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Adobe Drops Mac Support For Premiere
Theaetetus writes "In a story on MacCentral, it's revealed that Adobe Systems is dropping support for the Mac in the new version of video editing app Premiere: 'If Apple's already doing an application, it makes the market for a third-party developer that much smaller,' said David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group. In response to the news, Apple issued a statement welcoming Premiere customers to make the switch to the Mac and Final Cut Pro."
I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go), then you would react in such a non-sensical way to sudden competition. First post?
Post #1! This has become a very popular thing for developers to do nowadays...lost your will to innovate? Blame it on the other guy. What I don't understand is how this happens when it seems clear to me that people have learned to compete with Microsoft, arguably the most anti-competitive entity in the business, so why is it that they cannot compete with Apple, a company with significantly fewer software titles and an overwhelming demand for the portage of many common applications from the Win32 side of things? Just my two cents.
It's similar to Microsoft's excuse for dropping IE for Mac. If you don't want to support Mac, then just don't support it. Don't blame it on competition when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such. If it's not selling well, reduce the price to sell more. If the Apple market is just too small, say so.
This seems like a tactic by Adobe to intimidate Apple. Apple know that their macs are paperweights without the likes of Photoshop and Acrobat, so they are saying to Apple "Don't make good applications". Duh.
collins, brian
In a story on MacCentral,......
:)
or on the Ars Technica tab to your right for the past few hours......
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3976#11
XP comes with Windows Movie Maker. How can Adobe compete with that!?
With tar being a superior application, we are crippling file-roller and making people go back to the command line.
-- the file roller team
Please complain
Final Cut Pro is far superior. I know a guy heavy into video production/editing and he switched to FCP and never looked back. Premiere is/was a crash happy POS.
I had the pleasure of sitting in on a "Q and A" session with an adobe rep, while I was at RIT. The rep (perhaps not the position of the entire company) basically didn't like the mac platform. He complained about how it was more to support, and changed more frequently than the windows counterpart. This of course costs them more in development and support. Granted this was not long after the OS 9 -> OS X transition, so of course adobe is going to bitch that the platform changes too much because they just dumped the whole API adobe products were based off of. Carbon helped fill this gap but it's by no stretch a the cure-all.
I wonder if this is the general feel of Adobe developers however.
- tristan
But, it sounds like a good spin from Apple, that they're still "playing nice" with Adobe. All that's left is an Office killer and we'll be set. :)
The real question is whether or not you can import data from older Adobe files into FinalCut. Without this feature, Apple becomes The Bad Guy(TM). With this feature, Adobe becomes The Bad Guy(TM). Either way, Adobe is making a sound business decision.
Given the choice between supporting either Windows, Mac, or GNU/Linux (or whatever its called this week), I'd go with the overwhelmingly dominant operating system.
The most interesting implication of this article is that Apple, once considered the KING of video & sound, is being dropped by one of the largest makers of said software.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
What are the stats for video editing? Clearly not as favorable.
Another benefit of open source - no need to obey market economics when developing products.
They have also added nested composition to premiere (like final cut pro) I can't wait to see this two new versions in action!! By the way its my First POST!
Adobe Premier: $546
Apple Final Cut Pro: $999
I'd think Adobe would still hold a large share of the market based on price alone.
It's normally Microsoft that is derided (sp?) for bundling apps with their OS.
However I guess with Apple being the manufacture of machine you could argue that the rules are slightly different. I suppose they are trying to sell the Mac as an "Experience", ie buy a Mac no need to buy extra software everything works out of the box.
Who cares? Adobe, like Microsoft, is slowly being made a moot point on the Macintosh platform. Adobe- like Microsoft, has always had the "you should be grateful to be doing business with us" kind of attitude. As the story poster says- Apple says "sure, come on over Adobe users!"
I worked at a company that did plugin development for Premier and After Effects- and not a day went by without Adobe getting pissed off about something. They'd accuse the their 3rd-party plugin development community of giving out prereleases. They'd "change their mind" about giving the company developer licenses. They were constantly getting upset about the slightest things developers or marketing people said at tradeshows. Each little temper-tantrum from Adobe would take hours of people's time to "fix"(fix being "kiss adobe ass until they're happy".)
The funny thing is that when you act like that, everyone else puts up with it, but slowly works to make you irrelevant. This former employer is doing great business with Apple- their plugin is included with every copy of Final Cut Pro, and while I was still there, I never heard a bad word about relations with Apple.
Please help metamoderate.
I can understand your own personal preference of a plank of wood over a Macintosh for keeping dry in the rainstorm, for ease of use, but for sheer style, you have to go with the one with the arm-holes and belt. Sure, the insertion of arms into said holes does slow down the rain-deflection, but once on, the general grace and manoevrability is second to only that of a string vest.
It can't be really compatible if the excellent programmers making this piece of software can't even spell the name of the product they're copycating correctly.
I mis-read the summary, please be gentle.
I dunno about everyone else, but I've invested many hours into learning premier. I like Premier. I like Premier better than I like Final Cut Pro and (blech) iMovie. Although Final Cut Pro may render things faster and all that, I like Adobe's take on user interface and sometimes, they do a better job than apple. Also, there are good reasons for mirroring your applications across platforms. More than just marketshare, but for moving projects around. What if at the office a user is running windows and Premier, wants to take the project home and only has his nice new dual 2ghz G5 sitting there. What's he/she to do? sheesh.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
- Premiere was left to languish before Final Cut 1
-Once Final Cut shipped adobe was very slow to respond
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
-Adobe has shifted its mentally to the PC even though 30% of their revenues come from apple's "5%" of the market
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
-Adobe was very late getting an OSX version out
-Adobe says they can't compete with Apple but now is competing in the PC market that has FREE products and products that also get better reviews?
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
-Adobe has yet to take advantage of the second proc in macs for After Effects even though they have been standard for years
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
-Premiere is a crappy product compared to Final Cut
Well, Adobe is taking a page from Microsoft's book...
Although this is scarier than IE leaving the Mac. Premier is a major program, one that some might consider a major part of the Mac arsenal in terms of getting people to use the platform. It's interesting that Apple was applauded for writing their own versions of Apps (Keynote, Final Cut Pro), but there could be consequences for doing such. If Apple steps on the wrong toes, it could hurt the platform.
In a worse case Scenario, they release a complete office suite (on the level to compliment Keynote) or a major graphics program (like Photoshop). Say what you want about Office and Microsoft, Office for OS X is an excellent product. Photoshop is...well...Photoshop. If either of these programs were to get pulled from the platform, Apple could face an uphill battle in getting people to stay/switch.
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
FCE costs $299
Crack good today, moderators? Notice the dot before the name, you fucking idiots.
Please bear in mind as you read this post that I am quite the Wintel/Lintel advocate, although I absolutely love Final Cut on the Mac.
;0)
I think that in Apple's attempts to make everything work so well (which they do an excellent job of), they end up simply deepening the divide between their user base and the "mainstream" (read: other 95%) user base. Final Cut is a dream to use, I've used it since version 1.0 and love everything it does. But I also like Premiere, partly because of its lower cost and ability to work either on Windows or Mac (as a side note, in a video environment, professionals will use the best platform for the job... Windows provides better support for the high-end stuff, but for quick and dirty you can't beat the Mac. Thus, I work on both platforms).
I think that we're seeing a disturbing trend. Although I do love Final Cut, I simply can't justify spending the money on a Mac when I could get equal performance on an x86 platform for less.
(NOTE: none of the comparison benchmarks I have read did any comparison with the Opteron. Why? Because the Opteron would win, hands-down... there would hardly be a contest
As Mac tries to do it better themselves, I think they're only going to push themselves farther and farther away from the rest of the computer world. Embracing BSD was a big step in the right direction, but I've locked OS/X so many times, I'm embarassed to think that it's based on Un*x.
Apple needs to decide what they want to do: do they want to support an entire platform, hardware AND software themselves, or do they want to worry about one as opposed to the other?
Welcome to life, Adobe. Innovate or die.
I'm certainly not saying that FCP is the be all, end all for video production (it isn't), but at least give it a chance, Adobe. Final Cut Express is lookin mighty fine right now...
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Microsoft drops Mac IE development as Safari reaches 1.0
Of course, anyone who wants to develop Office-like business software or any kind of web browser for Windows faces the same uphill battle. When the OS manufacturer makes non-OS software, they enjoy unparalleled integration with the rest of the system and anyone else comes in four to six months behind the development curve.
It's sad that third parties stop developing Mac software because Apple's doing it better, but it's no more fatal -- to businesses or to consumers -- than it has been on Windows. When Microsoft took over the Windows office software market, developers either died or moved onto a different software niche. Same happens on Mac OS. Such is business.
The Dirty-Ol'-Man-who-likes-teenage-girl demographic?
pure quality.
Blar.
... but posting this comment should remove the point I gave the bastard.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Idiot moderators.
With the coming of the g5s which seem extremely promising, it seems that even if they would have to share the market in video production with final cut, the amount of people in that field that these new machines would draw would probably give them a boost anyhow
-Silmarildur
video editing for 3D and animation classes. But now Final Cut Pro is the default standard for film schools and most animation courses. The thing is, Adode has seriously lagged the last couple of releases with Premiere. Adobe had a lead for a long time and simply let the advantage go. Nothing remains constant and innovation requires a sense of pressure and urgency. It looks like Adobe didn't have a sense of urgency until it was too late.
The fruity-but-married project manager type guy?
Blar.
Adobe Premiere: $550
Final Cut Express: $300
And If you need the high-end features of FCP, chances are that $999 is cheap compared to the Avid you'd otherwise buy.
Additionally, as a person who does this for a living, i offer that the Premiere interface is a bad joke.
I wouldn't put too much stock into a vague comment like this with nothing even remotely solid behind it made by yet another Brue Perens fake.
If you believe some super-secret open source (now there is an oxymoron) project is in the works to replicate premiere, I have a bridge for sale...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
All Adobe is saying is "we're not going to compete in a market where we'll be soundly trounced."
By the way, Acrobat sucks pretty bad on OS X. Most people use Preview instead of Reader. Creation of pdf files is as easy as hitting "Print", then "Save as PDF", which takes away much of the need for the full version of Acrobat.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up?
