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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."
I just vomited in my coffee.
Facebook is the new AOL
This is horrifiyng news. What would happen to Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign?
Microsoft and Adobe merging is an option that would increase efficiency. That way I can direct my hatred in one direction with less distraction from various evil companies.
One less company to hate.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Adobe bought Macromedia back in distant times, so if Microsoft buy Adobe, won't that make them Micromacrobe?
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
'nuff said - two of the worst security records and they want to merge.
Oh God, I so hope this happens. Microsoft may have a bad reputation for security, but quite honestly nothing is as big a nightmare for IT than anything and everything Adobe. Reader, Flash, CS... it's all a perpetual pain in the butt that Adobe always drops the ball with deployment and maintenance.
Plus maybe then we can stop every MS site from needing SilverLight and every MS application installing an XPS Viewer/Printer.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
So....Flash will suck on my Ubuntu machines even more now? I'm going to go cry myself to sleep tonight.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Microdobe? Please.
If Adobe is lucky, they will be "Adobe, an independently managed subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation".
More likely, Adobe + Microsoft = Microsoft.
Double the evil, double the fun.
It's bad enough Mac users still have to install MS Office because it won't really interoperate with things like iWork or open office. Now imagine all those Mac creative types experiencing the pain of a MS-owned and focused Adobe.
I have to say, this is a crazy time to be in IT, software, and the mobile space. It's almost reminiscent of the chaos of the dot-com days: constant tech churn, companies rising and falling, etc. Hopefully we can avoid the bubble part ;-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Photoshop down the shitter?
I'm not a Mac user myself, but my very first thought of this whole thing was of my friends who DO use Mac systems... and that if Microsoft + Adobe happens, then what will happen to Photoshop and other Adobe based products on the Mac platforms?
... that has to get Ballmer's sweat stains out of the furniture in that meeting room!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I know we all hate Flash, but we need it (sometimes) and I doubt Microbe would continue development on Flash for Linux.
....giggle like a schoolgirl.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If they make money, Microsoft will keep making them.
EG: Microsoft Office for Mac
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Microsoft has replaced postscript with XPS. IE and Silverlight can display XPS, so goodbye Acrobat. Silverlight does video and RIA. Goodbye Flash. Expression Blend can do what Illustrator does, although it's not as mature.
And with no one giving MS a chance of succeeding in the mobile space, the time may be right to sidestep antitrust issues.
Microsoft gets a migration path from Adobe to Silverlight. Adobe shareholders get $$$'s and not uncertainty.
The uncertainty will come from the government.
Microsoft and Adobe are now going to be Microbe, I always suspected they virus'
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
.....and kill off Cold Fusion once and for all.
>>>One less company to hate.
"Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's bad enough that Adobe bloated Macromedia's products after the merger. MS would turn Dreamweaver into a 20GB version of FrontPage 97.
The same thing that is happening now. Adobe products on the mac aren't all that great anymore.
After 12 years and a few days, I finally gave in to the dark side and joined slashdot.
This whole week, I've had to deal with infections from Flash drive-by insecurity and stupid people still using IE.
I guess I'll look seriously into starting to use Gimp, Xara LX and Inkscape. Are there any good open source photo editors / bitmap graphics applications?
Just what we need is _both_ Microsoft and Adobe screwing up flash on the Mac. That will ensure it never sees the light of day on an iPhone.
It's called Silverlight.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
ColdFusion used to be great. When it was just owned by Allaire. Then MacroMedia walks into the picture, buys Allaire and starts putting out buggy ColdFusion releases. Then Adobe buys MacroMedia and people thought they would handle ColdFusion better, but soon found out that all they really were doing was cramming Flash in it to make it even buggier and bloated.
I love CFML, but I haven't used Adobe's ColdFusion in over 2 years. Railo and BlueDragon for me.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Saying a Mac is secure is like saying you can't get STDs from a fleshlight.
The language is technically correct, but it implies a lack of experience and understanding.
If this happened, the merged company should be called Adobe. MS would do best to try to leave it's past behind. And it's present.
It looks like you're trying to edit that spring break photo with that guy you thought was a chick.
Would you like help?
