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Cringely Posits Adobe's Purchase by Apple

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-what-is-he-talking-about dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention another Robert Cringely piece discussing Apple's future. In his latest article, he lays out some goals for Apple on its quest to desktop dominance. An important link in this chain is Apple's purchase of Adobe Systems. From the article: "Adobe has already made one feint away from Mac development that required personal pressure from Steve Jobs on John Warnock to reverse. If Apple kinda-sorta embraces Windows enough for Adobe to question whether continued development for the native OS X platform is still warranted, well, then Apple WILL just become another Dell, which isn't what Steve Jobs wants. Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole. So he needs the top ISVs who are currently writing for OS X to continue writing for OS X, and that especially means Adobe."

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by neoshroom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think this is the first time Cringley is on to something. What he is onto isn't this Apple buying Adobe thing though. Its the following quote from the article stub:

    Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole.

    OS X running Windows apps in ugly gray, thats what he is onto. Its coming.

    __
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    1. Re:Wow. by drgroove · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree completely. If Apple has access to the API as Cringley has stated in his past two articles, Apple in theory could enable OSX to launch WinXP apps inside a process similar to how it ran "Classic Mode" for OS9 apps. Imagine that, though - WinXP apps running inside OSX without XP itself running.

      Given that Vista isn't due until '07, and most orgs are still running apps from the Win2k days, being able to run Win2k/XP apps w/in a more secure OS would certainly be an attractive offering.

  2. "There's no demand for a Windows version..." by network23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple co-founded Adobe and owned part of Adobe.

    This would be the perfect deal. And then the sweet "sorry, we're cancelling Photoshop for Windows since there is no demand for a PC version".

    They have done that before too.

    We live in interesting times. And I love it.