The US government is suing Adobe, alleging that the software company deceived consumers by hiding the early termination fee for its most popular subscription plan and making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions.

A federal court complaint filed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) claims that Adobe pushed consumers toward an “annual paid monthly” subscription without adequately disclosing that cancelling the plan in the first year could cost hundreds of dollars.

According to the DoJ the lawsuit alleges that the defendants imposed a hidden early termination fee on millions of online subscribers and that Adobe also forced subscribers to navigate a “complex and challenging cancellation process” designed to deter them from cancelling subscriptions they no longer wanted.

David Wadhwani, Adobe’s president of Digital Media Business, and Maninder Sawhney, Adobe's Vice President of Digital Go to Market & Sales are also listed as defendants. The complaint charges that Adobe’s practices violate the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA): the case will be decided by the court.

Adobe’s general counsel and chief trust officer Dana Rao denied the FTC’s claims, adding that the firm will contest the charges in court.

“Subscription services are convenient, flexible and cost effective to allow users to choose the plan that best fits their needs, timeline and budget. Our priority is to always ensure our customers have a positive experience,” Rao said. “We are transparent with the terms and conditions of our subscription agreements and have a simple cancellation process. We will refute the FTC’s claims in court.”

After 2012, Adobe shifted principally to a subscription model, requiring consumers to pay for access to the company’s popular software on a recurring basis. Subscriptions account for most of the company’s revenue, the FTC said.

“Adobe trapped customers into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“Americans are tired of companies hiding the ball during subscription signup and then putting up roadblocks when they try to cancel.”

According to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the defendants systematically violated ROSCA by using fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks to hide important information about Adobe’s subscription plans, including about a “hefty” early termination fee that customers may be charged when they cancel their subscriptions.

The complaint alleges that for years, Adobe has profited from this hidden fee, “misleading consumers about the true costs of a subscription and ambushing them with the fee when they try to cancel, wielding the fee as a powerful retention tool,” according to the DoJ’s statement.

The complaint alleges that Adobe also violated ROSCA by failing to provide consumers with a simple mechanism to cancel their recurring, online subscriptions. Instead, “Adobe allegedly protects its subscription revenues by thwarting subscribers’ attempts to cancel, subjecting them to a convoluted and inefficient cancellation process filled with unnecessary steps, delays, unsolicited offers and warnings,” the DoJ said.

According to the complaint, when consumers purchase a subscription through the company’s website, Adobe pushes consumers to its “annual paid monthly” subscription plan, pre-selecting it as a default.

The complaint said that Adobe prominently shows the plan’s monthly cost during enrolment, “but it buries” the early termination fee and its amount, which is 50% of the remaining monthly payments when a consumer cancels in their first year, according to the FTC.

Adobe’s early termination fee disclosures are buried on the company’s website in small print or require consumers to hover over small icons to find the disclosures, the complaint said.

In addition to failing to disclose the early termination fee to consumers when they subscribe, the FTC complaint also alleges that Adobe uses the early termination fee to “ambush” consumers to deter them from cancelling their subscriptions.

The complaint also alleges that Adobe’s cancellation processes are designed to make cancellation difficult for consumers. When consumers have attempted to cancel their subscription on the company’s website, they have been forced to navigate numerous pages in order to cancel.

“When consumers reach out to Adobe’s customer service to cancel, they encounter resistance and delay from Adobe representatives. Consumers also experience other obstacles, such as dropped calls and chats, and multiple transfers. Some consumers who thought they had successfully cancelled their subscription reported that the company continued to charge them until discovering the charges on their credit card statements,” the FTC said.

Adobe is putting out fires on two fronts over its AI terms of use policy, as employees begin to criticize the company through internal communication channels.

Already busy dealing with the fallout from customers angry that the firm might be using personal data to train AI, screenshots obtained by Business Insider indicate Adobe now faces similar sentiment from its own staff.

The screenshots show excerpts from an internal Adobe Slack channel, in which employees complain about the firm’s botched communication and badly handled response to the fiasco.

"If our goal is truly to prioritize our users' best interests (which, to be honest, I sometimes question), it's astonishing how poor our communication can be," one person wrote to the Slack channel.

"The general perception is: Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to F its users," they added. 

The latter of these comments comes from a widespread sense that Adobe as a company garners a lot of bad press and general criticism from users, largely due to its dominance in the creative software space.

"Let's avoid becoming like IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems," the same person added. 

Another employee suggested that the firm place more focus on effective communication in the future, and that it should create a “long-term communication and marketing plan outside of blog posts”.

It could also look to meet with its most prominent critics on YouTube and other social media platforms to “correct the misinformation head-on,” the employee added. 

"Watching the misinformation spread on social media like wildfire is really disheartening,” they said. "Still, a loud 'F Adobe' and 'Cancel Adobe' rhetoric is happening within the independent creator community that needs to be addressed”. 

A third staff member asked what the company was “doing meaningfully” to prevent similar issues from becoming problematic in the future, rather than just behaving reactively.

Things are going from bad to worse for Adobe

Adobe’s internal backlash marks the latest development in a tricky period for the firm, with the creative software company forced to tighten up its terms of use policy following AI training concerns. 

After users expressed outrage and one in particular suggested that it was “time to cancel Adobe,” the firm uploaded a blog post reiterating that it was “committed to transparency” and that it did not train its AI model Firefly on user data.

It stated rather that its AI models are trained on datasets of licensed content and public domain content where copyright has expired.

The situation is comparable to a similar backlash against Slack in which the enterprise messaging application was also forced to publically dismiss claims made by users that it was training AI models on private data. 

The company faced intense criticism on social media after updating its terms of service, prompting the company to issue a further update to calm fears. The company appears to have learned its lesson, however.

Speaking to ITPro last month, Slack’s chief customer officer, Peter Doolan, said the company has been engaging closely with customers to clarify the situation. 

Doolan told ITPro the company has had “a lot of education” from users regarding their concerns in the aftermath of the incident.

If you’ve ever wanted to chat to a PDF, here’s your chance. Adobe has unveiled the beta of its new AI Assistant, a generative AI-powered conversational engine integrated within its Reader and Acrobat packages.

Adobe said the AI Assistant can generate instant summaries and insights from long documents, answer questions, and format content for easy sharing in emails, reports, or presentations.

The new assistant leverages the same AI and machine learning capabilities as Acrobat Liquid Mode, which makes PDFs more readable on smaller screens by reformatting the headings, paragraphs, and images to create a better flow for viewing on a mobile device.

Adobe said the proprietary models it uses provide a “deep understanding” of PDF structure and content, enhancing quality and reliability in AI Assistant outputs.

“Generative AI offers the promise of more intelligent document experiences by transforming the information inside PDFs into actionable, knowledge and professional-looking content,” said Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president of document cloud at Adobe.

The new AI Assistant features are available, in beta, for Acrobat Standard and Pro Individual and Teams subscription plans on desktop and web in English. 

The company said AI features are coming to Reader desktop customers in English over the next few weeks, with other languages to follow. A private beta is available for enterprise customers, it said.

Once the Adobe AI Assistant is out of beta it will be offered via a new add-on subscription plan.

How the Adobe AI Assistant works 

The AI Assistant recommends questions based on a PDF’s content and answers questions about what’s in the document through a chat interface.

It can generate a summary broken down into a series of shorter elements, and uses Adobe’s attribution engine to create citations so users can verify the source of the generated answers. It adds clickable links to help customers quickly find what they need in long documents, and can consolidate and format information into top takeaways, and text for emails or reports.

Adobe said customers can use AI Assistant with document formats beyond PDF, such as Word, PowerPoint or meeting transcripts.

Adobe said the future roadmap for AI Assistant includes:

• The ability to work across multiple documents, document types and sources to find the most important information from everywhere.
• AI-powered authoring, editing and formatting to make it possible to quickly generate first drafts and help with copy editing by changing voice and tone, compressing copy length and suggesting content design and layout.
• Using key features from Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative models, and Adobe Express to make it simple for anyone to make their documents more creative and professional.
• AI-supported reviews that will analyze feedback and comments, suggesting changes and highlighting and helping to resolve conflicting feedback.

Deepak Bharadwaj, vice president of product at Adobe, said the company is taking an “agnostic approach” to its large language model (LLM) integrations but said for the AI Assistant features in Reader and Acrobat, Adobe is currently using the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. 

“We will continue to explore and test a variety of technologies to provide customers with quality, responsible experiences,” he said.

Bharadwaj added that the AI Assistant will keep humans in the loop by including attributions in generated responses, making it simple for customers to confirm where the information came from, while an in-app message reminds customers to double-check the source of the answers AI Assistant provides.

The company said no customer document content is stored or used for training AI Assistant without their consent, and said ‘enterprise-grade’ security and information governance are available for large business customers.

“We specifically prohibit third parties from manually reviewing or training their LLMs on Adobe customer data. We also include robust testing and monitoring methodologies in pre- and post-processing and engineering processes,” he added.

It’s not the first service that allows you to summarize a PDF. ChatGPT Plus will allow users to do this, however, building the functionality into something as mainstream as Acrobat is likely to have a bigger impact.

Adobe calculates that there are around three trillion PDFs in the world. The document format is over 30 years old and hundreds of billion PDFs are opened in Acrobat every year.

Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of Figma has been canceled due to regulatory blocks in the UK and European Union. 

The firm said the proposed deal will be scrapped due to there being “no clear path” for regulatory approval. Adobe will be forced to pay a $1 billion termination fee to Figma as part of the move.

Adobe chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen said the company disagrees with the positions of regulators, but noted the decision is “in our respective best interests to move forward independently”.

“While Adobe and Figma shared a vision to jointly redefine the future of creativity and productivity, we continue to be well positioned to capitalize on our massive market opportunity and mission to change the world through personalized digital experiences.”

The announcement brings to a close a lengthy battle between Adobe and regulators in the UK and EU, both of which argued that the deal would harm competition.

The announcement also marks one of the biggest scrapped deals in recent history, and could serve as a future warning to organizations conducting so-called “buy and kill” acquisition tactics.

Regulators in both the UK and European Union have taken a hard stance on big tech acquisitions in recent years in a bid to prevent major corporations from scooping up greater market share and harming consumer choice.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard served as a flashpoint in this ongoing battle. Although the deal was finally approved, Microsoft was forced to make significant concessions and robustly defend its position.

The CMA has been unwavering in its resolve with regard to big tech mergers and acquisitions, which Adobe may have been hoping to test. 

In October 2022, the regulator ordered Meta to sell social media GIF library, Giphy, following a highly charged probe into the purchase.

The proposed deal would have given Meta “excessive power” and control over this market segment, the investigation found, with the CMA ruling the deal would lead to a “substantial lessening in competition” for UK social media services that would ultimately harm users.

Adobe and Figma have repeatedly disagreed with the stance taken by regulators on the deal, but have appeared unwilling to compromise.

Last week, Adobe rejected proposals from the CMA that would have seen the merger approved pending an in-depth antitrust probe. The CMA requested that Adobe conduct a divestment of assets as part of the deal to avoid infringing competition regulations.

Adobe described the suggestion as “wholly disproportionate” and held its ground, much to its own detriment.

Adobe-Figma acquisition: What happened?

Adobe first announced its intention to acquire Figma, a cloud-based creative designer platform, in September 2022. The move was subject to intense regulatory scrutiny from the offset, with the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) arguing that it would reduce innovation and competition.

The CMA’s stance was largely based on the fact that Figma dominated a significant portion of the UI design market. Adobe, which had been “continuously investing in” this market segment, could harm long-term competition by completing the acquisition. 

Figma was also fast emerging as a key competitor to Adobe in the image, video, and animation market, the regulator said. Therefore the acquisition would seriously stifle innovation and have a negative impact on consumers.

“This important rivalry could be lost if the deal goes ahead,” the CMA said at the time.

The CMA’s position on the acquisition was echoed by European regulators, who in August announced plans to launch an in-depth antitrust investigation into the deal.

Regulators said at the time the move had the potential to “reduce competition in the global markets for the supply of interactive product design software and for digital asset creation tools”.

Our selection of top AI tools for business highlights the remarkable progress generative AI has made, moving from a novel concept to an essential technology now embedded in countless professional workflows.

From creative applications like image generation in Midjourney to programming assistance with GitHub Copilot, professionals across diverse industries can now leverage AI tools to enhance their productivity and streamline tasks.

The use cases for generative AI are growing daily. With each update, these platforms open up new possibilities, offering tools that integrate seamlessly into everyday operations. Here, we’ve rounded up 12 impressive AI tools ready to elevate your business operations today.

The best AI tools for business

1. Adobe Firefly

If any company should be concerned about the rise of computer-generated images, it is Adobe. However, rather than fighting the tide, they have integrated it directly into the creative suite that businesses have relied on for decades.