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Well, that merger would spell the death of Flash pretty damn quickly. What, you think Microsoft would keep Flash _and_ Silverlight? You think they'd keep Flash _instead_ of Silverlight? Don't kid yourself - they are a corporate culture company with political infighting of the worst degree. The Microsoft team would do everything and then some to ensure that all products that Adobe made that duplicated existing Microsoft products were wiped from the face of computing. If they're willing to nonchallantly stab fellow Microsoft execs in the back to ensure their product gets favoured treatment, just think how ruthless they'll be against non-Microsoft execs...
When these two bloated behemoths merge, a black hole will inevitably form... and my job is just on the other side of Lake Washington, at UW. There's no way we'll escape from the gravitational well!
I think I'm gonna call in sick on the day they sign the merger papers.
#DeleteChrome
Clearly, any potential merger makes for a damn good reason to keep Flash off the iPhone, and support HTML 5. Platform neutrality is rather important here.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Both companies ship code riddled with bugs and obsolete code. They were made for each other.
Sand People code single file to hide their line count.
Frankly, I agree. The threat of Microsoft pulling Office prompted them to make iWork and, quite frankly, I like the suite a great deal more than Office. If this pushes Apple to do the same for graphics programs, I'll be a very happy camper. Would the creative suite be as polished as Adobe CS right off the bat? Obviously not but Apple does know a thing or two about developing software packages so I'm pretty confident it wouldn't take them too long to get things working at a professional level.
As I recall, the reason OpenOffice can export to PDFs natively and Office can't is because Adobe didn't trust Microsoft with the relevant code. (Or it may have been something to do with licensing, could someone else chime in here? Either way, Adobe wouldn't let them do it.) Anyhow, I would expect we could see that feature "coming soon to a Ribbon near you".
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
So will adobe reader be rebadged as windows 8?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I can't believe you just used "fleshlight" in the same sentence as "experience and understanding"
The same thing that is happening now. Adobe products on the mac aren't all that great anymore.
You can blame Apple and their constantly changing direction for that. How can you add in new features if you have to rewrite the core of the software just to account for Apple's newest platform changes? Adobe is still catching up after Apple yanked 64-bit Carbon support out from under them.
It would make more sense for them to discontinue Photoshop altogether than to cut the OSX version. It would be much more likely that MS would sell the rights to Photoshop than discontinuing the OSX version, given that the professionals that use Photoshop mainly use OSX.
EG: Microsoft Office for Mac ie MS Adobe for Mac: $$$ and massive version drift.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They perhaps don't care about security and but they are masters of software bloat !
Their programs are insanely huge.
Apple would have to perfect color seperation, trapping, CMYK, plug ins and work flows.
Who knows what is left on the OS X dev side of Apple to make their own graphics suite?
Anything on the open market?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I have never used Mac Office, Open office has been good enough for my uses. Although I do know that Entourage is truly an abomination.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
This would be great. Get rid of flash for silverlight and user expression blend. I guess they could keep PDFs.
Boo-freakin-hoo! Apple told developers ten years ago that Carbon was just a bridge to the new OS and that Cocoa was the way to go. Adobe knew full well that sooner or later, carbon applications were going to be second-class citizens; and spent the last ten years with their heads in the sand about it.
Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
As if millions of geeks suddenly cried out in pain.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Ok, lets just play with this for a bit. Perhaps Microsoft should skip Adobe and buy Corel instead. They'd save tonnes of cash and get many high end and comparable products taht are very respectable and powerful (DRAW, Painter, Photopaint - they could kill off Word Perfect finally). Hmmmm, OK, lets look at this from a reciprocal fashion - maybe if Adobe gets taken over by Microsoft...Apple buys Corel instead. They get an instant professional quality office suite and the graphic programs too. Not only that, they get to decide if they'll play only on Mac OS or on Windows. Anyhow, if Adobe gets bought out I'd keep an eye North of the border...Corel is ripe for the picking too.
Two large, lumbering companies with zero agility that have coasted for a decade on their successful products from the 90s and failed with everything since, decide to become one larger company that's less agile, less creative, and even less likely to do something game changing or even newly profitable.
Yeah, that's some scary competition. What did Bill Gates say so many years ago? Something like "We didn't want to become IBM"? Well, IBM, in a corporate sense, has become far more dynamic than MS is today. Don't see a merger with Adobe changing that.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Yes live webcam streaming will be fun. Html5 support is ??, with flash knifed, Silverlight 4 support is CaptureDeviceConfiguration.AllowedDeviceAccess _captureSource.Start(); for all.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I highly doubt that Microsoft will buy Adobe. More than likely, they are looking into possible ways to get Flash on their new Windows 7 Phone OS so that they can have a larger legion of developers making games for their new mobile OS to more easily compete with the iOS from Apple.
