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Microsoft / Adobe Competition Heating Up
MicroAdobe writes "Microsoft has noticed that some of the coolest sites on the Web, YouTube and MySpace included, get much of their flash from Flash and other design programs sold by Adobe. But as Microsoft gets ready to ship its own line of tools for designers and Web developers, the company is finding it must also defend against Adobe on its home turf, the desktop. At the same time, the line between Internet and desktop programs is blurring, and both companies see an opportunity to capture new business." The article focuses on the competition and doesn't even mention that Adobe's CEO called Microsoft a $50 billion monopolist.
On the plus side, if the MSFT version is Windows-only, I suspect we'll all have a brand new reason to persuade folks to abandon the OS for Linux/OSX/(and yes)*BSD after this little battle gets done...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Adobe's CEO brought up what should be the single most important point everyone who is considering a switch to MS products - Microsoft doesn't maintain anything cross-platform.
They may start out cross-platform, but eventually the mac version will fall behind on patches and then get EOL'd.<br><br>
For any broadcaster that relies on compatibility and reaching the widest market possible, MS would be a bad choice.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
He might be a smaller "monopolist" than Microsoft, but he still has his own little monopoly and all the great things that come from that.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
...there was an OS.
then there was an office-packet.
eh, it's great to have a server-os, so let's build on. it's really handy with all those nice folks already using our desktop-os.
uuuuh, some guys are makin' big bucks with a search engine, let's have one.
hey, gaming. GAMING is the next BIGBIGBIG issue. what about a gaming console?
see those fruity mediaplayer-guys? they are making big bucks! let's build a rip-off.
ha, those adobe-guys seem to live from their software. why not try that one, too?
i think there's a pattern there, but i can't fully grasp it. duh...
More like Wolf-359.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Great, it's $600 cheaper, but nobody will buy it if it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
As someone who has worked with Flash since version 4 (in both a graphical and RIA capacity), the biggest stumbling blocks for Flash were/are:
1- Adobe Photoshop integration [*check!*]
2- Usefulness as a RIA application [remember the disaster that was Flash Googlemaps?]
3- Horribly broken scripting language [still an issue]
If Microsoft can compete on those points and bring something radically new to the table (say, easy 3D graphical development, quality OO scripting, etc) then they'll have an adoptable product. Otherwise, developers used to using Adobe & Flash products will look the other way.
Microsoft announced yesterday its "Silverlight", previously named WPF/E:r oducing-microsoft-silverlight.aspx.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/15/int
They call it "cross platform, cross browser plug-in" and it is basically a replacement for flash with wmv lock-in. Oh, and no linux (cross platform means XP+Vista+OSX, I guess)
One nice feature being HD streaming, I have to give it to them.
I'll still stay away...
It's about to get worse with CS3 too, it's split into Vista style packages so now you have to really pay a lot of money to get the programs you need to do business as a professional in the creative industry.
Probably the only exception to this is Premiere, cos few - if any - professionals use that. Otherwise, there's absolutely no alternative to Adobe products. (Yes, technically GIMP etc exists, but they aren't industry standard so professionals have no chance of using them.)
80% of my work is done on Adobe products and I really would like to change that.
I find it funny that Adobe's CEO has the gall to call Microsoft monopolistic considering that Adobe essentially has a complete monopoly over the design industry. Microsoft's control over the PC market pales in comparison to Adobe's control of the design industry, the obvious distinction being that Microsoft's market is much larger.
I welcome the competition and although I'm not optimistic I would like to see Microsoft become a serious competitor in this market. I'd prefer it were someone else entering this market, I can't say I'm looking forward to bloated applications with cumbersome interfaces. Nevertheless it's been long overdo that something take Adobe down a few notches.
I'm sure Adobe's CEO is only upset that Adobe's purchase of Macromedia didn't ensure a complete lack of competition for a longer period of time.
http://www.openlaszlo.org/
Uses XML/Javascript to drive either Flash or DHTML.
Some of their examples are pretty good, while other examples could have used a QA person.
Im also a web developer, and I *always* wait to experience a product, any product, by any developer, regardless of their prior history before I form any opinion on the product - sometimes its best to put the rhetoric away and join the adult world, especially when it comes to earning money.
I remain convinced that part of the reason that Microsoft is attempting to push it's own alternative to Flash is because Linux support is finally decent.
Not only is there the binary client but some of the free alternatives can now handle YouTube. Development was getting a little closer to cross platform content and entertainment that the internet promised rather than the platform locking that was looking likely at one point.
Anyway I installed swfdec today on a PPC machine and documented the steps. The results are very good for an application in such an early stage of development. While you might think the internet *with* Flash is annoying, you try living without it for a while and see how much the Firefox "you need more plugins to view this page" bar bugs you.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
A quick google for "SVG plugin internet explorer -adobe" turned up MozzIE (hackish) and Renesis Player which is cross-platform for "Windows, Windows CE, Linux, Mac and more".
You haven't tried very hard to find an alternative, have you?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmm.. that must be why Visual Studio 2005, and the Expression Web Designer tool default to XHTML compliance as a default. That and EWD will separate your style definitions out... You probably didn't know that.
As to the rest.. I wholeheartedly agree... Frontpage was terrible.. And Office's output to HTML produced absolute crap... However, EWD and Visual Studio are pretty nice... ASP.Net is awesome... As to the implications, well perhaps you can expand on this... If the output is standards compliant XHTML + CSS, then I don't see the real issue here...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info