Firefly is the result of that pivot, a generative AI engine that lets users create brand-new images or edit existing files based on text prompts. Crucially for businesses, Adobe trained Firefly on its own stock library, meaning the output is "commercially safe" and free from the copyright grey areas that plague other AI image generators.

The tool’s big break came when Adobe bundled it into Photoshop as "Generative Fill." To test it, we took a sample image of a runner and asked Photoshop to expand the canvas and fill the space with "a pond with waterlilies." In seconds, the tool extended the image naturally, matching lighting and reflections. While it isn't always perfect on the first try, it significantly reduces the technical skill required to generate complex assets.

2. ChatGPT Plus

Just when we thought the AI wars were settling, OpenAI released GPT-5.1 (November 2025), once again shifting the goalposts. For business users, the £16/$20 monthly subscription is now non-negotiable.

The headline feature of 5.1 is the split between "Instant" and "Thinking" modes.

Instant Mode is designed for the fast-paced business world. It is warmer, more conversational, and incredibly quick at drafting emails or summarizing meetings.

Thinking Mode replaces the experimental "o1" models. It pauses to "reason" through complex problems, such as analysing a Q3 financial forecast or debugging a thousand lines of Python code, before answering.

Perhaps most useful for corporate branding is the new Personality Presets. You no longer need to prompt the AI to "act professional." You can simply toggle ChatGPT to "Professional," "Concise," or "Candid" mode, ensuring every output matches your company's tone of voice automatically.

3. Perplexity

Perplexity AI is an innovative search tool that combines natural language processing with traditional search functionality to provide users with more intuitive, conversational answers. Unlike conventional search engines that primarily deliver links to websites, Perplexity AI responds directly to user queries with succinct, relevant answers, often citing multiple sources for added credibility. This tool is particularly valuable for businesses and professionals who require quick insights without the need to sift through multiple web pages.

The AI behind Perplexity operates similarly to chat-based AI models, allowing users to ask complex questions in everyday language. For example, a user might ask, “What are the latest trends in digital marketing?” or “How does machine learning improve cybersecurity?” Perplexity AI then parses these inquiries and generates clear, concise answers. The responses are typically followed by links to the original sources, enabling users to delve deeper if they wish. This format saves time by offering direct answers first, with source material readily available for further reading.

Perplexity AI’s primary strength lies in its capacity to provide context and nuance, making it a great asset for research and knowledge acquisition in fast-paced fields. With its ability to interpret and respond to a broad array of topics, Perplexity AI is useful for professionals in marketing, finance, technology, and other information-driven industries. Its simplicity makes it accessible to users of all experience levels, eliminating the need for advanced search skills.

Additionally, Perplexity AI’s commitment to transparency is noteworthy. Each response includes a list of cited sources, helping to maintain accuracy and allowing users to verify information easily. As AI-driven tools like Perplexity evolve, they’re poised to revolutionize how we access and interact with information, transforming search from a list of results into a more insightful and user-friendly experience.

4. Altered Studio

Ever wondered what your voice would sound like if you were a warm, kind, mid-sixties woman from Scotland called Jennifer? 

Altered Studio uses AI to transform your speech into a completely different voice. Say, for example, you wanted a 20-something woman to voice your new YouTube ad – but didn’t want the expense and hassle of booking a voice actor. You can record the audio yourself, upload it to Altered Studio, and pick from a huge bank of AI-generated voice characters. 

The voices are unbelievably convincing. You’d struggle to tell them apart from real voice actors. Visit the site to listen to various samples, or take up the free trial and experiment with a limited selection available to subscribers. 

There’s a huge range of potential uses for Altered Studio. It may provide a second or third podcast host for a podcast or can introduce speakers at a conference. In our tests, it worked best when you provided a voice recording – it also offers text-to-speech, but that emerged with a robotic speech pattern that clearly marked it out as AI.

5. Midjourney

Adobe Firefly is a powerful tool for editing and compositing creative assets, but Midjourney continues to dominate the field of artistic AI generation. Since Midjourney introduced its long-awaited web interface earlier this year, it has become easily accessible for professionals, removing the friction of Discord-based workflows and allowing creative teams to collaborate efficiently through a standard browser experience.

For branding agencies and concept artists, Midjourney has established itself as an unparalleled solution. The latest model, v7, demonstrates remarkable advancements in text rendering, finally allowing users to integrate correctly spelled company names and slogans directly into generated graphics. This improvement streamlines logo design and makes Midjourney much more practical for real-world branding applications.

Another standout feature is the ability to specify output dimensions, such as custom aspect ratios (like "--ar 16:9" for slide presentations), and refine results with style references, like “in the style of corporate Memphis art.” These controls give designers flexible, granular command over visual output, enabling rapid prototyping and iteration of on-brand concepts.

Midjourney operates via a subscription model with entry pricing around $10 per month, and the value proposition is significant. With the ability to generate unlimited stock-quality images, illustrations, and branded assets, marketing departments and creative teams can dramatically reduce asset acquisition costs while producing bespoke, high-impact visuals on demand.

6. GitHub Copilot

I’m a long way from being a professional coder. I know my way around HTML/CSS files and have dabbled with JavaScript and Python, but that’s as far as it goes. In some ways, that makes me the perfect candidate to test drive GitHub Copilot.

Copilot started as "autocomplete for code," but in 2025, it has evolved into a comprehensive AI pair programmer. It sits quietly in the background of your code editor (like VS Code), offering suggestions, but now features a fully integrated Chat window that understands your entire project context.

For coding novices, the workflow is seamless. Previously, you might have used an external tool to generate base code, but now you can do it all in one place. For example, I opened the Copilot Chat sidebar and asked it to "write a basic VAT calculator where you enter a price, hit a button, and it shows the price ex-VAT." It instantly generated the necessary HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, which I could insert with a single click.

Once the files were created, I wanted to make an About page. I created an about.html file and started to type . Copilot’s "Ghost Text" immediately took over. It suggested a full section with the correct title tags and automatically linked to the existing stylesheet I had just created. It even started suggesting copy for the page, writing: “This is a simple VAT calculator. It calculates the price without VAT from the price with VAT.”

It isn't going to win prizes for prose, but the AI understood the site’s context without any prompting.

This is a basic example, but it’s capable of far more. You can highlight a broken block of code and ask Copilot, "Why isn't this working?" and it will diagnose the bug and offer a fix. You can even write comments like // create a function to validate email, and Copilot will generate the logic instantly.

It is no replacement for coding knowledge; you still need to understand the "plumbing" to know if the AI has hallucinated, but for $10 per month (or free for students), GitHub Copilot makes coding monumentally faster and less intimidating.

7. Yoodli

In a job market where many candidates share similar technical credentials, how you communicate often matters as much as what you know. Yoodli positions itself squarely in that gap as an AI communication coach designed to improve your spoken delivery for interviews, presentations, and high-stakes conversations. Instead of waiting for limited slots with a human coach, users can log in at any time, pick a scenario, and practice in a low-pressure, private environment.​

For interview preparation, Yoodli can simulate a full mock interview based on the specific role you enter, asking contextual follow-up questions that force you to think on your feet rather than reciting memorized answers. You can speak live into your webcam and microphone, or upload recordings from Zoom and other video calls, and the system turns those sessions into a detailed performance report. That report breaks down pacing, filler words, sentence starters, and overall conciseness, so users can see exactly where they ramble, rush, or lose their train of thought.​​

Where Yoodli stands out from basic transcription tools is the coaching layer. The platform highlights specific moments where you spoke too quickly, failed to answer the question directly, or missed the chance to provide a concrete example, then suggests more effective phrasing or structure for next time. Over multiple sessions, it tracks trends in your performance, turning vague goals like “sound more confident” into measurable improvements in metrics such as pace, filler-word frequency, and clarity.​

Beyond classic job interviews, Yoodli supports scenarios tailored to public speaking, sales pitches, and everyday workplace communication, such as running meetings or delivering status updates. Video-based practice can also surface non-verbal patterns such as eye contact and body language, providing a more holistic view of how you come across to an audience. This makes it a useful tool not only for job seekers but also for executives, managers, and students who want to refine their presence before stepping into a live room.​​

Yoodli follows a freemium model, with a no-cost tier that lets individuals try a limited number of AI “scenarios” and get a feel for the feedback engine, and paid plans that unlock unlimited practice, deeper analytics, and enhanced privacy controls. Individual subscriptions for more frequent use are typically priced in the low double-digit monthly range, with custom packages available for organizations that want centralized management, branding, and team-level reporting. For users who are serious about interview preparation or public speaking but prefer to practice on their own schedule, it offers a structured, quantifiable alternative to ad-hoc rehearsal in front of a mirror.

8. Fliki

Video is critical on social media, but not everyone can afford a team to shoot content. Fliki could potentially save you a bundle on the camera crew.

Write a video script, choose a virtual host to narrate it, select stock video/images for each scene (or upload your own), and add some background music if you want. The AI voice narration sounds a little too synthetic, although you can manually alter the pitch of words or correct mispronunciations of brands or other words. But this will surely improve over time. 

Fliki offers a free plan, so you can see how you get on with the tools, before subscribing to get rid of the watermarks and increase video quality. You’ll need a $21 per month standard account to hit Full HD quality, mind. 

9. Notion AI

Notion has become one of those trendy apps; it’s a OneNote for people who like to be seen. 

It’s one of those all-encompassing note-takers that can be used for creating to-do lists, bashing out ideas, taking notes from meetings, and even as a public wiki for your company’s products.

It’s recently added a set of very well-implemented AI tools to the mix. As you’re writing on any page, you can simply press the space bar at the start of a new line and activate the AI tools. Here, for example, you can ask the AI to autocomplete a passage you’re writing, list ten ideas on different ways you could market a new product, or create a to-do list of items you’ll need to pack for a trip. 

If you’ve used it to take meeting notes, it can pick out the action points; if you’ve written a description of a new product line, the AI can take a stab at writing the press release. 

The AI responses flow into the page within a couple of seconds and it’s easy to edit out any daft suggestions. “Adapter for electrical outlets” for my holiday to Crete? Don’t be daft, everyone knows you buy them afresh at the airport every time you fly abroad at vastly inflated prices.

Notion provides an AI add-on at $10 per member per month, with a 20% discount available for annual billing. This add-on grants access to advanced AI functionalities, enhancing productivity and creativity within the platform.

10. SlidesAI

SlidesAI continues to lead rapid presentation drafting in Google Workspace, focusing on usability and fast, structured slide creation for anyone working in the Google ecosystem. The core process remains simple: install the add-on, paste a substantial text sample, such as a report or blog post, and SlidesAI instantly transforms it into a multi-slide deck with logical structure and clean formatting.

In recent releases, SlidesAI’s image selection has improved notably thanks to the new “smart-match” feature, which more reliably surfaces relevant stock imagery matched to each topic. The days of mismatched flowers on technology slides are largely gone; the tool now scrapes from a richer, context-aware image bank, resulting in more professional results and less manual tweaking.​

While Microsoft users have Copilot built into Office, SlidesAI has staked its territory in Google Slides, remaining the essential choice for Google-first teams and individuals. You may still need to refine fonts or swap a few images to reflect your brand identity, but for moving from a blank screen to a first draft presentation in under 60 seconds, the speed and convenience are unmatched.

The free plan allows you to create 3 presentations per month, each supporting up to 2500 characters of input, making it generous for occasional use. Pro and Premium plans have expanded limits: Pro offers 10 presentations per month (6000 characters each) for $8–$10/month, while Premium allows unlimited presentations (up to 12,000 characters each) for $16–$20/month, with additional features such as extensive AI credits and future support for video exports and document upload. Pricing and limits are subject to change as SlidesAI continues evolving; for the latest tiers, check the official site.

11. Microsoft Copilot (Windows integration)

Microsoft hasn’t just bet the house on AI; they have rebuilt the foundation of Windows around it. What started as a sidebar in Windows 11 has evolved into the "Copilot+ PC" standard, where AI is baked into the hardware itself.

If you are using a modern business laptop (released late 2024 or later), you likely have a dedicated Copilot key on your keyboard. Pressing this no longer just opens a web chat; it activates an assistant that has "screen awareness." You can be looking at a complex spreadsheet or a PDF and simply ask Copilot, "Summarise this," or "Help me rewrite this email," without ever uploading the file to the cloud, thanks to the local NPU (Neural Processing Unit) handling the data for privacy.

For IT professionals and power users, the "system control" capabilities have finally matured. You no longer need to dig through the Control Panel or Settings menus. You can simply say, "Turn on 'Do Not Disturb' and connect to the conference room Bluetooth," and the OS handles it instantly.

