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Why Apple Should Acquire Adobe
aabode writes "OSWeekly.com's Brandon Watts suggests that Apple should acquire Adobe. Why? 'While Apple has done a great job of developing media applications for beginners (the iLife suite is a good example of this), they could use a boost on the professional side. Granted, Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing, and Logic Studio is a great professional solution for editing audio, but what about the graphics and Web design segments of the market? If people want tools to support these interests on the Mac, then they turn to Adobe.'"
I really fail to see why this is interesting.
"When Nature Calls We All Shall Drown" Johan Edlund
monopoly, it was real fun...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Sorry, but honestly, Apple could develop better stuff than Adobe. The only company that should even consider buying Adobe is MS - they are the ones with the track record of buying crap and making it better (note: I didn't say "good" or "perfect", as they don't always manage the first, and the last is impossible).
Apple should stick to what they are good at - making applications that do what they are supposed to do, de-novo.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
...what they did with Emagic. Emagic Logic, lovely music sequencing program, worked on Windows and Macs. Apple buy them up, first thing they do, "sorry guys, its going Mac only".
Now, if they do that with Adobe software, what do you think will happen?
Pros and Cons:
Pros: establishes Apple as THE platform for photographers and designers by removing the Windows competition. Sure, Apple could continue to fund the development of Photoshop and Illustrator for Windows. But the latest and greatest version would always appear on the Macintosh first.
Cons: even with its current pile of money (iPhone and Ipod are two very successful products after all), I am not sure Apple has enough money to buy Adobe. Not to mention Microsoft would certainly file an anti-trust suit. It also raises all kind of legal snafus in Europe for instance, which would certainly frown upon it.
Cons: Postscript and PDF are both open standards. I am not sure I'd like to see Apple control their future.
So, yes, and interesting prospect. Still pretty unlikely, though.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I was wondering if there was a way to make Flash, Quicktime, and PDFs work WORSE than they already do... the answer: Obviously you should bundle them together.
Imagine an app that takes over ALL file extensions on every windows box, makes it impossible to look at any image, any document, and any web page!
I always thought that the fact that iTunes/Quicktime basically destroy windows PCs was a calculated move. I could never understand why Adobe Reader had a simmilar effect. If you could do the same to Flash it would be the last nail in the coffin for the home user of Windows. Since he who controls flash controls the civilian entertain-web, I would be surprised if there was not a google, MS, Apple bidding war for them. I am actually suprised it hasn't happened yet.
There has been nothing in the past that I have though had the power to kill Windows for the home user than a version of flash that plain does not work right on the PC, like Reader and Quicktime before it.
Apple cant even get Quicktime working well on Win32 and you want them to get Adobe ? i cant imagine how big Acrobat would be if Apple touched it and Logic is dead in the new pro-music scene, we've moved on and its all about Steinberg (we tried to fight it but at the end of the day Steinberg just makes better products) VSTi's are probably the best thing to happen (and the worst for KB manufacturers)
Besides the obvious "Why?" that this article must prompt in anyone with some common sense, could Apple even afford it? Now I didn't RTFA but I search for the word 'afford' in it and I didn't find anything..
More seriously I'm asking if they could afford it because Adobe is huge, it has swallowed Macromedia whole, and I think that if Microsoft could have bought them, they would have done it a long time ago, right? So could Apple even do that, besides the questionable interest of doing such a thing?
You just got troll'd!
Sometimes its fun to write an entire column based on an incredibly unlikely and impractical idea. If we are going to make up crap based on conversations with our wives, I propose Apple buys a real Time Machine, goes back in time to 3000 years ago and begins a superior civilization in the North Americas, so that we have populated the Galaxy by tomorrow. And one more thing... Super Intelligent Llamas.
Any other fricken fantasy stories we need to get promoted as actual 'News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters'?
...how someone can suggest this when the most basic but most widely-used Adobe product, Flash player, is a giant flaming CPU-hogging turd in OS X.
I'm sure we wouldn't mind just using Silverlight on Windows, & AIR on Mac. I'm sure no one is going to get pissed off @ furthering a duopoly, at the risk of making one of the monopolies stronger. While we are it, let's not only ensure a duopoly of Windows & Mac further exists, but let's get the jump on Linux for spoiling what some idiots seem to see as a great opportunity to make a 2 party system the norm outside typical party politics & elections.
I'm not an idiot though; the above was assuming that Linux isn't kicking ass, which, be all counts on reality's part, is kicking ass. Although, I forgot that there is Mono for Linux so perhaps I don't know jack sh*t about anything. Too bad I don't have a site to display this on, other than the comments section @ /., then maybe perhaps my naive comments would be a news item too. I guess until that happens, I'm just an idiot ;D.
Cause the writer of the article has stock in (company) and wants to make a quick buck...
I know I've seen this same headline with Nintendo there, and I can't help but think there've been others. I just don't care enough to search. If Apple wanted to buy something, they'd buy it. I think Apple's pretty happy where they are though.
Shouldn't the first question be: does it make business sense? Do both companies benefit from a merger?
I can think of a lot of companies that can merge just because they make products that seem to go together. Does it mean they should do so, just because I think it'd be a neat idea?
Adobe software is slow but great. If apple bought it, it would be slow and bad, doing nothing revolutionary and costing like 5 times more than it's worth. but it would come in a funky steel box so people with more money than sense would be happy to buy it so they can show off to their mates at the crayon shop.
I hate to say it but Microsoft's Steve was right when he said, "Developers, developers, developers.". Adobe is one of the few big developers that actually support them Mac. They have supported Mac since the start. I feel this would have a chilling effect on the Mac development community. Let Adobe stay Adobe and Apple stay Apple.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
it would be worth it. Anything that can run on multiple platforms like Flash can is going to be a pain in Microsoft's side.
The software industry needs MORE diversity, not less. I know it is always fashionable to suck Steve Jobs' cock, but Apple is not really the "good guy", they will screw anyone over at any time if it means more money, just like Microsoft, IBM, Google, and every other company.
Adobe's products have gotten insanely bloated and crappy the past 5 years, and Apple isn't doing much better either. Quicktime and Itunes love to autorun 8 tons of horsecrap, and Adobe does the same + does a bunch of bullshit activation too. Acrobat Reader has become such a disaster that anyone with a clue has dumped it for Foxit (We just did that at work for 500+ workstations, and we are HEAVY users of the pdf format).
I can see it now. Adobe Quicktime Version 13 Profesional will have 5 autostart services, have mandatory bullshit activation every time it's actively used + background activation every 60 minutes, hijack all your multimedia settings, require 2 gigabytes of disk space and 4 gigabytes of ram, and kill your dog for good measure.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Adobe makes sense as an acquisition, but more people watch TV than use Photoshop. And, of course, Apple is moving more into consumer electronics. They should buy TiVo, redo the interface in a slick Apple way, and link it to the iTunes Movie Store. At the same time, sell them alongside big, beautiful Apple-brand HDTVs with well-designed connections and controls, which is a weak point on other HDTVs.