If they include Adobe products in an MSDN subscription it might be a big win for consumers. Also I would be amazed if Acrobat, Photoshop and other products are discontinued. Those are very popular products, many of them the industry standard. I think the MS bashing is too much. MS products are a lot more accessible to the average consumer AND developer than Apple's products and Ubuntu. Plus MS has excellent product documentation and offers express versions of many products for free. They also have great partnering programs for developers with cheap access to full MSDN subscriptions. There are reasons why MS and Adobe are industry leaders. The complaints about bugs and security are exaggerated and unreasonable. This might be bad for Adobe employees and Apple, but for consumers and shareholders it makes sense.
If Microsoft buys Adobe, then Apple would go ahead and develop replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Cannibalism outside a monopoly is good when starting up.
Play loss leader and grow. Long term, as you said "efficient ways, things that delight users" has to be the way.
Generations should know, never use MS, in a few years what you did wont be supported in some area and is $$$ time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Microsoft and Apple have market caps something like 220 and 260 Billion respectively, and apple looks to have made profits in excess of 15 billion in just the last 2 years, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/20results.html. This could just be Adobe trying to spark an interest in Apple to look into buying them. I think that it would have some potentially positive effects, mostly that there would be the king of creative production suites. However, flash would most certainly be killed off which can be taken different ways depending on you camp. If MS acquired Adobe there is again potential for a comprehensive software suite, gosh I wish you could merge acrobat and word.
Nor would Google sell. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin still control 67% of the voting power, not random shareholders, and I doubt they would have any interest in selling.
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I don't see this as a good idea for either company. Both companies have similar strengths and weaknesses - call them evil, rail against them or whatever - the companies have products that hit the same value curve in the market place. They are weak against their competition in the same ways, and strong in the same ways, to state the point again. Add to that the other points brought up in this conversation - how Microsoft has already attempted to compete against every one of Adobe's primary products - and there isn't much motivation for Microsoft or Adobe to make this happen. I'm a little skeptical that this will go anywhere.
It is amazing what the two of them can do separately, imagine what incredible damage they could do together...
You'll surely hate the remainder twice as much.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
For my part, I just hope that they don't do with ColdFusion what they did with Visual Fox Pro. It was a shame at the time and it would be the same now.
I also use Photoshop and Lightroom but they are cashcows and MS has nothing to compete against so I guess they will be safe for a while until Microsoft does a rewrite and completely FUBARs them.
I think that many people would reuse their existing hardware to install a new OS and learn it rather than dump their library of existing digital "assets" and expertise in favour of an unknown solution delivered at an unknown point in the future by an unknown competitor.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
...and as well as Adobe Illustrator, whe M$ will acquire Adobe.
FTFY
-]Phreak Out[-
Boo-freakin-hoo! Apple told developers ten years ago that Carbon was just a bridge to the new OS and that Cocoa was the way to go. Adobe knew full well that sooner or later, carbon applications were going to be second-class citizens; and spent the last ten years with their heads in the sand about it.
I've seen this argument before, and research shows it doesn't hold any water. Besides, if this switch to Cocoa was so absolutely going to be required, why did Apple even suggest that 64-bit Carbon was going to happen? Why is Final Cut Pro, Apple's own software, still in Carbon? The Boo is on you sir.
The Microbee was a home computer from Australia in the early 80s. With a merger between Microsoft and Adobe, they may just catch its performance.
Any company that couldn't figure out they should get off Carbon and migrate to Cocoa within ten years is too stupid to live.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
When 2 of the losers in the mainframe wars, Sperry-Univac and Burroughs merged they touted the deal as being "the power of 2" as in exponential power. Those of us who worked with these companies or their products and a lot of others more accurately described the merger outcome as "the power of 1/2".
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Given that Adobe hasn't upgraded to Cocoa precisely because they don't want to orphan people's libraries of existing photoshop plugins (which Adobe is terrified might cause them to switch to a different piece of software, if they're going to have to re-buy everything anyway), I doubt people will switch to a different OS and force that same re-buy on themselves voluntarily.
Microsoft has crippled Office on the Mac by not providing MS Access and binary compatible automation piece to let people build their own groupware out of it, but it's unlikely they would do the same to Photoshop. They are far far more likely to introduce a "Flash II" product *cough* Sliverlight *cough*, which is basically the same thing they did when they introduced Microsoft Money.