However, the real business power unlocks when you sign in with an Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). The Windows instance of Copilot bridges the gap between your local PC and the cloud. It can search across your local files, your OneDrive, and your Teams chats simultaneously. If you ask, "Where is that quarterly report script I was working on?" it doesn't just check your desktop; it checks the files your colleague sent you in Teams three weeks ago, making it the ultimate productivity unblocker.

12. Jasper AI

While generic tools like ChatGPT are fantastic generalists, Jasper has doubled down as a specialist platform for serious marketing teams. In a world where AI content is becoming commoditised, its value lies in helping your output feel like your brand, not like generic AI.

Its standout features are Jasper IQ and Brand Voice. Instead of pasting your style guide into every new chat, you centralise tone-of-voice rules, product information, and customer personas once, then reuse that context across everything you generate. Whether you are creating a LinkedIn post, a blog article, or a press release, Jasper automatically applies those constraints to keep a consistent corporate voice across channels.

Jasper has also evolved beyond one‑off templates into multi-asset campaign generation. Give it a single brief, ‘launch our new eco‑friendly sneaker’, and it can draft a coordinated bundle of assets: a blog post, multiple social variations, a basic email sequence, and ad copy, all aligned to the same message and brand voice.

It integrates tightly with SEO tools such as Surfer SEO and with CRM and marketing platforms like HubSpot, smoothing the path from ideation to optimisation and publishing. It does sit at a higher price point than a standard ChatGPT subscription, but for marketing departments that need to ship high volumes of safe, on‑brand content without constant micromanagement, it remains a strong, defensible investment.

Adobe co-founder John Warnock has died aged 82, according to a statement from the company. 

CEO Shantanu Narayen notified staff of Warnock’s passing on Sunday, hailing the co-founder and former CEO as “one of the greatest inventors in our generation”. 

"It is a sad day for the Adobe community and the industry for which he has been an inspiration for decades," Narayen said in an email.

Narayen added that his interactions with Warnock during his time at the firm “have been the highlight” of his professional career. 

"While he was my role model and mentor, I am most grateful to count him as a friend.”

Warnock spent more than 35 years at Adobe, steering it through an extended period of growth which saw the firm position itself as a leader in the digital design software space. 

From 1982, Warnock served as CEO until 2000 before stepping down. Thereafter, he served as co-chairman alongside Geschke until 2017. 

Warnock remained deeply involved with the company in recent years, having also remained on Adobe’s board of directors after stepping down as co-chairman.

Warnock was widely recognized as a pioneering figure in the tech industry. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by former US President, Barack Obama.  

John Warnock's pivotal role at Adobe

Warnock co-founded Adobe, known widely for its Photoshop, Acrobat and Premier Pro platforms, alongside Charles Geschke in 1982. 

The pair formed the company following a short dispute with Xerox over the development of the PostScript programming language, both of whom had been working on the project during their time at the firm’s Palo Alto-based research center. 

PostScript, a page description language for use in electronic publishing, was the first program launched by the newly-founded firm in 1984, and rapidly grew in popularity.

This growth was, in part, fueled by the programming language’s adoption by Apple in 1985 for use in the blossoming tech giant’s Apple LaserWriter; the first printer to leverage PostScript.

Apple’s involvement in Adobe’s early years was notable, having acquired a 15% stake in the firm a year into its journey.

Four decades on from its formation, Adobe has become one of the most recognized brands in the global tech industry. With a market capitalization of over $231 billion, the firm certainly holds its place as a heavyweight in the industry and boasts around 30 million customers through its Adobe Creative Cloud platform.

In recent months, Adobe has been embroiled in a back-and-forth with regulators over its proposed $20 billion acquisition of rival firm, Figma.

Regulators in both the UK and European Union have raised competition concerns over the deal, arguing that it “threatens to significantly affect competition in the market for interactive product design and whiteboarding software”.

Security experts have issued a warning over a potentially ‘incomplete’ fix for a security vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion. 

Researchers at Rapid7 have raised concerns that security patches issued for a series of vulnerabilities could still be placing users at risk. 

Adobe released fixes for a series of vulnerabilities earlier this month affecting ColdFusion, including an access control bypass vulnerability - tracked as CVE-2023-29298 and discovered by Rapid7. 

Researchers said that, based on observations, threat actors were found to be actively exploiting CVE-2023-29298 in customer environments.

“Rapid7 managed services teams have observed exploitation of Adobe ColdFusion in multiple customer environments,” the firm said in a blog post. 

“The attacks our team has responded to thus far appear to be chaining CVE-2023-29298, a Rapid7-discovered access control bypass in ColdFusion that was disclosed on July 11, with an additional vulnerability.”

Behaviors observed by researchers were found to be “consistent” with a separate zero-day exploit published - and later removed - by Project Discovery on July 12.

According to Rapid7, it appears that Project Discovery initially believed it discovered an exploit, tracked as CVE-2023-29300 - a deserialization vulnerability - that would enable arbitrary code execution.

However, this was then found to have been a zero-day exploit chain that Adobe subsequently fixed. 

“The Project Discovery team probably did not realize their discovery was a new zero-day vulnerability and (we assume) took down their blog while Adobe fixed the flaw,” the firm said. 

Warning issued over incomplete fix

Although Adobe issued a raft of fixes for these vulnerabilities last week, Rapid7’s analysis revealed that the patch provided is “incomplete”. 

This means that a modified exploit could still be leveraged to work against the latest version of ColdFusion. 

Similarly, researchers warned that, at present, there is no mitigation for customers vulnerable to CVE-2023-29298. 

“Rapid7 researchers determined earlier today that the fix Adobe provided for CVE-2023-29298 on 11 July is incomplete, and that a trivially modified exploit still works against the latest version of ColdFusion - released July 14). 

“We have notified Adobe that their patch is incomplete.”

Researchers noted, however, that for the incomplete fix to be harnessed effectively, threat actors would still be reliant on a secondary vulnerability for “full execution on target systems”. 

The firm urged customers to still update to the latest version of ColdFusion to mitigate the secondary vulnerability and prevent exploitation. 

Concern has been expressed by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of Figma, fearing that the purchase could reduce innovation.

The announcement comes less than two months after the CMA stated it was looking into the proposal. The EU is also looking into the deal.

According to the CMA, Figma had acquired a substantial chunk of the UI design market since its founding in 2012, and that Adobe “has been continuously investing in and competing in this segment”.

“This important rivalry could be lost if the deal goes ahead,” said the CMA

The CMA also noted that Figma was an emerging threat to Adobe’s traditional image, video, and animation market. Its removal from the sector by the deal could therefore stifle innovation.

Adobe announced its plans to acquire Figma in September 2022 for $20 billion, half in cash and half in stock. The transaction was expected to close in 2023, subject to regulatory approval.

Figma’s tools permit the visualization of mobile and web applications, and the company represents a gap in Adobe’s product line.

Closing the deal would therefore remove a major competitor for Adobe.

Businesses have benefited from the competition between Adobe and Figma, with improvements in app visualization and design collaboration tools proving highly beneficial when creating apps and websites.

The CMA cited figures from IBISWorld that put the value of the app development industry in the UK at £19.4 billion ($24.6 billion) in 2022, with faster growth than the rest of the wider technology sector overall.

Sorcha O’Carroll, senior mergers director at the CMA, expressed concern that as well as stifling innovation, there was a danger that higher costs would ensue for companies that rely on Figma and Adobe’s digital tools. 

She added that the products “are critical for the development of digital services that people and businesses use on a daily basis”.

The UK’s CMA has taken a strong stance with regard to technology companies in recent years. It blocked Meta’s acquisition of Giphy and delayed Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. 

Adobe said it had received overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers regarding the deal.

“We remain confident in the merits of the case as Figma’s product design is an adjacency to Adobe’s core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space,” a spokesperson said.

“We look forward to establishing these facts in the next phase of the process and successfully completing the transaction.”

Adobe and Figma now have until 7 July 2023 to come up with proposals to address the CMA’s concerns. 

A decision would then be taken in another five days - assuming any proposals are submitted - on whether to refer the case to the next stage, in which a further in-depth review of the merger would be undertaken. 

This would enable the CMA to go into the concerns in greater detail before a final decision is reached. The CMA would then state if the proposal would result in a substantial lessening of competition (SLC).

Change is happening – faster than ever. As the physical and virtual worlds merge ever closer, 3D design is the future of almost every industry.

In collaboration with The Drum, in this report by Adobe, they speak to 3D creatives, illustrators, and designers from leading brands to learn how 3D design is already a game changer across fashion, retail, e-commerce, manufacturing, digital media and education.

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• How 3D design is opening new doors creatively and commercially
• How 3D is bringing a whole new perspective to work, from product and packaging designs to virtual photography
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Where objects were once drawn they now flow, bounce and burst. Edges that used to be flat now have crunch, squidge and sheen. As the gap between the real and the virtual grows ever smaller, 3D design presents one of the most exciting frontiers in visual culture. Whether in gaming, product design, fashion or art, you’ll likely have noticed the rise of 3D design.

If you’re a creative approaching the world of 3D for the first time, you’re probably full of questions and within the 3D Trends Report, we hope to answer these possible questions. Surveying the length and breadth of work currently being created, we’ve identified a handful of trends we believe are leading the conversation, artists and ideas making waves in the world of 3D, and hints as to where the industry might be heading next.

Head into our report to discover current trends dominating visual creation, a case study of how 3D can be implemented in a cultural and commercial context, emerging trends to note, and discover how Adobe Substance 3D can elevate your future 3D work.

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Adobe has had to issue another software update after an out-of-band patch failed to fix a vulnerability in its e-commerce software.

Last weekend, the company released an out-of-band patch to fix a vulnerability in its Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source e-commerce products.

The CVE-2022-24086 input validation bug allowed attackers to run their own code on e-commerce sites, making them vulnerable to cart skimmers. The company said that the attack had been exploited in the wild.

Adobe credited the new discovery to one of the bug researchers that found the original vulnerability. The researcher from security company Bugscale, who uses the Twitter handle @Blaklis, warned about Adobe's first patch on Twitter. "THIS IS NOT SUFFICIENT to be safe," they said, adding a comment that hinted at the cause of the problem: "take care of json/url encoded values".

Researchers at security company Positive Technologies also warned that they had bypassed the initial patch to exploit the vulnerability again. "We weren't the first," they added.

The additional research created a new vulnerability ID, CVE-2022-24087. It mirrors the first bug's 9.8 (critical) rating. Adobe released a fix for the bug, which customers must apply on top of the first patch.

This isn't the first critical vulnerability that Adobe has had to patch lately. Earlier this month it issued a patch for a critical bug, CVE-2022-23202, that enabled attackers to execute their own code in its Creative Cloud Desktop application.

It also patched an arbitrary code execution bug in Adobe After Effects, and another in Photoshop.

Adobe has said it is making new payment options available for customer digital storefronts in order to tackle an over-reliance on integrations from third-party providers.

The new Payment Services tool is managed through Adobe Commerce Admin and will let merchants support a range of payment methods like credit and debit cards, Venmo, and PayPal, including PayPal's pay later services.

Adobe said that all payment and transaction data can be accessed through the Adobe Commerce Admin platform, and the company will provide competitive processing fees, where transactions will have tiered rates based on processing volume.

Merchants will also be able to access advanced financial reporting, and view information on their store’s orders and payments, like processed volume, payment balance, and transaction-level reporting.

“In today’s fast-moving digital economy, organisations demand flexibility and extensibility in their commerce platform to sustain business growth and deliver seamless experiences for their customers,” said Amit Ahuja, vice president of Adobe Experience Cloud Product and Strategy at Adobe.

“With the addition of Payment Services, we’re thrilled to expand on our already robust out-of-the-box commerce feature set to help Adobe Commerce merchants compete effectively and win in the digital-first economy.”

In the future, Adobe said that merchants might be able to offer other payment methods, pointing to the likes of PayPal and its ongoing investment in cryptocurrency.

Payment Services will be available to customers in the US from the fourth quarter of 2021, and will also be accessible to merchants using Magento Open Source. Support for additional territories, including Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, is planned for 2022.

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A modern content management system (CMS) can be an opportunity for businesses to reimagine the digital customer experience, but how do you do it correctly?

Upgrading your CMS is an important decision that requires you to get the timing, solution, and process right since it’s likely a big expenditure and a platform you’ll have to work with for at least several years, but the benefits are worth it if you can get it right.

Download this guide to find out more about:

• Five signs it’s time to upgrade your CMS
• What to look for in a new CMS
• Steps to a successful CMS deployment

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Virtual collaboration will be a commonplace feature of the future workplace, and your employee portal needs to support it.

Legacy tools can slow your workers down in a time when they need to connect easily and quickly in order to be productive, which creates a bad employee experience and will come back to bite your business in the long run.

Download this whitepaper to find out more about the five essential building blocks to creating a modern employee portal, including centralised content management and exceptional personalisation tools.