I do not have a signature
Anyone think that the Mac will become effectively a single-vendor platform, with Apple providing the dominant software packages for the dominant uses and users?
In other words, buy a Mac, get most of the software you need. Spend another $3k with Apple and you get "pro" tools for most applications -- video editing, photo editing, email/web, development, and page layout?
Not trolling, just wondering.
Well, if Adobe has rewritten Premier, then it should be a lot better than the old version. So, the obvious question is how does it compare to FCP4 and FCE. If it's significantly better than FCP4, then this could cause significant problems for Apple.
What I don't get is why it is that when this came up, and when the whole IE thing came up, people seem to occationally somehow think it's harder to compete against Apple than against a different third-party.
Why?
I don't see what Apple's advantage is. All of their apps have gone through public, well-documented (okay, and in some cases not-so-well-documented, but they're working on that) APIs; there's nothing hidden. There have even been a couple cases where widgets and classes used in iApps have been later migrated into the main Cocoa API (like the itunes search system or "that switcher thing") because apple thought they might be useful to developers. The only real advantage Apple's had is that they've taken advantage of new APIs immediately, whereas other companies don't like saying "you have to upgrade to Panther to use this app". I went to the WWDC, and it really seems like Apple hasn't done anything anyone could have done; in fact, they actually had one session where they used Safari as a case study, showing how they used performance testing tools in making Safari so other people could do the same.
Don't say it's because Apple can use the money from their OS/computer business to unfairly finance other things; Apple is clearly understaffed and Adobe probably has more loose change than Apple. And I seriously doubt it's becuase of the expertise and access to engineers that comes from being in the same building as the Quicktime engineers. If Adobe's support contract didn't give it roughly the same degree of access, they would be able to bitch and moan about that specific problem and there would be a big community backlash.. there's worry already about apple's new presence in the applications area and a perception that apple is giving its own engineers preferential treatment could hurt them kind of badly.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm not a big Mac user myself, although I do like them and would hate to seem them go under. It seems this is the same mistake that Microsoft makes all the time, by alienating their 3rd party application developers. Pretty much the worst thing you can do in this situation is start competing with your allies. Let's just hope they don't make a bigger mistake, like pre-installing it on Macs.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I remember this exact post in the forum about the G5 benchmarks. Dude, you gotta stop hitting the copy and paste buttons...
Traitor!!!
So instead of fighting for glory with Apple, they will now put all their eggs in one basket in the competition against AVID? Makes no business sense to me...
So anybody thought of running this on OSX using FINK or whatever? Maybee nice on G5.
I am the bastard of base minus 12! Turing was the ejaculate of my complete machine!
Adobe has dropped Linux support...
oh wait.... there wasn't any.
First Microsoft dropping IE support, then this. Well, no use in competing with Apple! Lets just all give up, since their application is better anyways.
Sheesh.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Priemere blows. I learned on it but when I discovered Final Cut, I never went back. Premiere is slow and clunky. Just like Microsoft and Explorer Mac, they are really saying that its the best they got and its time to throw in the towel because their best isn't good enough. How sad. How lazy.
Ok, ok, hear me out!
PS kicks every other Pixelprogramm up and down the street. I get that.
But what with the rest? We've got Cinelerra for free (beer, speech and all), we've got Pinnacle who recently bought Fast, a kick ass high end Video Tool company and are now shedding their technology in bundles in every Walmart alongside realtime NLE cards for a dime-a-dozen.
And we got Apple who's new Final Cut Pro apears to be kicking the living crap out of Premiere. So I heard from my former Video NLE Teacher the other day who'd wee-wee in his pants whilst raving about the superdooper Premiere just 3 years ago when he tought us.
From what it looks like to me with every software company in the vector/pixel, video and 3D business struggling for life and the cheap ones getting cheaper or even being bought by hardware vendors and Gimp pushing the GPL-freeness envelope on the Pixelside and Sodipodi giving Freehand, Illustrator and CorelDraw the GPL creeps, it seems these companys like Macromedia *and* Adobe aswell would be better of finding new fields of business *fast*.
Just my 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
pulling out of mac instead of digging in is happening because adobe has finally admitted defeat on the merits of the competition.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I was at this camp where they teach Final Cut Pro. Even though (a) I'm not a Mac user and (b) I'm not a video-editing guy, Final Cut Pro is REALLY easy to use. Everything can be done by very simple point and click with tons and tons of filter and special effects add-ons. With a little patience, you can create very respectable clips in Final Cut Pro. I tried using Premiere, and god that was awful!
Well, you can certainly make a "consumer grade" PDF from the print box in OS X, but this doesn't really touch the power of the full Acrobat with forms, interactivity, etcetera. I use the export all the time for short docs, but for anything I'm going to distribute, I still need to use Distiller, tweak in Acrobat, etcetera. Plus there's that whole LZW patent thing - Apple PDFs will be a lot larger for the same content.
If anything, I imagine Apple's probably get more value out of PDF becoming a standard than they lose out of sales from Apple's support. Heck, why do you think Adobe did a full, open publication of the format standard.
My video compression blog
Apple has closer to 80% of the graphics market.
Now, let's be sure we're talkign about the same thing here. I am referring to print and publcaition design (static graphics).
Windows is only ever used in these markets by governments as they wish to integrate publcaition with the rest of their networks, and giant corporations. In both of these cases Adobe Framemaker is the app - barely known outside these markets. Also, there's always at least one Mac about in these places.
Photoshop may sell somewhat more copies on Win than on Mac, but the majority of professional users are still on Mac. In the newspaper where I work (small Irish regional) there are 40+ Macs in production (journalism and layout/design) and four PCs. It's a different story in the advertising sales dept, but there you go.
The tech support staff are constantly trying to move to Windows but are blocked at every juncture by managment who realise that not only would there be a slight drop in productivity (and when producing a daily paper there's no room for this), but that there would also be significant retraining costs involved.
Finally, we're on to the PC tech support guys - how many people does it talke to administer a MAc network. And how many for Windows?
Of having Photoshop optimized for crazy performance on the mac?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
My guess (IANAAE, where AE=Adobe Employee) is that Final Cut Express was muc more of a competitive threat than Final Cut Pro. The difference in price (I think about $300) between FCP and Premiere makes them non-competitors (as do the differing feature sets-think HD editing etc).
Final Cut Express however, matches many of the features, and is only $299), so I'm guessing it's more of a threat to Premiere.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Not to mention BSD topics (!).
I wish there were a special moderation for "repeat trolls" so I could mask them away and still browse at -1.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
I believe the headline has a slight error, it should read "Premiere Stagnant, Users Have All Left".
No more Premiere on Mac? I'm sure both the guys still using it will be heartbroken. The past few years have seen an amazing variety of high-end (but low-priced) video editing apps. I've been amazed to watch Adobe do basically nothing in response.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Photoshop 4 may be usable, but I find 7's brushes to be EXTREMELY useful for texturing. Additionaly the layout changes between 5.5 and 6.0 made a huge usability improvement. Let's also not forget the immensly useful Image Ready, which makes slicing up layouts for the web very easy, although ultimately they still must be edited by hand, it gets rid of much of the grunt work. Adobe has done a great job of innovating Photoshop, currently there are no real competitors.
Photos.
Do you really think that the executives making decisions at Adobe are sitting around saying things like "lets teach Apple a lesson." etc.. If you pull your head out and look at how difficult it is to operate in the current software market (yes there is still a very heavy recession in the tech sector.) No one can afford to face losses on any piece of software. It takes a shoot load of time and money to develop and if the market is not there or is dwindling there is not time to wait for it to change. This is the world we are living in. Its not the 90's anymore. You cant run on faith.
This reminds me a lot about how Adobe stopped doing Chinese translations of their software. What was the point if everyone simply pirated it? They're using the same logic here. What's the point if everyone's switching over to Final Cut pro? Why spend millions of dollars in dev keeping premiere on track on the mac, when that money could be spent more profitably else were.
It's not that bad of a way to run a company. The other side of the coin would be sun, which sticks to their guns no matter what.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Um, Adobe's not leaving and taking the only video editing app with them. Adobe is leaving because they are no longer the only game in town.
And what do Blender and POVray have to do with anything?
I think that Adobe could produce a lot of good by making the source code available to the Open Source developer community. With their insight and years of experience, they could extend Premiere on the Mac with new functionality, permitting it to reach new heights.
There is still a lot of room for growth for Premiere on the Mac, such IPTables support, Ogg Vorbis extensions, and Cisco PIX emulation of a RS232 interface with a BNC connector. These are the features that most power-users yearn for. Final Cut Pro is a good tool, but somewhat overpriced.
Only when we fight the short-sightness of Adobe can we improve the digital key signature in PDFs.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
In the Microsoft anti-trust trial, it was ruled that Apple should not be considered competition to Microsoft.
Therefore, Apple and Microsoft are not competitors, and therefore, they are in seperate market spaces.
Therefore, Apple has it's own market. By definition, the market MS is in (amoung others) is "Desktop Operating Systems for x86 compatible hardware".
The question then becomes, is Apple a *monopoly*. On the face, a ridiculous question. But in depth, it's not. Apple is the exclusive maker now of hardware able to run Mac OS. Therefore, they maintain a hardware monopoly in relation to what can run Mac OS X.
The question is this: in relation to the ISV (independent software vendors) does Apple maintain monopoly control? This isn't the first software package killed by Apple's bundling: Internet Explorer, Roxio stuff, and now Adobe stuff.
At some point its not inconveivable that Apple could be the target of a Sherman related case. They are the exclusive makers of Mac OS X compatible hardware, and they bundle it with software, at the expense of smaller software companies (or in cases larger). It is entirely possible that Apple could face a charge of anti-competitive bundling much like MS did.
Speculation yes, but it is starting to get obvious that Apple is killing ISV's via their use of bundling.
Apple is doing the exact things that Microsoft does. It owns the OS; so it creates the best software for it's OS by using hidden, unpublished APIs. ...they are all the same. Thank God for Linux!
The Mac and XBox share the same marketing philosophy of having an integrated hardware/software platform (although they are very different machines.) More and more, the Mac users will only have the choice of "approved" (and in many cases, Apple-only) software. With a small market share it's hard for developers to invest the resources in creating Mac products, especially if there is the threat that Apple may offer a similar "factory approved/installed" option. (The same has happened to a number of MS developers who created nifty utilities only to find that they were later incorporated into the OS.)