Also, come out with some sort of mini-tower Mac in between (in cost and features) the Mini and the Mac Pro....
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Don't vim and emacs run on OSX?
At least that's what our department head, the guy with advanced degrees in engineering and marketing, says. His claim is: companies that buy other companies who do something similar end up diluting themselves and losing maneuverability.
Apple's already designing hardware *and* operating systems *and* lots of applications. Do they need to spend money on *more* applications, when those applications are currently being managed by someone else who knows how to market them, and whose marketing helps drive Apple's sales effectively for free?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
While it might seem that Adobe would make a good acquisition for Apple there are several factors weighing against it IMHO. First, the price for Adobe, now that it includes the assets of the former Macromedia combined with the many successful core Adobe products, would be very high indeed for Apple. Apple might do better by reserving such a large chunk of their available investment capital, assuming that they could finance the purchase (haven't checked the respective balance sheets of the companies, but Yahoo Finance could probably get someone a ballpark estimate if they were interested), for internal R&D, improvements to their core products, OSX Leopard for example, and especially their profitable iPhone and iPod hardware sales and services which brings up the second and main point:
The iPhone, iPod, and iTunes angles are so profitable for Apple that it would be hard to justify NOT investing the maximum available capital or the last available profitable investment dollar (where marginal return exceeds marginal cost of investing one more dollar) into the expanding entertainment hardware and media business. The opportunity cost of buying Adobe instead of or at the expense of continued investment in the profitable iPhone, iPod, and iTunes markets may simply be too high, even though Adobe might be a good fit for Apple at least conceptually, to justify.
Disclaimer: I am neither an Apple nor an Adobe shareholder and I have no personal financial interest in either company.
If you ask me, Adobe shouldn't be looking to be acquired by an OS-maker. Instead, Adobe should be looking to acquire an OS.
I've been working in IT for various kinds of media companies, and in a lot of cases, there are people whose entire jobs are centered around using Adobe apps. You could throw Adobe CS3 on any system and any OS, and those people would still be able to do their jobs just fine. The OS doesn't matter.
So let's say Adobe develops their own Linux/BSD variant or buys someone else's. With very little work on their end, they could actually become a competitor to Microsoft. What often keeps linux from a lot of desktop these days is the lack of specific professional media applications. Adobe could make their own port of OpenOffice/Evolution/Linux, bundle that with Adobe CS3, and have a pretty formidable media/business desktop OS.
This is a horrible idea. It might be a boon for Apple but it would ruin Adobe and their great line of software that they have aquired. Adobe screws things up every once in a while (Adobe Reader bugs anybody?) but their content creation and editing software is the best. If Apple bought them they would stop putting out software for PC. This will just add fuel to the fire of their fallacious argument about PC software being really buggy while Apple software is great and magical and delicious! It's poppycock!
WItness that Mac OS X 10.4 and later come with a complete set of Photoshop clone construction tools. See Acorn, DrawIt, Pixelmator and even later versions of GraphicConverter. Adobe dragged their heels too long.
Well, this was *probably* done as a retaliatory move on Apple's part, as much as anything. Apple traditionally had a good foothold in the MIDI music, sequencing, and hard disk recording sectors - but Windows-only products were eating away at their market share. (Think products like Cakewalk Sonar, for example, or ACID Pro, or Gigastudio.)
Furthermore, some of the music gear out there was starting to only include Windows software for the purpose of editing or cataloging sound patches. (I remember buying a Yamaha Motif synthesizer a few years ago, and the only Mac software tools it included were for Mac OS 9.x only. OS X support was "coming soon" for pretty much the whole time I owned it.)
Apple wanted to create at least one more good reason to choose a Mac as a musician.
With Adobe, it's a whole different situation. For starters, Adobe uses their own methods of software development, which appear to be Windows-centric. (All of their new apps for OS X are supporting Intel Mac only, as opposed to "Universal binaries" that work with PPC Macs too. That would indicate they're not writing this stuff with Apple's xcode tools at all, but rather, doing some kind of ports directly over from their Windows versions.) I don't think Apple would want to buy out an entire product line that they'd have to re-code using xcode, before it would even be up to the standards they endorse of supporting both architectures.
Lest we all forget that Apple is first and foremost a hardware company that just happens to provide an operating system to work no their hardware and a few applications designed as eye-candy to try and pull people away from evil Microsoft.
"Final Cut Studio has become the standard"? Yes, maybe for the home market. The bigger stuff is still dominated by heavyweights such as Harris/Leitch and Avid.
Granted it's not an Apples to Apples (hah!) comparison but really now...
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Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they bought Adobe. They've made some pretty big acquisitions of software developers in the past, the most relevant to me being their acquisition of eMagic, the developers of Logic Audio. Now Logic is one of Apple's key "Pro" applications, and they used the Logic technology to build their included-with-every-new-Mac "GarageBand" software (thus increasing the value of their platform - now you can produce music with every new Mac).
Considering that the vast majority of graphic design houses are running Macs, this does feel like another area where Apple could buy the company and bring further integration and a more "consistent experience" with the software, all the while further increasing the value of their platform.
That said, Adobe has a LOT of technology, history and a huge customer base (covering more than just Mac platforms, too). In my opinion, realistically, Adobe would be too big of a load for Apple to take on especially considering their own recent growth and increasing business responsibilities.
I wouldn't mind seeing iTunes's movie-purchase functionality hitched up with Netflix's online movie rental stuff, both delivered over an AppleTV.
Of course, it's not going to happen. Media companies are already too afraid of Apple, and would probably find a way to punish apple for a move like that, even if Apple were ready to go for it.
Adobe has a knack for programming software that makes MS look incredible. There seems to be no awareness of what the teams are doing. Having to install programs in a certain order so that they don't break each other is hardly an idea situation for any company using their products.
Sure they've got a lock on some markets but it sure doesn't mean they're great. IMHO this would be disastrous for Apple and their, well from my perspective, long line of fairly sold programming. I'm not sure they really want to scrap everything Adobe has done and start from scratch so that it actually plays nice with each other.
For reference I've got a mix of Acrobat 5,6,7, Illustrator 8,9, and FrameMaker 7 here. Probably should upgrade one of these years...
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consider the source please... OSweekly is nothing more than a blog of crap.
webmasters: Can have a way to filter out articles based on the source...?? A shitlist so to speak?
Finally, we have two great design software companies that have really good interface sense, competing with each other. Why would we want them to join? No, the best thing would be to let them (especially Adobe) spread into other design fields. I'd like to see an Adobe audio suite (like logic or Digital Performer)... but what *I*, personally, really want to see is Adobe tackle the seemingly impossible-to-make-good music notation software market, give Finale and Sibelius a well-deserved run for their money. Apple's welcome to join the fun too (they're closer, they've already got Logic). The visual design fields are really getting their all, but the audio design fields are a little behind the ball.
Now, an Apple merger with Nintendo would make perfect sense... but Adobe would just be a catastrophe.