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After being in and out of lockdown during the pandemic, it’s fair to say that consumers are craving interaction. For brands, it’s important to capitalise on this - when the majority of correspondence has been through technology - and deliver those personalised experiences that will help meet their needs.

From how to build a digital foundation to delivering personal experiences at scale, discover why personalisation matters.

Download this guide to learn:

• How to map your customer journey
• What data to track and how to measure success
• The main personalisation challenges facing brands

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Today’s consumers want and expect personalised, relevant experiences more than ever, and for those brands that aren’t already delivering them, there’s a risk they could be left way behind the competition.

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Discover the tools that today’s marketers need to optimise their CX delivery and thrive in the age of digital transformation in this informative guide.

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Organisations these days are spending a lot of time considering how to create, deliver and optimise amazing content-led experiences for their customers. Targeting and personalisation continue to be a top priority for leaders in CX, and it’s clear to see why as those organisations with outstanding customer experiences are more likely to exceed their business goals.

With the evolution of cloud-native CMS platforms, even more businesses can innovate and introduce personalised experiences they never thought possible.

Download this resource to learn how to choose and deploy a CMS that will deliver the best results for your business.

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The majority of CIOs agree that AI and machine learning will continue to be critical to their businesses over the next five years; however some guidance is required for brands who aren’t quite sure where to start and how to make the most of it.

Content management is one of the areas where AI is excelling, from personalised content, A/B testing and content production.

Download this guide to learn:

• Three ways AI can transform your content
• Six tools of the AI trade
• How to future proof your AI

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Adobe has admitted that users' images and presets have been permanently deleted due to a bug in the latest version of the Lightroom app for iOS and iPadOS.

As first reported by PetaPixel, users started reporting missing files after updating Lightroom to version 5.4 earlier this week.

Those affected lost photos, presets, edits, watermarks, and more. One Reddit user said that he lost two years of edits, and there are a number of similar complaints from people who lost important data.

The majority of those hit by the glitch were using local storage and hadn't upgraded content to Adobe's cloud storage service, although some paid users were also impacted and lost thousands of photos.

Adobe has since pulled the botched update and release a new version of Lightroom for iOS and iPadOS (5.4.1) that "prevents this issue from affecting additional customers".

However, in a forum post, the company warned that "installing version 5.4.1 will not restore missing photos or presets for customers affected by the problem introduced in 5.4.0."

"We know that some customers have photos and presets that are not recoverable. We sincerely apologize to any customers who have been affected by this issue," Adobe added.

In a follow-up statement, the company recommended that affected users try to restore an iCloud backup that might have the lost content, but reiterated there's no solution on Adobe's end to address the loss and no fix if there's no ‌iCloud‌ backup.

News of this glitch comes just weeks after Canon warned that some users’ media has been permanently deleted following a coding error that arose from a botched attempt to switch its image.canon service to new software.

Adobe has announced it will start tagging Photoshopped images as having been edited, to help push back against misinformation.

The software maker's digital image editing tools will feature the technology in a preview version later this year, the company told WIRED, under a previously detailed Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).

The system will add a tag to metadata showing the provenance of an image, such as which camera took it or whether it was edited. That data will be cryptographically signed so it can't be altered or removed, letting someone viewing the image track its history through metadata.

“We imagine a future where if something in the news arrives without CAI data attached to it, you might look at it with extra skepticism and not want to trust that piece of media,” project leader Andy Parsons told the magazine.

The aim is to make it easier for content creators to label their work as authentic and claim it as their own, giving the rest of us an extra signal that an image can be trusted. "Currently, creators who wish to include metadata about their work (for example authorship) cannot do so in a secure, tamper-evident and standard way across platforms," an Adobe white paper on the system notes. "Without this attribution information, publishers and consumers lack critical context for determining the authenticity of media."

Adobe has already been working with Twitter on the project, which could see images posted to social media tracked via the tags, helping to make it easier to spot falsified images and to highlight pictures that aren't what they claim to be, something Twitter has already started doing with posts about elections and public health.

The move comes amid wider concerns about misinformation spread via social media during the pandemic and ahead of the US election, with tech firms laying out their plans for how they intend to battle falsehoods and promote correct data in the months running up to the vote.

But photos and video add an extra dimension in the battle against misinformation and propaganda, especially with the rise of deep-fake technologies that make it easier to convincingly falsify such content.

Whether the Adobe system can help push back against such concerns remains to be seen, but the CAI technology may have to be used more widely than specialist, expensive software like Photoshop to make much of a dent, as that's not how most people edit an image before posting it online.

Adobe, IBM and Red Hat are teaming up to accelerate digital transformation and strengthen real-time data security for organizations in regulated industries, such as banking and healthcare. The partnership will enable companies to deliver personalized customer experiences while driving improved engagement, profitability and customer loyalty.

By certifying and delivering Adobe Experience Manager 6.5 to run on Red Hat OpenShift, IBM will offer its clients the flexibility to host, access and leverage data in the environment of their choosing.

IBM will also use the IBM Cloud for Financial Services to extend Adobe Experience Manager to finance professionals. This will help them as they meet security and regulatory requirements without sacrificing a personalized experience for customers.

Meanwhile, IBM iX, the business design arm of IBM Services, will extend its offerings across all of Adobe's core enterprise applications. With integrated support for Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud clients, IBM iX will accelerate how organizations use data to design, implement and scale personalized customer experiences.

Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Global Markets, explained businesses are operating in an “experience first world where it is possible to gain immense value from data if trust and technology flexibility are central to the equation.”

“It is with these principles as the focus of our partnership – bringing Adobe’s marketing expertise, IBM’s industry domain knowledge and the open innovation of Red Hat – that will give clients the confidence to use their data for new competitive advantage,” Kralingen added.

Anil Chakravarthy, executive vice president and general manager of digital experience at Adobe, stated, “We are excited to partner with IBM and Red Hat to enable companies in regulated industries to meet this moment and use real-time customer data to securely deliver experiences across any digital touchpoint, at scale and compliant with regulations.”

“Through this collaboration, Adobe, IBM and Red Hat are enabling organizations to deliver great digital experiences in any environment with flexibility and speed across the hybrid cloud, whether in on-premises data centers or across multiple public clouds,” added Ashesh Badani, senior vice president of cloud platforms at Red Hat.

As part of the partnership, IBM has also named Adobe its “Global Partner for Experience” and will adopt Adobe Experience Cloud to transform its own global marketing efforts.

To comply with Trump's August executive order banning US trade with Venezuela, Adobe is cancelling all Venezuelan subscriptions to its software. Users have until 28 October to save the documents within their Adobe Creative Cloud accounts, although Adobe has confirmed that Venezuelans will still be able to access its free Behance service.

The sanctions block the trade of "funds, goods, or services" between the two countries, an effort by the US government to put economic pressure on Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro. The US recently placed 28 Chinese organizations on the Entity List, which similarly prohibits trade between US companies and the blacklisted entities. Tech giant Huawei has also been on the list for most of this year, although it has received a number of temporary exemptions.

Adobe is the first major tech company to react to the sanctions. Others including Google, PayPal, Microsoft, and many other US-based software service providers have not currently made any move to shut down their Venezuelan users' accounts.

Adobe says it is monitoring the situation closely so as to restore user access at the earliest time possible, but there's no indication as to how long subscribers will have to wait. The dilemma has renewed debates over the shortcomings of the subscription model for applications.

Many people depend on Adobe software to run their businesses, and human rights advocates have expressed concern over the impact that revoking software services will have on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and independent media outlets in the country. The option to buy a license rather than temporarily subscribe to Adobe services could have circumvented such concerns, had the software company not eliminated the option in 2019.

Yet there are many pros that make subscription-based applications an attractive option. Pricing is more accessible, programs can be updated faster, and companies maintain the power to revoke their software from a user. However, Adobe's bowing out of the Venezuelan market has already begun to show how this business model can go wrong.

Adobe has more information for those affected by their compliance with the executive order here.

Just as you can rely on the Christmas decorations arriving in the supermarkets every October, so too can you can count on a new release of Photoshop Elements.

The consumer-friendly version of the industry-standard photo editor has been, frankly, trundling along for many a year. A scattering of new features are added every autumn to justify a fresh version, but in an era when tablet and smartphone apps are getting ever-more sophisticated and enthusiast-grade editors are getting cheaper, it's getting harder to justify Photoshop Elements' very existence.

Does the 2019 version do anything to pull Elements back from the brink?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 review: Price

Elements is something of a black sheep in the Adobe stable. While almost all of the company's other apps have been sucked into the monthly subscription model, Elements remains one of the very few pieces of Adobe software you can buy as a one-off, perennial licence.

And while we have long bemoaned the lack of striking new features in Elements releases, it's easy to forget how much editing power lies beneath the software's consumer-friendly surface. Plunge the software into Expert mode and you'll find many of the power features that are in full-blown Photoshop. Finding a justification to upgrade for those who own a recent edition of Elements, however, is a tougher challenge.

Elements' launch price of 81 is steep, but this software does tend to tumble during sale season, so bear that in mind if you're looking to purchase.

However, at full price Elements starts to butt up against Adobe's own Photography Plan, which includes both Lightroom and full-blown Photoshop. For sure, those tools are overkill for casual photographers taking holiday snaps and pics of the kids, but if you're even faintly keen on photography, the Photography Plan is a tempting option.

More pertinently, Serif's Affinity Photo - which again lacks that beginners' hand-holding but surpasses the tools on offer in Elements' Expert Mode -- is less than 50 for a one-off purchase.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 review: New features

So what's new in Photoshop Elements 2019? The majority of the fresh features come in the form of Guided Edits, where Elements takes you step-by-step through procedures that add effects such as motion blur, removing scratches and blemishes, or popping a colour in a black and white image.

It's fair to say most of the new additions fall into the novelty category, or what Elements cringingly describes as 'fun edits'.

Arguably, the most impressive of these is the 'multi-photo text' process. Here you select a background image, add some large text over the top of it, and then fill each of the letters with a different photo. As with all of the Guided Edits, Elements makes this process practically foolproof, but it only gets you halfway there. For example, there are no instructions on how to move the photos within the frame of the letters, leading to awkward crops like the chopped-off face in the first O of our test image.

Then there's a 'partial sketch' tool, where you can select part of a picture to look like it's been drawn in pencil (coloured or greyscale). This is the kind of edit that tips over into the 'easy way to ruin a nice photo' category, especially as the pencil sketch effect isn't particularly convincing. This is also one of the few times we've seen a Guided Edit fail -- the final step is meant to allow you to flip the parts of the image that are sketched and which aren't, but in our test it simply turned the whole photo into a sketch. (On the, ahem, flip side, that mistake vastly improved the quality of the overall image.)

Further Guided Edits let you overlay a frame and text on a photo, while another lets you create 'fun memes' (we're applying for an injunction to prevent Adobe ever using the word 'fun' again, by the way). These are the type of memes that were popular circa 2012, with the photo in the middle and bold text above and below the image. The Guided Edit works perfectly well, but you do wonder where Adobe's developers have been for the past few years? What are they planning for next year: MySpace support?

In Adobe's defence, it at least makes sharing these memes and other Guided Edits simple -- our 25MB image was automatically resized below Twitter's 2MB hard limit without any user intervention. But the social networks you can share with are restricted to Flickr and Twitter. Again, it's all a bit noughties. Not supporting Instagram, at the very least, is utterly baffling.

Aside from Guided Edits, other new features are desperately thin on the ground. There's a revamped system for making collages. You select the images you want to use from Elements' rather tired looking Organizer, hit the Create button, choose Photo Collage and have a selection of different layouts to choose from. This time it's easy to move the photos around inside the frames and Instagram-style layouts are also included here - although there's still no way to upload directly to that network.

The new features are rounded off with a revamped home screen and a pretty insipid feature that uses "AI" to automatically create slideshows of events such as birthdays and weddings. There wasn't a great deal of the 'I' being used in the slideshows it created for us - pictures seemed to be plucked at random and were often repetitive.

Finally, there's now support for the High Efficiency Image Format if you're running Elements on a Mac.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 review: Verdict

Elements finds itself trapped in an awkward middle ground. If you want to make collages, flashy graphics or to smash your photos with a dozen different filters, there are all manner of free apps available to do it with: Google's Snapseed, Over, Enlight, even Adobe's own Photoshop Express.

If you want the high-end features, such as layer-based editing, the ability to wipe errant objects out of photos or to add gradients to boring skies, then Affinity Photo is perfectly capable and much cheaper -- both on desktop and tablet.

Which leaves us wondering what the point of Photoshop Elements is in 2019. The Guided Edits are very good at steering you through tricky processes and it's lost none of its power, but its competitors have got better and cheaper, while Adobe still clings to an 80 price ticket.

Elements feels like a piece of software that's run out of steam. Will it even make it into the next decade? We wouldn't bet on it.

