Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Moves in on the Graphics Market
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft has quietly been building up graphics-related R&D, reports Computerworld, noting that Microsoft employees will be presenting one out of every eight papers at SIGGRAPH 2007. And it's not a fluke — other recent Microsoft graphics-related developments include Photosynth, which has been discussed on Slashdot several times, as well as the Silverlight/Expression Studio graphics suite, which will compete with Adobe's Flash/Illustrator/Lightroom/Dreamweaver offerings. At SIGGRAPH, Microsoft will supposedly have demos of some new software including image deblurring tools and Soft Scissors, which 'solves the vexing problem of how to cut and paste an image from one background to another if the image's edges — hair blowing in the wind, blades of grass — are very complex.' Microsoft's competitors aren't sitting down. Adobe's CEO, calling Microsoft a '$50 billion monopolist,' has questioned whether Silverlight will be compatible with non-Windows operating systems, and Google has also been building up its own graphics-related software products, such as the 3D modeling tool SketchUp, and Google Earth."
but I can't feel any sympathy for Adobe, who is increasingly monopolising the design arena with their obscenely priced tools. Competition is good, no matter what your opinion on Microsoft is - someone needs to take on rapidly enlarging 500lb gorilla that is Adobe, particularly since they took over Macromedia.
Is that what I'll need to input in order to access the graphics-related functionality in Google Earth?
"Adobe's CEO ... has questioned whether Silverlight will be compatible with non-Windows operating systems"
Because I've neeever had problems with Flash on my Linux machine...
Silverlight has been cross-platform since launch. The Adobe CEO questioned whether this would persist. Microsoft didn't invest on porting a subset of the
What, specifically, is Bruce Chizen's plan to support non-Microsoft OS's?
Don't bitch about how the bad monopoly is being mean to you when you aren't doing anything much to help the nascent competition.
Paying one programmer to port and support your apps on other platforms does more than all the public whining about how Microsoft is being mean.
The Microsoft bash is nothing but fodder for the simpleton fan boys that ride the bash Microsoft bandwagon no matter what.
Looks like a great tool to me:
http://vis.berkeley.edu/papers/softscissors/
But isn't Microsoft the developer of Direct3D, which is now a premiere graphics API for anything Windows? Yes, OpenGL still is extremely important, but I just don't see why it's a surprise that Microsoft has so many researchers contributing to the field of computer graphics when they develop one of the two biggest graphics platforms in the world.
In other related news today:
1 -46.html
Microsoft Nurtures Linux Silverlight Port
http://www.sdtimes.com/article/LatestNews-2007080
I have more faith in MS and Silverlight on cross platform than I do Flash anymore after the past few years. Not only is Silverlight already available on other platforms it even supports 64bit (gasp).
And this is just the Silverlight 1.0 RC and MS doesn't expect long range use or adoption until 1.1 is finalized as it adds in massive amounts of support for web interaction and more language support. (1.1 is already in developer circles, and will be out not long after 1.0)
Also for people worried about adoption, take a look at MLB.com. There are a lot things in Silverlight especially on the programming side that Flash just can't do easily. Silverlight not only builds on Vista XAML technology for the web but also does HD quality video and can also do single feed streaming unlike Flash.
If I were Adobe, I would start to push Linux products out of the door like crazy.
Is it right? Not?
Web Browser: IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0
Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB recommended.
Disk: This technology preview uses almost no disk space. The ActiveX control is less than 5MB in size, and no local disk storage is used when the code is running.
Graphics: We have tested Photosynth on graphics cards that are "Vista Aero Ready". This includes: support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum), and 32 bits per pixel. If you want to find out whether your card is suitable, the Vista Upgrade Advisor tool will tell you. Photosynth may run on cards that do not meet this requirement, but performance may be poor and functionality may be impaired. I think we can all see where this is going...
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Adobe's CEO first calling microsoft a monopolist, name calling, the true sign of a mature, unthreatened CEO- of course they are a monopolist, but it has nothing to do with adobe's market- and if it was, adobe would have no problems because monopolies don't innovate. THen he says he wanders if it is compatible with other OSes, of course it will, most microsoft software is now, of course there may be slight differences like MS office, but it will come out for OS X at the very least.
What is Single Feed streaming? Can you elaborate?
Maybe Adobe will be forced to lower it's outrageous prices.
I think Dreamweaver may have officially jumped the shark with the Adobe acquisition. The damn install put 800 MEG of adobe bloat, a new bonjour service, and a licensing service onto my system before it laid down a single Dreamweaver directory.
.net 2.0, but Dreamweaver as done nothing but go backwards.
