I've been using Photoshop since version 7, in 2002, and, despite all the company's failings and questionable business practices, was rather fond of Adobe software until their clown of a CEO decided that its users weren't being milked hard enough already and imposed that CC crap upon us all (the technical justification behind the decision more frequent and granular updates , by the way, is a blatant lie, as the CC 2014 moniker might as well have been CS8).
The way Adobe veered off course with their AIR and Flash shenanigans also goes to show just how out of touch they are with the market at large
Seriously, it took a disruptive platform with an incompatible browser and an open letter by Jobs for the web to be finally fixed and purged of proprietary, accesibility-averse plugins and, even then, those morons were in full denial mode for more than a year.
To add insult to injury, they were lucky (or were they?) for not having been the target of an antitrust case on account of their purchase of Macromedia (and the subsequent and, in my opinion, monopolistic, anticompetitive and downright criminal discontinuation of FreeHand; either the acquisition should've been blocked altogether or, at the very least, they should've been forced to sell off all FreeHand-related patents and IP by regulators).
After a long, stable 25-year-long reign, it's safe to say that the barbarians are at the gates already
The Pixelmator, Acorn and iDraw archers came in front and showed the way, and now it's up to the folks at Serif to knock 'em down with their Affinity Photo battering ram.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/
For all the people saying that this won't be a viable contender until it is ported to Windows, I beg to differ; nowadays, the Mac is, more than ever (except perhaps in the early 90's, back when Ps 1.0 was launched first on the Mac and Windows 3.0 was still in its infancy) the dominant platform in creative circles, and it's not like Serif doesn't have a long history of developing Windows applications already.
But anyway, since the cross-platform case is a strong one, I am also predicting that once these guys look at the combined revenues of the Designer, Photo and Publisher components come next year, they will announce a cross-platform Affinity Suite 2 shortly afterwards (whether they scrap the Plus Suite altogether or keep developing it as a Windows-only, Elements-esque prosumer counterpart to Affinity is anyone's guess though if I were in a position to decide that, I *would* bet the company on Affinity, go straight to Adobe's jugular and not even bother with the prosumer market, as that space probably has low margins and an infrequent upgrade cycle) and, well, it could very well be game over for Adobe in the professional photography, illustration and DTP fields (not a small chunk of their overall market, and they have serious competition on the professional audio and NLE markets already, leaving only AfterEffects as an isolated monopoly; as for Lightroom, as Apple has shown us before, I'd venture to say that it's probably not *that* hard to clone or replace, seriously). I don't mean game over in the classical sense that they would file for bankruptcy soon (if ever! Just look at Microsoft; 800lb gorillas, especially those deeply entrenched in a few software niches, can take years to falter) or even lose the market share majority they currently enjoy, but game over as in being forced to seriously rethink their software licencing and pricing model
And only then I, as many other, might consider switching back to Adobe's offerings; however, by then, we will have partially learnt new tools and workflows and, if the support is there (plug-ins, tutorials, overall academic and industry acceptance, etc.), may end up sticking with Affinity. That Adobe doesn't get this and is probably laughing their competitors off while extorting and bullying their loyal users yes, bullying, as in treating them like pirates and making their legally paid and licenced software actually harder to maintain and less reliable than if otherwise pirated just shows that company's deep, culturally entrenched hubris and contempt for all things decent.
