Activation a good thing?

RA
Posted By
Richard_A._Ross
Oct 23, 2003
Views
229
Replies
6
Status
Closed
Macromedia sinks on sales news:
<http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5095653.html?tag=nefd_top>

Since Macromedia instituted activation in its product, sales should have gone straight up. No? Or it’s just that Macromedia products all suck so this is happening and Adobe won’t suffer the same fate?
Related Tags
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Y
YrbkMgr
Oct 23, 2003
Macromedia claims it was the lack of an evaluation copy being offered.

"The lack of prerelease evaluation copies was in retrospect a management misstep and sets the upgrade cycle back by 30 days,"

I think it’s activation – although the lack of evaluation copies is, well, a "misstep". Users are wary – companies need to be assured that they can trust users (ergo activation), but there’s no reciprocity.

<shrug>
RH
r_harvey
Oct 23, 2003
For me, it’s Macromedia’s reputation, compounded by Activation. I was looking at Freehand, but the Activation thing kept me away.
RB
Robert_Blackwell
Oct 23, 2003
You gotta give MM some credit. Flash and Dreamweaver are GREAT products, Fireworks is okay too, but I have Photoshop.
Q
QuiGonJ
Oct 24, 2003
I’d also say they charge more than Adobe. I am a registered Director owner, but another $400 a year to upgrade has made me go… I don’t think so.
JW
John_Waller
Oct 25, 2003
Personally, I don’t think slow sales of MX 2004 has much to do with activation. It hasn’t been a big discussion point on Macromedia newsgroups.

I think it’s more to do with a) the "evolutionary" nature of the upgrade
i.e. lack of new features, b) lack of bug fixes for legacy issues, 3) high
price of upgrading, 4) performance issues being experienced by many on PC and Mac platforms.

I’m a long time user of Dreamweaver but this particular iteration of DW is quite a letdown for me.

—
Regards

John Waller
RH
r_harvey
Oct 25, 2003
Macromedia is taking some punches about activation in the forum thread following this Macromedia shares dip 30 percent <http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/10/24/macromedia/> article. While their John Dowdell usually offers a fine defense, he’s surprisingly quiet on this issue. He did say that people often wait until midway between releases before upgrading, but, to me, that means after the first bug fix, which may not happen if the upgrade cycle is too tight.

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