A couple of thoughts.
1. With the subscription only model, what incentive does that give Adobe to innovate and come up with NEW features and bug fixes? I mean, the main reason people updated was new features. If they have you the short and curlies renting the software, what incentive do they have then to come out with regular and meaningful updates on a regular basis?
2. I have pretty strong faith in the hackers and crackers out there, I"m guessing at some point, they'll have a "fix" for the software phoning home, likely have it talk to an app. locally on your computer when it needs to check in.
I think, however, it kinda blows they're doing this. Sure, it might open up room for competition, but from where? What out there is close to PS ? There's the open sourced GIMP application, but it needs a lot of work to bring it more up to speed with PS.
Me? Well, I've been talking about it...and now I"m gonna hurry up and do it.
I"m gonna register with one of the local community colleges here, for $50, you don't even have to sign up for classes, and you can get an EDU ID, which is all you need for getting the Student/Teacher edition of CS6.
Its fully functional, and according to the FAQ and TOS of Adobe, perfectly usable for commercial, for $$ work.
I'll get that at a reasonable price, and won't worry about upgrading until someday when/if Adobe changes their tune on the subscription only model.
Just my $0.02,
cayenne