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Other than iTunes/Quicktime which in required to drive all those iPod sales--Apple really isn't in the PC software business. Apple has done really well being a hardware company that makes software to support it. Buying Adobe puts them many new business arenas. They would be in vertical publishing markets like newspapers and magazines, document management with big corporations and govt, etc. It would seem like alot of new operation to absorb just to drive Mac sales. I'm sure they would love to get Macs on more corporate desks, but this is alot to take on to accomplish that.
Is sell frickin OSX, in a box, on the shelf next to Windows...and sell it to OEMs as an option to be installed on their PCs.
As soon as they do that, windows instantly loses market share.
Too bad Apple is too retarded to see that.
This proposal isn't like most out there (small fry buying company 10 times their size, etc.) which are completely outside the realm of possibility.
ADBE's market cap is 16% (27 Billion) of AAPL's market cap (167 Billion). APPL has $15 Billion in cash on the books, so this couldn't be an all cash deal, but it could be a mix of stock and cash or an all stock deal.
It is worth considering an AAPL acquisition of ADBE. Of course, AAPL would have to offer a premium. If I was putting together the deal, I would offer 1 AAPL share for 4 ADBE shares and $10 a share in cash.
This would value ADBE at 46.75 + $10 = $56.75 a share. This is an 18% permium to today's price. That is a reasonable premium on ADBE's current valuation.
Yours,
Jordan
Granted, Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing, and Logic Studio is a great professional solution for editing audio, but what about the graphics and Web design segments of the market? If people want tools to support these interests on the Mac, then they turn to Adobe.
It boils down to this: Pick the battles you can win.
Quick, everyone, let's jump in the wayback machine to the 90's, when Apple "made" just about everything under the sun. And was doing a pretty shit job of it, and suffering for it. Part of what brought back Apple was Steve saying "what the fuck are we doing making digital cameras and a dozen different desktop computers?" They dropped all the shit products Apple was screwing around with, and simplified the product line down to just two laptop models and three desktops, all with clearly delineated target audiences and design.
Apple has benefited for two reasons: their business capabilities are not diluted as much, and consumers find the buying experience easier and simpler.
I've needed to buy a new bike and a cell phone recently. Both industries are chock full of companies that will offer you DOZENS of different products that are all every so slightly different; go look at Nokia's website sometime. Fifty goddamn phones, when really there's only 3-4 categories of 'em.
Apple has acquired sotware packages and such when (I believe) they felt it would benefit the platform, or there was a deal to be had. This is the same reasoning behind the various Apple peripherals we were inundated with in the 90's; nobody else made a good Appletalk laser printer, so Apple said "dammit, we'll do it ourselves." It made sense to some degree, bolstered by the fact that schools liked to buy everything from one place. It's nice to be able to get everything for your gradeschool lab from one place. To some degree.
That's the challenge I think Apple will face in the future: not getting caught up in too many product areas trying to support the platform, to the extent that both the core hardware suffers and the sideline stuff no longer becomes compelling.
Please help metamoderate.
Other reasons for not wanting to see this happen:
- Apple needs some sort decent competition in this arena
- What does it really do for Apple?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Or IBM should do that.
Come ooouuun... Apple buying Adobe wasn't feasible back in the days when you NEEDED Apple hardware if you wanted to work with Adobe software.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You fanboys don't do yourself any favours.
My natural reaction to any blog-sourced article is to ask who the hell is this person and why should consider their opinion credible at all. Unfortunately, there's no bio at all for this Brandon Watts. Another pointless blog-spam as far as I'm concerned.
Apple has tended to bring apps and services to the Windows world, not buy Windows apps and kill them.
Quicktime has long been available on Windows. And, iTunes is there, too. Apple even contributes to open source.
Microsoft got their application start on Macs, and continues to support Office there. Adobe started with their apps on the Macintosh, and support them now on both Macs and Windows.
Apple provides entry level apps with the system. They also have some some pro apps. Other vendors provide professional applications for both the Mac and Windows.
Maybe a linux user group should buy them all and kiil them. Then linux would be the best system in the whole world.
But that doesn't mean they should spend it on Adobe, unless they've gotten wind of something the rest of us haven't.
Apple has a pretty compelling story just now. They have a new OS with tools developers are excited about using. The Mac is gaining market share, so developers are more inclined to write software for the platform. That should include Adobe. However, much of Adobe's software is written using Apple's 32-bit Carbon framework. It will be an expensive proposition for Adobe to move forward and develop new 64-bit Cocoa versions of their code.
If Apple could positively determine that Adobe was not going to make this investment it might make sense for them to buy them to make sure that it happened. Adobe software is hugely important to Apple--look at how many people held off making the transition to Intel Macs until CS3 was ready. Apple is not a huge company, employee-wise. They could eventually develop competing products at the cost of increasing their number of employees, a lead time to market and risking incompatibility with the existing market standard. Given those terms, purchasing Adobe could be the cheaper option.
But unless Adobe plans to abandon the Mac this purchase wouldn't make much sense for Apple.
I know apple is a big company. They have gotten HUGE ever since that ipod thingy, absolutely massive. I'm sure they have a mind boggling amount of money just laying around.
But do they really have the cash around to blow on photoshop, flash, etc? That has to be a staggaring amount of money. If I had the multimedia industry as cornered as adobe does, I don't think I'd sell for less than youtube.
while Apple is pushing Cocoa.
If Apple could've purchased a company, I wish it'd been Macromedia before Adobe got to them, and I _still_ wish that FreeHand had been saved one last time and that Adobe had been required to divest themselves of it.
Apple really should haul out the old Sketch.app code and update it to a nice modern drawing program, ideally one as efficient and productive as FreeHand.
William
(who needs to find the time to dig into Cenon's, http://www.cenon.info/ codebase)
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Apple bought Emagic back in July of '02 and promptly killed all support for Win32 for Logic Audio Pro and their audio interfaces. My assumption was that they somehow figured that all the guys using it under Windows would naturally migrate over to the Mac to continue using it. They were dead wrong and lost a lot of customers, myself being one of them. Though I had a couple of Macs at that time, I didn't have a copy of Logic for MacOS, I had a Windows version.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Adobe is not Photoshop.
And neither is Gimp.
Comparing Gimp to Photoshop is like comparing the newest laser printer to a early '90s ink-jet printer.
As for Apple buying Adobe, and then going Apple only - that would burry both companies.
Think about it.
You'd have a de facto industry standard (not to mention household name) that is bought up and switched from "ANY computer in the world"-market to a 5%-world market.
99% market share turned into a 5% market share.
Apples shares wouldn't be worth the ink used to print them.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
More fundamentally, there's bad blood between Adobe & Apple dating back to the late 80s: Adobe is constantly looking over its shoulder at Microsoft and what Microsoft might do. All this is because of a blindside announcement by Microsoft at the Seybold Desktop Publishing Conference in San Francisco on September 20, 1989 when it announced TrueType fonts and made Apple (a traditional Adobe partner) it's strategic partner to promote the new font standard.