Is any Mac user morning the death of Casady & Greene and the shaky state of macintouch.com?
but the format that's produced by the new, Win-only version.
BTW, you should be modded up.
Nobody else has gotten it so far.
Premier sucks, and it will take a lot more than one update to make it as good as Final Cut 2, let alone Final Cut 4. I have used both for actual broadcast editing, and there is NO WAY I would go back to Premier. I don't care if Adobe was giving it away. It was good back in the early 90s when it was the only option available outside of a hyper-expensive Avid suite of an SGI, but now, there is no reason to put yourself through the pain of using it.
On another note, Final Cut with the Cinema tools is making After Effects for Mac obsolete as well. Any bet on how long until Adobe cancels it for Mac as well?
Well they could have used a cross platform system like Qt. That would have solved a lot of problems and given them a lot more flexibility later on.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
CinePaint works fine folks..Adobe will not be missed at all :)
Don't Tread on OpenSource
If you are doing DV work on an 8600/300, please submit yourself to the ministrations of a psychiatric ward.
I have a 7600/330 (G3 upgrade card), and it would ring that 8600 like a gong, b/c that "300" is a 604e PPC, i.e. a G2. And yet... that 7600 is now relegated to the duties of an email server and router.
Let's talk modern hardware, b/c DV pros use the kind of hardware that makes even gamer boyz go hard.
"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
My company has been using Premiere on Windows 2000 with real-time hardware exclusively for about 2 years now. I've seen it crash maybe 4 or 5 times (I mean Premiere; I have *never* seen W2K Pro crash). That's five real-time workstations, working at least 8 hours a day. So stop saying nonsense. And stop modding clearly uninformed nonsense as "informative".
I use Avids too and I think they're complete crap. Both Premiere and FCP 4 are light-years ahead of them both in terms of quality and ease of use.
*baffled look*
/. is about some angry competitor swearing off the mac. What exactly is causing this? Personally, I'd have to go with the incredible ease of use that Safari/FCP/etc 'suffer' from, but there has to be something else.
After years and years of Windows/Solaris usage, I finally went out and bought a mac. The OS was stable and unixlike to the point where I couldn't rationalize -not- buying one.
Now, every 8th story on
Could enough people actually be buying macs now that companies are purposefully trying to pull out of the market to cease the flow of new mac purchasers?
Christ knows I won't be buying another PC until my dev box dies. Yay Apple.
Are you MORE than your SPINAL COLUMN?
haha, you almost got me there.
Bottom line, Apple cannot develop EVERY application for their platform. As these applications start to be pulled, it starts to weed out all but the Apple zealots.
Bummer for Apple. Of course the Zealots will say who cares, and FCP is better and the like, but this is just one less application they have for their platform.
Hey, Im going to run out and drop and extra 3 grand I have on a Mac so I can use FCP too. Yeah, tomorrow.
Also missed out:
3 posts giving anecdotes on the infinitesimally small TCO (that word being used in the most conspicuous manner) of a Macintosh. Promptly modded +5, Interesting.
if they were going up against something free (iTunes, iPhoto) from Apple, then i can see it hard to justify a consumer level app..... maybe. There will always be things that Apple's iApps can not and will not do in the name of simplicity. You can't tell me anyone is giving up a legit copy of Photoshop for iPhoto. Kind of off topic, but my point is that FCP and FCE are not free by any means. FCE is a lot cheaper than Premiere, but FCP is still the most money. FCE is targetted at people wanting a step up from iMovie, not people working on big films. If anything it's like Photoshop elements, which is still very much not the application that iPhoto is.
So if Adobe is "afraid of competition" because they decide to stop developing a program for the (much) smaller of their two target platforms, what can you say about Apple not releasing OS X for x86, or FCP 4 for Windows? So who's afraid of competition now?
Macs have less than 2% of market share, worldwide. Assuming Premiere and FCP split the market evenly on the Mac, this would leave 1% of potential customers for Adobe (in fact, it's probably closer to 0.3%). From those, maybe 10% are interested in editing video beyond what the free utilities let them. Even if there are comparatively less PC users interested in editing video, the simple fact that the market is about 50 times bigger means it's a more profitable market.
So Adobe halve their development costs and keep 98% of their customers. Seems like a sound business decision to me.
If Macs and FCP are that much better, then this is also a good move for Apple, who will now sell a lot more copies of FCP, no?
I knew this sounded familiar, and for once its not a Slashdot repeat. Here is an article I found. Its pretty weak, but it describes the attitude Adobe had two years ago at a Macworld Expo.
I remember at that time, When X was in its infancy and people were hyping it, that Adobe was really against the hype.
I can't say why they are doing this, but I think all the speculation on the post so far is too short sighted (they must have had this planned for a while) and I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe has had an exit strategy for years. This doesn't bode well, because while I don't use Premiere, I do use some of their Acrobat products.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
When a news sites like CNN and Google news post stories that just say "Adobe Spurns Mac with New Release" it just re-invigorates Mac bashers. Why bother to read on because the Mac platform is dying, right? So much lopsided reporting just re-invigorates Mac supporters to I guess.
This is exactly the situation that Claris was formed for. The company was spun out of Apple in the late 80's to market the AppleWorks office suite - since it was independent, 3rd party developers (like adobe) were competing on an even playing field, and not directly with the owner of the OS & HW. It was a good situation for the market, and I think good for the mac platform as a whole. But, that's all over since Apple reabsorbed claris back in '98. Oh well...
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
However, I'm not upset about the FCP vs Premiere (vs Avid) battle for pro video tools. Pro apps are high-intensity and high-cost; only the big boys can compete there to begin with. As far as I'm concerned, "Go FCP! Faster pussycat, kill kill!"
The market that really bugs me is the free iApps. Lots of smaller developers get hammered every time Steve Jobs decides to give away some new toy during a keynote speech.
What would make much more sense, IMO, is to follow the Safari/WebCore model. Replace all of the iApps with "iCore" libraries and public APIs. Then the actual iPhoto application would be a tiny cocoa shell that calls /Library/Frameworks/PhotoCore.framework. Along with iMovie, FCP and FCX could call on MovieCore, and so on.
It's a win-win situation. So... why won't it happen?Yep - in a nutshell that comment PERFECTLY describes the situation.
The only thing I would add is that Adobe is under attack in Windows-Land also. With products like the awesome Vegas Video out there who can blame them for not wanting to fight a two front war?
Perhaps they should think about porting to Linux. What serious competition would they have there? If you could tell video production houses that they could save some bucks on licensing, and sweeten it by selling the open source concept, I think Adobe would have a winner (and a leg up).
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Premiere 6 natively supports DV editing. That means any system with a firewire port will perform like your DV500 card (BTW, the DV500 is crap, like anything Pinnacle has ever made). It also supports firewire device control, it uses any of After Effects' filters, it loads MPEG files, it supports effect keyframing and - more importantly - it crashes about 10 times less than version 5. The differences between Premiere 5 and 6 are much bigger than between 4 and 5. Premiere 6.5 adds real-time preview of effects (even without any real-time hardware) and a built-in MPEG-2 exporter.
Avid DV Express is a piece of crap. FCP 4 is nice, but the interface is too antiquated. They need to drop some of those old concepts and learn from compositing and rendering software like Shake, DFusion, 3D SMAX, etc.
with the exeption for the price i fail to see why one would use premiere, in final cut pro i can make both big (price, lenght, and so on)and smal ones, while in premiere basicaly only smal ones are posible.
sure final cut has it's shortcomings, but it is clearly the better app.
I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't part of a larger Adobe strategy to deemphasize their video products: clearly they have refocused their effort on their print products: PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat have all seen massive revisions, and all are going to be updated again within months, while Adobe's video editing line has been rotting. Their print applications have risen dramatically above the competition, while their video products have been crushed by the competition (although After Effects is fortunate not to have much competition). Perhaps they're just waiting for Avid to surpass them on Windows the same way Apple did on Macs, and then they'll drop Premiere entirely.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
You hit the nail on the head about Photoshop 4. Image Ready? Please. Export, gif; save as jpeg. Image slicing? Select tools work perfectly for that, and besides, image slicing is crap. More images = more downloads slowing overall performance. Sure there are uses for it, but it isn't worth $1.
How is this any different? Does MS's threat pale in comparison to Apples? Weird sorta move by adobe. sumthing else is goin on.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Vegas® 4.0
Err.. Except that Premiere is te h suck.
The interface was GREAT back in the day (about 10 years ago), but it's simply not intuitive. The main reason why products like Final Cut and Vegas are kicking their ass is because NEWCOMERS like them better.
Here at Linden Hall School for Girls, we went through a year of trying to teach Premiere 6 to the girls. They hated the thing. I won't even go into all the bugs we ran into with various digital cameras (PC platform).
Then last summer I investigated Video Vegas. That program is amazing! The girls are now able to start editing almost right away. I'm told that Final Cut Express is also along the same lines.
Premiere 7 would truly have to be groundbreaking in order for us to go back to Adobe, Mac or no Mac, it had better be good.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I seem to recall from somewhere that Apple actually purchased what later became Final Cut from Adobe. Can anyone verify this?
Tweet, tweet.
With all the focus Dreamworks is receiving fo rendering *Sinbad* completely with Linux systems, I must ask why you haven't ported your entire product line for the Linux market? Windows is in decline. Perhaps if you would continue supporting OSX your programmers would improve their skills enough to hack it in the post-Windows era of user-friendly Unix deriviative operating systems... Otherwise, your company is going to be the next Digital Research, Ashton-Tate, Borland, or WordPerfect Inc. Seems to me, its only a matter of time before you get "Gimp*ed."
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
for Adobe to port Premiere over to Carbon/Cocoa after considering potential user uptake.
A similar article here. Bottomline, after reading the 2 articles: Adobe is very sensitive about direct competition from Apple. Adobe also fears that Apple might one day start giving away Pro applications for free, which is not entirely impossible because Apple is still mainly a hardware manufacturer. What, about 75% revenue from hardware sales?
Another reason stated in the article on Digital Video Editing is:
This announcement seems to follow a consistent trend at Adobe: none of the applications in the digital video editing segment get an OS X version Encore DVD, Audition, now Premiere gets the axe, when will After Effects get the boot?
