Photoshop for iPad has met with a lackluster reception and a review rating of 2.3 out of 5 stars, prompting Adobe exec to defend its first version
what happened? Killian Bell / Cult of Mac : Adobe chief defends Photoshop for iPad following poor reviews Stephen Warwick / iMore : Adobe's Chief Product Officer defends Photoshop for iPad Tweets: Scott Belsky / @scottbelsky : a real-time v1 lesson: you've gotta ship an MVP to start the journey, but it will be painful at first. by definition, it won't please everyone (and if it's a reimagination of a 30yr old popular/global product, will displease many) pic.twitter.com/LaJ6oJlwcD Scott Belsky / @scottbelsky : if you try to make everybody happy w/ a v1, you'll either never ship or make nobody happy. such feats require customer feedback to truly exceed expectations. you must ship and get fellow passionate travelers on board. Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : Adobe exec defends Photoshop for iPad after app falls flat https://www.bloomberg.com/... // The idea of “Photoshop” for the iPad is probably the mistake. Photoshop is a specific product tuned for a desktop PC experience. Whatever gets used on an iPad will not be “Photoshop” per se. Bob Burrough / @bob_burrough : Changing the way the user interacts with software (replacing mouse+keyboard with multitouch) is a major, fundamental change. Adobe did not carefully manage expectations. Instead, they misled their customers by describing it as “real” Photoshop. https://twitter.com/... Fritz Lanman / @fritzanity : Ballsy. And so contra the bravado / projected infallibility of most modern builders. Hard not to root for @scottbelsky and in awe of $ADBE - the most underrated company in history of big tech? https://twitter.com/... @michaelglena : This level of transparency around the struggles of an anticipated product launch that didn't go to plan from a product leader of @Adobe's scale is unprecedented What an incredible gift to the product/tech community @scottbelsky is. Honored to have him as an investor in @GrainHQ https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This landing was predictable from the flight plan: Adobe spent 2018 building expectations by promising to unveil "the real Photoshop" for iPad at its MAX conference (sources flagged the full-version plan as early as July 2018), then spent October managing them down when beta testers complained about missing features and Adobe confirmed the year-end release would ship with gaps.
It launched days ago at $9.99/month with a free trial, and the verdict arrived fast: a 2.3/5 App Store rating, forcing chief product officer Scott Belsky into a public defense framing the release as a deliberate MVP for reimagining a 30-year-old product.
First-order effects
- Adobe now has an expectation-debt problem on its flagship brand: users who were promised "real Photoshop" in 2018 are rating a feature-incomplete v1, and Belsky's public MVP argument is the company's chosen tool for resetting that narrative.
- Subscribers deciding within the 30-day trial window whether $9.99/month is worth it are reading those reviews, making early ratings a direct conversion variable for this product.
Second-order effects
- Competing iPad editing apps that already match Photoshop's tablet workflow get an opening to court frustrated creative professionals during exactly the window when Adobe is asking them to pay and wait for parity.
- Apple gains leverage in its ongoing pitch that the iPad is a serious creation platform only if major software partners commit fully — a half-shipped Photoshop weakens the showcase app for that story.
Third-order effects
- If the MVP defense becomes the template for porting legacy desktop franchises to new platforms, expect more flagship apps to ship publicly incomplete — shifting review scores from a quality signal to a roadmap bet users must underwrite via subscription.
- The gap between what Adobe marketed in 2018 and shipped in 2019 illustrates the structural risk of announcing platform reimaginings years ahead: the brand carries the promise while the product timeline can't.
The trend: Legacy software vendors rebuilding flagship products for touch-first hardware are increasingly shipping subscription-funded MVPs publicly, converting early adopters into funders of an unfinished roadmap.