Verdict

The addition of one or two interesting new features does little to disguise the fact that this photo editing package is beginning to feel increasingly outdated next to cheaper and better-equipped rivals

Aside from the monthly sucking of funds from your account, there's one problem with subscription-only software such as Adobe Premiere Pro CC: it's easy to miss when a significant new version arrives.

Don't make that mistake with this latest incarnation, because it's a belter: along with some long-needed usability and collaboration improvements, there's also much better support for 360-degree video content.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 review: Usability updates

Let's start with the usability and collaboration improvements. It seems like a bizarre feature not to have had over Adobe Premiere Pro's 25 years of history, but at long last you can now open more than one project simultaneously. Before, if you wanted to reuse assets created in one project within a new one, you would need to import the old project. This could get very messy.

Now you can just open both projects, then copy and paste between them. You can grab elements from the timeline of one sequence, and when you paste them into a sequence in another project, their related file references come with them. This is a much more convenient way of working.

Vaguely related is the new Shared Projects facility. Premiere Pro CC has had a team project capability via Creative Cloud storage for a while, but Shared Projects are aimed at collaboration using communal storage on a local network. A user can now lock a project that has been loaded from a central storage repository, say a NAS or SAN, so that other workstations can only open it in read-only mode.

Once Project Locking has been enabled in the Premiere Pro Preferences, you give your workstation a User Name in the same dialog. Then you create Shared Projects, and can use a little padlock icon in the bottom left-hand corner to toggle read-write mode or release a project for others to work on.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 review: VR editing

The other significant area of improvement is for creating 360-degree VR content, which Adobe is labelling Immersive Video. Premiere Pro CC had received some support for 360 content with version 2015.3 in the middle of 2016. But for CC 2018 this has been beefed up considerably, with a selection of 360-aware effects and transitions that derive from Adobe's acquisition of the Mettle SkyBox Suite (sadly Adobe hasn't included the latter's 360 stitching tools into Premiere Pro).

Although you could apply 2D effects already, these introduce unwanted artefacts along stitching lines. But the new effects are seamless, and include Blur, Chromatic Aberrations, Color Gradients, De-Noise, Digital Glitch, Fractal Noise, Glow, Plane to Sphere, Projection, Rotate Sphere and Sharpen.

The Plane to Sphere effect is particularly useful; without this, when you import a 2D image it will automatically look curved. Apply the VR Plane to Sphere, and the image will instead appear like a 2D placard within 360-degree space, with tools to adjust how far away it looks and orientation. Even better, all these effects are GPU-accelerated, so they gain a performance advantage from your graphics hardware.

The VR Rotate Sphere effect lets you correct orientation issues with your 3D sphere, and you can add keyframes to animate the default view direction within the 360-degree space. The VR Projection tool is also handy, because it makes it easy to use footage shot on different 360 cameras on the same timeline. For example, we imported footage shot on a Ricoh Theta S alongside Garmin VIRB 360 output, and the VR Projection filter stretched the Ricoh footage perfectly to match the Garmin's.

The remaining effects are essentially 360-aware versions of their 2D counterparts. The immersive transitions include Chroma Leaks, Gradient Wipe, Iris Wipe, Light Leaks, Light Rays, Mobius Zoom, Random Blocks and Spherical Blur.

All eight use the 360-degree space in an interesting way to move between clips, and are a welcome addition because most 2D transitions introduce unwanted visual artefacts. Premiere Pro itself also now works in VR, so you can edit while wearing a VR viewing device such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 review: Extra features

There are a couple of other significant new features. The Essential Graphics Panel, introduced with Premiere Pro CC 2017 to replace the legacy titler, has been improved by the addition of Responsive Design. The Time element lets you pin a range of intro and outro keyframes at the beginning and end of a motion graphics clip, which are preserved when you make ripple edits.

This also includes a rolling credits feature. The Position element lets you pin a graphics layer to another layer or the video frame itself. The graphics layer will then respond to changes to the pinned layer or video frame, so when these are added to a sequence with a different aspect ratio they will maintain relative position.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 review: Verdict

There are sundry smaller improvements, including the ability to preview fonts and edit motion graphics templates created in After Effects directly within Premiere Pro. There are now also eight new label colours to aid clip organisation. But the ability to load multiple projects, shared project controls and extended VR support are the killer new features. Premiere Pro CC 2018 is even easier to use than ever, and now also a serious contender for creating 360 content.

Verdict

The ability to load multiple projects, shared project controls and extended VR support are killer new features. Premiere Pro CC 2018 is even easier to use than ever, and now also a serious contender for creating 360 content.

Adobe's head of emerging business for EMEA, Mark Greenaway, believes that "there's no place for paper" when it comes to signing a contract.

Speaking at the Experience Adobe Sign event in London, Greenaway said that traditional paper contracts are frequently bringing the final stages of agreements grinding to a halt, costing businesses time and money, and delaying customers from getting the products and services they want.

Adobe's solution lies in its e-signature platform Adobe Sign. Relaunched and rebranded in 2016 (you may remember it as EchoSign), it allows users to digitally sign documents and return them instantly. It's now Adobe's fastest growing business worldwide, with 6 billion signature transactions processed every year.

Greenaway stressed that Adobe's main focus with Sign is to help create a strong connection between businesses and their customers.

"We want to help build experience businesses," he said. "At Adobe Sign that means helping organisations move from traditional document-based processes with the contract very often being a breakpoint in a process which is otherwise being transformed.

"There's a great opportunity with digital signatures to remove that discontinuity, create a great experience, and save time and cost."

One business that's integrated Adobe Sign into its digital transformation is telecommunications company TalkTalk.

Andrew Dacombe, TalkTalk's director of colleague systems, said that the business's move to an agile working environment meant that putting pen to paper wasn't always possible.

"The traditional way of getting a contract, taking it to someone's desk and signing it became increasingly difficult. That's why we came to Adobe Sign as a tool," he told IT Pro.

The results have been impressive. Dacombe revealed that internal TalkTalk research showed the average cost of getting a document signed had fallen from 16 to below 1, while the average time taken had dropped from four weeks to four days.

BT's head of digital innovation Kirsty Goddard has a similar story when it comes to making Adobe Sign part of their business.

"There is no point in having beautiful websites with beautiful content and amazing journeys, when at the end you go, we're going to send you a letter, can you just sign it and send it back to us?'" she said. "That's not a digital journey and that's not looking at the end-to-end customer experience."

BT introduced e-signatures into their 38 BT Local Business franchises back in 2011 when the telecoms giant saw the average wait for the return of a signed contract sitting at 336 hours.

With Adobe Sign in place, that has now been reduced to four hours and taking paper out of the equation has resulted in a 630,000 cost saving. All in all, the platform has reduced processing time at BT by a staggering 8,300%.

With these ROIs, Goddard has been able to make a case for pushing Sign into other areas of the business such as HR contracts and to consumer customers.

"It's a no brainer - why would you use paper? It's a great customer experience and it's great for efficiency," she commented. TalkTalk's Dacombe has similar thoughts, adding: "Do I think we'll ever get to no paper? I'd like to think so."

With that in mind, Greenaway's "no place for paper" mantra might soon become a reality.

Discover more about Adobe Sign.

Every company, quite rightly, looks to optimise its costs, preventing overspending to run a more streamlined business. Yet, in the pursuit of the lowest running costs, there's a danger that a corner too far will be cut and a financial decision will be taken to buy cheaper creative software.

While this may look good on the balance sheet, initially, the impact of choosing second-best can be damaging in the long-term for any business. The old adage states that a bad workman always blames his tools, but it's as fair to say that a great workman can be hampered by poor tools. In other words, if you want to get the best out of your creative design team, you need to provide them with the best software. Undoubtedly, in the creative arena, the best software means Adobe Creative Cloud.

Staff retention

There are many good reasons to choose Adobe's software, but first, it's worth examining the human element. Each business is only as good as the staff that it can attract and retain. Part of employee satisfaction is providing them with the tools that they're happiest using, and that will do them the most good personally.

Creative Cloud contains the products the most experienced creative professionals will know how to use. For instance, any designer worth their salt will want to be working across Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, while a skilled video editor will know the ins and outs of Premiere Pro. By using this software, rather than a lesser-known brand, you can attract the best from a far wider pool of talent. Using other software, you'll find that you're limiting the staff, both permanent and freelance, that you can attract.

Individuals also see working for a company as an opportunity to improve their skills. For a person to develop and improve themselves, they want to use the best software, where the skills that they develop are transportable to other roles. As such, the best staff are likely to only want to work at a company that uses Adobe software, so that they can both develop their individual talents and work with the best collaboration tools Creative Cloud has to offer.

Meeting demand

Working with customers and other third parties is far easier using the leading software, as this is what most people expect. Using lesser-known software not only restricts the features that you can use, but is likely to require that you use a compatibility mode for saving files, which often has very mixed results.

And, if a customer sends you a file created with the latest version of Creative Cloud apps, there's a real danger that your business won't be able to open it. Even if the file can be opened, not all of its features may be compatible with lesser-known software. This kind of restriction simply isn't good enough for a modern business.

By not using Creative Cloud, your business could be limiting its options and the range of people it can work with. Before cutting costs on software, it's worth examining how much work you could potentially lose out on as a result.

A more flexible way of working

While Creative Cloud used to be a fairly expensive capital expense, Adobe's move to powerful subscription packages, changes the dynamic. By paying monthly per licence, subscription plans remove that initial upfront cost, add flexibility and give every business an operational cost directly attributable to the tax year. With this model, there's no reason to cite tight budgets for not giving your design staff the software that they want.

Subscription plans are flexible, letting you choose your subscription length, and more easily choosing the packages that you need: you can go from a single app all the way up to the full Creative Cloud offering, including Adobe Stock.

For businesses, Adobe's Value Incentive Plan (VIP) gives all organisations the tools and controls that they need to deliver and manage Creative Cloud apps.

Centralised management lets your business decide where applications are deployed, and provides a simple way to upgrade everyone to the latest products as soon as they're released. This level of control makes software management far easier than with lesser-known tools.

Importantly, the management burden reduces, as the management console tells you how many licences you have, how many are deployed and who's using them. Trying to manage licences manually for other software is a real headache, and can result in unused licences effectively costing companies money.

More importantly, the VIP service gives businesses complete flexibility. Licences can be easily re-assigned, letting your software become a moveable asset. For less money and smart management of licences, companies can move software to suit projects and working groups. And, this requires very little in the way of management overhead.

Of course, as staff numbers change, the VIP service lets you add licences easily. As all additional subscriptions prorate to the same anniversary date, billing is kept simple, too.

With some software, managing additional licences or re-assigning them can be a fairly substantial job and not one easily achieved.

For any software purchase, it's important to take into account any management costs that go with it, looking at the total cost of ownership (TCO), rather than just the basic price paid.

More secure

Security is a big worry for all companies, and using well-known software, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, can help meet targets. Downloading smaller, lesser-known products comes with the risk that there will be security holes and fewer patches and updates.

With Adobe Creative Cloud, you can rest assured that all the applications are constantly being updated, minimising your company's risk.

Flexibility and power beats 'low' cost

Adobe's VIP subscription service for Creative Cloud means that there's no need to settle for second best anymore. Its simple subscription costs make Creative Cloud affordable for any company, giving staff the tools that they want. More importantly, VIP gives companies the flexibility and simple management tools that modern businesses require.

Find out how Adobe Value Incentive Plan can deliver the best creative tools to your company.

Software was traditionally bought outright via a perpetual licence, with companies paying for the number of licences required for their workforces. Today, the needs of companies have changed, and software vendors are increasingly moving to subscription services instead.

A fundamental shift in the way that software is delivered, subscription services make a lot of sense for modern companies, delivering a new level of flexibility and agility.

Much of the benefit of subscription services comes down to the ways that software is accounted for. With a perpetual licence, software is typically bought as a capital expenditure (CAPEX); subscription services are treated as an operating expense (OPEX).

CAPEX vs OPEX

With CAPEX, purchases are recorded as assets and depreciation is used to spread the cost over the product's useful life, measured in a number of years. As software subscriptions are treated as a lease, the cost is attributed as OPEX: an ongoing cost to the company, where the full amount paid can be claimed against tax each year.

This difference in accounting gives the foundations of a much more flexible and powerful way of working. Under CAPEX, as the cost is written off over a period of years, companies are locked into using the version of the software that they bought; it simply doesn't make financial sense to pay for upgrades before the CAPEX period expires.

Worse, businesses have to make a decision upfront about the number of software licenses they want, and the configuration required. As requirements change, it can mean that companies have over-paid for features that they don't use and can end up with unused licenses. As a result, Gartner worked out in 2016 that businesses could save up to 30% on software costs by implementing three best practices: optimising software configurations, recycling software licences and implementing software asset management software.

