
This idea-software as a subscription-is catching on. Instead this software is now available only for rent, for a perpetual monthly or yearly fee. That's what Adobe managed to do this spring when it announced that it would no longer sell Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and its other professional design programs. Even if the overall outcome is a step forward, a bit of customer disgruntlement is just a cost of doing business.Īpparently, however, it's also possible to enrage just about your entire customer base at once.

Any little change will infuriate some subset of your customers: change the layout, change how a feature works, change the system requirements. You can't please all the people all the time, and nobody knows it better than tech companies.