"It usualy starts with some screaming. Afterwards there is much running around."
Perhaps this is their reasoning but I think they have waited too long. If Adobe had pursued this strategy right away when FinalCut was introduced it would have worked as you suggest but now it will be a near run thing. Apple is a niche player and has it's eye on dominating the video editting/production niche. FinalCut Pro is one of the "killer" (or "tractor") apps in their strategy. Once the Mac platform has a critical mass of users and a critical mass of applications many of which are Mac only even competing apps like Premier can't leave without doing themselves more harm than good. Instead of Adobe keeping their business their users (some reluctantly) switch to FinalCut Pro because the *other* apps they need and the other people they need to work with are all on the mac.
Sadly for Adobe FinalCut Pro has already proven itself and is widely regarded as a superior, even revolutionary product. Also Apples play to dominate the video/film production market doesn't rest on FinalCut alone but also on a fundamental technology (QuickTime) and a parallel strategy of "tractor apps" at the very high end (Shake), the very low end (iMovie) and in related fields (DVD Studio Pro, Logic) and on Apple hardware designed specifically for this market (why do you think they offer a "server" with an option for a high(ish) end video card and a FireWire port on the front?). Apple's hand has just gotten stronger with the introduction of the G5 and the introduction of the Pixlet codec. (not to mention the implications of Apple developing a codec at the specific request of Steve's other company which just happens to be a major Hollywood player and the developers of RenderMan (Coming to a Mac near you soon?))
Adobe may do OK despite all the advantages Apple has at this point since increasingly FinalCut Pro is not competing with Premiere at the low end of the spectrum but with Avid at the high end, but that begs the question of why someone getting in to the low end would buy a middle-to-low end product like Premiere when for the same price he can get a middle-to-high end product like FinalCut Pro on the platform with all the users and software (in this niche).
It won't just be Premiere. In this case Apple's "Final Cut" software was obviously the cause, but expect more software companies to flee Apple after the relase of 10.3 with its built-in XFree86 that makes running all that cool free software in Apple.com's "Downloads" section a breeze.
Adobe has already made it quite clear that Windows is their new preferred platform, so I think that it's safe to assume that we will see more of this down the road. Adobe is, for the most part, a proprietary software company, and with Apple cozying up to the Open Source world, Adobe's profit margins in the Apple world will shrink as popular free tools like Gimp encroach on Adobe's market share. Microsoft yanked IE support for Apple, punishing Apple for providing a little competition. It will continue.
Apple is doing what the Linux world has failed at- bringing Open-Source software to desktop users. In a few years Apple users might not need much proprietary software at all- making up for the higher cost of Mac hardware. Apple is taking a big risk by pissing off a lot of software companies, but the rewards should make up for it if Apple comes through it.
As someone who has used Premiere to edit large projects for years, and recently switched to Final Cut, I have to say: who cares? Final Cut Pro is better than Premiere in almost every respect. Anyone who mourns the loss of Premiere on the Mac must be insane (or at least a masochist).
As I understand it, Apple is giving its software for free. It might not be free, you have to buy the OS/hardware.
Its very hard to compete against "free", unless you clain that Apple is a monopoly. Then you can get the DOJ to fight for you.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
...spend $5-7k with Apple just for the hardware alone, spend another $5-8K for your software. Apple want the "pro workstation" solution to start in the neighborhood of $10K because they feel they aren't making enough money and it's too much hassle dealing with small-time systems. They will be moving to the "smaller volume, larger margin" pricing model very soon now
Avid droped Mac support too. And all that did was make Final Cut that much more popular. Now Avid is begging for Mac users again. Especialy since almost every school now teaches video editing on the Mac using FinalCut. Bad move Adobe. I think you will do an about face just like Avid did.
"why is it that they cannot compete with Apple"
Because unlike Microsoft, Apple truely does have a monopoly. They have total control over the hardware and the operating system, whereas MS makes an OS that runs on many flavors of hardware.
What can MS really do? They can tell big system manufacturers that if they ship systems without Windows installed on them then they won't get the huge discount they give big system manufacturers. This sounds like a monopolistic practice to many, but in reality, I think most people can see if they are honest with themselves that systems that didn't ship with Windows would wind up with a pirated copy of Windows on them.
MS can't really MAKE anyone do anything. Anyone, you, me, Walmart, could start building systems today that MS would despise, yet MS has no power what so ever to stop us.
Apple on the other hand can and will sue your ass of at every turn. Did you know that it is illegal to run Mac OS on non Apple hardware, it's a violation of the EULA. So not only are you not supposed to do it in the privacy of your own home, if you tried to market a product that did, well, you wouldn't even make it to market.
Apple can do anything they want with their hardware and software to break 3rd party apps. The only recourse a developer would have is to rewrite the code. Sure, right now, Apple pretty much bends over backwards for most developers, but that's because they NEED apps. However, as in this case, when Apple is making an app themselves , I sure wouldn't want to be in competition with that app.
I shudder to think of the state the computer industry would be in if Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed.
Ehh, FinalCut is a better product. It has a much better UI, handles 24p h4 video perfectly, and does quite few things that Premiere needs 3rd party hardware to accomplish. Moreover, FinalCut on a PowerBook is typically a much more robust portable solution the Premiere on a PC laptop.
FinalCut's video/audio solutions have surpassed that of Premiere's during the past two major releases. Over the past 12 months FinalCut has become -the- pro video editing solution for MacOSX.
Honestly, it makes no sense to keep selling Premiere on OS X. Adobe would be loosing money. Now that FinalCut's feature set is mature, Mac user are migrating away from Premiere. Furthermore, a lot of Digital Video folks are migrating to OS X simply to use Final Cut or Final Cut Express.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Jesus, at the first sign of the competition taking their market away, they turn and run with their tales between their legs. I guess Adobe isn't comfortable unless they have a monopoly and can take years between new version releases of their software. Welcome to America, Adobe. It's called capitalism. This is a bad thing for both Final Cut Pro and Premiere. Less competition is almost never good for the market, and it certainly isn't a good thing in this case.
Do you mean "equivocation"?
Steve Jobs still doesnt quite realize the importance of a software base for the Apple. By leaving the market to others, they can be a bigger player, and always be able to roll out their own anytime in the future. Instead they keep trying to be an all-in-one company.
Even Suns beginning to learn IBMs original idea of outsourcing software, then hardware like they did to the 8086. All other hardware + software proprietary computer makers are going out of business and while many Taiwanese are getting rich off the x86, IBM lives on and keeps growing bigger.
That said, Adobe shouldnt try to use their mac market presence as threats to keep their markets good. They should look at raw profits instead.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I like apples, but not apple users
Yeah. I feel that way about most groups of enthusiats, which includes linux zealots, BSD nuts, MS lovers, Metallica fans, Kiss army, Ect, ect. I love technology, movies, music, tv shows, art. I just don't always love other people who also love those things. I don't really know why. I think its because I'm a free thinker. No, wait I think its because I'm a jerk.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
While I haven't used FCP, I believe from what I've heard it runs much better in OSX than Premier does. Adobe obviously is pissed off at Apple's development of FCP, FCP Express, and iPhoto. The market share reason is obvious--it's the $, stupid. But still the loss of competition for Apple is not good. Perhaps Avid will drop the Mac next. And what will all thos Mac Premier users do? Hopefully Apple will offer a very good comp upgrade for Premier users.
Competition is good for innovation and pricing, and while I love my mac and apple computer, I worry about so much centralized control of the platform's hardware and software. Apple had to develop the iApps to survive because developers were not innovating, updating, or even delivering mac compatible software. Now that MS has dropped IE (and bought Virtual PC), the mac is even more vulnerable to losing viability without compatible software. I think Apple should really make sure Linux can not only run on its hardware, but run well. This way many applications which are ported there and not on a mac can run in a window on a Mac. Putting all our eggs in one basket (OSX) is very risky when you only have 3% market share. God knows what would happen to Apple if Photoshop were pulled for the mac.
Yeah, it's sad. It's unfortunate. Especially for those of us who upgraded and spent money to keep current, but I'm kind of relieved. It will force a lot of us to put the nose to the grindstone and get into FCP.
Also something to note, Premiere had more features in the PC version even at version 6. MPEG imports/exports, for example. It kinda sucked to have bought a shiny new copy of Premiere for a badass new Power Mac DP Ghz G4 and find that features were just "missing."
Time to check out FCP lite and FCP Pro to see if they can put the PC version to shame...
I had a sucky sig.
i think that adobe should discontinue all their mac products since emagic dropped pc support for their tools!
The folks at C&G ( http://thinksecret.com/news/wsjcasadygreene.html ) developed soundjam, which rocked. I actually bought it! Apple liked it and brought it into the fold and made iTunes. Thats what third party developers should be doing.
First of all, I'm not going to miss Premiere. Having used both FCP and Premiere, I prefer FCP.
However, I'm beginning to see the trend swing around where Apple apps. "should" be compatible with MS/Windows apps, but something isn't quite right. I'm sure everyone had problems going from Appleworks to Word/Excel for Windows. There are still problems with PowerPoint formatting, Word templates, and other annoyances(using Office v.X). I will probably have to have IE available on my Macs for quite a while so I can use some web sites(though Safari is getting much better...but still submitting bug reports).
Apple, if they are going to keep going in this direction, will have to be sure they keep as compatible with M$ products as possible. Marketshare isn't going to grow if there are more apps available, but a Office document can't be used on a PC.
*note: I don't like M$ as much as any Mac user, however the reality is MS/Office pretty much makes the world go round
I suppose your post counts as the 60 trolls. But where's the summary?
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
Gimp poses no threat to photoshop whatsoever.
The only people who would be interested in using GIMP instead of Photoshop are home users who pirated photoshop in the first place. Adobe makes its money from corporations, not home users. And there are no open source programs that rival adobe now, or in the near future.
I agree with this. Apple acts like Microsoft only wishes it could. But I still own an iBook because Apple's products are decent and well thought out, even if they are monopolistic.
Agreed. Now, let's just hope Adobe doesnt' drop Photoshop.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think not. At the very least, Acrobat is completely unrivaled. If you've ever really used it for PDF editing and creation, it is multiple thousands of times better than the competition.