Adobe co-founder John Warnock was at the podium next and was in tears over this unforeseen betrayal since Adobe, until then, owned this part of the business. From that point on Adobe, like the character in the movie, has been running from pursuers, imagined or otherwise. Adobe isn't looking to buy or get bought by somebody who makes OSs. They are looking to build their software into a web platform that leaves the OS irrelevant. Sound familiar anyone? The real suitor is the other 800-lb. gorilla in the room. (Hint: rhymes with "Moogle.")
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Why do people want Apple to control every aspect of their computer? I just don't get the mentality. I guess some people just want an appliance instead of a general purpose computer.
Most high-end graphics shops are Mac.
As long as Adobe continues to operate as a somewhat separate entity from Apple, it would be good for Apple. The loss of Adobe support at some point in the future could kill the Mac, so it makes sense from a future-proofing perspective. Microsoft is slowly and insidiously removing all of their products from the Mac platform, and I wouldn't be surprised if Office 2008 were the last product the Mac BU produces. With the likes of Neooffice (soon OpenOffice), and iWork, this is less of a threat than it would have once been. However, the loss of both Adobe and Microsoft would probably be more than the platform could bear. I think that dropping any Windows support for Adobe products would be a bad move, and Apple wouldn't do it. It would give rise to a new competitor in the niche they just took ownership of. They wouldn't give a up a monopoly in creative tools for the most popular platform on the planet.
Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing
FCP is very popular and making inroads to some pro shops but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the standard" in professional video editing. Avid is still very popular in broadcast shops and Adobe still has a fair number of Premiere users out there. I'd go up against any of them with Sony Vegas. I'd give FCP the upper-middle range.
If anyone should buy Adobe it should be Sony. Then they could both change their name to Sonobe One, which sounds like a Star Wars character.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If Apple really wants to get into the "Pro" game, why not create a recording iPod that syncs up with Logic? As a producer and DJ, the fact Apple won't make a pro iPod that can record (crappy voice recorders excepted) has always baffled me. I only begrudgingly got a Nano after years of saying I would hold out for a record-capabable unit. Oh well...
Microsoft couldn't, anti-trust complaints would ensue if Microsoft bought Adobe and dropped Mac support.
If you look at Apple's track record, you'd notice they buy small companies who are innovating in one area and they bring those technologies under one umbrella to fit a grand vision or sorts (save for exceptions like eMagic). Look at Fingerworks. Apple bought them out and integrated their technologies in the iPhone. Coverflow was an indie, beta application. Apple purchased it and integrated it across their OS (Finder/iTunes) and iPods (iPhone/iTouch). These things have a far greater utility, and provide a larger return on investment. Adobe isn't Apple's vision. You can't integrate Adobe apps or technologies into the Apple ecosystem more than they already are.
This type of a giant acquisition would put Apple in a managerial position because the company is too mature and too entrenched in its core market. I can't see the benefit of running an entire company (Adobe) that has hit it's peak. There is nothing coming out of Adobe that's exciting anymore.
Be aware that part of your argument is incorrect, as I am running the Abode CS3 Design standard and Web standard applications of a PowerPC based Mac as I type. They are "Universal Binaries."
All of their new apps for OS X are supporting Intel Mac only, as opposed to "Universal binaries" that work with PPC Macs too
All is a bit strong a word. Some of their video apps are intel only (After Effects is Universal), all the rest (including all the apps from Design/Web collections) are universal.
is it just me, or is it anytime either apple or some other company releases some hip new thing, the thing we always see is some "pundit" theorizing that apple should merge / buy the other company? Think about all the crazy "Apple & Nintnendo Merge" rumors/desires/nonsense when the Wii hit it big. And, this is not the first time anyone has suggested that apple and adobe need to become one in some sort of unholy union. I think we see these stories just about any time apple or adobe has a new major release. this of course begs the question, why don't we see the same stuff about ms and adobe? i think that the people who use apple and adobe products are probably using them both, for the most part. art geeks, and i know a lot of us, usually stick with apple and adobe. i think i know one artist personally who uses a windows machine, and it's mostly because she loves her games. there's obviously some sort of vibe apple gives off these days that make people think that they really need to acquire some other company because they have so much to offer each other. to that i say "meh."
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Acquire Adobe, then cut support for M$ platforms beyond XP. Go Mac only.
Power is what power does.
Steve Jobs has said before that Apple is a hardware company.
They don't WANT to write high-end professional software. They want to write intuitive user-friendly apps that promote the experience of using their hardware, which is their bread and butter.
They didn't drop the "computer" from their name because they want to get into software, it's because they've got more brand-awareness from iPods these days than from Macs. I doubt you could get Photoshop running on your iPhone.
Adobe still has some little consideration for Linux. It has improved in the last months, but it is still far from love -- or even friendship.
Apple OTOH really does not give a damn about mere mortals. If you're not a designer (or a future one, still having classes) with lots of money, well, hit the road. I know it from experience: Apple won't sell in Brazil... I think they find us "cheap". In a bad way.
This is gonna be fine with M$. Probably Flash will go the way of Shockwave, which we have never the pleasure to see this side of our Linux/Windows borderline. Bye-bye easy videos. Less interoperability... and Apple can strike deals with M$ -- deals Adobe would not do, mainly now they're under attack by M$'s Silversomething. Ah, well, guess we really need Gnash ready. This or convincing Adobe to make Flash a standard, like they did with PDF.
That is irrelevant to any comparison between Mac and PC.
but their weak pathetic market share is the reason Adobe abandoned the platformInaccurate and inflammatory. Adobe has not abandoned the platform, they elected not to port Premier or Framemaker and have a few fringe apps that are Windows-only. Either that, or my recollection of having CS3 installed on my Mac at home is the result of delusional psychosis.
that seems like any investment in the platform is a waste of time and money.That is a baseless conclusion. I find it difficult to believe that it is a "waste of time and money" (i.e., an unprofitable endeavor), since they continue to make new versions of their core products for the Mac and show no signs of stopping.
Adobe has thrived after dumping Apple.Again, they only dumped support for a few major applications (good alternatives to which exist on the platform already), and secondly, I fail to see any causal link between the two.
Apple would buy a profitable Adobe, then just strap them into making software to stuff into Apple's $150 OSX service packs.I don't know if it's fair to call them service packs, because I was a lot more excited about any of them than XP SP2. Furthermore, that's an unreasonable conclusion. iLife is basically just Logic Pro Lite, Final Cut Pro Lite, a photo album and a web authoring tool. In the case of the professional apps, full versions do, in fact, exist. What would be more likely to happen in that situation is that every Adobe application would be forked into a home version and a pro version, just like with the other apps.
I basically agree that it's pointless for Apple to acquire Adobe, but your post was just littered with so many half-truths, twisted facts and blatant omissions that I had to break it down.
1) Recent slashdot articles have claimed that Mac is at about 5% now
2) The fact that 50% use a pirated version (even if true) is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Now, if you claim that 50% of Apple users use a pirated version... well, that would at least be relevant.