With a subscription service, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, these problems are largely eradicated, and the way that software is bought, used and transitioned becomes far more flexible.

Flexible use

First, a subscription service builds in much-needed licensing flexibility. If a company grows and needs more licences, it can just pay for the extra that it needs and the job is done. This works in reverse too. Say extra licences were required for a big project or temp staff, the additional subscriptions can be cut when additional users are no longer required.

The ability to scale up or down based on actual use is incredibly powerful and gives companies the flexibility that they need. Importantly, as the cost per user is clearly defined and attributable to the current tax year, there's a clearer control over costs. And, licensing is far easier to manage from a central console, rather than having to manage perpetual licences in-house.

Flexibility stretches beyond simply being able to change the number of licences on-demand, though. Companies also gain flexibility in the type of subscription they have, so users can be upgraded or downgraded flexibly, depending on the packages and features that they need.

Businesses can even rent some packages on a short-term basis, say to complete a one-off project. By renting software for a short period, businesses gain an ability to take on some jobs where the previous model of having to pay outright for a package would have been too cost prohibitive.

Latest versions

Beyond the flexibility to grow, software subscriptions have many other benefits compared to perpetual licences. Top of that list has to be bundled upgrades, letting businesses run the latest versions at all times: as software is leased, the upgrades are provided as part of the subscription service.

Under a perpetual licence, minor updates and bugfixes are provided, but the upgrade to the next version has to be paid for. As a result, many companies end up running out-dated software. Even worse, businesses may end up running different versions of the same software across different teams, due to the way that perpetual licences are paid-for and managed.

Under a subscription service all employees can run the same, up-to-date versions, even if new staff arrive years after the initial rollout. Running the latest version of software is incredibly important with modern applications. For starters, it means that you remove the threat of obsolescence, running unsupported and out-of-date software. From a security perspective, software subscription is an important change, helping boost protection by running the most up-to-date versions, and ensuring that hotfixes are installed.

More than this, new versions of software bring with them more powerful features and new ways of working. Missing out on these by not upgrading regularly puts companies at a competitive disadvantage and limits creativity: a position that no business wants to be in.

Running the latest software is not just about working internally, it's about working with other partners. With perpetual licences, companies would have to check with partners to see which version of the software they were using. Where there was a mismatch, files would have to be saved as an older version for compatibility reasons, which had the net result that some newer features weren't supported. Effectively, working with an external partner could have the effect of downgrading the software that you were running.

With subscription services, everyone should be running or, at the least, have access to the latest version of an application. This makes sharing files between users, divisions and partners far easier and removes the obstacle of compatibility issues.

Conclusion

Overall, moving to a software subscription service is far more flexible than the old perpetual licence model. The old way of working, with a fixed and immovable asset that slowly becomes out of date, has changed. Instead, a more flexible and powerful way of working has been introduced, with the ability to scale and expand software to meet today's demands. Simpler management and lower upfront costs that are easier to attribute complete the picture and demonstrate that software subscriptions give modern companies a better way of working.

Find out how Adobe Value Incentive Plan can deliver the best creative tools to your company.

Adobe's annual Email Use Survey has revealed that although email is still seen as the most important marketing channel for businesses, it's on the downturn, with fewer professionals checking their business and personal email as thoroughly over the last year compared to 2016.

Email has become less of a commodity - people don't check their email in bed as much, for example, and employees will wait until they get into the office before signing into their account.

Additionally, Adobe revealed spam filtering has improved, meaning marketing emails are more likely to make their way into the junk mail folder than in previous years.

However, the report highlighted the importance of optimising email marketing campaigns for mobile, as 23% of respondents explained this has improved their experience of email over the last few years.

"As brands continue to embrace email marketing as a pivotal component to build delightful, holistic experiences, many struggle with meeting customers' heightened demands," said Stephan Dietrich, vice president of Adobe Campaign.

However, email remains the most important way for brands to contact potential customers, the research explained. 65% of people prefer to be contacted via email, while only 16% want direct mail promoting a company's products and services.

Although 51% of respondents are happy to receive special offers and promotions from brands, 39% said they would like to see emails that are more about providing information rather than being too salesy.

Adobe has now launched Adobe Campaign as part of its Adobe Marketing Cloud, which has been designed to send relevant and personalised emails to customers, using Adobe Sensei to identify a customer's likes and habits.

"Our new email innovations further cement our leadership in helping enterprises provide well-designed emails that enhance customer relationships, brand awareness and ultimately sales," Dietrich said.

Adobe Creative Cloud prices are set to leap next month - the latest software to see prices climb due to the exchange rate carnage following Brexit.

Rather than publicly lay out the full price increases, the company sent messages to subscribers, depending on the products they use.

That left industry websites to tally up the price bump from emails forwarded by readers, with Digital Arts Online totting up most of the changes.

It revealed that Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan would increase from 8.57 to 10.10 per month, including VAT. The Creative Cloud bundle is climbing from 45.73 to 50.57, while Creative Cloud for Teams is up from 53.20 to 59.

Those increases are all about 11%, but students face a 62% leap from 15.49 a month to 25.28 - however, Adobe pointed out that students get a 50% discount in their first year, so the actual difference is similar to the price increases seen by others.

The price hikes start on 6 March, but if you're a subscriber, the price won't increase until you renew. In that case, the price may not leap by the amount noted in the letters, as Adobe said it will "change to reflect the then current local currency price". Adobe said it would update subscribers closer to renewal time with more details of exactly how much they will have to pay.

A company spokesperson said: "Like many companies doing business globally, Adobe is making pricing adjustments based on fluctuating foreign exchange rates. Markets impacted include Sweden and the UK where pricing varied slightly based on the specific Adobe offering. Select customers saw the same price adjustments but adjustments may have appeared to be larger if they were coming to the end of a specific promotion."

The statement added: "For example, a customer who was part of a promotion that discounted the product by 50% for the first year would receive an email communication indicating that the promotional pricing period was ending and they were shifting to standard pricing while also noting the fluctuation on the foreign exchange rate. We will monitor currency fluctuations and make pricing adjustments as necessary."

Adobe warned in January that fluctuating currency rates in Brazil, Sweden and the UK would affect prices. "We monitor currency fluctuations and make adjustments only when necessary," the company said at the time. "Our ability to align with fluctuations in currency rates will enable us to continually innovate and deliver great value through our products and services.

Adobe isn't the first company to fiddle with prices because of Brexit, with Microsoft's climbing 22% and Apple's App Store up 25%.

Adobe has warned its customers to update Flash player software immediately, following the discovery of a 'critical' flaw that has already been exploited by malware.

The emergency security update released yesterday aims to fix a single vulnerability designated 'CVE-2016-7855'. This use-after-free memory flaw allows hackers to gain full remote access to a system when the user views a harmful flash-media file.

"Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit exists in the wild, and is being used in limited, targeted attacks against users running Windows versions 7, 8.1 and 10," said Adobe in a blog post.

A security update has also been released as a precaution for macOS, Linux and ChromeOS operating systems.

Google Threat Analysis Group researchers Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard first spotted the flaw and reported it to Adobe, however an update could not be released before exploits had found their way onto user systems.

Adobe has recommended users update to the latest versions of Flash player, which will fix the flaw and prevent future attacks.

Desktop Flash software, as well as Flash players on Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11, using versions 23.0.0.185 and under, are vulnerable to the latest exploit.

Linux users on 11.2.202.637 and under should also update to the latest security patch.

The latest patch follows a similar 'critical' security patch that dropped earlier this month, as Adobe worked to fix 12 significant vulnerabilities affecting use-after-free memory flaws.

These latest security concerns will likely further justify calls from the security community to abandon the Flash player in favour of a more reliable and secure HTML5 format. Many high profile companies, such as Apple, have blocked older unfsafe versions of flash, however some have abandoned the buggy plugin completely.

Following an announcement in May, Google Chrome will begin auto-defaulting to HTML5 format on all but 10 high-traffic websites, such as YouTube and Facebook, by the end of the year.

Browser provider Mozilla announced in July that it would begin slowly blocking Flash content entirely on its Firefox platform, replacing it with HTML by 2017.

Apple has confirmed that it is no longer supporting QuickTime for Windows, following reports last week of serious security vulnerabilities threatening the software.

Security firm Trend Micro released an urgent blog post last week recommending that that Windows users of QuickTime uninstall the software as soon as possible. It claimed Apple will no longer be supporting its video player, and notified readers of two new security holes that had been identified.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team quickly passed on the security firm's warning.

Apple has made no formal announcement about ending support for QuickTime on Windows. However, on Wednesday it updated its support page dedicated to the software with the following additional information: "QuickTime 7 for Windows is no longer supported by Apple."

QuickTime has been a fixture for Apple on Windows machines for several years. The users were prompted to install it along with the company's iTunes media software. The latter made use of QuickTime's video player functions for some of its own media, including the video content purchased from the iTunes Store.

Apple's decision to pull the plug on its support for QuickTime on Windows has also affected other software makers, and their users who rely on some of its codecs.

Adobe is one such company that relies on QuickTime, which it uses in Adobe After Effects and some of its other products.

Following the news, Adobe has distanced itself from Apple. In a statement, Adobe said: "Adobe has worked extensively on removing dependencies on QuickTime in its professional video, audio and digital imaging applications and native decoding of many .mov formats is available today (including uncompressed, DV, IMX, MPEG2, XDCAM, h264, JPEG, DNxHD, DNxHR, AVCI and Cineform). Native export support is also possible for DV and Cineform in .mov wrappers.

It added: "Unfortunately, there are some codecs which remain dependent on QuickTime being installed on Windows, most notably Apple ProRes. We know how common this format is in many worfklows, and we continue to work hard to improve this situation, but have no estimated timeframe for native decode currently.

"Adobe's desire has always been to support everything natively without the need for QuickTime. As a result of the above we intend to increase our efforts to remove these incompatibilities, and provide our customers with a complete native pipeline."

This kerfuffle over QuickTime's codecs will be sour news for Adobe, which continues to face criticisms for its Flash middleware. For the time being, Windows users who rely on some its QuickTime-dependent products may have to risk keeping it installed.

Apple noted at new versions of Windows has included support for Apple-created media formats, such as H.264 and AAC, since 2009.

For information on how to uninstall QuickTime 7 for Windows, see Apple's support page.

Image: Flickr-CC/Roger Schultz

Adobe has released its third Flash unscheduled security update this year, after video sharing site Dailymotion found an advert that redirected to an attacker-controlled page that could be used to take control of a user's system.

Adobe said in its alert: "A critical vulnerability (CVE-2015-0313) exists in Adobe Flash Player 16.0.0.296 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. Successful exploitation could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. We are aware of reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild via drive-by-download attacks against systems running Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows 8.1 and below."

Paul Ducklin wrote on the Sophos blog: "This script tries to guess which vulnerabilities are most likely to work on your computer, based on browser version, available plugins, and other settings, and then lets rip one-by-one with specific exploits," until nothing happens, the browser crashes or one of the exploits succeeds and your computer has been taken over.

The zero-day exploit has been patched, but Adobe doesn't anticipate completely fixing the vulnerability until later this week.

Peter Pi, threat analyst at Trend Micro, said: "We've seen around 3,294 hits related to the exploit and, with an attack already seen in the wild, it's likely there are other attacks leveraging this zero-day, posing a great risk of compromise to unprotected systems."

Meanwhile, Adobe commented in a statement: "We are aware of reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild via drive-by-download attacks against systems running Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows 8.1 and below."

Last week, YouTube announced it has started to implement HTML5 by default in browsers to play videos rather than Flash because it said Flash couldn't support Adaptive Bitrate (ABR), which cuts down on buffering without compromising video quality.

Kaspersky Lab got in touch at the end of last week to say the number of untrusted digital certificates used to sign off malicious software had doubled in the last year, with its anti-virus database highlighting more than 6,000 of the things, just to put this into context.

A little context is never a bad thing, as there are plenty of sysadmins who routinely trust digital signatures without any further investigation and are happy to install signed files on this flawed trust assumption, which is worrying. Especially when stolen or faked signatures have been used for donkey's years to fool users into thinking malicious files are the exact opposite. Remember Stuxnet, anyone?

There's plenty of evidence to suggest cybercriminals actively trade in stolen digital certificates within the dark market that exists online, and some (such as the Darkhotel folk) even appear to have access to the keys needed to create fake certs.

Kaspersky Lab suggests, quite rightly, that digitally signed apps from unknown software vendors are prevented from launching, and permission should not be granted to launch them without checking serial numbers and hash sums first.

It also recommends that certificates from unknown certification centres are not installed in storage and users' systems are kept patched (the Microsoft MS13-098 update will eliminate the error that allows additional data in the signed file without violating the file signature, for example).

