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[espher]

The only people I've ever personally known to be 'proud' to pirate were the guys in my high school that had access to a fancy connection through their parents' employer or w/e back in the days of dial-up and would show up with a CD wallet full of burned discs of $800-$1000 applications that they never used, so it's always weird to me to see that pushed forward today, esp. between applications that have solid 'free' alternatives (e.g. Paint.NET/GIMP for Photoshop, OpenOffice/LibreOffice for Microsoft Office) and games which are often available at exceptionally good prices.

I legitimately cannot think of the last time I saw something I truly wanted and was averse to paying for it or thought "eh I'll just pirate it". If I don't want to pay for it, I don't want it enough.

I guess the only people I see 'proud' to pirate nowadays that I understand are people that do it for archival/data preservation reasons, and I absolutely support that - but those aren't the people just going to download a torrent somewhere.

 

[kiguel182]

It really annoys me when I'm using some app and people's first question about is "is it free?".

Like, most phone apps are dirt cheap but people are still opposed to pay for quality software instead using free, low quality alternatives. Not even talking about piracy, that is even worse of course.

 

[Fuchsdh]

Claim one is incorrect and claim two is staggeringly out of touch with reality.



I'm pretty innately skeptical of anything like this at first blush but based on the website they've at least talked to real users to figure out what's useful which is more than any single person working on the GIMP has ever done. I'll probably give the free trial a shot at least.

The proliferation of good to great Photoshop alternatives on Mac while the Gimp continues to be a mess is a pretty good example of how there's no substitute for the incentive to make money to spur software development. The Gimp is remarkably powerful, and I'd say for most Photoshop tasks people could replace it (I don't use any of the 3D features in Photoshop except once in a blue moon, for instance, even for my work.) But I'd be learning a user-unfriendly piece of software when there are better options.

Wish Apple would improve the Mac App Store. A lot of companies still wouldn't want to give up the 30%, but it'd still be far more attractive and I'd be fine paying a higher fee to centralize all my serials and licenses and make getting a new computer set up much less painful.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

The proliferation of good to great Photoshop alternatives on Mac while the Gimp continues to be a mess is a pretty good example of how there's no substitute for the incentive to make money to spur software development. The Gimp is remarkably powerful, and I'd say for most Photoshop tasks people could replace it (I don't use any of the 3D features in Photoshop except once in a blue moon, for instance, even for my work.) But I'd be learning a user-unfriendly piece of software when there are better options.

Wish Apple would improve the Mac App Store. A lot of companies still wouldn't want to give up the 30%, but it'd still be far more attractive and I'd be fine paying a higher fee to centralize all my serials and licenses and make getting a new computer set up much less painful.

I don't know why non-Adobe diehards continue to want Photoshop on OSX when Pixelmator exists, for 1/8th of the price. It randomly goes on sale too and can be had for as low as $10.

 

[bionic77]

Hold on there mate lets not get carried away now

Though, I've been buying more and more stuff since I've gotten older. I pirated like crazy when I was a kid/teen.

probably a few terabytes, maybe more

I pirated a lot of music when napster and the like were first around (weirdly enough 90% of what I downloaded I already had on cds but it was easier to DL than ripping a ton of cds). For software I remember borrowing a ton of games and applications in the 80s and 90s, which I never thought was wrong either. When I was a kid I had no idea what a license for that stuff was. It is still wrong for kids and teens, but most kids and teens are dumb as hell so I will give them a break.

There was a time I honestly did not understand what piracy was or why it was wrong (though I think I knew it was wrong to download music for free back in the day). Back then I probably would have pirated games or pretty much anything else if I knew how to do it.

But once I got a little older it was obvious to me that pirating was wrong, whether it was a tv show, movie, game, whatever. Someone worked really fucking hard to make those things and it is wrong not to pay them some money for it. Which is why the justifications make me angry. Fine go ahead and pirate but don't fucking tell me that there is nothing wrong with it (not addressed to you, this is a leftover of the GOT thread).

 

[NekoFever]

I don't know why non-Adobe diehards continue to want Photoshop on OSX when Pixelmator exists, for 1/8th of the price. It randomly goes on sale too and can be had for as low as $10.

And Affinity Photo is great too. And Pixelmator Pro has just been announced, which is even closer to Photoshop. And for amateurs who just want to polish up their photos, Apple Photos is very good, with significant improvements to the editing coming in High Sierra (and it has a plugin to use Pixelmator's retouch tool). All way cheaper than Photoshop, if not free, and regularly discounted.

I have Photoshop installed because I have a CC subscription through work but there have never been more capable alternatives.

 

[mackattk]

If it is good software that I will use I don't mind paying for it. A stable system is worth the $10-$50 for a program I will use often.

I have bought programs like
PDF X-Change - PDF software which I greatly prefer over Adobe
Syncovery - Program to sync/backup to my external hard drive
Teracopy - Windows copy./move program
Plex
Macrium Reflect
Resilio Sync
MalwareBytes

Sure there are probably some other open source alternatives, but these programs work extremely well and they are programs I use every day/week.

I stay away from a lot of lesser known freeware and don't touch the pirated shit. I don't know what is being installed on my computer if I do that. Even a bunch of the freeware shit, if you download it from the wrong website, the website will bake a bunch of adware/spyware into the installer.

