Dear Valued Customer…

So I received the following email today from Adobe.

Dear Valued Customer,

At Adobe, we always strive to deliver more value to our customers, including much requested new features and capabilities, critical bug fixes and security updates. For these reasons we recommend all customers use the latest release of our Creative Cloud applications. We have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and as a result, under the terms of our agreement, you are no longer licensed to use them. Based on your preference settings, we are not able to see if you are using any of the discontinued versions. Please be aware that should you use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.

Please upgrade to the latest version(s) using the instructions below. By upgrading, you will continue to receive all the value that Creative Cloud has to offer.

It goes on with more details, but you get the drift.

• They know my name, but can’t be arsed to do a basic mail-merge.
• Oddly, they’ve yet to get around to implement ‘stop taking several minutes to start up one of our apps.’
• Thankfully, I don’t use either Acrobat or Flash, so that’s a lot fewer critical bug fixes and security updates I need.
• A helpful reminder that I don’t own my Adobe software any more.
• I’m entirely unsurprised that the Creative Cloud desktop app doesn’t know what versions of their software I’ve got installed. That thing is a POS.
• It’s just as well that other sites have revealed WTH that reference to ‘risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties’ means. Cos Adobe sure as heck won’t tell me.
• The ‘value’ of Creative Cloud these days seems to be primarily Adobe’s, in terms of keeping people hooked onto their apps and services.

Yes, I’m jaded. Can you tell?