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Why Did Adobe Buy Macromedia?
option8 writes "According to John Dvorak the reasoning behind Adobe's recent (and to many, surprising) purchase of Macromedia for $3.4 billion is that Adobe was afraid Microsoft was going to do it first. An interesting look at the thinking and attitude of Adobe from someone who's been following them for a long time. From TFA: "So, mostly out of fear, Adobe buys its main competitor and now must shoehorn the company into its unfortunate not-invented-here corporate culture. (This aspect of Adobe is another story in itself.)""
Flash Lite also supports SVG-T, and has for a while.
e s/ msvg_t.html
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/articl
Macromedia hasn't existed as long as Adobe has been using the Mac. Illustrator and Photoshop were on the Mac long before they were on Windows.
What is Macromedia's video offering anyway? They sold what they had to Apple, who turned it into Final Cut Pro.
They also wanted to get into the non-portable consoles industry - traditionnaly owned and led by Japanese companies such as Nintendo, Sega and recently Sony. All other non-japanese companies failed to get into that market. Microsoft announces the Xbox. It costed them millions in terms of investments. In the beginning, they were loosing 100$ for each console they sold. So what? The objective was to make themselves a room in the market, not to make money. They already make money with Windows, Office and other things other companies now totally rely on. The result : Sega is now dead as a console manufacturer, Nintendo is no longer leading the market, and only Sony can really stand up against Microsoft.
So I guess my point is that, given the billions Microsoft can invest in any given project, they can do whatever they want. They could have offered Adobe's developpers 3 times what they were paid so they would come over. They even could have had them move to another country than the US, so the clauses in their contracts that (I imagine) prevent them to work in another company doing the same thing would be void (I assume here that the devs would be motivated only by cash and not loyalty, but it's not the point, really, because Adobe's developpers are not the only ones with that kind of skill; but they allow a better example). So I think that in the end Adobe made a good move, because they only made Microsoft's eventual objective harder to reach. But not impossible.
Are you sure you mean Photoshop CS, not Photoshop Album? Photoshop CS is Adobe's flagship product, and a *serious* image editor. 16bpp, L*A*B, CMYK, ICC color management, oodles of awesome filters, the works.
Photoshop Album is their cut down "consumer" variant, and rather more likely to be what you meant.
Then we all partied so Hearty that they called the cops on us.
Macromedia figured out that they would do better by leapfrogging Adobe, and jumping directly into webcentric software. To that end they basically killed off everything that wasn't web centric - xRes died a quick and merciful death, fontgrapher was shelved (and for this they earned incredibley bad karma, because fontLab is a fat POS with a crap UI - although it does rock for font output formats... it's just a world of pain for anyone trying to design anything...), and they killed off FreeHand a few years back and Director's got a tube up its nose.
They set about buying serverside stuff, like cold fusion, and developed various workflow systems for Dreamweaver, itself an acquisition, called FutureFlash.
I don't think this acquisition could have happened if MM had not killed off FreeHand and fontographer.
You can be QUITE certain that now that Adobe owns the codebase, FH and Fog are so completely dead as to be like, deader than dead.
This is a MAJOR acquisition. This is a MAJOR consolidation in the software market. It is not a time for rejoicing. Expect some very bad things.
Predictions:
Adobe will not sell FreeHand.
Adobe will not sell Fontographer.
Adobe will kill off Director within 3 years.
Adobe will "merge" GoLive and Dreamweaver, which will be good for GoLive and bad for Dreamweaver.
PDF will acquire flash-centric elements - this includes video...
Adobe will Rule The Roost in publishing (and don't give me any lip about GIMP - GIMP's UI sux ass and it's ability to handle CMYK or (x) plate printing is zero, and Adobe OWNZ that already - this will increase their hold on it.
Fireworks is TOAST. Dead within a year.
This is going to require people to completely re-think workflows and processes.
I for one DO NOT look forward to our Abobe Overlords.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think they actually meant Photoshop Elements, which is the slimmed down consumer version of Photoshop CS, but is still quite usable. Photoshop Album is actually a really terrible piece of software you often see bundled for free with digital imaging devices.
