A guy from Adobe replied in the comments. Apparently Adobe is a bit uncomfortable with the advice that their support rep gave about downloading a pirated copy of the software:Hi, your blog post was brought to my attention. After reading this post, I want to apologize for the way that your issue was handled. Our tech support agent provided you incorrect information as far “that its OK to download pirated software”. This is not a company policy suggestion and should not of been suggested.

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We prefer to provide you a link to download the Adobe software from an Adobe server. Downloading pirated content can contain viruses and cause security issues. I can help you with downloading the software from the Adobe’s server. I have sent you my email via a private message on your contact page. Please contact me at your earliest convenienceThank youScott VAdobe Customer CareFollow us on @AdobeCare. Are you having difficulty understanding Scott's message or intent?I assume Scott's either dumb or careless. If public communication isn't your thing, how hard is it to find someone to proofread your message when you're working at a corporation?

In either case he's not the person Adobe should have handling a PR situation. I think a lot of time is wasted on perfecting spelling/grammar because of comments like the one above.I'm very sympathetic to an engineer or scientist having issues like this, perhaps working in fields where people from all over the world will be working together. On the other hand, if you're working in customer care, written and verbal communication is your thing.

If you're not good at it, that reflects on you and your company and the seriousness with which they take the customer care function.Poor communication started the problems here with this customer so it is an especially touchy subject for Adobe. Hence the way people are reacting.edit: wow, mhurron, why not interact with what people have actually written in its full and intended context instead of assuming the worst about people and knocking over a strawman? Lowest common denominator is a phrase with different meanings in different contexts. It means the LCD in maths (used for simplifying fractional arithmetic) and it also means the 'basest form of something which all members of a population are able to comprehend/use'.There is a loose commonality in the usage but the term 'lowest common denominator' as used here is not the mathematical term. GCF is a mathematical analogy but doesn't work as a direct usage as it would be unclear what the 'factor' is that the people are to hold in common whilst in the original phrase it's clear that the denominator (standard) to be held in common is the sum of language understood and used correctly by all. It is lowest because greater ones can be achieved by excluding proportions of the population that has been used to establish the standard.Whilst I couldn't care less the real meaning I've always assumed that 'I could care less' is a shorthand for something along the lines of 'I could care less but that's too much effort given how little I care about it'.

YMMV.All language can be misunderstood by those who wish to misunderstand it.E&OE. I think it's a matter of etiquette and professionalism. I don't get huffy about minor misspellings most of the time, but this conversation took place in a professional context. Imagine a scenario where you discover that several thousand dollars are missing from your bank account. You don't want them to reply with, 'lol, sry bro. Much stolen funds, wow fraud. We'll look into that.

L8r'When talking with friends I'd probably find that kind of banter (when used in moderation) to be amusing, but I expect a business person to take the time to proofread and spellcheck a message before sending it to me. I'm paying them money, they should show me a little courtesy. I actually see native speakers make the 'should of' mistake far more often than I see non-native speakers make it, probably because it's a mistake based on pronunciation.

Native speakers often incorrectly spell based on pronunciation, while non-native speakers often incorrectly pronounce based on spelling. In fact, the (presumably native-speaking) author of the linked blog post makes such a mistake - he uses the word 'manor' where he should have used 'manner.' Frequent signs of non-native English are improper verb conjugation and article placement, rather than something like 'should of.' Well, I do sometimes make the mistakes you give as examples, but only as I get very tired, when I curiously start to mix up all kinds of homophones and near-homophones with no apparent connection (particularly curious to me since, as you suggested, I picked up English primarily through writing; it's not like I have a habit of sounding out words.

It took many years from I started reading and writing English until I ever used it in a spoken conversation)For the same reason I can't ever see me using 'should of' - it sounds too wrong.It is rarer for me to make the mistakes you list than mixing up completely unrelated homophones, though, as they're definitively ones I'm extra aware of. I hesitated in making a joke on HN, since that never works well here.

I was actually making fun of the practice of having Indian call center employees go by ridiculous American sounding names that couldn't possibly be theirs.I always have to chuckle when you get someone on the line, and they say 'my name is 'Scott', and you have to think, 'No, its not.' I thought that was what the parent meant by 'Scott'.

As in, that's not his real name.It was not an attack on anyone other than the people that run these call centers. Most of the comments thought I was picking on grammar or something, which wouldn't have been very funny.Sorry for any misunderstanding or offense caused. I love jokes. My sense of humor is such, that it doesn't have to take shots at people for things they can do nothing about: the colour of their skin, their looks, their height, the name they're given, how they didn't choose the families they were born into.Still, let's chill out.