Likewise, Illustrator is noticeably better than MacroMedia FreeHand or the Corel Suite. Also, Illustrator is enormously improved from the earlier verions. The change between 9 and 10 is a vast improvement (if nothing else, svg support is really nice) and if you try going back at 5 or 6 after using 10 you will find youself trying to gouge your own eyes out.
Now, these aren't maybe their biggest products, but Acrobat Writer is very important and Illustrator is definitely of significant note.
Also, Adobe has many little features which the opposition cannot compete with. Premiere, however, has always been one of their less impressive offerings. While Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat are all the absolute best at what they do, Premiere has never been as good as Final Cut Pro.
There aren't many (if any) Mac users on Premiere anymore.
Avid already dropped the Mac several years ago. Guess what, after bankruptcy proceedings, they came crawling back, and now they're begging for people to use Xpress DV in OS X.
What will happen to Adobe? The only people who use premiere are hobbyists and event videographers. If adobe can't make its $$$ there, then it will probably sell off Premiere to a small development house.
...used by mom-n-pops and small corporations to produce the video equivalent of company newsletters. FCP already took the high end.
If Adobe wants to compete with FCP its going to have to be with a ground up new app a la InDesign.
This isn't a platform vendor leveraging the platform to push their apps, Apple charges a pretty penny for FCP, there is room for a well designed app to compete on cost alone.
We might actually get a halfway-decent version of Premiere for the PC, instead of one stripped down that can't handle Mpeg-2 to save its life?
Apple says FU to to Adobe by releaseing iGimp as a free replacement for Photoshop pushing Adobe away from Mac platform entirely. In a related note Microsoft chairman Bill Gates sent a memo to Adobe management welcoming them to his playground.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
As much as I admire OSX and the new Mac hardware, I have to be honest and say that I think Steve Jobs is burning bridges with a big group of Mac users. First he moves the Mac to a Unix codebase, which we love, but old-line Mac users have huge reservations about. Then he slowly goes about writing all the important apps for the Mac, pushing out longtime 3rd party vendors that Mac users have relied upon for years. This is a direct shot at Adobe, the software company most associated with Mac third party software. Jobs seems intent on making all software on the Mac "All Apple, All The Time". And I think this might be the new Apple's Achilles Heel; its really hard to expand your market if no one else is writing software for your platform. I know ole' Steve wants the revenue, but this is getting rediculous.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You should know better than to bash Apple! You'll get labelled flamebait? However, ever notice that the mac folks can say ANYTHING about windows and they are labelled as interesting?
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
He was right. It's a saying. It was explained here previously in a /. artical, so hopefully someone can post the explaination again.
Adobe cancels Windows versions of Premiere due to Microsoft's inclusion of Windows Movie Maker with their latest versions of their OS.
Has anyone even tried Premiere Pro?
Aside from the screenshots on the Adobe site, I haven't seen any reviews of it. Maybe it doesn't "suck" as much compared to FCP now...
Everyone's knocking Premiere 6.5 and earlier, but it is conceivable (maybe not likely) that with a focused development team on a single platform, Premiere could start catching up to FCP (in terms of product quality) over the next two years, considering that they also have a new code base.
I have recently wondered if it would be possible for a company?(Apple/IBM) to create some sort of complier/installer that would allow comercial third party developers to develope for a generic *nix (or Apple Aqua)base and then be complied/installed specificaly to either a Mac or Opteron, x86 *nix box. It seems to me that if such a thing were possible those third party apps would double if not triple their sales because of the larger potential userbase. it Could create a better standard for benchmarks. It might also provide an indirect upgrade path to the new Apple hardware (G5)
Is such a thought nuts? Would it be a technical or political problem?
I find it interesting how the major developers (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) are quick to drop Mac support when a better product comes along. Now while I understand that "the bottom line" is all that matters in the business world, the respective companies have some degree of control over their bottom line.
And please do drop the market share argument. Any decent economist, that is those who have joined in the anti-Apple conspiracy*, knows that market share does not determine anything and more often than not it is the high-end quality products that have the single-digit market share values. * Yes it is a conspiracy because no other high-end company (e.g. Bang & Olufsen, Rolls Royce, etc.) gets the consistent negative treatment that Apple does. The only reason for this is a multi-tiered scheme on the part of the press, economists, IT professionals, and Microsoft/Intel, organized or not, to wipe Apple of the map while promoting the dominance of a second-rate product line (Wintel/AMDows systems).
Now is Adobe's option to drop Premier for the Mac a bad thing? For those in the professional video market using Macs obviously not since they have opted to purchase a product that costs $300 more. Also, Apple has traditionally been a fairly small player in this market. Unfortunately, the mainstream press will most likely use this as another opportunity to scream about the impending death of Apple that has been coming for nearly two decades. Even if a negative spin is not used, the general public has been successfully brainwashed enough to interpret this as a bad sign.
Apple took an existing product, improved it and the consumers made a choice: FCP over Premier. This has nothing to do with who happens to market and sell Final Cut Pro/Express; it is not as if pro users are getting PowerMacs with FCP pre-installed. In fact, none of Apple's pre-installed apps are pro-level by any stretch of the imagination. Adobe's reasoning, much like Microsoft's decision to drop IE for the Mac, is a cop out. The only difference is that Microsoft has their "drop" of IE for Windows to hide behind--in actuality Microsoft is simply circumventing their illegal binding of IE with the OS by ceasing to make IE a separate product and fully incorporating it into the OS and thus continuing to make the use competing browsers on Wintel systems an unattractive, or at least seemingly unnecessary, option.
Now will Adobe leverage its position to threaten the removal of Photoshop/Illustrator? Probably not. Unlike the professional video market, Macs are nearly a de facto standard in desktop publishing and have been since the beginning of the market. It is bad enough that Adobe is beginning to display Quark-esque traits (e.g. the change in the PS7 plug-in SDK which can potentially lock competing products out of Photoshop plug-in compatibility) and as always their pricing is astronomical for their product. For $200+ less than the cost of entry for Photoshop (an image editing-only app) a graphic artist/technician can get a full set of features with Canvas or CorelDRAW Suite. And, both of those products support enough file formats to not exist in a vacuum. Yet, Photoshop and the Adobe suites still rules the roost while being considerably more expensive. If Adobe pulls the plug on the Mac, someone will move in to take its place. In my experience the only real problem with Canvas is its stability and hopefully the recent merging of Deneba and ACD will provide them the resources to remedy that.
It is unlikely that Apple will create a professional level graphics app. It is ultimately counterproductive and with Adobe, Deneba/ACD, Macromedia, what's left of Corel, GIMP, etc. already in the market, they would have to develop and market one heck of a graphics suite to even be noticed, let alone have a significant rate of adoption. Also, creating a full arc of Apple developed software will only reinforce the long since false proprietary image that Apple still has to shed.
Q4 of 2003 will be an interesting time for all parties concerned.
Given the apple integrated approach to OS10+ your statement might just be a little premature
If Apple does succeed in integrating Gimp functionality into a desktop, then the average PhotoShop pro might just say hey why the hell should I pay big money for a 64 bit pentium work station, then tons of cash for software as well.
Adobe dropping Apple is a move that is obvious in it's implications. To keep Redmond happy! The free software movement is gaining steam with the pro's.
In music, imaging, etc. The home market for PC junkies has become more important to Adobe. Pro's will pay for great tools like ProTools audio, but Photoshop Pro has become a bloated button ridden overpriced PC style app, great as it was it is not that indespensable.
I do not even own an Apple, but I am getting very tempted!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
If Apple continues this trend, will there be a huge 3rd party market on the Mac? How much software are they going to have to purchase or make themselves to keep their platform alive?
How fast are they going to be able to innovate? Can they keep up to pace with Linux and Microsoft? Will they just borrow more open source stuff as necessary when it comes of age?
At what point are you pushing 3rd parties away from your platform? Microsoft is notorious for doing this at times. *cough* office *cough*
Is Apple attempting to be a more attractive Microsoft by using Open Source and appealing to people for updates and security?
Maybe you don't use it very much. But a lot of people do. It's a big time-saver, worth much more that $1.
As for "More images = more downloads". That's just a completely obsurd thing to say. Are you suggesting giant, 1 page sized GIFs or something?
Adobe isn't just abandoning the Apple Platform. You don't just dump a platform for the hell of it. You go TO another platform with a plan. And, given the evidence I beleieve THIS is Adobe's plan:
To become the dominant media creation tool providers in the Windows Platform.
This is how you do it:
1. create a seamless UI and file management system from acquisition to media creation.
2. Get it into the hands of students
3. Wait.
How does Adobe do this?
Acquisition: Photoshop, Premiere, Audition. Processing: Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects
Creation: Premiere, Encore, Acrobat
This creates a unified workflow with a unified UI - scan in Photoshop, DV in Premiere, Audio acquire in Audition. Put it together in Premiere and process with After Effects and Photoshop. Project complete, export it as a movie or sequence back into DV/Web (Premiere), DVD (Encore), or Print/Web (Acrobat).
With a unified UI, it's all super easy, and an extremely powerful suite of applications.
Since going between machines is a royal pain in the ass in a given workflow, and Apple blew Premiere away with Final Cut Pro (Note: the core engineering team for Apple FCP was from Macromedia, and Macromedia raided them from Premiere back around v4!) Adobe lost a leg in their media creation system. Rather than screw with Apple over FCP, it makes MUCH more sense to create an entire new industry based on the Windows platform.
To create this new workflow, you have to get students involved, and right now, Adobe spews TONS of software for a very nominal price into the education channel. In fact, their single largest sales client is the fourth rate Art Institutes International (any art school that advertises on daytime TV is not an Art school...) who soak up thousands of seat licenses for Adobe, and churn out thousands of little graphic design drones. A.I.I. is not alone - all major art schools have such agreements with Adobe.
And when these kidz get out of school, they will know nad love Adobe products. So, when they go out into the world GUESS what they will use? FreeHand? Painter? Final Cut Pro? Vegas? DVD Studio Pro? Sonic Foundry? Quark? No:
They will use Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Encore, Audition, and InDesign - all of them sharing similar similar UI cues and systems, providing them with a uniform media creation environment.
