Illustrator is up against Sketchpad or whatever that Autodesk program is called. Premier is constantly up against Avid, of Final Cut. Have you never used GIMP? Dreamweaver has a tonne of competition. And to shy away because they are using online installers and name their licence storage as a cloud is daft. Why would anyone subscribe to wait 3 months or so, to receive a new addition. Whereas Waves in general doesn't update their products at all. You don't have a delay between new features and a full CS version number update. In Waves' case, I would not do it, because I'm in the middle tier of not starting out and needing a bundle, but also not being a pro studio that would absorb a monthly bill.The significant difference is Adobe constantly develop their software, so a subscription model makes sense. Once the product suite reaches that kind of critical mass, it's gonna happen. It did work, in my case, I didn't have all the Adobe video products back when I bought and owned the CS suite and I have to admit I'm now hooked on having all the products for 50 bucks a month. They'd get the young producers starting out, with a 20 a month bundle too sweet to resist, and woo the large studios with 'the full package at an amazing value' subscription. I totally see this as something they have their eye on. They've been filling voids in their product line, like crazy. With Waves, their total package, including SoundGrid, may soon fit that escape velocity criteria. Adobe knew it had reached escape velocity, that it could do it, and so it did. Two decades, and for the pros, nothing filled the void of Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. If a company doesn't have real competition, they'd be compelled to do it, and take that next trivial step of making that the only way. It's the technical foundation, the first step, toward the subscription model where the revenue steam and consolidated support costs are too tempting to ignore.

Waves complete v9r27