And starting Dreamweaver revealed a program (unlike the CS3 suite) that looked suspiciously (almost exactly like) Dreamweaver 8. It had a new tab for Adobe's Ajax framework and it might have some new support for cold fusion which I don't need.
It can no longer be said that Dreamweaver is kick-ass, open platform, in a lightweight package. It may even be bigger than Expression!!!!!! And MS has been learning from Dreamweaver. Expression only targets
No. You'll need to pony up $400 per year for Google Earth Pro.
Google Earth is a very useful tool for architects when used with SketchUp. The $400/year license for the Pro version lets you save higher quality images and gives you the right to use them in presentations and renderings.
I would be after the markets too. Also video, audio and whatever else I could get at. Some plans will pan out and some won't, but it is irresponsible (as far as the company goes) to not try to dominate such markets. It' about the money. Last time I checked, Adobe was not a registered charity.
What pisses us off most is that for a lot of computing, MS has suceeded.
The real problem is that competing with a company that controls a monopoly operating system and is willing to use it to illegally extend its market share in other software sectors is like being in bed with an elephant. The elephant only need twitch and you are crushed.
We can't trust Microsoft not to illegally use their monopolies in either the OS sector or the office productivity suite sector to seize control over other areas and lock out competition from Open Source.
They are already buying their way to a victory over ODF so that customer lock-in will continue far into the foreseeable future. They're trying to fill the intranet with proprietary "standards" that they control and use their monopolies as a vehicle to push them. Again in an effort to control and ultimately destroy Linux.
Let face it. Microsoft is a corporate thug that needs to be busted up into at least three separate companies so that true innovation in the software industry can occur.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Software application companies only develop for Windows, help MS keep their OS monopoly up, and then cry when MS decides to take those app companies' market too. They enabled it with their short sightedness.
Here's a quick video visually displaying one of Microsoft's SIGGRAPH papers. I especially like the part with a dancing frog and dinosaur. It's unclear to me as to whether or not this is an entirely different way to deform a SubD surface, or an augmentation to traditional bones and skin rigs. As much as I dislike Microsoft, I actually hope they eventually move into the 3d market, if only to spur on the production of the big three, 3dSMax, XSI, and Maya. The major 3d applications have been in a slump recently feature wise, including this year's SIGGRAPH announcements, and more serious competition would be welcome.
This is basically good news. Adobe software is certainly cross platform if cross platform is defined as Windows and Mac. But Adobe has been no great track record on supporting Linux. Even Flash player and Acroread, which have had Linux support, have had big holes and delays compared to Windows and Mac.
As others have pointed out, while MS has a monopoly on PC OS and Office software, Adobe has a near monopoly on the graphics content creation market, their products are expensive, and they could certainly use some competition.
In the long term, this could also be good news for MS and MS shareholders. MS still holds a firm monopoly in OS and Office software, but these monopolies are under attack, particularly in the Office software market, where eventual adoption of open (or more open) formats will reduce the lock-in factor and make adoption of free/cheap Office suites much more feasible for many. Microsoft should be expanding into other software markets. There are very few companies the size of MS who have survived and grown so long on just two products and MS would be wise to be in other markets when those two monopolies eventually begin to weaken.
When you're the $50 billion gorilla, you get to send expeditions into many difficult markets/areas without feeling the pinch much. Who cares if you disturb the local flora and fauna? They might just accidentally win with their foray. Germs and Guns, anyone?
Of course, what happens if they wipe out the market competition and later leave the market by taking the same sort of lark that brought them there in the first place?
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I'd be with you if I thought it were real competition.
What we have here is a monopoly leveraging its powers to dominate yet another domain and a company I have no real sympathy for that is deeply entrenched in the market due to good products and many patents.
I'm fearing litigation and dirty tricks rather than the creation of new, better and cheaper products. In one sense, that might be "competition" but it's not the sort that actually benefits anyone.
Of course, if I prove wrong and they actually do something decent, I'll have no complaints. I just don't find that likely.
They would be very wise to do more in Linux, but it's just not likely.
1. Worked with Adobe corporate types I can tell you the riskiest thing they've done in a LONG time is choosing a new restaurant for lunch.
2. They've got the Graphic Design market easily in hand world wide. Moreover, the mere discussion of alternatives to many people that use their tools every day is a thoughtcrime. Why screw that up by validating Linux? If they offer any of their desktop publishing software on linux, then the good Free desktop publishing tools and color management systems already available are the worst kind of competition.
