“Adobe next week will unveil Creative Suite 4, a new version of its media design bundle set to ship the following month with features such as enhanced options for working with 3D objects in Photoshop, new Flash document exports from within InDesign, and a new animation model for Flash,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
“The San Jose-based software developer has confirmed the package to include new versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Flash Player, InDesign, Photoshop, and Soundbooth, but will also bundle minor updates to the suite’s remaining components,” McLean reports.
“People privy to private demonstrations of Creative Suite 4 say the update will generally be minor, with only a few new features tacked on to each application,” McLean reports. “‘The lack of compelling new features has been the discussion among many employees and customers that are testing the software,’ one of those people said, ‘with many relating CS4 to a maintenance release rather than a complete new version.'”
“People familiar with Adobe’s plans say the company will continue to offer multiple versions of the Creative Suite, continuing with the same suite configurations. Upgrades for the most popular suite, Design Premium, are expected to be priced at $699,” McLean reports.
Much more in the full article, including screenshots, here.
The more things change…the more they remain the same!
Another yawn from Adobe.
One compelling feature they could add is making the performance not completely suck. CS3 is by far the buggiest most crash-prone version of Adobe software I’ve used in 15 years. They aren’t likely to get any upgrade money from me.
I wish Adobe would spend their time on fixing the current apps then coming out with a $700 upgrade with no new features. If history serves me correct they will break more things than they will fix with a new release. Now they are just ripping us off.
Adobe = mud.
$700 for an upgrade?????? and a minor one at that???????????? I need some of that cool aid they drinking!!!!!!!!
They need to re-write adobe apps from scratch to make use of modern development environments and OS platforms instead of continuing to develop on top of old platforms with fixes and patches that keep it barely running.
Just start again! Write a complete feature list of what the app has and start again. Seriously, they should be making use of the apple cocoa frameworks, core animation, core audio etc… All it will take is one good alternative application and there business is gone. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.
Whatever happened to companies spending time on a good application and supporting it? Freaking Adobe is too busy trying to make a new version so they can bring in some cash. I think that they should go back to the way it was and update individual programs instead of the whole suite. It is like buying an album – 1 good song and the rest crap.
$699. for a minor upgrade! If this is true, I’ll just continue to use CS3. Shame on you Adobe!
This is about a transition — and turning Creative Suite into Adobe’s new cash cow. Adobe is attempting to replace Photoshop’s gigantic revenue stream with a more robust CS revenue stream now that Photoshop has saturated the market and growth has leveled off.
For years, Adobe’s strongest profit-making periods always come during the quarters with Photoshop upgrades, which occurred every 18 months or so. Customers probably have been upgrading other Adobe programs less often. By tying the Photoshop franchise to the CS Suite, Adobe now receives about $700 per customer during these upgrade quarters, rather than $199 from a mere Photoshop upgrade.
This, in-and-of itself, is not a bad thing — if Adobe can maintain a feverish development pace for all CS applications. This CS release may be the first indicator that Adobe can’t easily maintain that pace for each CS application.
Dump your Adobe stock… in this day with the economy so tight, why on earth would anyone spend $700 on a service pack? I hope this comes back to hurt Adobe and its stock.
$700 for a service pack is a rip off and should be illegal. I know no one is forcing me to buy it, but…
“It is like buying an album – 1 good song and the rest crap.”
and that one song requires 4 gigs and no other applications running when you play it in iTunes……
Of course, if you’re a nonprofit, and you bought into the service contract, it’s basically free … except what you paid for the service contract, which is something like $150-200 every 2 years.
$700 is way too much to pay for minor feature upgrades. But if few people pay it, they will be forced to come down. Yet another good reason NOT to support applications in the cloud … because then you’d be REQUIRED to pay the upgrade, or no Photoshop for you.
See what happens when sales starts to run the company???
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Jat,
en
” . . . why on earth would anyone spend $700 on a service pack?”
Yeah, but it might have a few new tool shapes and take only five minutes to quit an app instead of ten!
There is no way I’m paying ANOTHER $700 for CS4. I’ve been working with Adobe products since the mid 80’s and once thought very highly of them. Now, I’m always looking for other software options. C’mon Adobe, give us independent creative types a price break. After all, we were the customers who built your company up in the first place!!
@ Macromancer
I agree about CS3’s buggieness, it freezes and crashes for me regularly and is completely incapable of remembering workspaces, palette locations etc. I have to reset the workspace every time I switch away from the app to another app and back again.
Adobe killed Quark. Who will kill Adobe?
“Who will kill Adobe?”
I think it will be Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, with the Candlestick. If they had a Clue, this could be avoided.
Adobe have been ripping off UK customers for Photoshop for years charging way over the top and getting away with it.
I certainly wont be buying ANYTHING from Adobe in a hurry.
You guys are missing the most important new feature.
New icons.
Macs left out!
Adobe’s flagship product, Photoshop, will become a 64-bit application in the next major revision to the company’s bundle of creative pro applications, Creative Suite 4. However, the 64-bit version will only be available to Windows users because of a change Apple made at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2007.
http://www.macworld.com/article/132810/2008/04/photoshop64.html
This looks to be the first time I’ll skip the upgrade myself. I understand, somewhat, the decision not to make the Mac version of Photoshop 64-bit. Does this mean than once Apple comes out with Snow Leopard next year they’ll bring out CS5 and it’ll be 64-bit?
A lot of my fondness for Adobe died when they killed FrameMaker for Mac. I wish they’d sell it to Apple or someone who can get apps written for the Mac. I loved using that program for nearly all of our document needs.
lemecdutex
Apple used Frame Maker on some documents on something or other in the past year, I forget what it was. But this was after Classic was officially discontinued in their main OS 10.5.
So even Apple likes Frame Maker and uses it even tho they no longer make any hardware that can support it.
What would it take to finally bring FreeHand’s bezier point conversion tools into Illustrator? Allow me to move between pages in a PDF without opening and closing? And simply have the app not crash? THAT last one in and of it self would be worth the price of admission.