But once I got a little older it was obvious to me that pirating was wrong, whether it was a tv show, movie, game, whatever. Someone worked really fucking hard to make those things and it is wrong not to pay them some money for it. Which is why the justifications make me angry. Fine go ahead and pirate but don't fucking tell me that there is nothing wrong with it (not addressed to you, this is a leftover of the GOT thread).

I roll my eyes HARD at the people who think the Kodi plugin and internet streaming is different than downloading. "If I stream this movie that just got released in the theaters two days ago it is legal.... It is totally different if I download it and keep a copy of it on my hard drive."

Nope, it is the same fucking thing and they know it, you are just trying to justify not spending their money to watch it. If they want to download/stream it illegally, I don't really care because it isn't any of my business.. but don't try to justify it.

 

[radios shipping overview]

When I moved from Windows to Mac, I encountered a bit of culture shock, as small apps that handled basic things and worked well were often freeware on Windows, but on Mac they'd be $10-20. On Windows it was like people were making tools to do something cool or serve the community, and on Mac they were trying to make a buck instead. Like, who decides to charge $20 for a console emulator, let alone a Mac port of an existing, free Windows emulator? This was before the Mac App Store existed. You might still find a freeware alternative to a paid GUI app on Mac, but it's usually sort of shitty in comparison. It's like the preexisting user base on Mac (creatives, professionals, wealthy users) supported this kind of ecosystem before app stores on other platforms made it more feasible.

I use a lot of open-source software, and I'll still lean toward an open-source solution to any given task if one is available.

 

[tonysidaway]

On Windows it was like people were making tools to do something cool or serve the community, and on Mac they were trying to make a buck instead. Like, who decides to charge $20 for a console emulator, let alone a Mac port of an existing, free Windows emulator?

All the more puzzling because the greater part of the lower layers of OSX is composed of free software, including BSD, making it exceptionally easy to port free and open source Unix or Linux applications to it.

To its credit, Apple has freely licensed much of its more useful code, including the Webkit rendering engine which is used by many of the best web browsers, and the compiler framework llvm which is being adopted by all the major BSD systems to reduce their reliance on the ageing gcc suite.

 

[Faddy]

I use https://alternativeto.net/ to find free - open source software.

 

[kiguel182]

I don't know why non-Adobe diehards continue to want Photoshop on OSX when Pixelmator exists, for 1/8th of the price. It randomly goes on sale too and can be had for as low as $10.

I don't know that tool and have used Photoshop for years, that's my reason. Altought now I kinda wish I hadn't just renewed my sub since that program seems nice...

 

[Fenderputty]

Depending on the life cycle, software is also something that changes and needs repurchasing too fast. Think windows office. I can't count how many iterations of office I've bought since high school. Now I'm having to subscribe?

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I don't know that tool and have used Photoshop for years, that's my reason. Altought now I kinda wish I hadn't just renewed my sub since that program seems nice...

That's inherently the problem with software, on any platform, discoverability of quality alternatives. Followed by, convincing people to drop more than a $1 on something of the caliber of Pixelmator.

 

[kiguel182]

That's inherently the problem with software, on any platform, discoverability of quality alternatives. Followed by, convincing people to drop more than a $1 on something of the caliber of Pixelmator.

I wouldn't mind paying but Photoshop is the kind of software that is ingrained in you since forever.

I'm not even a super heavy user but it's what I've always used so changing is hard.

 

[Fuchsdh]

I wouldn't mind paying but Photoshop is the kind of software that is ingrained in you since forever.

I'm not even a super heavy user but it's what I've always used so changing is hard.

There's also the ecosystem concerns. If you're just trying to get rid of Lightroom or Photoshop, it's pretty easy. But there is no alternative to After Effects unless you want to get into a completely different compositing paradigm, and there's certainly no comparison to the ability to spit out editable text from Photoshop into After Effects and create templates editors can manage in Premiere, or pasted shapes between programs, etc.

 

[Rookhelm]

I think it all boils down to is that software (and songs and movies, any digital media) is infinitely copyable.


With a single button press, you can have a thousand more of a thing....so why not just pass it around freely.


If cars could be duplicated, on a whim, in infinite amounts without consuming tangible resources, they'd be passed around for free, too.


So, the mentality here is that this stuff is "intangible"...it's not like breaking a window and picking something up.

 

[Micael]

There's also the ecosystem concerns. If you're just trying to get rid of Lightroom or Photoshop, it's pretty easy. But there is no alternative to After Effects unless you want to get into a completely different compositing paradigm, and there's certainly no comparison to the ability to spit out editable text from Photoshop into After Effects and create templates editors can manage in Premiere, or pasted shapes between programs, etc.

If you ever end up doing textures for video games depending on the tools you decided to use it might not be so easy either, quixel ddo and ndo which are wildly used industry tools are basically addons for photoshop.

 

[charlequin]

What about it do you not like?

You can't switch which corner you get notifications in; they don't support rich content so you just get one square image, plain text, and one or two buttons; they pop in from the window edge pushing existing ones down so you can go to interact with one and have a different one pop into its place while you're in the process of clicking; you can't configure notifications per-app in the Notification Center or dismiss all of an app's messages without clearing them completely; you can't implement things like reply-in-place that exist in other notification platforms; the set of actions you can perform on any given notification is incoherent and there's usually no clear visual demonstration of what will work and how. It works about as badly as it could work while technically still meeting the baseline level of functionality, IMO.