3. "Linux" as a market size is unknown. The corporate types rely on market research for their quantifying Linux and there's no perception of a reliable source of this kind of data. Therefore, the market is ignored. It would be career suicide within Adobe to promote, much less discuss seat-of-the-pants prognostications.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
It is many of these companies that, through the release of countless windows programs, many exclusively for windows, that have helped microsoft get to where they are today.
Did they really believe that microsoft wouldn't move in on their territory sooner or later?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
That way, everyone now has a load of windows-only stuff that they're stuck with.
This is one of the reasons I think Mono is a bad idea. All Microsoft has to do is be friendly to Mono, until everyone drops their guard and decides it's okay to develop in dotNET. Then, all they need to do is start enforcing their patents, and it's all over...
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
"Adobe's CEO, calling Microsoft a '$50 billion monopolist,' has questioned whether Silverlight will be compatible with non-Windows operating systems..."
That Adobe "monopolist" quote is 4 months old. Did that quote really need to be dragged out again for this story?
(BTW, Adobe has some nerve calling someone else a "monopolist" when Adobe tried to collude with MS in price fixing to protect its own Office to PDF export monopoly (Adobe proposed that MS could include PDF export functionality in Office 2k7 if MS up'ed the price so as not to undercut Adobe's Office PDF-export tools.))
And Silverlight is already working on Macs, so the question of Silverlight being "compatilble with non-Windows operating systems" is more 4-month old FUD.
The submitter should've just gone with the story at hand, not dig up a 4-month old story about Adobe's fears of competing with Silverlight.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Image editing? Photoshop. Sure there's GIMP, but frankly, GIMP sucks and has no value outside of RGB colour space. There are a few other apps, (Painter, Corel, etc.) but the POINT is: pros use Photoshop because it is the best. Period.
Bezier Curve? Illustrator. There used to be a better app, Freehand, but it died in the Macromedia acquisition.
Page Layout? Sure, there's Quark, but everyone HATES Quark, and InDesign does the job. So, that's not a monopoly, yet...
Web Design? Dreamweaver. nuff said.
Web based animation? Flash.
Adobe completely dominates the graphic design industry, and for Adobe to make noises about MS being some kind of a monopoly is simply ludicrous.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Not officially, but the mono team has already created a silverlight client for linux.
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
And Silverlight is already working on Macs, so the question of Silverlight being "compatilble with non-Windows operating systems" is more 4-month old FUD. --- There are more operating systems than windows and mac. If silverlight was an open standard then it would work on any Operating system
"Free" Market. I understand. I also actually read Adam Smith, who placed several caveats on his theory that make it an unattainable ideal. Holding primacy among these is the availability of perfect information. (And the unspoken addendum that the volume of perfect information must be evaluable (i.e. instantly having perfect information from the correct context.))
r e_about/a_modest_man_named_smith/
What we have today is, at best, mercantilism. The biggest thing you ignore in your assertion are "barriers to entry", which as any silicon valley executive can tell you are impenetrable when Microsoft is in the market. A startup's best chance for profit in a Microsoft market is for MS to buy them out. This happened lots in the 80's ad 90's, with most of those companies' products and innovations heading straight for the MS dustbin. So, your assertion about others filling the void to keep MS on their toes is wishful thinking. I'm not defending the current occupants of the market: their business models are antiquated and inefficient.
A cash cow by whose standards?
going by market capitalization (a flawed metric, but something.) Adobe who are the market leader in this space are at $23,978.8 Million. Microsoft are at $271,139.2 Million. That's over an order of magnitude in business size. The graphics market at a discount (in order to kill Adobe) from Adobe's pricing is quite small in relative terms. Add to that the trend towards freeish software led by Google and you have a shrinking market in dollars, even if you have a larger user base. It's like the browser wars. It doesn't really matter who wins, because everyone loses economically. Remember Netscape Communications Corp?
By the way, MS never has to sell people on the next version. They just cease support for the version before last and corporate customers adopt the last version. Wash, rinse, repeat. See other discussions regarding their other product lines most notably windows, office, and Visual Studio.
From The Wealth of Nations:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." (Book 1, Chapter 10).
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/index.php/smith/mo
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism :
Mercantilist domestic policy was more fragmented than its trade policy. While Adam Smith portrayed mercantilism as supportive of strict controls over the economy, many mercantilists disagreed. The early modern era was one of letters patent and government-imposed monopolies; some mercantilists supported these, but others acknowledged the corruption and inefficiency of such systems. Many mercantilists also realized the inevitable result of quotas and price ceilings were black markets. One notion mercantilists widely agreed upon was the need for economic oppression of the working population; laborers and farmers were to live at the "margins of subsistence". The goal was to maximize production, with no concern for consumption. Extra money, free time, or education for the "lower classes" was seen to inevitably lead to vice and laziness, and would result in harm to the economy.[7]
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
15,000 lb elephant? The gorilla may be more adept with it's tools, but the elephant has a lot of weight to swing around and can hurt a lot more(in magnitude and multitude) in the long run.