And process the half hearted apology of 'sorry if anyone was offended, but not sorry I said it because I don't see the big deal'.I wasn't really that upset by you putting a reasonably accurate looking and long south indian name.It did made me wonder if doing so was really that evolved from making up a willfully ignorant African or Asian inspired name 30-60 years ago. That, in turn, made me wonder if we're really progressing, and what made me write.What's a joke to me, is how little empathy there is when someone is told to change their name to make it more acceptable and easier to pronounce because they're not worth knowing.Maybe it'll start getting better when narrow minded thinking stops telling the world to be more open minded to tolerate their continued close-mindedness. I find it interesting that despite Adobe (and many other companies) fixating on the idea that really what you're buying is the -serial-, not the binary, they don't continue to offer the binary.It runs at complete odds with the claim, and also what is clearly the expectation of the OP.I think we, as humans, have issues with buying 'permission' to use a good, even a digital good; what we want is to -buy- the good. Not license it.

And since when we 'buy' it, it's now ours, it's free for us to share (or so the logic goes).It also seems rather amazing that Adobe's fix would be to tell you to download the software from an illegitimate source, given that the frequent anti-piracy scare tactics are that such downloads are ripe with malware, and will steal your serial, your bank account passwords, your soul, your little dog too, etc etc. They don't offer the binary because cracks and keygens get out that make installing it trivial. And since the version N-1 or more back is still totally useful they don't want to support shooting their own bottom line. What they should do is offer a signed realtime.dmg for logged in users. But since they are Adobe and have their crufty ass codebase head stuck so far up their hard drive they will never do that.It is time for terracotta, porcelain or some other ceramic to start pushing their media wielding wares. Well for one I think without giving a hash value for the data to be downloaded, say a known good torrent, this can only result in tears for the end user.

Adobe pirate releases, notorious for being infected.But to the point of your comment I would be wary of just considering it downloading. If, again using the bittorrent file transfer idea, you download a copy you could very well be considered to be making available the intellectual property for illegal obtainment. I personally wouldn't want to be stating 'support said it was OK' if my ISP or an IP protection firm's lawyers take action. Since Adobe has worked with ISPs to monitor and issue complaints I wouldn't put this out of the realm of possibility. Yet another Adobe story:I paid for CS4, infrequent user, after a couple of hardware changes (SSDs etc) it wouldn't install anymore.

Long Skype call to US (over an hour), treated like criminal.Forget it, I'm your customer taking the burden of your business problems. Happy Acorn user now.So many dollars over the years on PS/Macromedia/etc, never again.So tired of companies treating honest customers like criminals.Edit: how many times have I bought a movie on iTunes to show my kids how to do it right, and then torrented it as I couldn't wait for the download, too slow. This post is superficially about bad support but the underlying issue is the move to subscription-based pricing (Creative Cloud).Slightly in Adobe's defense, a subscription model would avoid this particular issue, where the customer needed support for a 4 year old version. Subscriptions just get everyone on a recent version always. The problem of course is that the subscription price is so much more expensive for casual/budget users.

Casual users used to skip upgrades because they don't need all the latest features (some would say bloatware). Now they have to pay a minimum of $240/yr (1 app) and as much as $600/yr.Adobe has essentially screwed these less profitable but very loyal and evangelistic customers in favor of extracting more revenue out of those that depend on Creative Suite. Responded favorably to this revenue pop but I fear this has (further) damaged Adobe's brand in the long term.Interesting fact: the folks responsible for the Flash Platform fiasco were rewarded by being put in charge of Creative Suite. It's like the CEO said, sure, Flash worked out great, why not hand them the crown jewels and a shotgun?BTW I 100% agree with the Sketch recommendation.

It's much better than Fireworks or Photoshop for UI-related design. I just don't get such people, how can someone be so persistently annoying instead of just downloading the damn software somewhere else?Or maybe connecting an external DVD drive/using Apple Software to connect to some DVD drive over network.Instead this guy wastes his time calling hotlines and writing a pointless blog post - I guess that's what it means to be more productive on a Mac. (Of course, there are people that don't know how to solve such an issue, but this person is probably not one of them). FWIW, I purchased the same CS5 Master Suite with a student/teacher license and opted originally not to receive a copy on optical media (IIRC, it was a bit cheaper that way). At the time, there was no indication that in 4 years, obtaining the software online from Adobe would be an issue.Obtaining the software from other sources is obviously an option, but not one that should be required, especially for someone trying to 'play by the rules.'

