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Against Apple, Ballmer Floats Microsoft Merger With Adobe
Ebbesen writes "Ballmer had a meeting with the CEO of Adobe, and among other things: 'The meeting, which lasted over an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could partner in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.' Apparently MS has courted Adobe previously, but feared anti-trust regulations. With Google and Apple gaining, Microdobe might be possible."
Two companies that don't know shit about security teaming up. I have never been so happy I bought a Mac.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Oh don't worry, they will integrate Adobe Flash at the kernel level in Windows. That will make everything super safe!
Or maybe integrate it into the context menus or associate it with explorer - we can only hope...
Plus with automatic updates you can be sure that updating other operating systems will become "less important", but that is okay, like everyone uses Windows right?
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
This might finally convince Apple to make their own graphics suite. Adobe hasn't been an innovator for a long time, and they don't write good software.
This is a good example of why Microsoft's future looks so gloomy. Instead of coming out with new ways of doing things, better, more efficient ways, things that delight users, they think of ways they can screw other companies like Apple and Google that ARE doing those things.
Buy Adobe for mobile? Is there an Adobe phone I haven't seen? Has Adobe developed a successful phone/pad OS I'm not aware of? What, pray-tell, does Adobe have in mobile?
Perhaps this is about Flash. Silverlight must not be meeting expectations... Anyhow, few care about Flash in mobile, really. Both iPhonePad and Android are succeeding largely without it. Vector graphics and playing movies are solved problems.
The only company with a credible counter to Apple's iPhonePad is Google, and Microsoft can't afford to buy Google. I really can't imagine how you rationalize what would be the huge purchase cost of Adobe on the basis of 'battle against apple' in the 'mobile phone' market when Adobe brings so little to the table.
Anyhow, go buy Flash if you want Ballmer. HTML5 trumps all that nonsense anyhow. Canvas is already better than flash because it's not a plug-in. I've used WebM/VP8 with ffmpeg and it works fine and looks great. The only reason these new tools haven't replaced the legacy stuff is lack of motivation. Perhaps Microsoft will provide it.
You can't buy the Internet Ballmer. It doesn't like you.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I've always hated adobe. Adobe reader is the one thing throughout history that has been able to crash my browser. It's like they don't have a clue how to write a good program (Less offensively, I'd guess that they have no fear wiring too deeply into the OS where perhaps they should). Before acrobat, ATM for Windows was one of the most destabilizing pieces of software around, so I already kind of had an attitude about them.
Then came Flash. Holy cow they started to give Adobe a run for their money when it came to the ability to crash browsers at will and they added something new into the mix--they could eat a CPU like nobody's business. Luckily they merged--I don't like it when my hate becomes defocused.
A low-lying dislike underneath all this has been Microsoft. I don't find them as annoying as the other two--I think MS has a HUGE job and takes on too much. Lately though I've been avoiding windows--mostly because of the swiss-cheese security (I refuse to use a credit card on any windows PC--I'm fairly sure they are all infected with some kind of rootkit)
Anyway, since I've moved all my home PCs to either Linux or OSX, I would really appreciate it if Microsoft would do me the favor of once more refocusing my hate back into a single horrifying but somewhat avoidable target.
...did you get the living shit beat out of you in school?
The irony is that the new AdobeSoft would likely start supporting Linux and OSX to a lesser degree (or drop Linux "since no one uses it") which would make Flash even more irrelevant. There are already valid PDF readers and creators, so Acrobat is superfluous already.
That leaves Photoshop and a handful of video and image tools. An important segment, but history has shown us that any "must have" application can be replaced with the proper application of time and money. Since 95% of people use Photoshop for RGB only, IBM could throw some money at GIMP, leaving only the CMYK crowd stuck with Photoshop. Besides, 90% of the 95% are pirating it anyway, and with Microsoft's control, that will be reduced enough to open the market. Just a thought.
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