Already their stranglehold on the education market has killed off FreeHand and Painter. They tried to kill off FreeHand back in 1994, but failed, and went to the aggressive education strategy shortly thereafter.
With thousands of little droids cranking out graphics, video, and DVDs, usingthe unified Adobe environment, Adobe will pretty much own that space in about 5 years.
Innovation will occur around the fringes, and the ideas will filter into Adobe over time. Just like how ideas filter in Microsoft over time. At the core, like Microsoft, there is precious little reason to innovate at Adobe. Like Microsoft, they have cash cows: PostScript and Photoshop, like Windows and Word...
Unless Apple does something amazing REALLY SOON, the loss of IE and Premiere spell one direction for Apple:
SGI.
You heard it here first. Sure the G5 is faster. So what? An MP SGI Onyx box back in its day kicked butt too...
What I hope this post does:
Someone will forward it to someone at Apple (and people who make software in the same space as Adobe) so they might WAKE UP AND GET A CLUE. I love my Apple computers, and I want to be using an Apple 10 years from now, not some POS wintel box. If they continue along this path, they face the same fate as SGI: marginalised and ignored. which is very very sad.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
As long as you are not using the buggy limited Windows version, the limits of the Gimp are hard to find, and like photoshop require real study!
Do anything in CMYK.
Oops. Guess those limits aren't so hard to find after all, huh?
Heh, and people complain about Microsoft's monopoly, yet this shows that Apple's Final Cut Pro leaves no room for competitors.
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Check out Harvest Moon Online
(a free online game based on the SNES game)
Moderators: mod that post up please !
0 000120.html
from here: http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/0
Trolltech(r), a leader in single source, multiplatform software development tools, today announced that Adobe System's innovative new product, Adobe(r) Photoshop(r) Album, was developed using Trolltech's flagship product, Qt(r), a multiplatform C++ development framework.
"Trolltech has provided us with an intuitive, powerful tool. Qt simplified our task of developing Photoshop Album by providing high-level tools that we could customize to meet our needs," said Mike DePaoli, Photoshop Album Engineering Manager. "The product is excellent, the support was outstanding and we are extremely pleased with our decision to go with Qt."
---
So the question is: I understand that for video apps it is not easy to write cross-platfrom code because each OS has it's own API and often needs specialized tricks to achieve excellent video performance.
But being a Qt programmer myself and having written a stereo laser scanner application (runs on Linux and Windows) that grabs two video streams at 25fps and reconstructs a 3d points in real time (and at the same time modifiying the video on screen to show the position of recognized markers), I must say that the effort to make it crossplatfrom was quite low.
Just wrap the video grabbing and video output API in your own calls and provide backends for both windows and Linux.
The number of lines of platform specific code is very low compared to the overall project.
So my question: why is Adobe not using the same approach for Premiere ?
Adobe Photoshop Album is written in Qt, anyone speculating why they have chosen Qt over other toolkits (MFC etc) ?
Do they plan to port that app to other platforms ?
How about Premiere ?
Is that legacy code written in MFC which is hard and unconvenient to port to other platforms ?
How about Photoshop ?
I guess it is legacy code too, but I think porting it to Qt would be really a good investment.
I don't think that performance (or the limitations of the Qt toolkit itself) is a plausible excuse to not write Photoshop in Qt.
Ok perhaps a few OS specific hooks are needed anyway, but I guess they are minuscle compared to the whole codebase.
I think once all code is converted to Qt even a relatively small market like the Mac or Linux justifies the porting of the application.
Ok porting tons of MFC code takes time (and thus money) but once you are done. You are freed from the Windows platform and can target almost any platform in existence.
With the advancing of the application you probably need only really small man-hours to maintain the platform specific code since there is not that much code to maintain. (you have probably to touch that code when switching major OS releases anyway, eg from win98 to win2k etc).
Any thoughts what the cross-platform future of Adobe looks like ?
Will Photoshop for Linux become a reality eventually or will it take such long that gimp will catch up in the meantime, making Photoshop on Linux meaningless ?
Same for AutoCAD, had AutoCAD ported their apps to Qt, they would now be able to target all major desktop platforms without major problems.
Thanks for your comments on Adobe & Qt & Linux.
After Effects still does solid business on the Mac...the compositing tools built into Final Cut 3 don't offer nearly the same level of power & control and such. Final Cut 4 might, but it is primarily an editing app.
Apple does have a more powerful compositing/animation tool -- Shake -- but that is aimed more at the film industry and other Really Big Tasks, whereas After Effects is more useful for TV and DV.
If Apple were to come out with a "Shake Lite" to bridge the gap between FCP and the regular Pro Shake, then we might see Adobe run away again. Cowards!
According to the article, Apple is dropping the API that Premiere was writtent in
the article does not say that anywhere. why was this modded up?
Final Cut Pro is the Premier-killer application and it's been pillaging Premier for some time. It's gotten to the point that Apple has released FCP 4 but Adobe still doesn't have a reply to FCP 3. Remember, FCP has been taking the pro market by storm even at twice what Premier costs. With Final Cut Express undercutting Premier's price, Adobe has decided to take their ball and run home before Apple shuts them out entirely.
I mean, even Avid is restructuring their marketing strategy and slashing prices because of the heat they're feeling from Final Cut Pro. What's a long-in-the-tooth, klunky program like Premier to do in the face of this competition?
From what I understand, Premier is not really competitive on the PC side, either, with several programs having more features and better interface. The PC market is larger and more fragmented, though, so they it's more economical for them and less embarrassing. (I.e., on the Mac side, a single opponent came from nowhere, kicked sand in their face, took their girlfriend, and has been voted "Most eligible Editor on the beach".
All of the video editors I know hate Premier, which is so primitive and klunky. I mean, this is the 2000's and it can still only have a single timeline per project file?
As far as I can tell, Premier's user base is: 1) people who have been using it forever, 2) novices who recognize the brand name and have read over the years about Premier, or 3) those who got it free with a bundled purchase.
microsoft photo editor has stopped photoshop?
Yes, Adobe was outclassed / outgunned and withdrew Premiere from the Mac market. And it may be that Macs are wonderful for video editing. But the fact remains that that the overall Macintosh market size is still miniscule compared with the potential that lies in the PC market. That means they can focus on the larger, more promising PC market, which by most estimates is at least 15x the size of the Mac market. Even if they're not the best act in town, they can still probably achieve a higher level of profitability in the PC market without being #1 or #2 in overall sales (e.g. Apple / Avid).
it's not premier, it's premier pro, a complete rewrite! have you used it? maybe you should try it first since the new version has mutliple, nestable timelines and real-time editing. it can't be as poorly as you suggest or they would've canned the product already.
Stories such as this remind me of the time John Warnock stood before the attendees of a Seybold conference years ago and actually cried because Apple was threatening Adobe's PostScript font tech with its own TrueType. (Well, okay, I can't find any articles that back up my recollection, but perhaps that's what the author of this one meant by "visible dismay.")
In those days, Adobe had a stranglehold on the fonts market. Sure, there were players such as Bitstream and Agfa, but nothing compared to Adobe and the huge fees it was collecting per font. Then came Apple (along with Microsoft) who announced a competing technology that would be included with its operating systems, rather than as an add-on such as Adobe Type Manager, and if not make PostScript irrelevant, at least take a huge bite out of Adobe's margins. History tells us a truce was achieved, but at the time, my sympathy for Adobe was in the minus. Gouging your customers inevitably is bad business.
Now we have this. I personally haven't used Premiere in ages, and I can't say I know how it has evolved in the meantime. But while I was using it, I always had the unnerving feeling I was using a pee cee port that was an afterthought. A stagnant afterthought. (Not quite as bad as MS Word 6.0, but you get the idea.) After using FCP (and FCP Express), the question I have is: Why would I ever want to go back to Premiere?
Again, I'm thinking it's just desserts for Adobe. While I'm certain their reasons for redeveloping Premiere are exclusively retaliatory (just my opinion), Premiere is a fading star in as much the same way that Quark Xpress is. Ironic, in a way, that it's Adobe that's eating Quark's lunch.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
First of all. This is ADOBE PREMIERE PRO. A complete rewrite. It's possible your comparisons against the older versions of Premiere don't apply anymore. Look them up or try the program before making an ass of yourself on Slashdot.
For example, I've seen it mentioned multiple times that it can't do multiple timelines. This is wrong. According to the marketting bull it now supports multiple nested timelines.
Also, it seems they've rewritten a lot to work in Real-time. A major advantage over some of the older shit that would allow certain editting functions to get done faster.
Now it's probably fun to call Adobe a pussy or loser, let's try some of the new software or at least read a fucking page about it before we start spewing bullshit around. If you wanna spew shit, provide a link to your numbers or facts.
What is the prime reason for them to do so? I just don't get it. Maybe someone does?
I use FCP and it's truly a great media editing application. It's straightforward, flexible, even fun. It's my "killer app," and it's one of the few that really makes the G4 feel truly worthwhile. So I can't blame Adobe for not wanting to compete there. It wouldn't make any sense. Final Cut Pro is a phenomenon. Even academy award winning editor Walter Murch is onboard now (with "Cold Mountain.")
Adobe makes great products, but they lacked vision when it really mattered in the video editing department.
I haven't run into any problems getting the files to be accepted by any press houses. A lot of them take InDesign documents these days even if they don't advertise the fact. The few that don't take the native file wil usualy accept a PDF or EPS.
Next time you upgrade get one of Adobes all inclusive packages (one of those ones that includes PS, Illustrator, Acrobat, ect...) you would practicaly be getting it for free, so if you don't like it it's no big loss.
Two words: color management. GIMP is great for web graphics, but CMYK color management is practically non-existant in GIMP. You can't do (print) graphics work without it (CMYK CM), pure and simple. Somebody needs to write P-Tone libraries and a complete color-management suite for GIMP. Then it will be able to compete, maybe...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
The parent is a troll. Please do not feed it.
I think it's important to remember that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Adobe's attitude and Premiere's interface in particular before Apple bought FCP from Macromedia.
It's that Quark-style "hey, we own this market, we don't need to fix anything if we don't want to" attitude that did them in. Apple have clearly decided that they don't want the main reason to have a mac (a/v media editing) in the hands of unfriendly third parties.
