State of the Art: Software as a Monthly Rental

Yes, it’s still the program that just about every photographer and designer on earth uses to retouch or even reimagine photos. It’s still the only program whose name is a verb.

But now, Photoshop is also the biggest-name software that you can’t actually buy. You can only rent it, for a month or a year at a time. If you ever stop paying, you keep your files but lose the ability to edit them.

You have to pay $30 a month, or $240 a year, for the privilege of using the latest Photoshop version, called Photoshop CC. Or, if you want to use the full Adobe suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere and so on), you’ll pay $600 a year.

The price list is stunningly complex. The fees may be higher or lower depending on how many programs you rent, whether you already own an existing version and which one, whether you commit to a full year or prefer to rent one month at a time. There are also discounted first-year teaser rates, student/teacher rates and a 30-day free trial.

But you get the point: the dawn of Software as a Subscription is now upon us.

Microsoft is conducting a similar experiment with the latest version of Office. An Office 365 subscription is $100 a year. But there’s a big difference: renting Office is optional. You can still buy it outright if you prefer.

It should be obvious why Adobe is enthusiastic about rental software. First, it’s big money.

Not everybody will pay more than before under the new plan. If you use three or more Adobe programs and you upgrade to the latest versions every year, you’ll save money by renting.

But if you use only one or two programs, you’ll pay much more by renting — especially if you were in the habit of upgrading only every other year, for example. Here’s the math: Photoshop CC alone will cost $240 a year. In the old days, buying the annual upgrade cost $200, and you didn’t have to upgrade every year. In three years, you might have spent $200 or $400; now you’ll pay $720.

And Adobe could raise the rental prices at any time. Every year, if it chooses.

Adobe also benefits because a rental plan helps it cut down on software piracy. Despite its name (CC stands for Creative Cloud), the new software versions are not, in fact, stored online. You still download Photoshop, Illustrator and the other programs and run them from your computer. But the downloaded software checks in with the mother ship every 30 days, over the Internet, to make sure the subscription is up to date. If not, you’re locked out.

Finally, Adobe benefits because it’s no longer committed to a difficult, relentless annual release cycle. There will no longer be a big new version of each Adobe program each year. Instead, Adobe says that it will regularly slip in new features as soon as they’re ready. The company hasn’t decided whether it will ever use numbers again (Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6), but for now, the name is simply Photoshop CC.

So far, the switch to a rental-only plan may sound like a rotten deal for many creative people, especially small operators on a budget. And, indeed, many of them are horrified by the switch. A touching but entirely hopeless petition (j.mp/1aynMtK) has 35,000 signatures so far. (“We want you to restart development for Adobe Creative Suite 7 and all future Creative Suites,” it says. “Do it for the freelancers. For the small businesses. For the average consumer.”)

Adobe, however, points out that rental customers gain vast advantages over the old “you buy it” system. The big one, of course, is that perpetual refinement principle. You’ll always be up to date with software that’s constantly improving.

Adobe also points out that subscribing to Photoshop gets you more than just the right to download the software. The subscription comes with access to Behance, an online portfolio where you can display your Adobe-created documents and read admiring comments from fellow creative types. You also get 20 gigabytes of online storage for files, Dropbox style, so you can work on them wherever you happen to be.

Another perk: As before, you can use your rented programs simultaneously on two computers — but now, one can be a Mac and one can be a Windows machine.

Bits Blog: Time Warner Cable to Charge Modem Rental Fee

1:45 p.m. | Updated Adding more details about buying a modem.

Time Warner Cable, the big broadband and cable provider, is planning to start charging customers a monthly fee of $3.95 for renting a cable modem from the company. It said in notifications mailed to customers this week that the new fee would go into effect over the next two months.

Internet customers who want to avoid the monthly fee can purchase a modem of their own and have Time Warner Cable activate it. The company has published a list of approved modems on its Web site. The compatible modems cost between $50 and $137 on Amazon.com.

A message that Time Warner Cable mailed to customers.

Time Warner Cable lists two main types of modems that people can buy: Docsis 2.0, which works with lower-end, slower Internet services, or Docsis 3.0, for the more expensive, faster packages. For budget-conscious consumers who buy the $50 modem, it will take a year to break even.

But many consumers who are less tech-savvy are unlikely to go through the hassle of purchasing and installing their own modem, so the policy change will probably lead to a big boost in revenue for Time Warner Cable.

The company said the new fee was necessary to make up for the cost of distributing and replacing cable modems over time.

“As we continue to deploy more and more cable modems, many of these modems need servicing or replacing, get damaged and some are not returned,” said Justin Venech, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable.  “The monthly lease charge will allow us to service or replace the equipment as needed and helps provide a better user experience.”

Though most Time Warner Cable customers have not had to pay to rent modems in the past, these types of leasing fees are a common practice among Internet providers. Comcast, another broadband provider, charges a modem rental fee of $7 a month.

App City: Navigating the New York Rental Market Jungle

So Mr. DeMenthon created PadMapper, a Web site that turns each listing into a plot point on a map. It clearly spoke to a problem that extended beyond Mr. DeMenthon’s own search. The Web site now receives millions of hits a month, and PadMapper’s free smartphone app has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

PadMapper’s success shows how much room for improvement there is in the way New Yorkers look for apartments and how difficult it will be to make the search easier.

