When will Adobe release CS6?

by David on Tuesday 24th April, 2012 at 10:04 COMMENTS (2)

(See updates below)

Nobody has any idea when CS6 will be launched, but I bet it will be just after you upgrade to CS5, it is always the way with upgrades.

When CS5 was released last year everyone was excited but there were not many enhancements to warrant a £600.00 upgrade at the time.


Since upgrading to Snow Leopard it has been a bit of a nightmare, as Fireworks CS4 definitely does not like Snow Leopard and Adobe do not care as they say it was developed on an earlier OS so in effect they have wiped their hands of it. They obviously would prefer everyone give them all their money by upgrading.

I held out, and have now had a year of misery and woe when it comes to simple and obvious functionality not working as expected, doing any work within Fireworks and then switching to Dreamweaver as well as the simple task of closing Fireworks gives unexpectedly quit errors and brings up a report this to Apple box every time.


It has now got beyond a joke and the more work I have the more I understand the need for upgrading to Adobe CS5 Fireworks upgrade for Mac OS X but I will not upgrade to the full Adobe CS5 Web Premium

My dilemma is should I

1. wait for Adobe to launch CS6
2. Upgrade now

I have this feeling that if I upgrade to CS5 Adobe will launch CS6 within weeks.

How long can I put up with Fireworks CS4 causing so much grief, wasting my time and Adobe not bothering to fix it?

Upgrade and be damned, it is the only option as every time I have a crash there is the possibility that I will lose work and that would be disastrous.

Let's test this theory that new versions are launched shortly after you purchase the latest version. I will post here once CS6 is launched and we can see how long it took for future reference.

Wish me luck.

11th April 2011


OK So here we are as promised a followup regarding the upgrade of CS4 to CS5. Just two weeks after buying the upgrade for CS5 Adobe today released news of their CS5.5 update.

Still lucky as I am eligible for a post release upgrade as I purchased my upgrade only a few weeks ago.

4th November 2011
I have now been using Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 since April and can report that there is not much difference between this and any previous versions. The look and feel is the same, there are some small updates that are useful but really should have been updated along the way for CS4 rather than including them in a major release of CS5 or even CS5.5, seems to me Adobe just want to continue to squeeze us for more money but not deliver on the goods.

DREAMWEAVER
Some of the new features that are useful, but still not worth the upgrade fee, do help with general designs and markup. Help text for jQuery and some new CSS codes included but by no means extensive, this does need some further work.

DEVICES
Dealing with different sized browsers and devices is worked in very well, but has some issues regarding refreshing, most of the time the display shows as though no style sheet is available, resizing or reselecting the window size seems to sort this out.

STYLE SHEETS
Along with the refreshing of display types, the refreshing of the style sheets themselves seems to me to be a bit hit and miss. Many times I have updated a style sheet and found Dreamweaver has changed the name of another style making my design look very strange or completely wrong. If the style sheet remains open this is easy to fix as a simple undo will remove whatever happened, but this has to be one of the most annoying and frustrating ways to deal with style sheets.

FTP
Along with the style sheet issue there are still issues regarding their FTP access, accessing servers via your FTP is the most important part as this is how you send your design to the world. The majority of my time now seems to be taken up waiting for server, running any other FTP software processes my files immediately, Adobe do not have a clue about how to manage FTP and need to sort this out rather than dismissing it with each version upgrade.

OPENING FILES
One of my biggest issues with Dreamweaver is opening a file and seeing the beach ball spinning continuously with no timeout and therefore no error messages to let me know what the issue is. This usually occurs when opening a file containing an external javascript or other file. Forcing Dreamweaver to close and reopen does not resolve the issue, sometimes I just leave the spinning beach ball and come back after making a cup of coffee and hope for the best. In some cases I have edited the file using Textwrangler or other text editor and removed or remarked the line containing the external file, then reopen it in Dreamweaver, after shutting it down and reopening of course. This works so it definitely has issues with external files.

So far these are the issues that have affected me, since upgrading to Snow Leopard problems have been mounting. Maybe it is time to forget about Adobe and move on to something a little more reliable.

News of CS6
There have been rumours that some parts of the new CS6 are in beta at the moment, it would seem that CS6 maybe released mid 2012. Don't hold your breath though, and don't expect miracles that this version will solve all the problems, in my opinion this version will be even fatter and more bloated than before and may not even be able to drag itself out of the box.

20th December 2011
So Adobe have now told us they hope to launch the new version of their software in 2012, probably spring 2012, the name has not been confirmed but will be known as and called CS6 by most people.

The news also gave some detail regarding upgrades and pricing, which would only allow one level back for upgrade, for all other versions a full price will be paid. So if you do not have CS5 or CS5.5 then full price will be charged for CS6 (or whatever it will be called). This will outrage people who leapfrog versions or are happy with their CS2 or CS3 and would like the opportunity to upgrade. It does feel like Adobe are forcing and upgrade path to give them the biggest return, as proven with their monthly payment scheme.

We shall see as these are all speculation as Adobe have not actually said anything for certain and it is all just their thoughts and plans, we all know what happens with those at Adobe from time to time.

More updates when I get them.

Read the transcript here.

24th March 2012
Adobe have now released a Beta copy of Photoshop CS6 for download from their labs pages, go here labs.adobe.com/technologies/photoshopcs6/ to get your copy for testing.

Be aware that this maybe full of bugs and could crash your system but from previous experience the worst that could happen is that you lose the image your are currently working on, so save regularly.

I think it is a shame that Adobe spend all their time enhancing and promoting Photoshop as if it is their only application, they seem to forget about Dreamweaver and Fireworks, adding only minor enhancements along the way.

21st April 2012
Adobe are to release CS6 on Monday 23rd April 2012, that's 3 days time. Here is a pointless little 20 second video that Adobe have released;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=21LFZyHNaqg

Well it seems on 23rd April that "creativity is to be set free" and what is all that about Adobe & the creative cloud?

Will the software be a free upgrade? or are Adobe free to charge what they want? Are they moving everything to the cloud whether we want it or not? I don't know, but we will learn more on Monday, I am sure of that.

23rd April 2012
OK So Adobe have now launched CS6 and the Creative Cloud; a service that allows them to extract from your bank account every month for the rest of your poor designers life, that is if you want to continue to use their software, and if you stop paying them at any time then the software will stop working at the end of that monthly term.

If you want access to the Creative Cloud then you will have to pay almost £50 per month, or if you are in America then $50, which is strange as the exchange rate is not 1:1, this should be around £30 in the UK if the current exchange rate is used. Yet again England gets shafted by its so called American "FRIEND".

Discount is available if you are a "loyal customer" and have anything from CS3 to CS5.5, which reduces the monthly fee to £28 per month for the first year only.

If you take a moment to read their terms you will find that fees can change without warning, so possibly if no-one goes for these extortionate service then they may increase them at will to make up any shortfall.


The alternate option is to purchase the retail boxed version of the software and continue as before.

Adobe have threatened us though; if you sign up to the cloud then they will update the software weekly or monthly, so you will always have access to the latest software and all their software, not just the parts sold with the retail pack. This is the only good thing about the cloud.

Let us know your opinion about the Cloud and CS6. Are you buying retail or subscribing? Is it extortion or is it value for money?

Please comment below and give your experiences of upgrading Adobe software in the past.

Filed under: Fireworks Adobe_CS6 Adobe_CS5 Upgrade Web_Premium COMMENTS (2) Tuesday 24th April, 2012