Log-in outage hobbles Adobe's Creative Cloud
After 24 hours of trouble with its subscription plan, including people being locked out of software, Adobe says it's fixing it.
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Adobe Systems' Creative Cloud, a subscription to the company's software and services, has been hampered by a log-in problem that in some circumstance could make it harder or impossible for people to use their software.
"Adobe login is currently offline, impacting access to Adobe services. We apologize for the disruption," Adobe said in a status report. "We have identified the cause and are working to restore the service as quickly as possible."
The outage, which Adobe first acknowledged 24 hours ago, is keeping some people from secondary tasks including purchasing or updating software, using the Creative Cloud website, and synchronizing font files, Adobe said. In addition, administration abilities have been affected.
Software should continue to work as long as a customer already was logged in, but if a person needs to move from one computer to another -- one of the advantages of the Creative Cloud when it's working properly -- they could be locked out of their software.
Even then, there are some workarounds, Adobe said.
"While the outage continues you can open your Creative Cloud applications successfully, and utilize the software in trial mode," Adobe said in an advisory. "If your trial mode has expired...you will be able to utilize your Creative Cloud applications in a bonus launch state...If your bonus launch has expired then you will be unable to utilize the Creative Cloud applications on your current computer until the outage is complete."
The good news is that a fix is in the works.
"We are making progress on restoring Adobe login services, and will share more info as it becomes available," Adobe said over Twitter.
Adobe is shifting from selling perpetual licenses to its Creative Suite software such as Photoshop or After Effects to selling subscriptions to the same software through the Creative Cloud. It costs $50 per month for a full-year commitment and grants access to Adobe's full suite of products as well as some online services. There also are cheaper subscriptions for individual programs. Despite a name that suggests cloud computing, Adobe's software still is installed on people's computers and runs there.
The Creative Cloud has angered customers who don't like the idea of software that stops working when they stop paying and who say the Creative Cloud significantly raises their costs. However, Adobe is making steady progress signing up customers for the plan.
(Via Petapixel)