It's much the same as Microsoft not leaving the main reason for having a PC (office apps) to 3rd parties.
Adobe lost the Apple market share because Apple produced a better product. That's called competition and competition is good! I just hope Apple doesn't slack off on their FCP software.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
hope and pray someone mods me up big time, because this is very important and I hope people pay attention:
Adobe isn't just abandoning the Apple Platform. You don't just dump a platform for the hell of it. You go TO another platform with a plan. And, given the evidence I beleieve THIS is Adobe's plan:
To become the dominant media creation tool providers in the Windows Platform.
This is how you do it:
1. create a seamless UI and file management system from acquisition to media creation.
2. Get it into the hands of students
3. Wait.
How does Adobe do this?
Acquisition: Photoshop, Premiere, Audition.
Processing: Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects
Creation: Premiere, Encore, Acrobat
This creates a unified workflow with a unified UI - scan in Photoshop, DV in Premiere, Audio acquire in Audition. Put it together in Premiere and process with After Effects and Photoshop. Project complete, export it as a movie or sequence back into DV/Web (Premiere), DVD (Encore), or Print/Web (Acrobat).
With a unified UI, it's all super easy, and an extremely powerful suite of applications.
Since going between machines is a royal pain in the ass in a given workflow, and Apple blew Premiere away with Final Cut Pro (Note: the core engineering team for Apple FCP was from Macromedia, and Macromedia raided them from Premiere back around v4!) Adobe lost a leg in their media creation system. Rather than screw with Apple over FCP, it makes MUCH more sense to create an entire new industry based on the Windows platform.
To create this new workflow, you have to get students involved, and right now, Adobe spews TONS of software for a very nominal price into the education channel. In fact, their single largest sales client is the fourth rate Art Institutes International (any art school that advertises on daytime TV is not an Art school...) who soak up thousands of seat licenses for Adobe, and churn out thousands of little graphic design drones. A.I.I. is not alone - all major art schools have such agreements with Adobe.
And when these kidz get out of school, they will know nad love Adobe products. So, when they go out into the world GUESS what they will use? FreeHand? Painter? Final Cut Pro? Vegas? DVD Studio Pro? Sonic Foundry? Quark? No:
They will use Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Encore, Audition, and InDesign - all of them sharing similar similar UI cues and systems, providing them with a uniform media creation environment.
Already their stranglehold on the education market has killed off FreeHand and Painter. They tried to kill off FreeHand back in 1994, but failed, and went to the aggressive education strategy shortly thereafter.
With thousands of little droids who think they're being creative cranking out graphics, video, and DVDs, usingthe unified Adobe environment, Adobe will pretty much own that space in about 5 years.
Innovation will occur around the fringes, and the ideas will filter into Adobe over time. Just like how ideas filter in Microsoft over time. At the core, like Microsoft, there is precious little reason to innovate at Adobe. Like Microsoft, they have cash cows: PostScript and Photoshop, like Windows and Word...
Unless Apple does something amazing REALLY SOON, the loss of IE and Premiere spell one direction for Apple:
SGI.
You heard it here first. Sure the G5 is faster. So what? An MP SGI Onyx box back in its day kicked butt too...
What I hope this post does: Someone will forward it to someone at Apple (and people who make software in the same space as Adobe) so they might WAKE UP AND GET A CLUE. I love my Apple computers, and I want to be using an Apple 10 years from now, not some POS wintel box. If they continue along this path, they face the same fate as SGI: marginalised and ignored. which is very very sad.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
From my experience in video editing, natural windows users tend to like Premiere on the Mac, while natural mac users will tend to prefer Final Cut Pro.
So, Adobe really won't lose many sales, imnsho, they will just switch platforms.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
I think the point being missed here is that Apple is a company made up of many groups. There's Apple hardware and Apple software.
Just like any business Apple software probably treats the video editing market as a business opportunity... that is - look at the environment, evaluate competitors and decide to enter the market if you can sustain a competitive and profitable advantage.
When they bought FCP from Macromedia, I'm sure they knew what they were doing. Premiere was already out on the Mac so they knew they were entering into competition with Adobe. Think of the FCP at Apple as Macromedia. Two software developers competing in a market.
That's all there is to it. No conspiracy theories, etc. Apple is just about to make money like everyone else.
Wow you have issues.
Blar.
Tossing in a couple stiffly grafted-on profanities and saying "marketing bull" doesn't make you sound like you're not a shill--it makes you sound like you're a shill thinking you're sounding like you're not a shill.
As does your repeating the same "marketing bull" over and over again. And your saying "marketing bull." Only marketing dinks call it that, when denigrating us non-dinks, in mockery of our outré redneck incomprehension of your wizardry.
And oh--
"Real-time" is only capitalized mid-sentence if it's appearing in "marketing bull."
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
here is a read me from the linux 86 of the icc color lib.
ICC profile I/O library (icclib), README file
Date 5th November 2002, Version 2.03
This distribution contains source code which implements the reading and
writing of color profile files that conform to the International Color
Consortium (ICC) Profile Format Specification, Version 3.4.
For more information about the ICC, and for copies of the specification,
please refer to http://www.color.org/.
(Note that this software is written from the ICC V3.4 standard, but the
software and its author are not affiliated with, or otherwise connected
with the ICC.)
The ICC profile I/O library archive is kept at
http://web.access.net.au/argyll/color.html
Motivation
Color is still very much a black art to many programmers dealing with
computer graphics. The ICC Profile Format is an industry attempt to provide
an interchange format to help solve the problems of specifying color, and
in transferring color graphics from, and between systems and devices.
Although the ICC format has been around a number of years, and has long
been adopted by companies in the business of providing systems for
publishing and printing, and is now widely used as part of commercial
operating system support for device independent color, its uptake in the
general world of computer graphics has been slow.
The writing of this library was prompted by my private and professional
enthusiasm for computer graphics, and color. Inspired by other examples of
freely usable software (notably the Independent JPEG Group's free JPEG
software, and Sam Leffler's TIFF library), I have decided to make this
library available under similar terms. I hope that this library will
provide a starting point for including ICC profile support more widely that
is currently the case, particularly in open source code projects.
Overview
This package contains a C software implementation of the ICC Profile
Format, Version 3.4. The ICC Profile Format attempts to provide a
cross-platform device profile format, that can be used to translate color
data created on one device into another device's native color space. For a
fuller explanation of what the ICC Profile Format is all about, please
refer to http://www.color.org, and the profile specification.
In summary this library provides:
* Full source code, free for commercial and non-commercial use.
* Support for all version 3.4 header elements, Tags and Tag Types.
* Conversion to/from machine native representation of all data
types.
* Support for user defined Tags.
* Support for adding/deleting Tags.
* Support for Tag type sharing within a file (often used for
sharing LUTs amongst intents).
* Support for reading/writing embedded profiles, including from/to
a memory buffer, rather than a file.
* Provides a single function for transforming color values through
a profile, including support for intents, forward and reverse
transforms, gamut lookup or preview lookup.
* Provides support and code examples for creating all profile
types, monochrome, matrix and Lut.
* Attempts to be platform neutral, and flexibility in its use of
system file and memory sub-systems.
* Loads Tag Types on demand to conserve memory space.
Changes from V2.02
Version 2.03 has a few minor changes from the previous release, V2.02,
aimed at improving the system compatibility of the library.
See icc.c for a more detailed change history.
Package contents:
icclib.zip ZIP archive of the following files
README.txt This file.
Licence.txt Important! - Permissions for use of this package.
icc.c Library source file.
iccstd.c Library source that uses stdio and malloc system calls.
icc.h Library include file. Note machine dependent
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
...until there is a replacement for their products that will satisfy not just web designers but the prepress and technical document preparation industries. Photoshop, Illustrator, and FrameMaker are leaders in their markets because they have no real competition. (The GIMP doesn't have what prepress operators need, and the venerable Emacs/TeX combination isn't an answer to Frame's document management capabilities.)
From the market you're looking at--video--Adobe may well be in trouble. But it took years for them to get to that position, and it'll take many more years for anything to change in the markets they're more firmly entrenched in. You can see this, ironically, in Adobe's own challenge of Quark's position as the dominant graphic layout program with InDesign. Everyone thought InDesign was "promising" at version 1.0, at version 1.5 it was considered a strong contender, and at 2.0 it got accolades as noticeably superior to Xpress 5... yet, Xpress was still consistently cited as a main reason why Macintosh professionals weren't switching to OS X, and why Xpress 6 has been greeted with relief even though everyone assumes ahead of time it's going to be an expensive porker. If you read prepress journals, in fact, you'll find that many printing houses are still on Xpress 4 or even 3.3. InDesign will have to not only be as good as Xpress, it'll have to be much better than Xpress, cheaper than Xpress, and be backed by Adobe for another three or four years before it starts seriously eroding Quark's userbase.
Dear Randy, What are you wearing? Steve Jobs Apple Comuter, Inc.
It's all a matter of what you're used to. The GIMP's unstable release (1.3.16 in my case) in Linux has cleaned things up a lot.
The only entries on the task list are for the gimp's tool dialog and the open documents. The dialogs remain above open windows, and in Linux(most window managers) the dialogs can be rolled up to just their title bar with a simple double click like any other window.
To me at least, it makes more sense to give the image's window rather than the applications window a command, but I realize that this confuses some people. The unstable version of the GIMP has the right-click menu items in a menu bar for such users.
The GIMP's primary development team is not targetting Windows, and the interface understandably sucks on that platform. It's OSS; if you hate the interface so much, make a new one.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
nya nya nya nya nya nyaaaaa! Apple is poopy! Adobe is poopy! Poopy poopy corporate thinktank man! Your post will save Apple corporate thinktank man! Thank you and thanks again! You are a juggernaut of business-saving thoughts!
Issues? I dont really have many of those. Vocies in my head that tell me to burn dirty socks and listen to cpu fans for ideas to get rid of that not so fresh feeling, Yes I have many of those. But I don't think I have any issues. Never really been into comincs, Manga,magasines, or paper with printed words on the pages. I think I'm deaf.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Apple have made a bad, VERY BAD move here.
Without applications any platform is doomed.
Apple should reconsider what they offer to their customers. Providing hardware and a matching OS is one thing, but applications, as someone has pointed out already, enters Microsoft type activity.