EDIT: While I agree that digital-only distribution carries inherent risks to the buyer (and the buyer should normally maintain thier own backup of installation files), I think most people consider that risk to be associated with things like the publisher going out of business or some other major calamity. In this case, it sounds like Adobe is willfully removing these download options (I'm sure the file didn't disappear from Adobe's servers without someone in management deliberately making a decision to remove it) with the intent to encourage people to upgrade. I agree on the last point, this complaint is so casual and frequently expressed. Carrier manuals service. What is the issue?

That they are paid less and the service would be better otherwise? The adobe CEO is Indian too. Fact is that when I work with international teams, the English of Indian team members have been a breath of fresh air compared to ESL European counterparts. This call center first world problem trope is tired.

Would love to see folks deal with call center operators from areas of the UK with more abstract manifestations of English. I was hoping this would be about how annoying the pricing is for Creative Cloud. If I was a designer then I could justify paying that kind of monthly tariff, but as primarily a developer who needs infrequent access to Photoshop or Illustrator the pricing options are just highway robbery. At least in the old days I could pay up front and stretch it out over time to get my money's worth by deciding when and if to upgrade. Adobe is really pushing me as hard as they can towards the competition, and I've been using Photoshop for over 20 years now, so it's no light decision to give up such a familiar UI. Yes I spend more than that on coffee, I drink very good coffee every day and I enjoy it.

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If I used Photoshop every day I would also find their pricing reasonable, but the reality is I can go 6 months without needing Photoshop. I don't need advice on how to afford it, I am not a student and I have plenty of money. My point is that the old pricing model was at least justifiable for me whereas the new pricing model is just not suitable for me in any way. To capitulate to this greedy new regime would be a slap in the face for upstarts like Pixelmator who are doing a great product at a reasonable value, it's no Photoshop, but at least they aren't just trying to juice the orange of all the people that are extrinsically locked into their file formats. Adobe does practically nothing to deter piracy except put the token lock on the shed. Their copy protection has always been trivial to break.

They seem to have worked out that it's better for someone to pirate their tools than it is for them to use a competing, cheaper product. Their bottom line would probably take a huge hit if they were to ever make it less than trivial to pirate.Not sure if this strategy is starting to take a back seat with their new subscription offerings. Seems like they might be trying to bring the pirates into the fold. Time will tell.

Meh, it's an industry monopoly they have on a global scale. And a web developer from india cannot afford the huge price that comes with Adobe Photoshop - so they pirate it.

Don't care personally, what do you they expect, in the real world? Shades of gray and all that.Another example: games.A AAA game costs 60$ on Steam a price 90% of the people online in South America can't afford. So what happened recently? A lot of latinamerican online stores sell Steam games for a much more realistic price. For example, a AAA game costs $30-$40 on sites like Nuuvem.

No offense, but there really aren't 'shades of gray' here. I've definitely pirated things, but not wanting to pay the cost of something doesn't entitle you to spring forth 'illegally downloading' as a justified option.The article's case, where downloading the software legitimately was actually not an option, does establish that other option: he has paid for the software (or the serial, or the dream of software, or whatever), but Adobe has now made it impossible to legitimately access the software. He didn't contact Adobe and say 'I've decided I must use your software, but I do not wish to pay, so it's cool if I pirate, right?' There may not be 'shades of gray' as far as the legality and fact of copyright infringement goes.

But morally, it's certainly not so clear cut. A 14-yr-old me pirated Photoshop and used it to screw around with some filters (I've got little artistic talent) and whatnot. There's certainly no harm done to Adobe in that case - I wasn't gonna buy Photoshop for a total few hours of playing around. Someone living in a poor country that simply could not afford the software is in a similar position.

It doesn't harm Adobe, but locks them in further - just like Microsoft benefited greatly from piracy, too.It's still illegal, but there is clearly different levels of morality. If a large, profitable, studio was pirating software, that's sorta sleazy. People that legitimately can't afford it, eh. There's no way to load PSD files other than paying obscene amounts of money. Both pricing models screw the person who has to occasionally open and view PSDs - the monthly fee screws you unless you're opening and editing lots of files; the one-time fee screws you unless you manage to open a bunch of files before the new version comes out and you're not compatible with what artists/designers are sending you anymore.At least with formats like DOC, there are free reader apps available and free converters, because the format has public specifications and is used for interchange.