3) A lot of the Windows computers out there are office computers that wouldn't be using this anyway. The percentage that's important is the Apple market share amongst professionals, which is most likely *very* different than the standard market share number.
Thank God for evolution.
If it meant Warnock would return to running day-to-day operations and making decisions about which features to work on I'd be all for it. Then maybe we could get rid of the marketing drones running the place whose only focus seems to be perfecting a filter which will automatically put LOLcats titles on your pet pics.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I really fail to see why this is interesting.
Ummm...I'm gonna have to agree with you there and say that this is not only troll bait, but is something that will *NEVER* happen. Ever. Really, really, never. Even with Apple's deep pockets, there is no interest at all inside Apple to buy Adobe. Why? Because there's no valid business reason to do so.
If Adobe was doing a piss poor job of bringing products and features to the Mac platform, AND if Adobe was floundering as a company, then, and only then, maybe, on a Tuesday soon after Hell froze over, Apple might think about buying Adobe. Really, really.
Don't know what crack the OP and article writer were smoking, but you need to cut back or try another brand.
Adobe is not just ye ol'graphic company of 80's & 90's. It's fast growing into a much more diverse entity. Adobe has been seriously entering the developer side of things, but with a much broader start to finish mindset.
;-)
Many programming languages let you write application code. Many graphic tools allow you to design GUI look'n'feel elements. Adobe is in a very unique position that no other company (not Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter) to bring a full fledge start to finish workflow. Those in the publishing industry will understand this aspect from design to mock-up, to proof and splits for printing.
Adobe has a number of radical developments in it's product range:
- First off, Adobe's Flash was rebuilt in version 9 with an entirely new virtual machine. Faster, more robust and exclusively uses ActionScript 3.0 (which is much more robust, object oriented, strongly typed, with a fuller feature set).
- Furthermore, Adobe's Flex is developing an awesome developer community, in part due the to sharing that is encouraged by the "component" philosophy. Oh, and although Flex Builder does cost money you can freely use the Flex SDK. Flex is for "developers" (no timeline, no layers, nada). Oh, the new Flex Builder 3 will only be $250(which I've been using beta versions for 4 months now and is by far more stable than most released software)
- Adobe AIR, takes the Flash Player out of the browser and into the desktop world. In a lot of ways, it's the dream that was the Java Virtual Machine. So while Microsoft catches up to Flash, Adobe is already moving it's technology beyond. Oh, and Adobe AIR can utilize either Flex or AJAX code.
- Thermo was just demoed at Adobe MAX. It's a tool to allow designers to create a graphic image and then mark aspects of the image to be GUI components. (ie: designer creates a stylized scrollbar, then marks it to be a scrollbar and it then becomes such. The designer's image become the scrollbar's skin). We've not seen much of this, but the potential benefits are pretty sweet.
Most people think of Flash technology as this stupid animation software and used for fancy ads & pop-ups. If that is all you're experience of Flash. Then you've really only scratched the tip, of the tip of the iceberg.
The Flash technology platform has become a application development environment. I've worked on medical applications written in Flash. There is so much more Flash can do outside of serving up ads and YouTube videos.
But Apple designed its own font architecture for System 7, which was released in 1992. This was the now-familiar TrueType. I'm not real clear on the details, but I guess Apple and Adobe couldn't agree on font architectures, with Adobe preferring to stick with its Postscript fonts, so Apple sold its stock in Adobe. If my memory is correct, they made $69 million.
Apple had at first announced that the Adobe Type Manager (ATM) software wouldn't work on System 7, as it was an extension, or "INIT", that installed a lot of patches in the OS. But after a widespread outcry, Apple relented and worked with Adobe to enable compatibility. Apple always hated INITs, as they prevented Apple from changing low-level APIs that would have broken the INITs' binary compatibility.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The real possibility would be for Microsoft to buy Adobe (and maybe Apple too). This way the business market could actually get good content creation applications and a good user interface. I, however, would settle for Microsoft just buying Adobe. This likely would not be considered an anti-trust issue because of the applications that Sony and Apple have.
$7.1 billion,/a> or so cash and cash equivalents, another $6.6 billion in short-term investments, 1.4 in accounts receivable.
If you want numbers, go get them. They're a public company, and their numbers (at the end of each quarter anyway) are therefore public record.
Adobe, OTOH, has less than $600 million in cash and not quite $1.4 billion in short-term investments, and $5.667 billion in total assets.
It seems to me that if Apple was desperate enough to buy Adobe, it could probably cut a check. Why it'd want to is beyond me, though.
Isn't Apple hurting enough for system sales due to lack of third-party developers? When you're building a platform, after-market products mean a great deal. Adobe is one of the shining examples of third-party development on Apple's systems. Why would Apple want to make all the things Adobe adds to their software stack more stuff to market as a vertical internal to their product catalog? Wouldn't that reinforce the "only if Apple sees fit will your software needs be met" syndrome?
Ok, I stand corrected ... but I was thinking of products of theirs like Soundbooth (Intel Mac only) as I was writing my initial post.
I still believe it's a correct assumption to say Adobe was not building any of their applications using Apple's xcode as their development tool. They may, however, be re-writing many of the "Design/Web collection" apps from the ground up, or at least re-coding them completely using new tools, so they can indeed offer both PPC and Intel support for them. It appears to be something Adobe is doing on a "case by case" basis.
No, Mac users like that.
Unlike you backwards Windows folks, we are not locked into a mindset of "one window on the screen". We are used to having many windows open and overlapping, which is, after all, kind of the point of multitasking. I have never understood why Windows pushes so hard to make you fill your screen with one window.
Furthermore, I absolutely, utterly despise the MDI paradigm that Office and Photoshop (among many others) for Windows lock you into. Look, if I have 5 different documents open and they're hiding everything in the background, that's one thing, but for God's sake, why do you have to put a stupid gray background window behind them all and lock me into that, not letting me have *your* windows interleaved with *other* applications' windows??
...I guess it's all a matter of what you're used to, but like I said, your way doesn't make sense to us, and we really honestly like it better our way.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The only CS3 apps that are intel mac only are the Video apps that had no Mac version of the previous generation. My assumption is they are reusing their SSE tuned code from the windows version since the error message is actually that the program requires SSE2.
BTW they do actually use xcode for the mac apps as of CS3.
http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/03/macintosh_and_t.html
Things are fine the way they are. It's not like Apple really needs a cut of what Adobe brings in, and Adobe is doing fine on their own... I think Apple acquiring Adobe can only lead to problems...and I'm not saying this just because I'm a graphic designer who uses windows... ^^;
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
The editors seem to have a fascination with stupid pundits. Shall we tag this and similar stories stupidpundit?
Here's one big collective stupidpundit story: when Leopard came out, a bunch of pundits crowed that it was a big leap forward, filesystemwise. Why? Because Leopard has gone over to ZFS as the main file system, and ZFS is the first really new file system in decades.
