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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?
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.
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.
This is very true. I have a copy of Premiere 5.0 and it does EVERYTHING that premiere 6.0 and 6.5 and the upcoming 7.0 will do. I added DV support with my pinnacle dv500 card, and pinnacle gave me free titling tools that makes premiere's in 6.5 look like a complete joke. My really old aftereffects does the job well... Hell I can do the "gee wiz" and trendy effects everyone else is doing on my old crud and do it much faster than them.
Adobe has gave me no reason to drop big $$$ to get a minor upgrade.
Avid DV express and final cut are both superior products and cost less (avid DV express LE is FREE) while doing more.
Adobe's ONLY hold right now is photoshop.. and photoshop 4 is still very VERY useable....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just like the marketplace in general, Windows accounts for 97%+ of every software vendor's revenue stream (in regards to their software, and only when both Mac && Win apps are being developed; obviously, this wouldn't apply to BareBones, 4D, etc etc, neither would it apply to straight PC-shops), and Mac accounts for 3%- of revenue.
Wrong. Adobe gets 30% of their revenues from the mac market. look it up.
There is also an unspoken fear among software developers regarding Mac OSX - that somehow, someway, some UNIX nut is going to reverse-engineer their application
Which developers. I would say only the ignorant.
Just imagine that, for a moment - Photoshop, available for free, that runs on Linux. If I were Adobe, I'd pull all of my Mac titles off the shelves immediately. You are cookoo for cocoa puffs. At least you did not say Gimp == Photoshop...
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 comment on the article you linked suffers from a logical fallacy of false equivalence.
Apple has a 3% market share (it's actually closer to 8% total installed base, but for the sake of argument...) of all computers in existence.
Adobe does not sell Premier to all computers in existence. They sell to the video editing industry. In this industry, Apple has about a 70% market share.
So, obviously, market share is NOT the reason Adobe is dropping Mac support. The truth is, they can't compete with Final Cut Pro, so they've dropped their support for that platform and are concentrating on the minority platform where they still maintain the monopoly. If FCP were ever ported to Windows, Premiere would pretty much cease to exist as a product.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
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.
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"
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 know it's a pretty narrow market, but Illustrator still whoops ass all over Freehand. And as a long-time Quark user, every update of InDesign get's me contemplating how much easier life would be if I bit the bullet and switched.
Adobe's problem isn't that Apple strongarmed them out of the video market. Adobe's problem is that the Apple product just kicked theirs all over the school yard. Good riddance to an inferior product.
You know what?
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."
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!
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.
"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?