There is a certain degree of irony in receiving this piece of security information from a security vendor, when you think about how security software (although I don't know if Kaspersky uses this method, but some leading vendors certainly do) analyses content for malicious activity from within a browser with an SSL connection.

The SSL has to be decoded on-the-fly, as it were, then re-wrapped and all in such a seamless way within the network layer that nobody knows. This is done, and here comes the irony bit, by squirting a Certificate Authority into your trust store and generating a 'fake' certificate for every site being visited and analysed.

It's clever, and web-content filtering is a must have if you want to stay protected, but using these on-the-fly certs added into the Root Certificate store in Windows and major browsers seems like being warned to watch out for what the bad guys are doing.

But, isn't it some kind of man in the middle attack, albeit that the man is wearing a white hat? Trust is a two way street, and mine is starting to get rather too full of potholes to negotiate safely.

Adobe Systems has suffered a massive data breach in which the personal details of 2.9 million users have been stolen, along with the source code for its Adobe Acrobat and ColdFusion programmes.

According to a blog post by Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief security officer, hackers were able to steal customers' names, encrypted credit and debit card numbers, their expiration dates, Adobe IDs and encrypted passwords.

Arkin said source code for "numerous Adobe products" was also removed from the firm's systems, but security researcher Brian Krebs specifically identified the company's ColdFusion web application platform and Acrobat family of products as being amongst those affected.

Krebs, who with fellow researcher Alex Holden, discovered the stolen source code used by cyber criminals believed to have attacked LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet earlier this year, further suggested users of Adobe's Creative Cloud and Revel cloud services were also disproportionately affected.

Peter Armstrong, director of cybersecurity at Thales UK, said the breach suggests companies like Adobe are either not taking cyber security seriously enough or do not know how to tackle it.

"Companies need to ensure they're protecting all of their assets, and that includes people, places and information. Security threats present themselves in a number of forms, and these increase by the day if not hour, minute or second," he said.

"Regulation in this case is a necessity to alter corporate behaviour. Once the full extent of the cyber threat is uncovered, greater collaboration on cyber issues should lead to an improvement in cyber awareness and cyber standards," Armstrong added.

Paul Ayers, VP EMEA at enterprise security firm Vormetric, added that - while it is good Adobe protects credit card information using encryption - he is concerned other personally identifiable information, such as addresses, owned software licenses and email addresses may be out in the open.

"This information could potentially be used for a very targeted spear phishing attack coming from Adobe', one that recommends a necessary software update is available to be downloaded with an email that seems very real because of all the accurate details it contains," Ayers said.

"From the reports out so far and the information available, you could draw the conclusion that Adobe used encryption to meet compliance requirements but not to protect what matters. Now, they have joined the ranks of Cisco and RSA which have lost valuable source code to a hacker.

"If Adobe had the appropriate security intelligence there was a much better chance that we would have never read these reports about their breach," he concluded.

IT Pro contacted Adobe for comment, but the company had not responded at the time of publication.

Adobe has taken the wraps off Adobe Anywhere, its new cloud-based collaboration suite, and claims it can overcome the three biggest headaches in video production: massive file transfers, duplicate media, and proxy files.

The cloud service would allow virtual teams to work together on projects, enabling them to efficiently log, edit, share and finish video productions using standard networks and hardware.

The service supports the latest versions of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe Prelude CC that are available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Support for Adobe After Effects CC is expected later in 2013.

"Video production has always been challenging because it's difficult for multiple editors to work on the same project and pass huge files back and forth across the internet," said Jim Guerard, vice president of enterprise solutions at Adobe.

"With Adobe Anywhere, these hassles are gone. Team members can work together with centralised media and assets, making it possible for remote users to work jointly on a project from virtually anywhere."

Adobe Anywhere is an enterprise-level offering that is hosted on-premise and enables production teams to collaborate smoothly and securely.

It can be installed on a cluster of servers and is powered by two core components: the Adobe Anywhere Collaboration Hub and the Adobe Mercury Streaming Engine.

The Adobe Collaboration Hub contains all the project information and metadata, manages user access, and allows multiple team members to work on the same project files simultaneously.

The Adobe Mercury Streaming Engine is a technology used across applications and provides real-time, dynamic viewing streams with GPU-accelerated effects of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe Prelude CC sequences.

The Adobe Mercury Streaming Engine reportedly eliminates hours of time spent transferring or duplicating large files and provides remote team members with instant access to media files from anywhere.

Inside the Enterprise: For most people who own a PC (or a Mac), the usual way to buy software is to buy a DVD or a download, install it, and then run it for life. Once you've bought the licence, that's usually it, unless you want to upgrade.

That, though, might not be the case for much longer. Adobe, one of the largest vendors of software tools for the creative industry but also a significant provider of graphics and design tools to enterprises has announced that its flagship software will, from now on, only be available on subscription.

Adobe's Creative Suite bundles Photoshop, perhaps the vendor's best-known product, with Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign and Premiere, depending on the version. It's a comprehensive set of tools, with a price tag to match.

But Creative Suite 6 (CS6) will be the last sold on a "perpetual" licence. From now on, anyone wanting the latest versions will have to either rent them, starting at 17.58 for a single application, or rent the suite, for 46.88 (there are several other options, too, for education users, teams, and users upgrading from CS3 and above).

The rental model is not new for Adobe: it has offered its software known as "subscription editions" for over a year now. The difference is that, post CS6, the only way to upgrade is to subscribe.

Before designers, photographers and other creative types cry foul, though, it is worth putting what Adobe is doing in context. The new services are not simply CS6, updated and rented.

The vendor is positioning the software as part of its Creative Cloud offering, which includes online storage (20GB for single users), portfolio and showcase tools, and even a tool for creating smart device apps. And the full CC bundle includes applications, such as Lightroom, which were not in Creative Suite 6.

And Adobe is allowing creatives to spread the cost of an otherwise expensive purchase, which will help freelancers. Die hards can still buy the conventional, CS6 licence; there just will not be any updates, aside from maintenance fixes, for the suite.

Adobe is not alone in allowing rentals Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription product, although for now, there's still also a "boxed" Office licence. And, as Ian Murphy, of analysts Creative Intellect explains, there are benefits to enterprises from software subscriptions. "Simplifying the acquisition and management of key business tools is a real cost saver for businesses," he says; companies can also rent a specialist tool, such as Premiere, for a short period, perhaps for a project.

But if businesses do decide to subscribe, it changes their relationship with their software provider. As the writer and blogger Tim Anderson puts it: "users have an ongoing dependency on the vendor this is not going to work unless you have a high level of trust and confidence in the vendor."

And that is the heart of the issue. Do businesses that depend on Adobe's tools, trust the company enough to abandon a perpetual licence, in favour of a subscription? For some, it may be like signing up to Spotify, but throwing away their CDs (or their vinyl). For others, it may turn out to be a simpler, cheaper and tidier way to run software they use every day.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT Pro.

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have been ordered to appear before Australia's parliament to explain why local consumers pay so much for their products, despite the strong Aussie dollar.

Broadening a row between the world's most valuable company and Australian lawmakers over corporate taxes paid on Apple's operations, the company's executives were formally summonsed on Monday to front a parliamentary committee in Canberra on March 22.

"In what's probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being summoned by the Australian parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the United States," said ruling Labour government MP Ed Husic, who helped set up the committee.

For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more.

All three companies have so far declined to appear before the special committee set up in May last year to investigate possible price gouging on Australian hardware and software buyers, despite the Australian dollar hovering near record highs above the US currency around A$1.03.

A 16GB WiFi iPad produced by Apple with Retina display sells in Australia for A$539, $40 above the price in the US, despite the stronger local currency. Microsoft's latest versions of Office 365 home premium cost A$119 in Australia versus $99.99 in the United States.

IT firms and other multinationals have blamed high operating costs in Australia including high local wages and conditions, as well as import costs and the relatively small size of the retail market in the $1.5 trillion economy.

Failure to appear before the committee as ordered could leave all three firms open to contempt of parliament charges, fines or even jail terms.

"For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more, particularly for software, where if it's downloaded there is no shipping or handling, or much of a labour cost," Husic told Reuters.

Adobe and Microsoft have previously provided separate written statements and submissions to the inquiry. But executives have been reluctant to explain their pricing before a public inquiry.

Apple executives in Australia declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

"The companies have blamed each other for not appearing. One will say 'we're not going to appear if the other is not going to appear'. So we've cut straight to the chase and said we'll just summons you," Husic said.

Price gouging in IT for hardware and software, Husic said, could be costing Australia's more than 2 million SMBs as much as $10 billion extra.

Husic took aim at Apple last week over local taxes paid by the company, telling parliament that Apple generated A$6 billion in revenue in Australia in 2011, but paid only A$40 million in tax - less than one percent of turnover.

"While they generated A$6 billion in revenue, they apparently racked up from what I understand A$5.5 billion in costs. How?" Husic said. "They do not manufacture here. They have no factories here."

He accused Apple executives of maintaining a "cloak of invisibility", while dodging scrutiny of operations. Apple has been criticised elsewhere for its zealous secrecy.

"Ask anyone who has sought answers from them about their Australian operations and you will hear a common theme. They will not talk," he said.

Adobe is investigating claims that a computer hacker has obtained the email addresses and passwords of more than 150,000 of the firm's customers and partners.

In a post on text sharing site, Pastebin, a computer hacker called ViruS_HimA claims to have hacked into an Adobe database.

"I have hacked into one of the Adobe servers, gained full access to it, dumped the database...[and] it contains over 150,000 email [addresses and] passwords," the hacker wrote.

This was accompanied by a series of links to several websites hosting a file containing 230 records that reportedly feature the names, email addresses, usernames and encrypted passwords of people from several US government agencies.

The hacker said only @adobe.com, .mil and .gov email addresses were at risk of being leaked, before going on to warn that Yahoo could be its next target.

"I'm not looking to ruin Adobe's business...but they don't really take care of security issues," wrote ViruS_HimA.

"When someone reports [a] vulnerability to them, it take[s] five-to-seven days for the notification that they've received your report.

"Such big companies should really respond very fast and fix the security issues as fast as they can," the hacker added.

In a statement to IT Pro, an Adobe spokesperson responded to the post by stating: "We are aware of the claim and are in the process of investigating."

Despite going on sale less than a month ago, Microsoft is to release three fixes for Windows 8 and its Surface tablets.

Three security holes have been found that affect Windows systems from Windows XP SP3 right up to and including Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

The flaws allow hackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable systems. A couple of patches also fix flaws in Windows 8 RT, the ARM-based OS used in Microsoft's new tablet computer.

Another critical patch is for an Internet Explorer vulnerability that could be used in both drive-by and targeted attacks. An attacker would be able to compromise their system if the user visits a malicious web page.

Another flaw affects Microsoft Office. Listed as important, the vulnerability allows remote code execution if a victim opens a malicious Office document. This bulletin is listed as important because the attacker can't force the user to open a document; they would have to be socially engineered into opening it.

The six patches rectify 19 vulnerabilities found in Microsoft software. The patches will be released on Tuesday 13 November.

"Most organisations will be affected by these critical bulletins as they relate to legacy codebase that is present even in Microsoft's most recent releases, such as Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012," said Marcus Carey, a security researcher with Rapid7.

"This may come as a surprise to many who expected that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 to be much more secure than legacy versions. The truth is that Microsoft and other vendors have significant technical debt in their code base which results in security issues."

Alongside the patches for Microsoft, Adobe is to release patches for vulnerabilities in its own products.

The software company will be releasing updates timed to coincide with Microsoft's patching schedule, rather than its previous policy of sending out updates as soon as they are ready.

"Starting with the next Flash Player security update, we plan to release regularly-scheduled security updates for Flash Player on 'Patch Tuesdays," the company said in a release.

The patches will fix seven critical flaws in Flash Player.

According to Chester Wisniewski ,security expert at Sophos, Flash Player remains one of the most exploited plug-ins used in drive by web attacks, and he said "it is sensible to update as soon as possible.

Software giant Adobe is to overhaul its digital signing procedures after the discovery of two malware samples carrying the firm's digital certificate of approval.

The certificate's presence means the "malicious utilities" would have been treated as safe by end users' computers.

We believe the vast majority of users are not at risk.

In a blog post, confirming the discovery, Adobe said the malware had been traced back to a single source and that a "compromised build server" had been discovered with access to the firm's code signing infrastructure.

"We immediately decommissioned the existing Adobe code signing infrastructure and initiated a forensics investigation to determine how these signatures were created," said the blog post.

"We are proceeding with plans to revoke the certificate and publish updates for existing Adobe software signed using the impacted certificate."

The firm said signed samples of malware are often used in "highly targeted attacks", but said the "vast majority" of users were not at risk.

The software vendor has introduced an interim signing service, featuring an offline human verification stage, and revealed that it is working on a replacement system.

It will also be revoking all affected certificates, issued after 10 July 2012, on Thursday 4 October 2012.