Except that Leopard hasn't gone over to ZFS. It doesn't even support read-write access to ZFS. Why did so many pundits get it so wrong? Because Leopard introduces Time Machine, an automatic file versioning system, which is "obviously" built on top of ZFS's file versioning feature. Of course, if that were true, you wouldn't have to plug in an external disk to use Time Machine. But you do.
Darn those stupid pundits. They had me all excited because ZFS really is very cool. If Mac OS had gone over to it, I would have been terribly tempted to buy my first Mac.
The author seems to think Photoshop and the rest of Adobe's products are only used by graphic designers and hip young beatniks who sport the Apple "lifestyle". But as a video game artist, I constantly have Photoshop open on one monitor and 3DSMax on the other. With the exception of the few companies that use Maya instead of Max (the latter of which is not Mac compatible), these tools are the industry standard. Seeing as my employer only develops games for Windows and never gives Mac users a second thought, you can see why having Photoshop becoming a Mac exclusive could be troublesome for us. Some would call the video game industry "large", or "booming", or "holy shit we're making a lot of money", so one would think that Adobe, a company that could be considered too gargantuan for acquisition, would like to not loose its many customers who work on Windows.
If we're talking about totally hypothetical situations not based on any sort of market evidence here, then maybe Autodesk will buy Adobe! With AutoCAD, Maya, and 3DS Max, the one company already has complete domination over the architecture, film, and video game industries, respectively.
Why is this news again?
Adobe has been developing for Apple OS since the 80s. This blurb sounds as if the platform is lacking apps or neglected by Adobe. Besides, Apple cannot run the gigantic Adobe main tain quality of both software and hardware.
"Granted, Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing, and Logic Studio is a great professional solution for editing audio"
Last time I checked Final Cut and Logic Studio hadn't become the standard. Avids products (and Digidesign owned by Avid) are the standard choice of the professionals. Why? Their product Unity for one, which allows for off site storage and just sitting down at any Avid at the office and grabbing your work. Final Cut is a very nice product, but it isn't ready for the prime time in a long shot.
JOHN:
Senores, senors, senoritas, Buenas noches!
Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen!
GUITARIST and DANCER:
Buenas noches!
Good Evening!
JOHN:
La llama es una cuadrupeda
que vive en grande rios parecido el Amazonas.
Ello toiene dos orejas un corazón
una frente y un pico para comiend miel.
Pero ello es suministrado con aleta pare nadando.
The llama is a quadruped which lives in big rivers like the Amazon.
It has two ears, a heart, a forehead, and a beak for eating honey.
But it is provided with fins for swimming.
GUITARIST and DANCER:
Llamas son mas grande que ranas.
Llamas are larger than frogs.
JOHN:
Llamas son peligrosa
Asi si usted ve uno donde pueblo es nodando usted grita Cuidado Llamas.
Llamas are dangerous,
so if you see one where people are swimming,
you shout:
GUITARIST and DANCER:
Cuidado cuidado cuidado Llamas
Cuidado cuidado cuidado Llamas
Ole!
Look out, there are llamas!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I totally agree. Even in print and web, I have clients who require Quark (ick!), and I use BBEdit and other independent applications for sites, rather than Dreamweaver.
What I have been thinking about is a Linux based version of their Air platform. A decent browser experience is great, but what about a desktop which remained consistent across platforms for users in specific markets?
No, we don't need Flash to be even more closed. Apple, despite basing just about everything major on open-source code (OS-X, Safari, X, etc.) they don't seem very into making code open, and say if such a major thing such as Flash was acquired by an OS maker, they could alienate Linux users even more by not providing it. Despite saying that "OS-X is so good because small parts of it are open source" Apple hasn't released major software to Linux such as iTunes and then they try to block the ways us F/OSS programmers find ways around it. Apple is just about as hostile to open source as MS is, its just that Apple knows that Linux is good, MS just thinks it should be eliminated.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Don't buyout/mergers just about always suck?
And what would be the real benefit anyway? What could the combined company do that the two companies couldn't? All the crap about "synergies" notwithstanding?
I certainly hope that Apple doesn't buy Adobe.
Cheers.
I don't know who shot first, but Adobe and Apple have had a pretty dysfunctional relationship for years. I'm not sure a closer partnership would be a great idea.
NOOOOOooooo!
Today, I'm going to acquire some coffee.
Apple should buy Sony. Apple should buy Sun. Apple should buy SGI. Apple should buy Alias Research. Apple should buy Nintendo. Apple should buy AMD. Apple should buy PortalPlayer. Apple should buy Pixo. Apple should buy Palm. Apple should buy into the 700 MHz spectrum. Apple should buy Pixar. Apple should buy Disney. Apple should buy Universal. Apple should buy TiVo. Apple should buy YouTube.
Apple has bought 2 years of flash memory, 50 more acres of land in Cupertino, Next, Coverflow, CUPS, Emagic, Nothing Real, Soundjam MP, plus goodness knows what else (feel free to add to this list.)
But Apple buying Adobe?
That'd scare the heck out of a lot of folks. Apple has bought numerous products & smaller companies for code, patents, or teams before but Adobe (+ the former Macromedia) is a peer on the software side. That'd alienate the huge Windows userbase as well as freak out the many Adobe partners.
And to gain what?
Adobe already sells massively to Apple's customers. Sure their apps may lag, but Adobe has a huge set of codebases that has gone through 68000 -> PPC --> MacOS X --> x86, so if getting things up to speed & certified on each new iteration of MacOS X takes a bit that's not unreasonable.
To Mac-ify the apps? Again, why? Sure Apple is famous for doing really good (if not perfect) UIs but Adobe has some serious credibility too. Indeed it's been pretty clear that Apple & Adobe competing directly in some areas has improved both offerings.
Sorry, but I'm guessing Apple has enough on it's plate now. They'd just be complicating an already good, already mutually profitable situation for little reason or much greater profit.
Indeed look at the list above of companies & products folks think Apple should have bought, and in retrospect consider if they really would have been good investments...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
It's bad enough you have to install iTunes with Quicktime. But to do it with a Flash upgrade or an Adobe Reader upgrade (as if Reader's upgrades weren't annoying enough), no thank you.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
...is that Adobe jumped the shark after John Warnock retired, and they're now being run by the marketing department. There's no passion in their products anymore, and they've become more hostile to their customers (in both service and usability) with each release. Apple would remind them who they're making software for (creative professionals), and remind them that passion drives creativity. ...not that I'm holding my breath for an Adobe takeover by Apple.
From what I've seen, Apple avoids anything that will give Linux the least bit of legitimacy. No iTunes, no Quicktime, attempts at breaking iPod support. I'd be afraid that if Apple acquired Adobe, Flash and Adobe Reader would quit being ported to Linux in an attempt to re-enforce Apple's position as the alternative to Microsoft.
Case closed.
Apple should buy Adobe, Adobe should buy Apple, Apple should liquidate itself, Dell should buy Apple, Time Warner should buy the whole thing and market it under the AOL brand.. Large companies don't just go around buying each other whenever it seems like a good idea.