If the previous mainstream outside-the-OS/Office ventures of MS are any indication (see Xbox, Zune, et al) though, it's competitor(Adobe here) is going to put up a serious fight, and the consumer will enjoy the effects of the competition, just like if we got to watch an actual 500 lb gorilla and an actual 15,000 lb elephant fight...
Hmmm...time to go search the YouTube...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Microsoft (as a monopolist) will stifle innovation by (what in this case seems to be) innovating?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Hey Adobe! There are other OS's that OS X and Windows! Make your stuff work in Linux! ALL of it! I seriously hope that M$ creating this stuff will cause adobe to make their suites for Linux. I don't care if its closed source I just don't wanna have to use windows for graphics stuff anymore! I wanna use my 64bit processor for reals! And then I hope other popular art packages move to Linux and then the world will be safer and those Dell PC's with Ubuntu installed will be worth something to some people! Some people like me!
Balderdash!
*** Adobe's CEO, calling Microsoft a '$50 billion monopolist,' has questioned whether Silverlight will be compatible with non-Windows operating systems ***
Who the fuck cares if it is compatible with non-Windows operating systems.
Look at all the others of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pieces of software that only work on Windows.
Maybe they will get a clue.
Maybe someone should remind them that Office is the best selling Mac software.
Oh...wait...:)
And what is the market share for iWork (relative to the entire software market, not just the Macintosh island)?
-KF
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Sou rce
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo
These are still new, but Macrobe is making sure these are all cross platform.
With Flex you can create Flash content. You just need to know how to do Action Script.
I've mentioned MicroSoft's SIGGRAPH prowess several times in earlier threads. I'm glad they are starting to get results out into products. I asked this of a DirectX MicroSoft Developer at an earlier SIGGRAPH. He said the slowness was due to internal company politics. The people working on conventional products (such as that developer) view many of the researchers as pampered prima-donas and shy away from using their results. I've seen this happen in other companies too.
You think Dreamweaver is good? Wait until you try Microsoft Expression: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/
Thanks to project Moonlight, Siverlight is now supported on more platforms than Adobe's Flash.
I've attended many conferences in computer science and the physical sciences (I develop visualization tools for the energy industry) and I have to say SIGGRAPH is hands-down the most fun conference I attend. SIGGRAPH includes core graphics, advanced hardware, and special techniques used for movies and video games. This year there were several "how they did it" sessions from major movie studios. The young F/X Turks get up and expalin their amazing tricks to adulation of the audience. You can skim the exhibits and showrooms for a day for less than hundred dollars or listen to mathematically intense courses and papers all week.
2007 San Diego conference ended today. Los Angeles in 2008! (Big party city with all the studios)
Microsoft has too many battles going on. The list is long--MS vs Sony/NES, MS vs the Linux/Open source community, MS vs Apple iPod, MS vs Google, etc.. Now MS want to take on Adobe/Macromedia? In the end I think that this is a losing proposition for them. In fact it already might be happening. Their core product, the Windows OS, had a launch that was lackluster at best and Office had a little better reception than that. And it took them, what 5 years, to get it to market? Now they want to get into the graphics and web design market? This battle may be their undoing--their Stalingrad. MS should take a page out of the history books and realize that fighting on too many fronts usually leads to bad things. They need to keep their core business, and more importantly their core clientèle (ie Windows and Office) happy. Then narrow in on markets that they can overtake....but always keeping an eye toward the homeland. I don't think they are doing that. Think about it. Vista and new Office has lukewarm response (I have yet to know anyone that has upgraded that didn't buy a new computer), the Xbox 360 is having all kinds of hardware issues--for hardware that they are already subsidizing, the Zune officially blows (I don't know anyone that owns one...do you?), their "Live" suite of web services to compete with Google has completely dropped off the radar screen (zero buzz. I mean what happened to Live????), and now they want to get in the graphics arena? Hmmmm....looking like another half-baked business strategy. BTW, didn't MS already attempt a "Flash killer", some years back? Wasn't called Quicksilver or something like that?
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
64-bit operating systems are being used for years now, still you can't port Flash to 64 bit.
Someone's gotta' ward off the Adobe/Macromedia juggernaut. Only goliaths can take on each other. In the meantime instead of watching the fight the open source community can try to push its products up some notches. It would be interesting to think of scenarios about how to go about doing this. Is there a such thing as "open marketing"?