One major problem: the information available to potential renters is simply not very good. Rental listings rarely include much about the landlords, and many listings exist not to convey any real information but to lure potential clients into the offices of brokers, who will then show them whatever spaces they are trying to unload that day. When I looked at my street on PadMapper, for instance, there were three listings supposedly advertising three different apartments along a 10-block stretch, each described in almost identical language.

This problem is not a secret, and nascent projects like InsideDigs and RentHackr are trying to get renters to cooperate to solve it.

“I rented my first apartment through Craigslist, and now it’s all brokers, it’s all bait-and-switch; you never get good information,” said Sharif Fakhr, the creator of InsideDigs, a Web site. On the site, renters exchange information about how they like their apartments and when they are moving out. (Mr. Fakhr is also working on a mobile app that he plans to release this year.)

The idea is that renters will work cooperatively to find and lease apartments. Similarly, on RentHackr, users share what they are paying for their apartments and if they plan to move soon.

The trick, as it always is with projects like these, is getting enough people involved. To see what other tenants are saying on InsideDigs, users must post information about their own apartments or pay $20. Most opt to post data about their apartments. The listings are unusual in that they discuss apartments that will be available several months ahead of time and acknowledge their too-small bedrooms or lack of sunlight or closets. Of course, the apartments surreptitiously listed by the dozens of real estate brokers that Mr. Fakhr has to remove from the site each month ostensibly have no shortcomings.

It would be nice to see projects like these succeed, but they clearly still have a ways to go.

Spending a week thinking about the woes of the New York City renter had me indulging in a fantasy of mine, in which I strike it rich, buy a place and am done with this mess once and for all. An app called HomeSnap can help with such daydreaming. When you take a photograph of a house with the app — free for iPhone — it uses GPS information to find out how much the property is worth by checking tax records and other databases. If it is for sale, the app can connect you with a real estate agent.

HomeSnap seems like a suburban app, since it is based on houses rather than apartment buildings. Sawbuck, the real estate company that designed it, says it is working on an update that would offer some information about the apartments in multifamily buildings, but it acknowledges that is a much stiffer challenge. (The current version couldn’t even tell me the market value of the six-unit building I live in.)

The app worked well when I took it for a test run among the tightly packed row houses in my neighborhood. Of course, it served only as an efficient way to douse my dreams with cold water. HomeSnap informed me, quite credibly, that even the smallest and homeliest of the houses nearby were far beyond my reach.

Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein.

App City: Navigating the New York Rental Market Jungle

So Mr. DeMenthon created PadMapper, a Web site that turns each listing into a plot point on a map. It clearly spoke to a problem that extended beyond Mr. DeMenthon’s own search. The Web site now receives millions of hits a month, and PadMapper’s free smartphone app has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

PadMapper’s success shows how much room for improvement there is in the way New Yorkers look for apartments and how difficult it will be to make the search easier.

One major problem: the information available to potential renters is simply not very good. Rental listings rarely include much about the landlords, and many listings exist not to convey any real information but to lure potential clients into the offices of brokers, who will then show them whatever spaces they are trying to unload that day. When I looked at my street on PadMapper, for instance, there were three listings supposedly advertising three different apartments along a 10-block stretch, each described in almost identical language.

This problem is not a secret, and nascent projects like InsideDigs and RentHackr are trying to get renters to cooperate to solve it.

“I rented my first apartment through Craigslist, and now it’s all brokers, it’s all bait-and-switch; you never get good information,” said Sharif Fakhr, the creator of InsideDigs, a Web site. On the site, renters exchange information about how they like their apartments and when they are moving out. (Mr. Fakhr is also working on a mobile app that he plans to release this year.)

The idea is that renters will work cooperatively to find and lease apartments. Similarly, on RentHackr, users share what they are paying for their apartments and if they plan to move soon.

The trick, as it always is with projects like these, is getting enough people involved. To see what other tenants are saying on InsideDigs, users must post information about their own apartments or pay $20. Most opt to post data about their apartments. The listings are unusual in that they discuss apartments that will be available several months ahead of time and acknowledge their too-small bedrooms or lack of sunlight or closets. Of course, the apartments surreptitiously listed by the dozens of real estate brokers that Mr. Fakhr has to remove from the site each month ostensibly have no shortcomings.

It would be nice to see projects like these succeed, but they clearly still have a ways to go.

Spending a week thinking about the woes of the New York City renter had me indulging in a fantasy of mine, in which I strike it rich, buy a place and am done with this mess once and for all. An app called HomeSnap can help with such daydreaming. When you take a photograph of a house with the app — free for iPhone — it uses GPS information to find out how much the property is worth by checking tax records and other databases. If it is for sale, the app can connect you with a real estate agent.

HomeSnap seems like a suburban app, since it is based on houses rather than apartment buildings. Sawbuck, the real estate company that designed it, says it is working on an update that would offer some information about the apartments in multifamily buildings, but it acknowledges that is a much stiffer challenge. (The current version couldn’t even tell me the market value of the six-unit building I live in.)

The app worked well when I took it for a test run among the tightly packed row houses in my neighborhood. Of course, it served only as an efficient way to douse my dreams with cold water. HomeSnap informed me, quite credibly, that even the smallest and homeliest of the houses nearby were far beyond my reach.

Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein.