Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3976#11
XP comes with Windows Movie Maker. How can Adobe compete with that!?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
*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?
Hidden, unpublished APIs?
Have you even looked at the latest FireWire SDK?
Or QuickTime?
Or WebKit?
Or CoreAudio?
Or iMovie Plugin?
Or Image Capture?
Or Information Access Toolkit?
Or the rest of the Cocoa and Carbon APIs?
After you've written something that has exhausted the possibilities in those APIs,
then you might have a reason to gripe, but until then, you're just spreading FUD.
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."
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.
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!"
You ARE wrong. FCP came from Macromedia, who had pinched Premiere's lead programmers to produce a Premiere killer (that's why FCP is so Premiere like - it IS "Super Premiere"). Macromedia had let the project founder, Apple bought it back to life.
Now, Adobe has finally admitted defeat. The Premiere killer has killed.
That was classic intercourse!
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.
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.
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.
"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?
- 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.