In comparison, working with artists and designers is just plain expensive, because they all use Photoshop and the only way to consume their work is to buy Photoshop.You can call the OP names if you want, but I think the larger evil here is what Adobe's done. Honestly, I couldn't remember the name of the company, I'd buried it.Let's see. Oh yeah, Omnipage.The activation was painful, too, involving a key server and a few cut-and-paste operations that were easy to get wrong.I haven't needed to do any OCR in the last couple of years, but I'm sure I'll investigate other options than Omnipage before I'll use their products again.I'm happy to buy software. But I have to be able to use it indefinitely, without activations (which depend on companies still being around) or time-limited licenses that are just designed to fuel an upgrade pump.

I don't insist on source code or freedom, just quality. I'm not on a holy mission, I just won't buy software on bad terms.

I have an issue with the car analogy. First, warranty isn't forever. Bullshit yourself. Cars cost hundreds of times more and typically get just four years of support. Hardware typically gets a year free, and it also costs a whole lot more than software.You didn't pay for any sort of extended warranty. Legally the only warranty required is that at time of purchase it work as advertised.

It did, and while Adobe has an additional warranty they've added, it doesn't say you get everything you wish for just because you want it.Even saying you purchased the full creative suite at $2600, that's $650/year, $54.17/month. You didn't pay all that much for it, slightly less than $2 a day. Even assuming you purchased it near the end of it's life, that's 3 years, making it $72.23/month, which is only $2.37/day. That's less than the price of a meal.Additionally, they have no responsibility to provide you with an installer.

You got your installer, based on the post the author still had the installer, but happened to purchase a computer without a disk drive, which is essentially purchasing a computer without the minimum system requirements of the installer. The author could purchase a disk drive, or borrow a disk drive, or use his old computer's disk drive across the network (something OS X has the capability to do built in).Adobe also never had to provide downloads of those installers in the first place. Just because they previously had them available to download doesn't mean they have a responsibility to continue keeping them available for download. Your losing your disks is your fault, not Adobe's.So, bullshit yourself. That would be amazing.I used quark for years back in the day and when InDesign CS1 came out it seemed like the industry switched overnight. Until then even though both Quarks 4 and 5 had been released no one I knew, including printers, had gone further than Quark 3.1.The entire creative suite cost less than Quark and Photoshop was essential anyway. Plus it had support for OS X, could do transparency (no more creating drop shadows in Photoshop and importing them as a flat TIFF, the joy!), had really good typography support (no more creating a separate text box for bullets and manually aligning them), and getting a press-ready PDF out of it wasn't some sort of voodoo.The difference 10 years makes.

Now Adobe software is slow, bloated and buggy with only minor reasons to upgrade version to version. It seems like the fit and finish is worse on each release and watching photoshop or illustrator creak into life, even on my SSD macbook, is a painful experience.I think the only reason I've upgraded recently is due to their policy of making newer version file formats incompatible with the older version, so I've had to if I want to open files from colleagues. Creative Cloud is a blatant attempt to extract as much rent as they can before the gig is up, not as a way to provide a useful service.

For that reason I won't be upgrading from CS6, even though as a designer it's the software I use most.We need an Adobe competitor who'll either remind them they can write good software when they have to or consign them to irrelevance. How is it adobe's fault that the OP no longer has a optical drive? He purchased physical media in the first place, Adobe, nor any other vendor, is under no obligations to provide convenient access to him for years down the road.

Sure, it'd be nice if they did, it is completely understandable that they don't. CS5 is four year old software.Also, we're talking about an academic version of the software, which retails for about $200, not the full $799 for one App, or $2200+ for the full suite. They sell it to students so some day they'll buy the real thing when they do commercial work, which the academic license doesn't allow. There's no such thing as 'pirating'. 'Pirating' is just a buzz word that some use as a ignorant epithet and others hold as a badge of honor.The question is, 'Am I breaking copyright law by downloading this software?'

Here's a flow chart so you can check for yourself:Did you purchase said software?a) Yes- Then you are not breaking copyright law.b) No- Then you are breaking copyright law.Distributing the copyrighted material, as many torrent clients do for you automatically, is another matter altogether. Problem is, the open source community apparently decided Gimp and Inkscape were probably good enough, and few people who've ever used Adobe software would likely agree.Never mind that employers probably won't have them installed, and probably won't allow them to be used in house, they won't care if Gimp and Inkscape are on your resume if they're looking specifically to hire for photoshop/illustrator experience, and these alternatives would also have to deal with proprietary image formats, which might make the end result unacceptable to free software purists.