mkautzm

Something I always wanted to share with the photoshop crew is how important I feel piracy is to your product.

That might seem really odd, but let me share an anecdote.

Back in the way way back, when photoshop was around 4.0 or 5.0 and was in the 7th grade. My friend introduced me to Photoshop. He of course pirated it because as if a junior high student was going to pay for that product. I then pirated it and before it was all done, probably about a half a dozen of us ended up pirating the product. Using it, learning, and more importantly, getting invested in it.

15~ years later, we all own licenses to Photoshop. Those licenses were purchased on the back of almost a decade of piracy though. If we didn't already know the software and weren't already invested in it as a product, there is no way we would have ever dropped even the 300 dollars we did on a student license, let alone the nearly 800 dollars on a consumer license.

If you think our parents were going to fork over $120/year for that software when we were in 7th grade, you'd be mistaken.

My point from this anecdote is that had Photoshop not been piratable when we were much younger, it would have never translated to a sale more than a decade later. I know this kind of a story isn't unique either. From my experience, expensive and complex software won't just sell because. Whether that's Reason, or Photoshop, or Final Cut, or FLStudio. These are the kinds of products that people grow up with through piracy, then become invested and by the time those kids who pirated it become adults, they are proficient enough to buy their own license and even more importantly, make software purchasing decisions for their careers, partners and companies.

I'd be willing to bet a non-trivial amount of sales of Photoshop come from these kinds of stories. It's very indirect and it's definitely playing the long game, but if you can get teenagers invested in your product before it's actually time to make a purchasing decision either for a business or for personal use, I think that's extremely sustainable and profitable for a business.

The personal investment however has to start with the software creators. You have to make that complex software available. That silently takes to form of piracy, but I'd hope that by now, Adobe has realized that piracy of those kinds of products eventually turns into sales over the long term.

This is hugely at odds with the Adobe Cloud. If you don't create an outlet for the next generation to become invested in your product, then you risk losing your place in the market. It won't happen immediately, but as new young professionals take the place of the previous generation, their purchasing decisions and productivity decisions are going to be different because you can't pirate the cloud. My experience would suggest that not selling and making available a real, boxed license to future versions of Photoshop is, quite frankly, a tremendous fuck up.

As a kid, myself and my sisters had a pretty strict schedule of TV programming we watched when we were at home for the summer.

9:30 - Price is Right

10:30 - Maury

11:30 - Judge Judy

You don't dare interrupt our schedule lest you feel the full wrath of whiny high school students. Then, we found your show very entertaining and now days, I respect the work you do as an entertainer and storyteller, so thanks for your efforts!

A question for you: Is there any segment or idea that you wanted to do that you've never been able to do for some reason or another?

How many people in the upper ranks of big tobacco actually smoke?

Hi Jeremy!

There seems to have been this developing trend where a company calls my cell phone, lets it ring once, and then hangs up. If you call them back, they tell you that 'you are qualified to win a Alaskan Cruise! Just say on the line and...'

I'm on the Do Not call list so does that kind of stuff fall under TCPA stuff?

How did AoL manage to tank Bebo so spectacularly? I mean, something happened between $850m and $1m. What was that thing? Was it initial overvaluation? Classic AoL Mismanagement? Something else?