#1 - you didn't do your math correctly. CC is $50/mo and $600/yr. The reference to $375/yr is for guys like me who are using one of the suites which have been available for quite a few years. I use an intermediate suite called "Production Premium". Before that I used another suite called "Web Premium". Those packages were $375 for an upgrade. Full Master Collection was quite a bit more, but it's important to note that I do not have Master Collection, nor do I need it or want it. And I certainly haven't budgeted for it.
#2 - CC costs more in two ways. The first is that it requires you to use either the bargain basement package or the full collection. This is a change in their policy that I do not agree with because it pushes their software back out of my budget. When I'm at work, I use the company's licenses. I own Production Premium for my personal use. Quite frankly, I don't use it all that much at home since I am at work quite a lot. I don't mind paying $375 after nearly 2 years of use to keep my license up to date and my feature set current. It starts to get a bit ridiculous when I am asked to triple that to $600/yr for a bunch of software I don't even want. That was the idea of the intermediate product suites. Adobe has enough customers and their product costs enough that it's reasonable to see mid-level packages. Sony sells their video software in around 6 different tiers, all the way from beginner to experienced home user to serious amateur to 3 levels of Pro with accompanying software. Adobe is now: PS and LR or *everything*. This screws over everyone who owns PS + AI, everyone who owns PS + Premiere, *DEFINITELY* everyone who owns Pemiere + Speedgrade and AE, etc, all the way down the line. The only type of customer this is useful for is a business user. Do Adobe think that personal users and people who don't need the full package are no longer worth their attention? Do they just assume we're going to pirate it anyways, so might as well just let them do that and make all the legitimate paying customers carry that burden by increasing the on-year costs?
The second is that the software breaks if you don't keep paying. This is a half-step shy of extortion. I've got projects that are 2-3 years old and more that I've come back to to pull clips from. With Adobe CC, even if I wasn't using Adobe anymore, I'd need to have paid them $1800 to keep access to those work files for 3 years. Utter insanity.
#3 - You give the self-defeating argument about "if you don't like it". Well here is how that works. If you don't like it, you can stop paying. You end up having paid less for software you didn't want. And all the projects that you worked on while you were evaluating are *GONE FOREVER*.
Give me a break. No company builds their business plan around software that they will use, then stop using. The vast majority of Adobe users are long-term users (which is also why the "first year" of Adobe after coming in from CS is totally meaningless). I control software licenses at my work and for my personal use. For both of these, I view costs in 5-10 year chunks and off into perpetuity. Throw me a bone for a small discount for one year, but increase my overall cost over 10 years by a factor of 3 and I'll notice.
If I don't want to keep using my CC, I cancel and *LOSE ACCESS TO ALL MY FILES FOREVER*. These work files are worth more to me than the software - certainly for a business, this is true by definition. Those work files represent monies earned that must be more than the cost of the software (unless you don't understand ROI). For personal use, this is probably also true, but in a less direct way. If I don't want to keep using my Production Premium CS6, I can stop using it, and keep using it as long as I like. Or if I don't think the software was any good, I can sell it and recover some of my money. You can do that you know... But at least I understand the risks and I could wait 3, 4, 5 years or more to make my decision and still have a product worth something. I've seen people buy older software. I helped someone do that just last month. It was cheaper for them to buy an older version for use with their startup company than to do CC. I think they got AI CS4 for $79 on Ebay. Assuming they use it for 5 years, that's $79 for 5 years vs $1100 for 5 years using the subsciption model. Nice.
#4 - nobody keeps using software forever. But in business, budgets tend to require a lot of work to change. I look at things from the point of view of money in the bank to how far I can stretch it for *every single project I need to do*. I look at how much something is likely to cost, then secure my budget and see how far I can stretch that budget.
You say that after 5 years you will have invested $3000 (math please!) and gotten all the updates. Wow. That's a compelling argument... except for the fact that I have been using Adobe for a while now.
Purchased in 2011, through to 2016 pricing for Production Premium (it wasn't as smooth as that, so there's some assumption that things remain the same) to CS8 for my personal license): Initial buy-in $400 (I got in via educational license). Upgrade in 2013 to CS6. $375. Upgrade in 2015 to CS7 $375. Upgrade in 2017 to CS8. $375 = $1525.
Contrast to CC pricing: $3000.
#5 - why would we expect software to be different from cars? Uhm. I'll give you a hint. Choose any file on your computer. Control-C, Control-V. What just happened? Yeah. Now do that with your car.
How did that work? Nothing? Yeah, that's why software is different from cars. If you send out a car that has a major flaw in it, sending out a bug-fix is *VERY DIFFICULT*. For software, there are challenges, but it's not a lot more difficult than a software distribution model for initial purchases. If you have that worked out, I'm pretty sure you can figure it out. But let's be totally clear about this too. Nobody is asking to have CC for free. Or even any updates beyond the basic support for the package we bought. I'm still using CS6 both at home and in the office. We've had updates to Camera Raw. But my Premiere still can't autosync audio like CC. I do it by hand. Or I could use PluralEyes. No biggy. Before CS3, I used PS 7.0 because I didn't have a strong enough computer for the CS packages and they didn't have enough "bells and whistles" to get me to embrace the performance hit. Not really a big problem.
If my budget doesn't support having all the latest bells and whistles, I can live with that. Sadly, for CC, you either *MUST* take the bells and whistles (and bugs that go along with it) or you lose access to your files. WTF?
#6 - How much Adobe improves over the next 5 years. Spoken like a true newbie. I've been using Adobe for quite a while. The number of things I do in PS (my primary software skill) that I can't do in PS 7.0, CS3 (my favorite version before CS6) or CS4 with actions:
Content Aware fill. Adobe Camera Raw Clarity slider (I like it). Smart Objects (they were around in CS3).
Yep. Three things.
Now that's a bit silly of course because I do use and benefit from the software in more ways than this, but those two represent the value of CS6 to me. But those to me represent value worth paying good money for.
What is there in PS CC? Adobe Camera Raw adjustment layer. Yummy. But the workaround is to just open the image in ACR at the beginning. I have actually done this. Gone back into Bridge, ACR, exported another version of the image, brought it into the main working PSD and put it on the old version of the original image, with several adjustment layers above it. No big deal.
Is that $1200 worth of value for me to have been using CC for the past 2 years? Nope.
#7 - Where is Adobe pushing us middle guys? Well quite frankly, it's pushing me to other software and to piracy. I made a huge effort when I was in Uni and again when I went back to Uni to get legitimate software, but I did use pirate software for a while. I know how it's done and I know how it works. I made the effort to get it legit because I wanted to support Adobe. I felt good about Adobe and wanted to pay them money. I still do. I just don't have enough spare cash to match the requirements of CC. And my feeling towards Adobe has changed. It's not just the price hike that makes it not work. It's also the fact that Adobe has taken away their attention to us middle guys. No Production Suite for you! If you use more than PS/LR, your only choice is to go Full CC. Not only that, but the card they hold in their hand to get us to pay more is basically extortion by holding our own work files for ransom.
That's going to make it a lot easier to make the switch away from paying Adobe because I want to into not paying for it because Adobe is being evil.
Back in 2012, things were so bright. My software was all fully legit. I had a great phone with Adobe PS Touch and it was awesome. Now Adobe has turned things dark and confrontational. They have long black fingers that are clawing at my wallet with one hand while the other hand wraps its fingers around the throat of my work and personal creative projects. PS Touch has been abandoned and is on autopilot since mid 2013 and the newer version requires CC.
Those are not the conditions that elicit a "wallet-opening" response from me.