Adobe Premiere users will have no reason to stay with Apple now and that's the bottom line!
Could be something to do with licensing, or possibly some performance issues.
Corel had a few versions of their Linux software, such as Wordperfect, yanked and no mention of them ever again.
There are greater forces at work here.
"We like the Mac, but Apple currently has three [video] editing applications shipping.... It just didn't make sense for us to keep developing for the Mac when the Mac is well served by Apple." here
Translation:
Adobe Premier is Mickey Mouse BS when compared to FCP - we just could not compete. It is a good thing FCP is not available for Windows - we still have those Users under our finger.
Prediction:
If Adobe does not kick it into high gear and start making some changes (start with the interface which looks like it was designed by a focus group comprised of accountants, librarians, and lawyers) they will end up losing a good amount of their After Effects customers to Discreet' Combestion. Combustion rapes AE - hands down.
The upcoming AE 6.0 is heralded as:
"After Effects 6.0 Professional adds motion tracking and stabilization, advanced keying and warping tools, more than 30 additional visual effects, a particle system, render automation and network rendering, 16-bit-per-channel color, 3D channel effects, and additional audio effects."
Combustion had these 'new' features in late 2001 - only difference is that then it costs 4,995 and now you can get it for $995 - bye bye AE. Only advantage that AE has is all the plugins that are now being written to be combustion 2 compatible. Combustion 2.1 is available for OS X and Windows XP.
Hey - but they will still have Photoshop, right?
Still, Adobe Premiere was revolutionary in its day. I did some good work with Premiere on a 20MHz Mac IIci in 1995. Sure, it was slow, and I had to take the files to an Avid shop for final output, but it did the job.
But that was a long time ago.
Yeah, IBM has always done that. Right when their big customers were used to writing in Autocoder for the 1401, they came out with the 1620 and the code had to be updated. Then they came out with the OS/3x0 series, and all that Autocoder code had to be run on a 1620 simulator on the 360. Then they came out with VM, and the 1401 simulator running in a 1620 simulator under OS/360 had to be run in an OS/360 job under VM/MVS. And after only 20 years!! You'd think they could keep the environment around for long enough to amortize the development time!!
[I read once where in the late 1970's the US Social Security Administration's systems were exactly that - 1401 Autocoder jobs from the late 1950's being run in three or four levels of simulation and virtual machines on OS/390 mainframes. I probably have the details wrong, but hey.]
As for Apple providing apps, it all depends how it's done. Mostly it appears (2 me) that Apple has tread fairly lightly with indie developers, though no doubt some have different opinions. Don't forget that every free or GPL app has the same effect on indies!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
There are times I really would have liked to be able to read clients' Photoshop files into GIMP, rather than some derivative format with inevitable loss of information about image structure.
It'd also be cool to be able to use Photoshop plug-ins in GIMP, though that's probably not only a platform issue but a model definition problem between the two.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I cannot see any real difficulty in setting up better color print standards in the Gimp, just it needs time, and commitment from more caring developers like the bunch at Gnu that did it originaly. Adobe has a lock on digital printing standards and if they are abandoning Apple it will take time and some very dedicated people to put things to right.
What you described is the trivial part - reading and writing the well-standardized ICC format. What we are paying for with Photoshop is having all the Pantone and SWOP libraries of profiles and colors, and the fact that it is integrated and just works. This means that *ARTISTS* and not only programmers have spent time designing filters and e.g. interpolation algorithms.
I have no idea about the price, but I'd guess it is significantly more expensive to buy the color libraries separately rather than as a part of photoshop. And no, you cannot 'recreate' then since the standard is copyrighted and all names trademarked.
GIMP cannot even do the simplest possible of proofing: "what will this photo like if it is printed on a standard press?" (i.e. simulate CMYK color on a monitor).
The other issue with GIMP is that it is GPL. This means that Apple (or any other company) cannot make money from selling licenses since anybody is allowed to copy it, and use the source modifications.
The spoof on the real slim shady that you've put together is absolutely fucking hilarious... ROTFLMAO... but, who the hell is Bruce Perens, anyway??
- iMovie, which ships on every Mac, and is an entry-level video programme that is still quite good -- and completely locks Adobe out of the low-end. This was once Premiere's territory. Even iMovie supports a thriving third-party plug-in community.
- Final Cut Express, which is FCP shorn of some of the true pro features, that only true pros need. This sits just about exactly where Premiere is in the market, but costs less and the interface skills you develop can be taken "upstairs." There's also the snob appeal of using the "lite" version of stuff the big Hollyweird boys are using.
- Final Cut Pro itself, which as other
/.ers have mentioned, is eating Avid's lunch.
Two of these have identical code bases, practically speaking, letting poor Premiere get beaten up from above and below at once. Apple also is extending FCP's reach (and Apple's money-making) with things such as add-on compositing software.The bottom line is, Adobe's marketroids looked at Premiere on OS X and said, "Why would I buy this product instead of...?" and the answer they came up with... was curtains for Premiere.
An oversimplification but...
So MS gets sued for including things for free thus killing competition.
Now Apple starts to push out competitors so...?
Has anyone tried both?
However the output of new photo sensor technologies might make the job considerably easier.
Given the right programming environment, experimental freedom from corporate demands, the Gimp could evolve very quickly indeed. Adobe has been at it for a long time and has a lock on the market, upstarts like the Gimp are evolving much faster. The only catch is patented file formats, and other Microsoft anti competitive trickery.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Actually, no, I didn't forget about all that. All of those things are fixed costs. Those costs *do not* increase as more copies of the exact same product ship. In no way whatsoever did I imply that the cost of software is only the cost of the media, manuals, shipping, etc. The neat thing about those fixed costs is that as the number of copies of a software release approaches infinity, the per copy cost for development approaches $0. That is to say, the more copies you sell, the less the development cost per copy sold is.
It's a fantasy called economics. You should check it out sometime.
Well for somebody who claims to be using economics to justify their reasoning, your theory seems incredibly lacking. You seem to ignore the fact that Adobe is effectively an monopoly in the market for graphical production software, or at the very least a Stackelberg leader of an oligopoly. This means that Adobe maximises profit by setting prices at a level which is higher than its marginal cost, which you seem to be assuming in your example. Why is this the case? Well, as it decreases price nearer to marginal cost, it has an impact on the revenue it gains from all sales up to the point. So there will come a point where the decrease in revenue from existing sales is greater than the increase in revenue from new sales, and this indicates that the price is too low.
The world does not revolve around perfect competition - if you're going to use economic theory, at least try to know what you are talking about...
The image sensor deal is nice -- that's what allows color synchronization. But Pantone is the key. Pantone is the amazing system that absolutely positively guarantees that whatever Pantone color I pick, that same color will come out at the printer's end (not my little desktop printer, I mean the guy accross town who's making 10,000 copies). Yes, Pantone colors could be converted to CMYK, and then used -- but that would be painful, and any program releasing such color standards would be illegal.
The solution, it seems to me, is for a bunch of Linux programmers to offer to write a Pantone plug-in for GIMP; they will then have to hammer out a licensing scheme that satisfies both them and the holders of the Pantone patents. I'm waiting for this to happen...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
My Chinese is terrible.
"Form should follow function...unless it's just plain ugly."
What use is SVG support to you? This is not a troll/flame but a question from an Illustrator user since version 5. I know what SVG are and they seem to be a cool concept but browser support is next to nil (at least compared to Flash). What do you use them for?
"Form should follow function...unless it's just plain ugly."
"Yes, Pantone colors could be converted to CMYK, and then used -- but that would be painful, and any program releasing such color standards would be illegal."
Oddly enogh you couldn't be more wrong. Well, not wrong but yoru process will yield poor results. Many Pantone colors do not have direct CMYK values. Look at the solid to process color guide from Pantone to see what I mean. Many times your colors will shift visibly, others not so much.
Claris divested itself of all products except for FileMaker, and changed its name to FileMaker, Inc.
The only other major (IIRC) Claris product was ClarisWorks, which became AppleWorks. Well, unless you count Claris Emailer, which is and ancestor of the Mac version of Outlook Express, and the grandfather of Entourage-- the Emailer developers went and got jobs at Microsoft.
~Philly
Well this is typical. When apple releases a new software program either with the OS or seperately priced from the OS, the competition decides to hang the towel in and give up. Reason being is that because that market is so small, its just not worth it trying to hang in their. Monopolies are clearly established when the market is that small, the compedition doesn't seem to see the point of trying to compete unless they're on top, u can't sell enough of ur product to stay alive. Now bring it to the windows world where because there is so many customers, there's room for competition with the competitors surviving despite not being on top. Its the sad truth. In apple's world, if they like what you're selling, they'll either integrate it into their OS or make it a paid add on to the OS.
I hope that clears things up on the technical front.
The advantage of the Pantone guides (which are conveniently listed, albeit with prices in UKP, at this site, is that they are true standards which have been adopted wholesale by the entire graphics industry. A designer in Berlin can call a designer in San Francisco and talk about color schemes, referring specifically to either Pantone Process or Solid colors. While the CMYK values for Process could be entered manually, it is still impossible to replicate Pantone Solid, and, in spite of what is mentioned above, support for Pantone Solid colors is vital to nearly all graphic designers. GIMP DOES need that capability to be successful as a professional alternative to Photoshop.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Very compelling and nicely reasoned. However, I don't think Adobe's victory in this area is nearly as well-assured as you do. Apple is already in the process of sewing up the DV market at the student level. School editing programs are expanding their curricula to include Final Cut, and FCP and Avid are fast becoming the 2 essential programs you need on your resumé to compete for jobs.
In other words, Adobe can try to undercut Apple all it wants--if these students need FCP to graduate, they're going to get it (and the Apple kit to run it on), no matter how sweet Adobe makes their prices. (Not to mention Apple can simply respond with even more generous student discounts than they already offer. Why not? They're already making money off the hardware; Adobe has no such consolation.) Apple has the momentum; everyone in the film and DV industries knows they're the company to watch right now. Adobe has a lot of ground to recover.
Not to say that your post wasn't good. I'm willing to wager that Apple has a keen eye on all their competition in this area, and has reached much the same conclusions you have--this is a market Jobs wants to own, and he's going to do everything he has to to make sure Apple owns it.