I don't want Apple to take the development resources from either company. IMHO Adobe and Apple should in a "friendly" competition of each other products so they can each develop a better product. Monopolies stink.
Um, why are you looking at Adobe's cash and equivalents at all?
If Apple were to buy 100% Adobe, it would pay Adobe's market cap + a premium (due to goodwill and market impact costs). Adobe's market cap is at about $27B. This is considerably more than Apple's cash and equivalents; but even that doesn't matter, because Apple's ability to acquire another company isn't limited by how much cash it has, but rather, by the options available for financing the purchase (e.g., borrowing, issuing new shares, stock swaps). What financing options are available to Apple depend on aspects of Apple's ongoing business other than how much cash they have (e.g., market cap, revenue).
Are you adequate?
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Acrobat Reader 8 loads reasonably quickly on my old 800MHz box. QuickTime, on the other hand, is a useless waste of space (I don't even use it on my Mac—it's ugly as heck and is mostly useless, just a big ad for "Go Pro!"). iTunes is pretty good on OS X, but it sucks on PCs...
But nothing's worse than Java.
>All of their new apps for OS X are supporting Intel Mac only, as opposed to "Universal binaries" that work with PPC Macs too.
So, I am not in fact running Photoshop CS3 on this PowerBook G4 right now?
Or maybe I am a better tech than I thought...
The only way to write an Intel compatible GUI application is to use XCode. They may be using some in-house middleware to get their code into XCode but right now Apple is the only one who has an IDE to create Intel GUI apps.
"I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
-Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
I just posted this to the Byte Of The Apple blog at BusinessWeek.com in response. - AAH
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2007/11/apple_adobe_umm.html
Apple has $15.4 billion in cash, and as of today's closing price Adobe is worth nearly twice that at $27.5 billion. An Apple takeover would have to include a fair premium on top of that, which would make such a deal worth more than $30 billion easy.
The only way Apple could do it would be to issue stock, which would dilute its value, or take on debt. (Imagine a really big credit card.) And? Apple's stock on such a huge deal would be, um, Applesauce. Investors would flee. They usually do when big acquisitions are announced because they inject uncertainty, and investor hate uncertainty, and let's face it, Apple's on a very solid growth footing right now.
Here's the other problem: Platform Mix. As recently as 2005, the most recent year that Adobe broke the figure out, 75% of its revenue came from the Windows platform, and I'd venture to guess that that figure is about the same if slightly lower now. Watts is suggesting that an Apple-controlled Adobe would be able to encourage Windows users to switch favoring the Mac version of Adobe products, "while letting Windows versions trail behind."
Imagine buying a very expensive car, say a Jaguar, and then taking out its engine and replacing it with an inferior one. Not only have you made your car crappy to drive for yourself, but you've reduced its value substantially. Buying Adobe (which now owns Macromedia remember) and then hobbling the part of the business that brings in two-thirds to three-quarters of its revenue is a very bad business idea, and terrible way to squander Apple's hard-earned cash stockpile.
Sorry Brandon. Good idea? No.
So they can both be taken out at once?
Both make horrible products.
The photoshop interface is so disgusting I can't belive it, until I that remember photoshop was essentially a MAC product for ages, then it all makes sense.
As others have stated, given their respective market capitalizations and Apple's cash on hand, it's not impossible. It does seem like it would make a lot of sense too, from a business standpoint.
As for an anti-trust case against Apple, I don't see how that would work. Apple and Adobe don't have a lot of overlap in their products... Apple buying Adobe wouldn't remove any competition as far as I can tell. It would have been more of an issue when Adobe acquired Macromedia.
As for open standards, it seems to me like as far as companies go, Apple has done alright as far as working with the open source community, haven't they? I see no reason why Apple in control of Postscript/PDF's future is any worse than Adobe being in control. It's not like either of them are Microsoft.
Also, with Apple now requiring future applications on Mac OS X to be Cocoa apps, and Photoshop's huge Carbon codebase... Adobe probably needs some help porting it over to Cocoa. Adobe's fortunes really were built on top of the Mac. It makes pretty good sense. I don't think it would really remove any Windows competition either... although the UI for Adobe's applications on Windows might start deviating away from a native Windows look and feel. As we've seen with iTunes, QuickTime, and Safari... Apple likes to do things their own way. Although something needs to be said for Adobe's interfaces which everyone is by now used to and comfortable with.
For the record, as of CS3 (July 2007), Premiere is available for the Mac again.
Your other points are all valid. Anybody who wrote "Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing" clearly doesn't actually know any professional video editors.
Given my experiences, thus far, I wish there was less painful interoperability between Adobe's video editing and effects software and Apple's own tools -- but not at the expense of a merger (or worse, potentially losing Windows support). If anything, I'd like to see Adobe's creative software extended to more platforms, rather than fewer. There are a lot of folks out there who would explode with joy to get their hands on a real Linux version of Photoshop.
No, this wouldn't be the game of Monopoly, but it would be a familiar Wall Street game of corporate take-over... and a stupid one at that.
After the Time Warner / AOL fiasco has resolved into a case of "what were they thinking!?!" and BEA smartly tells Oracle to stuff it, let's look at the idea of Apple taking over Adobe.
First of all, Apple is a company that CEO Steve Jobs has somehow managed to steer into remarkable growth. Ten years ago they merged and integrated with NeXT. Probably not all that hard since both were Steve's babies and both were geographically located in the same place and both were relatively small in terms of staff size. I'm sure the corporate culture transformation had its bumps, but not too bad.
Just imagine merging Apple and Adobe, which I believe is housed in Seattle. Now we're talking about a two-campus company, rewriting the corporate management style-guide, firing sales staff and overlapping departments, yada yada yada. That would be mess #1.
Then think about the move of the Adobe code to Apple technology standards. Only an idiot would think Photoshop needs to be re-written as a Cocoa app. Do you really think we would get a better version of Creative Suite 4 next technology cycle? The new product development plans would evolve into mess #2.
Apple does what it does well: they REALLY innovate and focus on User Interface evolution. They see software market opportunities (Final Cut Pro, iLife, Aperture, etc.) and they expand their product line slowly and carefully. They are for the computer industry what Southwest Airlines has been for the Airline Industry for the past 30 years. If they bought Adobe (and other vulnerable software companies) "just because" without any strategy or focus they would become as irrelevant as Sony or Microsoft are becoming.
Now what would be nice would be seeing them slowly and steadily applying their cash into the hiring and development of the best & brightest of computer programming (and hardware engineering and design) talent. Don't buy Adobe and get stuck with some brilliant and some mediocre programmers; poach the top talent away from Adobe with top paychecks. That's my Good Idea #1.
I have one more Good Idea #2: create an incubation machine that finds programming talent and innovative spirit and spins off small software companies that can write incredible native-Apple killer apps. Apple has the corporate strategy, the design methodology, and the technology. They also exist in only one geographic location in the country. (And I, a developer in New York City, would kill for an opportunity to do Apple-platform development without moving to CA.) And I will agree that there are many apps and utilities that are needed--especially in the business/corporate IT niche--that exceed what the small Shareware developers can manage. If Apple could spin-off smaller Apple subsidiaries that had a stronger link to "the mothership", and if Apple invested some of its cash reserves into ongoing but cash-strapped projects (Gimp and OpenOffice are real, albeit imperfect, examples) we might get somewhere.