Adobe has taken the wraps of a new set of tools and services designed to help developers create content using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

The software vendor launched its new Edge Tools and Services products at an event in San Francisco yesterday, and announced the immediate availability of Adobe Edge Animate 1.0, Adobe Edge Inspect 1.0, Adobe PhoneGap Build 1.0 and Adobe Edge Web Fonts.

The company also confirmed that Edge Animate, which will allow developers to create animated content for web sites using HTML, JavaScript and CSS, will be given away for free to encourage adoption by web designers.

The products will also be made available to users of Adobe's Creative Cloud service.

"We are excited to put a powerful new set of HTML5 tools into the hands of Web designers and developers and can't wait to experience the beautiful websites, digital content and mobile apps they'll create," said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of interactive development at Adobe.

"[This] is why we're contributing to the web platform and making the Edge Tools and Services available for free, including the first release of Edge Animate."

Software vendor Adobe has announced an update for its popular Flash Player.

The new version fixes a number of security holes, including critical vulnerabilities that could result in memory corruption, stack overflows, security bypasses, null dereferencing and DLL hijacking.

Most of the addressed flaws deal with problems that could help hackers execute code on a user's machine.

These updates address vulnerabilities that could cause a crash or allow an attacker to take control of an affected system.

It also includes enhancements to the security of the code on a variety of platforms.

For instance, the Windows version of Flash Player now sports a production version of Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox. This sandboxes the code in the browser, making it more difficult for hackers to access other processes on a user's machine.

"These updates address vulnerabilities that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," said Adobe in an advisory.

Mac users get silent updating in the background. This runs a daemon on the machine every hour to check for updates on Adobe's servers. When updates are available, it downloads them once a response has been obtained.

This feature can be disabled in the Flash Player preferences menu.

Adobe has also signed the code on the Mac version in readiness for the Mac OS X release of Mountain Lion.

The next version of Apple's operating system will feature "GateKeeper". This is designed to protect users from malware while downloading applications on to their computers.

"Starting with Flash Player 11.3, Adobe has started signing releases for Mac OS X using an Apple Developer ID certificate," said Brad Arkin, Adobe's senior director of security, products and services, on a company blog.

When the Gatekeeper function is set to 'Mac App Store and identified developers,' end-users would "be able to install Flash Player without being blocked," added Arkin.

Flash Player on Windows and Macintosh will get updated to version 11.3.300.257, while Linux gets updated to 11.2.202.236. All previous versions should be treated as vulnerable to attack from criminals.

Software company Adobe has launched its new Adobe Creative Cloud, which allows creative types to use products from its Creative Suite 6 (CS6) on a monthly or yearly subscription instead of purchasing the software outright in a shrink-wrapped box.

Users of the service will also be able to download programs such as Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator, store their work in the cloud and share files with others.

One of the biggest selling points is the ability to download new updates from the cloud before regular software purchasers.

The move by the software company is a bid to make revenue growth more predictable, while dodging shortfalls in sales that happen between updates to its Creative Suite package.

One of the biggest selling points is the ability to download new updates from the cloud before regular software purchasers. Creative Cloud subscribers receive ongoing updates to Creative Suite applications before they launched as as part of major CS updates, as well as other new products and services as they emerge, such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4, Adobe Edge; and Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition, which allows the publication of digital magazines on iPad.

Adobe Creative Cloud publishing services features apps, magazines and catalogues piublishing to mobile devices, such as iPad, iPhone and Android. Members also have access to Adobe Typekit.

A new desktop app, Adobe Creative Cloud Connection, enables the syncing, sharing and storing of files across mobile devices and desktop. Creative Cloud membership includes up to 20GB of cloud storage, with additional storage purchase options coming soon, according to the company.

Membership of the cloud-based service is 38.11 ex VAT per month, with an annual contract. A special introductory offer of 22.23 ex VAT per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers is also available.

Adobe has updated its Web Experience Management (WEM) tool to allow digital content producers and online retailers to personalise content for end-users and create mobile apps without the need for third party development.

Key additions to the Adobe CQ 5.5 web-based software include the Client Context' and 'PhoneGap' tools that allow businesses to personalise content and deliver apps.

Client Context works by deriving a "profile" based on the information provided by a customer and the way in which they interact with a site.

To deliver the best possible personalised experience, a website would have to get users to sign up and provide information such as their gender, interests, location, email, Facebook ID as well as the browsers and devices that they use.

Kevin Cochrane, vice president of product strategy and solution marketing at Adobe demonstrated how a retail site could personalise content for a female user known as Alison Parker'. A homepage of the website was simulated that displayed skiing equipment as she was located in a mountainous area and had listed this as a hobby.

"Users increasingly want a personalised experience that is consistent across devices such a tablet, smartphone and desktop and this is what Adobe is focused on providing." he told IT Pro.

"Many websites already require users to sign-up and provide personal details when they shop for groceries, for example. The system will be completely opt-in so users do not have to provide details, but will benefit from a personalised experience if they do."

Cochrane was also keen to emphasis the importance of integrated PhoneGap tool, which aims to save businesses time and money when it comes to creating apps.

"PhoneGap will allow users to create HTML5-based cross-platform mobile apps as easily as they can create websites. Using the drag-and-drop interface they will be able to incorporate features such as the accelerometer, camera and GPS into the app without the need to go through a long-winded development process."

The CQ 5.5 update will also enhance collaboration between digital content managers and marketers. The software allows users to find, share, comment on, and revise and publish assets regardless of format, which Cochrane added will speed up time to market on digital campaigns.

Adobe CQ 5.5 is available now, with pricing to be confirmed.

Adobe has issued two patches for critical vulnerabilities affecting its Shockwave Player software and RoboHelp for Word authoring product.

Two bulletins were issued on Tuesday, one of them addressing nine security flaws most of them memory corruption vulnerabilities - in Shockwave version 11.6.3.633 and earlier versions on Windows and Mac OS.

"These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker, who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities, to run malicious code on the affected system," Adobe said in its advisory.

These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker, who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities, to run malicious code.

There was just one vulnerability - CVE-2012-0765 in RoboHelp, affecting Windows users only.

"A specially crafted URL could be used to create a cross-site scripting attack on Web-based output generated using RoboHelp for Word," Adobe warned in a separate advisory.

"Adobe recommends users update their product installation."

Microsoft yesterday issued its Patch Tuesday release for February, covering 21 vulnerabilities, including a critical update to Internet Explorer.

The patches came on the same day security company Secunia slammed the software industry for not doing enough to promote patching and ease the burden for IT managers.

Secunia's annual patch report found none of the top 20 software providers, including tech giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google, were able to cut the number of flaws in their products over the past five years.

"Vendors in general should improve their communication to customers and the patch distribution mechanism (for consumers that would imply auto updating)," said Thomas Kristensen, chief security officer at Secunia.

Oracle today released patches for 78 flaws in its software, covering the majority of its products.

A total of 16 are categorised as critical, meaning they could be exploited for remote code execution.

"Most of their products, including the acquisitioned PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Weblogic and the recent Sun/MySQL lines, are affected by this update," advised Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security company Qualys.

"Only PeopleSoft and the virtualisation products are not affected by this critical rating - everybody else should pay close attention to the release.

"One notable exception is the Java programming language as it is updated on a separate schedule and had its last release in December 2011."

You can find the full list of affected products here.

Oracle's list of patches makes for a busy January for IT departments, following Adobe and Microsoft announcements from earlier this month.

Microsoft, which usually keeps January quiet for patching, issued seven security bulletins covering eight vulnerabilities. One of those covered the BEAST SSL flaw highlighted by researchers last year.

Researchers found a way to exploit a long-known flaw in TLS (Transport Layer Security) that could have undermined the security credentials of the SSL cryptographic protocol and affected millions of sites. However, little emerged from the discovery and the Redmond giant now has Windows users' backs covered.

Adobe, meanwhile, addressed critical flaws in Reader and Acrobat on the same day (10 January).

Both Microsoft and Adobe have welcomed the new year by announcing some notable patching days for IT departments to be aware of.

Microsoft usually keeps Patch Tuesdays quiet in January, but has issued seven security bulletins for eight vulnerabilities.

One of those is a critical remote code execution vulnerability in Media Player, although for users of Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 its severity is downgraded to 'important.'

The remaining bulletins are ranked as important. One of those covers the BEAST SSL flaw highlighted by researchers last year.

Next Tuesday it will be interesting to see, which exact Windows features are involved and how this vulnerability can be used by attackers.

Researchers found a way to exploit a long-known flaw in TLS (Transport Layer Security) that could have undermined the security credentials of the SSL cryptographic protocol and affected millions of sites. However, little emerged from the discovery.

"Bulletins three and five, while rated 'important' both involve Remote Code Execution, most likely through a specifically crafted input file to one of the Windows standard programs and should also be high on your list of bulletins to look at," recommended Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys.

"Bulletin two stands out as it is tagged as 'Security Feature Bypass,' which is a new category. Next Tuesday it will be interesting to see which exact Windows features are involved and how this vulnerability can be used by attackers."

Adobe will join Microsoft in issuing updates tomorrow (10 January). It will address critical flaws in Reader and Acrobat.

"These updates will include fixes for CVE-2011-2462 and CVE-2011-4369, previously addressed in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows," Adobe said in its advisory.

Oracle is also due to issue its quarterly security update on 17 January, making it a busy month of patching for IT managers.

Adobe has been hit by another zero-day vulnerability, which has already been picked up by hackers targeting Windows machines.

The U3D memory flaw affects Adobe Reader X and earlier versions for Windows and Mac, as well as Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and earlier 9.x versions for UNIX. Adobe Acrobat X and earlier versions for Windows and Mac are also affected.

"This vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," the software maker said in a blog post.

"There are reports that the vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild in limited, targeted attacks against Adobe Reader 9.x on Windows."

Adobe said it is working on a fix, which will be ready "no later than the week of 12 December.

"Because Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Adobe Acrobat X Protected View would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing, we are currently planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader X and Acrobat X for Windows with the next quarterly security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, currently scheduled for 10 January 2012," Adobe continued.

"We are planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader and Acrobat X and earlier versions for Macintosh as part of the next quarterly update scheduled for 10 January 2012. An update to address this issue in Adobe Reader 9.x for UNIX is planned for 10 January 2012."

Adobe software has been hit by a plethora of flaws in the past. One of the reasons the late Steve Jobs wished to distance Apple from Flash was because of security issues.

The software developer confirmed last month it was giving up on creating Flash for mobile browsers, punting for HTML5 instead.

Adobe today confirmed it is quitting development of Flash for mobile browsers, a day after it revealed 750 staff are to be asked to leave.

The software maker had been losing its battle with Apple over getting Flash on iOS device browsers.

The two were involved in a protracted war of words, with Apple claiming Flash was buggy and insecure. Adobe responded by lambasting Apple's 'walled garden' approach to the management of iOS.

Now it seems Adobe has given in. It will instead look at how to make money out of HTML5, as well as support developers in their mobile app efforts.

"We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook," Adobe said in an official statement.

"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores."

Adobe has been relatively successful in helping provide platforms for iOS developers. For instance, Flash was used in the number one selling iPad game Machinarium. The company also recently released an HTML5 development tool called Edge.

What we think...

We suspect Adobe's decision has as much to do with manpower issues as it does with technology.

Maintaining active development on the Android and Playbook versions of Flash Player as well as a potential Windows Phone 7 version, alongside the Windows and Mac OS X players, has to be a drain on resources and developers which could be better spent elsewhere.

We wouldn't be surprised if Adobe minions were redeployed to work on Edge, the company's new HTML5 development tool a product that will directly bring in revenue unlike the free mobile Flash Players.

Alan Lu, Reviews Editor

"We are super excited about the next generations of HTML5 and Flash," the software maker added.

"We will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged."

Adobe even admitted Flash was not the top platform for web content anymore, describing HTML5 as "the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."

Apple, who did not include Flash as default in Mac computers either, was not the only tech giant to flee from Adobe's platform. Microsoft recently distanced itself from it too, confirming Flash would not be included by default in Windows 8.

A major issue with Flash was the number of security flaws that hit the software. The latest version, Flash Player 11, was released in September.

Corporate restructuring

Adobe yesterday revealed restructuring plans, confirming around 750 full-time workers were to be let go in North America and Europe.

The job losses came as a result of Adobe's strategy realignment to focus on two core areas: Digital Media and Digital Marketing. The former relates to the developer-focused business, the latter to Adobe's plans to become a leader in "solutions to manage, measure and optimise digital marketing and advertising."

"Our mission is to produce the world's content and maximize the impact of that content," said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe president and CEO. "Adobe is doubling down in the Digital Media and Digital Marketing categories, markets rich with opportunities for innovation and grow."