As usual, Dvorak has his head up where the sun don't shine!
Anyone remember Aldus Pagemaker or Cool Edit Pro?
Now Adobe Pagemaker and Adobe Audition.
Seems Adobe has a history of acquiring products and integrating them with their own product line, despite what Dvorak says.
You forget that they don't write most of their stuff from scratch
... About
I.E. 6 : Help
Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.
Contains security software licensed from RSA Data Security Inc.
Portions of this software are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
Multimedia software components, including Indeo(R); video, Indeo(R) audio, and Web Design Effects are provided by Intel Corp.
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There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As for Flash, I don't even have it installed, right now. The advertisements were driving me bonkers!
Quote:
Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla and Firefox browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves a placeholder on the page that allows you to click to view the Flash content.
I guess if you don't use Firefox, or don't like installing extensions, this might not work for you, but I've found it to be very useful. Every once in a blue moon I want to be able to view flash content (some $#@E@!! sites REQUIRE it), but this way I'm not assaulted by flash-based popups and that #@#@^@!!! Amityville Horror trailer everywhere on the web.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
I bookmarked it... it's an excellent tip!
Originally posted by Mister Transistor (259842) on Monday April 18, @10:19AM (#12269700)
Try this, 'tis most excellent! Makes Reader load in 1/2 sec or so, terminates quickly, and hardly ever crashes. It seems it's all those damn stupid bloated plugins causing the problems. To fix:
1. Install Adobe Reader 6.0 and notice where it is installed.
2. Navigate to that folder in Explorer, locate the plug_ins subfolder and rename this folder to plug_ins_disabled.
3. Create a new plug_ins folder.
4. Move the files EWH32.api, printme.api and search.api from plug_ins_disabled to plug_ins.
Try it, you'll like it!
I personally like the idea that no matter what computer you open a PDF with, it will look the same (unlike Word, which sometimes doesn't even look the same from one PC to the next using the same version of Word, ugh). PDF forms are becoming more common now, which considering Word's weaknesses in this area, is a good thing.
at work, we've used PDFs to share files with restrictions (printing and editing disabled, password protection, etc). PDFs are an excellent way to make sure that the people you're sharing with see the documents exactly as they're supposed to look.
+$0.02
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Maybe you'd like to know thing one before you create a fictive publishing history for the man based on what you want to believe?
Dvorak's famous original response to the introduction of the Mac in 1984 was that nobody had any proof that users would use a mouse, for chrissakes. So, you know, your "was a huge Mac fan" and "was largely correct in his analyses" statements were completely vitiated at the very first opportunity the man had to prove himself...
This guy's been a trash columnist for his whole career, always, and he's always had a particular grudge against Macs. He used to publish a column on the back page of either Macworld or MacUser magazine, as a kind of "counterpoint" -- in which every dang column was a rant against Apple and the Macintosh. It played very much like the sports columnist in your local paper who lays into the management of (fill in team name). This is strictly a profit thing; basically that sort of column does, as someone else pointed out, boost circulation like any troll post, and so the magazine ran him for a while and he was happy to print the dreck and cash the checks.
The other consistent note that Dvorak's sounded, always, is a sort of wannabe-neighborhood-bully line in favor of whoever appears to be the most powerful presence on the market. He positively adored IBM back in the day; that old column was full of stories about how great the PC was for so many reasons. When MS gets roundly criticized for something now you can count on Johnny to publish a "liberal media conspiracy" sort of argument about how MS is really being discriminated against. The guy sides with those in power, instinctively.
How Dvorak's managed to avoid working for Rupert Murdoch is a mystery. If there's any example of tech journalism being truly tabloid in its tone and general M.O., he's it. It's always seemed possible to me that he and Bill O'Reilly are actually the same person...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I've been using Acrobat Speedup since Reader6.0 came out.
. ph p
It has a nice user interface and you can manually edit which plugins you want activated.
http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index