­in Adobe are doing quite a lot of talk­ing and brain­storm­ing toward fig­ur­ing out ways to avoid sna­fus like this in the future.

42. 

    Pariah Burke Post author7 January 2013

    I just got off a call with some peo­ple at Adobe, includ­ing Jill Soley, the author of the orig­i­nal Touch Apps EOL blog post. There’s noth­ing con­crete to report yet, but a lot of poeo­ple with­in Adobe are doing quite a lot of talk­ing and brain­storm­ing toward fig­ur­ing out ways to avoid sna­fus like this in the future.

43. 

    Stephen Franklin 10 January 2013

    HI Pariah,

    Thank you for tak­ing the time to write this open let­ter, I will make sure to add the #AdobeTouch hash­tag when I share your post, as it cer­tain­ly sums up my own feel­ings on the untime­ly demise of Adobe Touch apps.

    It was cer­tain­ly a shock to lose such promis­ing apps, espe­cial­ly after inte­grat­ing them into my work­flow. Funnily enough I found Collage (the least morned) the most use­ful app of the lot as it pro­vide a quick way to build a mood board while work­ing on design concepts.

    One thing that I think may have been over­looked in this dis­cus­sion is the arrival of Windows 8, which brings the touch expe­ri­ence to the desk­top, lap­top and tablet form fac­tors. CES 2013 has brought with it a raft of new devices which are far more pow­er­ful than an iPad or Android from a Creative pro­fes­sion­als stand­point as they are capa­ble of run­ning full the full blow CS apps. 

    Most of these new Windows “Tablet” devices come with a high­ly accu­rate sty­lus as well which negates the need for pur­pose built touch apps such as PS Touch. I know if I had the choice between a cut­down ver­sion of Photoshop or the real deal in a sim­i­lar form fac­tor with the accu­ra­cy and pres­sure sen­si­tiv­i­ty of a sty­lus, I would choose the later. 

    So with the above in mind I think it’s only a mat­ter of time before most of us get tired of car­ry­ing around mul­ti­ple devices and pay­ing for apps that only pro­vide a small frac­tion of the cre­ative options that a desk­top class appli­ca­tion provides.

    Still, I liked the sim­plic­i­ty of a the Adobe Touch apps, and they will be sore­ly missed from my workflow.

    Cheers, sf d-)=

44. 

    Stephen Franklin 10 January 2013

    HI Pariah,

    Thank you for tak­ing the time to write this open let­ter, I will make sure to add the #AdobeTouch hash­tag when I share your post, as it cer­tain­ly sums up my own feel­ings on the untime­ly demise of Adobe Touch apps.

    It was cer­tain­ly a shock to lose such promis­ing apps, espe­cial­ly after inte­grat­ing them into my work­flow. Funnily enough I found Collage (the least morned) the most use­ful app of the lot as it pro­vide a quick way to build a mood board while work­ing on design concepts.

    One thing that I think may have been over­looked in this dis­cus­sion is the arrival of Windows 8, which brings the touch expe­ri­ence to the desk­top, lap­top and tablet form fac­tors. CES 2013 has brought with it a raft of new devices which are far more pow­er­ful than an iPad or Android from a Creative pro­fes­sion­als stand­point as they are capa­ble of run­ning full the full blow CS apps. 

    Most of these new Windows “Tablet” devices come with a high­ly accu­rate sty­lus as well which negates the need for pur­pose built touch apps such as PS Touch. I know if I had the choice between a cut­down ver­sion of Photoshop or the real deal in a sim­i­lar form fac­tor with the accu­ra­cy and pres­sure sen­si­tiv­i­ty of a sty­lus, I would choose the later. 

    So with the above in mind I think it’s only a mat­ter of time before most of us get tired of car­ry­ing around mul­ti­ple devices and pay­ing for apps that only pro­vide a small frac­tion of the cre­ative options that a desk­top class appli­ca­tion provides.

    Still, I liked the sim­plic­i­ty of a the Adobe Touch apps, and they will be sore­ly missed from my workflow.

    Cheers, sf d-)=

45. Pingback: Adobe is pulling Touch Apps without telling anyone

46. Pingback: Adobe is pulling Touch Apps without telling anyone

47. 

    Pariah Burke Post author22 January 2013

    Looking for replace­ment tablet apps? I wrote a piece on CreativePro​.com pro­vid­ing replace­ments for Adobe Touch Apps. http://​www​.cre​ative​pro​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​r​e​p​l​a​c​i​n​g​-​a​d​o​b​e​-​t​o​u​c​h-apps

    Many cre­ative pros’ work­flows are dis­rupt­ed by the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of Adobe’s Touch Apps—other cre­atives nev­er even got to try them. Pariah Burke found the apps you need to replace Adobe Touch Apps on your iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets and phones.

48. 

    Pariah Burke Post author22 January 2013

    Looking for replace­ment tablet apps? I wrote a piece on CreativePro​.com pro­vid­ing replace­ments for Adobe Touch Apps. http://​www​.cre​ative​pro​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​r​e​p​l​a​c​i​n​g​-​a​d​o​b​e​-​t​o​u​c​h-apps

    Many cre­ative pros’ work­flows are dis­rupt­ed by the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of Adobe’s Touch Apps—other cre­atives nev­er even got to try them. Pariah Burke found the apps you need to replace Adobe Touch Apps on your iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets and phones.

49. 

    T. A Brunemeyer 12 February 2013

    I do flags, I do ban­ners, I do signs. Little ol’ men and women come in and want flags ban­ners and signs. The have no idea what a PC is let alone vec­tor or raster art. I am not an artist or I don’t call myself one but it’s nice when I can whip out my iPad take a snap and build a new piece for my cus­tomer. Now I am not their yet I can get around in Illustrator and inkscape but when I found ideas the oth­er day I thought to myself ‘this is gonna be good’ now I see that though ideas isn’t gone (yet?) sup­port and hype for the touch apps is wan­ing (or thats the impres­sion Im getting).
    Personally I say push this stuff. A Ps that’s so sim­ple my father can use it but has enough depth for pow­er users. Ideas, think about it, so sim­ple a kinder­garten­er can use it that pro­duces pieces that can be used for any size or media out there. As to the rest of em. I haven’t played with em yet but I want Kuler on my iPad. I need to have col­or match­ing (PMS please)otherwise it’s all guess work and hav­ing some cus­tomer say “I did­n’t want that blue, I want­ed THAT blue” real­ly bites.

50. 

    T. A Brunemeyer 12 February 2013

    I do flags, I do ban­ners, I do signs. Little ol’ men and women come in and want flags ban­ners and signs. The have no idea what a PC is let alone vec­tor or raster art. I am not an artist or I don’t call myself one but it’s nice when I can whip out my iPad take a snap and build a new piece for my cus­tomer. Now I am not their yet I can get around in Illustrator and inkscape but when I found ideas the oth­er day I thought to myself ‘this is gonna be good’ now I see that though ideas isn’t gone (yet?) sup­port and hype for the touch apps is wan­ing (or thats the impres­sion Im getting).
    Personally I say push this stuff. A Ps that’s so sim­ple my father can use it but has enough depth for pow­er users. Ideas, think about it, so sim­ple a kinder­garten­er can use it that pro­duces pieces that can be used for any size or media out there. As to the rest of em. I haven’t played with em yet but I want Kuler on my iPad. I need to have col­or match­ing (PMS please)otherwise it’s all guess work and hav­ing some cus­tomer say “I did­n’t want that blue, I want­ed THAT blue” real­ly bites.

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