Not me. I have a client who’s a very sweet old lady who’s business is doing real bio science to treat cancer patients with cannabis extracts.
She’s very easily frustrated with technical problems and definitely has the boomer attitude that if you buy something expensive, it means it’s good. But she’s been getting more and more pissed about enshittification and big software companies screwing over their customers over the last couple years. Adobe’s new TOU has her hopping mad. She has all the research papers she’s worked on over the last 20 years in Creative Cloud.
I’ve been consulting with her off and on for six years and she will get SUPER frustrated with glitches and trouble shooting. I don’t think there’s anything out there that will work for her to ditch Adobe. But I thought I’d ask here, see if there’s anything she might try.
Research papers in creative cloud? I am guessing she is using something like InDesign or illustrator to make pdfs or maybe Acrobat? I think you need to clarify what her workflow entails to get better answers.
But going with my assumptions, it sounds like she can get away with using some kind of Office suit instead, maybe 365? not that it would solve the enshitification of apps problem… But I do consider it a stable program both as installed apps and on the web. There are also endless tutorials and support to get if she is running into issues.
With that said, it is probably not worth it if she is a boomer. It would take a long time to get into a new workflow and it would affect her output. If she is used to adobe she should probably stick to it.
Research papers should be typeset with LATEX.
Maybe not necessarily Latex but they definitely shouldn’t keep their work as PDFs and edit PDFs. Should edit in something else and only export as PDF.
Because her papers are PDFs and “Adobe does PDFs.” I was not part of this decision making process.
With that said, it is probably not worth it if she is a boomer. It would take a long time to get into a new workflow and it would affect her output. If she is used to adobe she should probably stick to it.
Yeah, she’s basically dead right?
If she uses software from CC and not only stores data there then I don’t think anything will be able to replace it without frustration. You have to get used to a whole different workflow.
Especially if she has 20 years’ experience with CC apps. All of the deeply entrained jargon, keyboard shortcuts, menu structures… Switching apps after that long takes months of training and practice, and the cost of that training is a key lever of enshittification.
Yeah if I’d be her I’d rather cut my finger off than do that tbh 😅
All software has glitches and any alternative will introduce a learning curve since they are all different from what she is used to.
So I don’t really have an answer.
Pirate an old, pre-CC version.
That’s what I do. Admittedly it’s Photoshop 3.0 on a Mac Quadra.
Does she need photoshop and illustrator and video editing or just word processing?
I’ve been trying to convince my boomer wife to try affinity. She works mostly with print, and it seems like a good fit to me.
If its for research paper storage and organising, why not something dedicated like Zotero? Or even Menedely, that’s more commercially oriented. You can pay for online storage space for either and it names and organises your papers for you. If she is concerned about TOS changes and AI enshittiffication I’d stay away from Menedley though, its an Elsevier product by now (massive scientific publisher).
Seconding Zotero. I truly don’t know how I would be able to keep track of all the research I read through and reference. I especially love that I can highlight passages and attach notes to each entry right inside the desktop app.
The browser connector is also super handy for quickly adding papers to read-through at a later date.
Serif Affinity