Why was that modded Flamebait? The grandparent poster implied that iWork's use of ODF would make a substantial difference. By asking about iWork's market share, I thought I was injecting some reality.
ODF may still win the file format war, but as part of Linux's long term victory, not because of iWork's negligible contribution.
> Microsoft has quietly been building up graphics-related R&D
It's hardly been "quiet". I don't remember exactly when it was but it was at seven years ago, possibly longer, when reading that month's IEEE CG&A and noticing "Microsoft Research" under Jim Blinn's name. And then numerous other well known graphics "gods"... All at MS Research. Those of us anyway associated with the graphics R&D community knew what was going on. Pity they screwed SGI "sideways with a barge pole" on the Fahrenheit thing. It could have been interesting.
Hmmm... I may have heard a leak about this somewhere... I hear their top secret computer graphics platform will be called "DirectX".
However, it seems they weren't quiet enough. Everyone I mentioned it to has already heard about it. Why am I always the last to know? Is it because I get all my information from Slashdot?
If they're standing up, it's just to complain. How about some hypocrasy in action? Microsoft wants to compete, I know, let's complain about how they're a monopolist!
Cmon man, Adobe is the monopolist in their market. They've driven everybody else out or bought them up.
Don't forget Microsoft's recent acquisition of iView Media Pro (http://www.iview-multimedia.com/), the only photo management/editing software I could find that could handle IPTC metadata in a way that made sense for me. iView has a pretty big following in the Mac community too, but I'm not sure how long the Mac version of iView will last...
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" - Einstein
Adobe will in fact sit pretty with at least two of it graphics powerhouses; Photoshop and Illustrator. Microsoft may create a few niche tools that will be used in conjunction with but never supercede Photoshop or Illustrator. The reason is that it is not a direct head-on competition in features. Adobe has a HUGE industry backing it up with training, videos, books, courseware, college courses. So - there are a very large contingent of people and businesses that have a very vested interest in keeping Adobe #1.
Microsoft Research has been working on graphics for a long time... and folks who work there have made some key contributions to the field.
... is that Linux is actually a pretty critical strategic piece for companies like Adobe. Adobe's market is getting targeted aggressively by Microsoft. The very best way to steal as much of Microsoft's thunder as possible is to support alternative platforms with equal quality. Microsoft's only strategy, from the start, has been "vendor lock-in." If they want to use *software people actually care about* they have to do it on Windows.
The short sighted thing to do is write for the platform everyone else uses, but in the long term - when you find yourself as a primary target/enemy of the company your product relies on you have nobody to cry to. Writing only for Windows because that's the only platform that pays off at the moment will cause you to pay much more down the road. Adobe's finding that out now.
People like you need to understand that, from a business standpoint, worrying about this insanely strategic and important platform simply makes sense, but in the long term.
Yah, you are missing the used computer market. Mac users who bother to upgrade sell their computers for a premium, the used prices are inflated so it works well to buy new, cheaper than upgrading components and you get the warranty.
Why? because macs obsolete a bit slower. I have a 7 year old iBook G3 that still gets used for capturing video and sorting clips in the field; the equivalent toshiba with its crappy case and expensive add-ons is already disposed of. A 4-year old machine will run OS X 10.4 fine.
What this means in practical terms to the discussion at hand is that I know quite a few freelance layout specialists who know damn little about their Macs but know their primary tools (Quark, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) exactly as much as they feel they need to. This means that they haven't upgraded for years, software or hardware, since their setup is essentially a locked-down turnkey system: stable and adequately fast for the task. The biggest speed boost is in the wetware, anyway.
A couple of examples: 3 years ago I was talking to someone who specializes in complex books like naturalist and travel guides. His rig was a maxed out and optimized PowerMac 8500 running OS 8. He couldn't afford the downtime of upgrading, because he didn't want to distract himself from churning out quality books and raking in freelance $. Last weekend I met a government document specialist who is finally moving to OS X with considerable anxiety, and is even more anxious about moving away from that nasty Quark thing to a new set of keyboard commands and costly paradigms.
Nerds have trouble grasping this, because they see corporate shops where the graphic dept. has spanky new quads, or they're used to an upgrade frenzy every time nvidia drops a log. I straddle both worlds, so I can tell you that quite a few Mac users are stealthed out there on their antiques, while many windows users are snapping up $400 dells and lenovos. I think this factor skews the installed user base / market share equation, and I'm pretty sure Adobe knows about them (though they probably don't care much).
Damn those pesky terrorists