Creative professionals accustomed to specific UI layouts or tool functionalities (like the classic Free Transform tool) may prefer to avoid the disruption caused by interface changes.

Before Illustrator, digital art was crude. Most computer drawing was pixel-based, meaning if you zoomed in, you saw blocks. Adobe, founded in 1982, had already revolutionized printing with , a programming language that told printers how to draw crisp text and shapes.

The early 90s were defined by the "PageMaker vs. QuarkXPress" wars for layout, but Illustrator faced its own rival: .

Adobe co-founder John Warnock developed a secret internal tool to automate the tedious coding required for PostScript. He realized this tool could be a consumer product. The goal was simple: create a program that used Bézier curves (mathematically defined lines) to draw shapes that would never pixelate.