The really interesting challenge will be if Apple can grow in size while avoiding the bureaucratic morass that large corporations so often become. We shall see what the future holds...
Murray Todd Williams
Actually they are using XCode. The issue is that they are using some x86 assembly.
Dude, you are so full of shit, it's untrue. For the record, Adobe just made a (very) painful transition to XCode from CodeWarrior, specifically for the purpose of making Universal binaries. Secondly, I have CS3, on a PPC eMac. And it seems to run! Shock.
Secondly, even if you were somehow right on the whole develop-for-windows-then-port-to-mac bullshit, why did Lightroom get released as a beta to Mac-only (as a universal I'd add). It was only later they ported it to windows. If anything, your idea is totally backwards. From the evidence available, it seems that Adobe are developing for mac, then porting to windows. Although I have it on good authority they have a core codebase that's OS independant, then the coding teams make the OS-dependant bit around that, with the Mac version being ready sooner because said core is made in XCode. Don't know how true that is, but I'd suspect fairly.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Both Apple and Adobe both have annoying update notification software and bundled crap. I installed Safari on Windows for web testing purposes and am regularly asked if I want to install QuickTime and iTunes (even if I'm not running Safari). There is no "Don't ask me again" checkbox, and no matter how many times I click Cancel, it eventually asks me again a few weeks later. As I recall, Adobe Acrobat regularly asks me if I want to update Acrobat Professional. NO MEANS NO!
iTunes - Gay because my music stopped playing when I reloaded too many times. Hello mp3sparks.com.
QuickSlime - Gay because it has a crappy interface, sucks on Windows, and asks me to upgrade to QuickSlime Pro and/or upgrade something else that is gay that I never use. Real Player is less annoying.
Acrobat Professional - Gay because it asks me to regularly install updates even though I keep saying NO.
If Apple buys Adobe then it will mean the end of Flash for Linux.
signature is pants
Logic Studio is a great professional solution for editing audio... Logic Studio is a professional solution. I guarantee you it's not a great solution. Maybe in a few more years.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Adobe could sell dedicated computers loaded with their gear. With Linux, they could do it at a discount, and totally Kick Ass.
Getting it all to work with every known printer on earth could be a problem, though....
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Who ever suggested this obviously has absolutely NO experience in digital media or content creation in a creative professional environment. As much I love Apple and Mac, saying that they should aquire Adobe makes as much sense as saying Microsoft should to the same. All the iLife/iMovie/iDVD cannot even be compared to the Adobe suite of products, as CS goes far beyond what the iProducts do. Even putting them in the same category reeks of ignorance. I am sorry, this is simply a rediculous suggestion and I hope to high heavens it never happens. Let Adobe worry about producing high end media content creation software, and let Apple worry about making amazing platforms to run both the software and end product on.
...they don't just stay on the Macs.
I'd rather a competitor was born, but frankly, for many of these people? Not gonna happen. A Mac, even with Windows under Parallels, would become a requirement for professional graphics work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
hahahaahHAHAHAH you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about. Keep it up!
So Microsoft doesn't!!!....and to protect Adobe from MS...MS has been testing the graphics waters an is getting ready to strike, we all know Balmer doesn't like anyone dominating a market but MS.
FCP is definitely not the industry standard for professional video editing. That title is still held by Avid's Media Composer. Yes, the prosumer wannabe wedding video/Youtube editors running around with HDV cameras are using hacked copies of FCP, but anything with a real production budget is being cut on Avid Media Composer, the standard for professional editors.
In recent years, Mac market share in universities and schools has been skyrocketing all over the classes, as far as I can tell. Unix + nice UI + Office + nicely designed hardware + ability to run Windows if needed seems to sell to students more than to most other people. When I started studying computer science in 00, there were maybe 5-10 Mac owners in 200 students. Even between 00 and 05, Mac market share has been rising steadily, Nowadays, where I used to study, it looks more like 50-50, maybe with a slight advantage for Macs.
As far as Adobe's market share is concerned, I think for their pro apps (like Photoshop or Illustrator; not including those where Apple competes with Adobe), it's about 50-50 between Windows and Macintosh. At least that was the last number I heard, about two years ago. Adobe even went back into the Mac market with some apps that compete with Apple, after leaving those markets a few years ago.
Anyway, all graphic designers and even a huge number of architects I know use Macs, I think mainly for ease of networking and general ease of use, good system-level support for color calibration, and font rendering that mimicks print instead of changing fonts for clearer on-screen display.
You know, in todays world people are allowed to think out loud without building a career on thinking first.
Stupid idea. Hope it never happens. Apple has a worse track record of sharing than any other computer manufacturer, even to the extent of making Intel hardware proprietary to OSX. I would expect to kiss Photoshop on Windows goodbye...
I still believe it's a correct assumption to say Adobe was not building any of their applications using Apple's xcode as their development tool.
:( > http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/03/macintosh_and_t.html
Wrong again
Mid 80's Quark announced they were going to buy Adobe and kill InDesign...Adobe fought like hell and Quark didn't have the cash in the bank. Adobe needs to remain an independent company. The real threat is Microsoft wanting to get it's hands on the flash code, however Google is currently providing a nice distraction! Thanks Google. Adobe is on more desktops than you know, especially enterprise, with Adobe Professional. Looking into my crystal ball I see Adobe buying out Maxon Cinema 4D (they were out on tour together this summer,) Making in-roads in higher education with the Tech Comm Suite and Captivate, and Corporate training with some of the other products acquired over the past couple of years... And no Adobe will never run on linux (except under Wine) And they are halfway to developing their own OS as Buzzwords will put a crimp in Microsoft's office Numbers
LKM, you make some really good points. Macs were able to do the color calibration and font rendering needed for graphic design well before Windows was able to. From what I've heard from most graphic designers, it wasn't even acceptable quality on Windows until XP was released.
I think the gap between to the two operating systems is now much closer than it used to be in this regard, but, Mac OS X is still ahead.
There are clear Font Rendering differences, though. Check out this recent article by Joel Spolsky, in which he writes: The nice thing about the Apple algorithm is that you can lay out a page of text for print, and on screen, you get a nice approximation of the finished product. This is especially significant when you consider how dark a block of text looks. (...) The advantage of Microsoft's method is that it works better for on-screen reading. Both rendering techniques have their advantages; Apple's is just better suited for designers who design for print.
What about acquiring something smaller with less troubles and improve application to meet the best Apple standards? I'm talking about Pixel Image Editor ... http://www.kanzelsberger.com/ ... look at upcoming version to be released in near future, looks really polished to me and comparable to Photoshop as well: http://www.kanzelsberger.com/temp/eliquid2a.png
Photoshop for Linux? Wine? No. http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Since when is idle speculation friggin news?