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Adobe Intends To Move All of Its Applications Online
E1ven writes "Adobe has announced their intention to transition their entire suite of software to web-based applications This includes their popular offerings Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. '[Adobe Chief Executive Bruce] Chizen answered a question about whether a complete shift to Web delivery would take five or 10 years and he indicated it would be closer to a decade. Like many traditional software makers including Microsoft Corp., Adobe must fend off rivals delivering competing applications over the Web and it also needs to adopt a new business model after years of selling software in boxes. Chizen expects professional customers of products like Acrobat document-sharing or Photoshop for editing images would opt to pay for subscriptions versus facing a steady stream of advertising to use tools critical to their jobs.'"
Do they plan to move it to web-based applications as in, say, Google Maps, or to Flash/some other proprietary technology?
I think it's about time to coin a new term; Googlation: n, the virtual necessity and eventual realization of migrating every single desktop application to the web.
Taking into accout how expensive Photoshop is, I wonder if this is a move to avoid software piracy (or at least mitigate it). Besides, anyone willing to pay for a full Photoshop license will also be buying a machine according to its needs; I just don't see how it can work (will it be a JS application? Flash? Not-hellishly-slow? Will it run remotely or locally? How well will it behave when treating large images? And so on).
My 0.02 cents
But I don't like the trend of *everything* moving to a web based structure. Given the dire effects I've seen as a result of unfinished network applications and stacks getting plugged into a corporate network by accident, I darn sure don't want to have to keep a box (regardless of how well firewalled stuff is) plugged in to do development.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
It's minimalist, but I find SumatraPDF useful:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
William
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We currently live in a world where for some time, local hard disk capacity and processing power have been growing far, far, faster than bandwidth.
Adobe makes applications which work with huge amounts of data and often
require significant processing power to do it. Obviously, the right thing to do is to take these applications and make them limited by bandwidth rather than local resources.
F'ing genius.
A legitimate copy of the last desktop version of Photoshop,etc is going to be like gold to publishers. Piracy of that last version is going to make Windows piracy look like a drop in the bucket.
My guess would be that they will still offer local-binary versions of their apps. The online-only versions will be aimed more at the hobbyist market that currently run unsanctioned copies. Most people can't afford a full version of Photoshop, but they may be willing to pay a small fee to use "Photoshop Lite" online (or perhaps it will be add-supported). This way, Adobe can maintain their "mindshare monopoly," because they will provide a low-cost (maybe even free) way for people to play with the application. This gets people "hooked," and these people will then buy the full version if they need it for professional purposes.
Or, at least, that's my guess as to their strategy.
The flip-side is that if they make it increasingly difficult to copy their software, this might make OSS options more attractive. Right now people need to choose between Photoshop (free) and GIMP (free). If instead they had to choose between Photoshop (expensive), Photoshop Lite (nearly free, but performance not great) and GIMP (free), then the cost and freedom advantages of OSS finally become relevant.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Now imagine that every single computer user uses web-based applications to do absolutely everything.
/. Simple economics dictates that as demand goes up and supply goes down prices automatically increase.
Online word processing
Online image editing
Online gaming
Online video and music (at first I thought to myself 'this is a stretch' and then and realized it's already common place a-la youtube and internet radio stations etc.)
Online e-mail (not really worth mentioning since it has already been so common for so long and is arguably one of the catalysts for the desire to move everything to the web)
Hell even a web-based OS with online file storage.
Now imagine the demand this will put on bandwidth.
Bandwidth is relatively cheap right now but there are already signs that it's not getting any cheaper. My ISP has raised it's cost by a couple of bucks / month TWICE in the last 6 months. We hear article and article about ISPs capping users and degrading service all the time on
As we move forward in this direction the demand for bandwidth is going to be astronomical. Prices will soar and performance will go downhill. The more I think about it the more I wonder if the entire concept is really sustainable with our current infrastructure. Of course the problem could be solvable. With competent software architects who can design these systems with great care to keep bandwidth consumption to an absolute minimum and with advancements in network technology we could offset the problem. It's just that there seems to be such a huge push towards moving everything web-based, and at the same time that we have a soar in online media such as youtube and all it's clones, internet radio, DVD piracy etc.
The question needs to be asked. Is this all blind business strategy or are people actually carefully considering how all of this increased demand is going to affect the infrastructure and how the infrastructure will be improved to handle it. Web applications in the now are sustainable but if every single Internet user starts to do everything online then the question needs to be answered.
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for security reasons? How would you use Adobe software on a desktop with no Network access?
Some people like to do work on a computer that is not tied to other computers, and then burn CDs or DVDs and move the works to other computers later.
With Online Applications it also opens the door to Malware infections.
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Off the top of my head:
- Constant updates
- Multiplatform (Photoshop for Linux, finally)
- Ability to run from any machine, not only those where you installed it.
- Ability to access any plug-in in existance... you preview the results, and pay for use if you need/like the effect.
- Ability to access any font in existance (likewise)
- Same thing with actions, clip art, stock material, etc.
- Ability to use the program a single time (eg: once a year you need Adobe Illustrator for a couple of hours, so you pay for a single use instead of buying the whole thing).
- Probably easier to do cooperative work... even though MS Word has great support, I find Google Docs very nice for this kind of thing. In Photoshop case you could send a link to a full layered document or various "views" (i.e. snapshots) of the document (with different effects, croppings, etc. applied) viewable though a read-only free version of PS.
- Probably easier to interact with printing studios, presses, etc. You just choose their profile (loaded and updated on-line) and your document is adjusted to it.
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