Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

I just don't get how Adobe didn't get dethroned after being so unpopular for so long. There are so many Photoshop competitors, many of which are quite good, they seem to be ripe for disruption. The last version I used was CS6, which came out more than a decade ago, and even that had more than a good enough feature set.

Blender is slowly taking over 3D, why can't 2D be disrupted similarly?

I'm pretty sure it's because just about every applicable art school has enforced their student's output to be done in adobe's products - meaning that Adobe has a firm grip on the educator's market. As the saying goes, hook them in when they're young and they'll be too lazy and vested to move away from their products for a lifetime.

That is how free market capitalism is supposed to work.

If you do not like products you switch to a competitor. That is the fundamental assumption on which the system is built

To a degree, Oracle was doing the same thing. Years ago I was teaching Data Science courses at the local Uni and Dean pulled me in and asked me if I can teach Introductory course in Web Dev, the current teacher was going on maternity leave. I was like heck yea, LFG. Student reaches out to me few days before the quarter was to start and asks if they need to buy the book since it is $285 (like $500 in today’s dollars). I was taken aback and went to my office and book was actually at my desk, “web development with oracle forms” … :) that was the course that was thought… (I didn’t of course - that was the last quarter I was asked :) )

The problem is that Adobe still makes the best tools in a lot of categories.

They also have the whole ecosystem lock-in model that also worked for Apple: their products work together, so if you try to replace Photoshop, you're probably still using Illustrator, and After Effects, etc. except your workflow isn't as smooth anymore, because there's one tool in the chain that works differently than the rest.

And on top of that, if your clients are Adobe users, you probably will have to be as well or you risk what they send you not opening properly.

Back in the Creative Suite days, my parents (small graphic design studio) upgraded largely because a client upgraded and they needed to be compatible with the newer version of the file format. Creative Cloud "fixed" that, I guess.

> every applicable art school has enforced their student's output to be done in adobe's products

do instructors really require people submit PSDs or do students export their stuff to jpg/png/whatever and submit the export

The end-user relationship with Adobe feels a lot more like a mob protection racket than free market capitalism.