Adobe Updates Lightroom for iOS With Support for New iPad Pro, Apple Pencil 2, iPhone XS, and iPhone XR

Still not a fan of this model where developers have to keep updating apps to maintain previous functionality because Apple doesn't care about breaking things in iOS.

What does this even mean?

Oh Morgenland. Adobe stuff does not cost 299USD every month.

Still not a fan of this model where developers have to keep updating apps to maintain previous functionality because Apple doesn't care about breaking things in iOS.

The Adobe education deal is pretty good, if you happen to be an educator/student. The Black Friday sale has it for £13.xx/month, which gives you access to all CC apps (or at least the vast majority). I think I currently pay £16.xx for the same plan and it’s due to go up to £25/mo after the first year. That’s when I really need to decide on things.

Apple offers its Pro Apps bundle for £180 (education pricing). With FCX and Logic Pro, I can abandon Premiere and Audition. I don’t even use Photoshop, because my workflow bounces between GIMP and Pixelmator. So, the only thing lost by dumping Adobe would be full versions of Acrobat and Animate, which I use occasionally. If I can find a decent replacement 2D animation tool, I’d happily drop that as well. My professional life doesn’t require these tools and I only use them for my hobbies. As a result, an endless monthly subscription gets a bit daunting after a while.

The problem with subscriptions is that they really start adding up and include things you’ll never use just to justify the monthly fee. It’s like cable channel bundles in the US. But yeah, if I went through and tallied up all my subs (Netflix, Amazon, newspapers, digital magazines, other software, etc.), I’m sure the monthly cost would be staggering.

Yeah, you're certainly right. Subscription models for music, magazines and virtual storage (iCloud) are comprehensible. This is where new things are offered.
But update-overloaded-software-monster subscriptions are outrageous. Analysts assume such stuff won't find any enthusiastic followers in 5 years when people start calculating.

At the beginning I thought that I could try things out cheaply.
But the marketing of these companies already knows how to squeeze customers.

Therefore, I have increasingly freed myself from software subscriptions, and I noticed more and more of my friends are also getting out of their software subscriptions, and switch back to standalone applications (e.g Photoshop -> Affinity). This feels more relaxed. And reasonable for the wallet.

Adobe will notice this painfully. Whenever. That's no longer my concern.
I am amazed that Microsoft has just learned: Besides the subscription and cloud nonsense it continues to offer a standalone version (Office 2019). Great. In Adobe, this hope can no longer be placed, I suppose.

As long as the subscription model applies, I will not give gifts to Grandpa Adobe.
Same with Adobe Premiere:
I'm willing to pay reasonable money for good program developers, but not for 'resourceful' marketing concepts.
Paying every year as much as the equivalent FinalCut costs once is usury IMO.

So $10/month over 2.5 years which includes Lightroom, Photoshop, and Adobe Cloud (which provides sync functionality between desktop & mobile devices) plus all the upgrades that come in between isn’t low enough?

No. You miss the point. If you just want one of those apps, and don’t care about future additional features, than its overpriced. At 10 a month you never pay off the software. The standard buy/upgrade model meant that developers had to provide enough value that people would be willing to pay for your software again. Now Adobe could go as long as they want without updating the software and you continue to pay regardless. Meanwhile they offer no discounts if you can’t update due to compatibility issues. Bug fixes have and should always be free, but new features should either be free or optional.

I have a copy of photoshop I purchased back in 2002 still running on a mirror door drive Mac that works just fine. Sure, it’s slower than modern computers, and has less features, but it does its job just like it did when I bought it. Updates would have broke my workflow, and honestly I don’t need them. The machine runs an automated camera arm, and I use photoshop to do some light work without having to transfer files. I want to say the software was $500 when I bought it, but if I had been paying monthly it would have cost me $2k so far. I have spare Macs to replace it when it dies, and even if I didn’t the cost for one of those machines is far less than what adobe expects people to pay for their software.

The subscription model also adds other problems. You can’t run the software on an exlusively off the grid machine. You can’t get bug fixes exclusively while avoiding taking major point updates. And there is the issue of hardware requirements; if I buy their software today, and I pay monthly, I expect them to support my machine in 20 years if I am still paying for it.