-- Terry
Adobe's 32-bit carbon apps suck ass. They're somewhat better in Windows, but they've still got a horrible and inconsistent UI.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Along those lines... How close do you think Apple is to already having such a Graphics software package? They've been sparring with Adobe around the edges for a bit with their video programs and such. And just like Microsoft Office and iWork, it's possibly a critical enough area for Apple to have some investment in preserving whether or not Adobe agrees.
I don't know anyone who suggested 64 bit Carbon...
It was pretty obvious to me that you couldn't jam a 64 bit inode and a 128 bit volume UUID into a file manager binary file format that could only store two 32 bit values.
But then, I can do math.
-- Terry
I'm open to being corrected.
And, if you've read about DR-DOS, it wouldn't be the first time.
But why argue, just rank me as flamebait... easier than thinking, isn't it?
and that if Microsoft + Adobe happens, then what will happen to Photoshop and other Adobe based products on the Mac platforms?
They'll continue to suck as they have for the past decade.
Will this help re-establish the ability of the printers in my office to reliably print the various editions of pdf's to 2001 standards?
I sort of hope they do, because the way Apple plays things, you'd know at the next "big thing" event we'd get a less bloated, faster Photoshop clone. Honestly, Apple could probably merge Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign into one speedy app: iDesign.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
You are correct the creators of Final Cut Pro should have their company shut down and its assets sold off.
First of all people, if Microsoft merges with Macrobe, either the Micro and Macro cancel out, and you get Adobesoft, which is too sensible, or you drop the Micro (being smaller than Macro) and run with Macrobesoft, which is just right for a slow, bloated mess of feeping creaturism.
Second of all, it won't happen, because it would be opening the Sixth Seal, and the resultant horror would make Cthulhu blanch. It would exceed the Planck limits for the amount of evil in one area, and thus the laws of Cosmic Censorship would force a M-Brane to wrap the whole lot up in a nice event horizon.
www.eFax.com are spammers
iTunes uses Carbon.
I don't believe this is really on the cards:
a) Releasing spurious leaks to the press seems to be par for the course in business negotiations now.
b) Adobe are desperate to somehow put the shitters up Apple, and get them to allow Flash on their phones.
c) If this was legit it would be very unlikely to be leaked the way it has been.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It isn't users that dislike software diversity as much as it is software companies. The overlap between Adobe and Microsoft is huge just like it was for Adobe and Macromedia. No one should be happy about this. We will only end up with more "Gimp vs Photoshop" type of arguments as there will be no other choices but the 1 comercial and the one open source one.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
XPS shows everything wrong with MS, even with a rival (!) like Adobe.
They come up with a "document" standard and yet they didn't even ship a viewer (let alone some virtual printer) for OS X. I am not even mentioning Linux support which is big deal on corporate. I don't want to cost anyone their job at that weirdo company so not giving any examples but it seems, they do create a lot of docs on OS X, export to PDF (or PS), re-export to XPS on a Windows machine/bot.
That is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to PDF. Just imagine if XPS really replaced PDF. It wouldn't be a nice day for anyone not using Windows on Desktop/Mobile. I am not even sure if there is an official XPS viewer for Windows 7 Mobile.
I got creative friends and imagine my surprise when I find out about "Expression" software, as I am not in that segment, I asked them and they -too- didn't have a clue about that software. They had a good laugh when they heard they are supposed to use "that thing" (their words) to do work for Silverlight. You know, in dream World of MS (and Ballmer), designers even use MS Visual Studio and OS X using designers install Eclipse to do Silverlight. Yea, right.
the software with good designers taken over by the company with the bad designers.. ugh. please, no. com'on - apple - adobe - please forget about your flash/html5 differences -- the creative suite would die the death of a thousand papercuts if it became run by the people who designed microsoft word. ugh. please, no.
This merger is the best idea to come out of tech since AOL/Timewarner!
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Seems like a good match to me, considering both companies are notorious for pushing the upgrade cycle at twice the speed it needs to go while consumers just ignore them and say, "Hey, I'm fine running Photoshop 6 on Windows XP!"
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Enjoy your new all Silverlight Photoshop.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was on the fence before in this adobe vs apple thing... but if adobe jumps in with ms like that, I'm definitely on apple's side!!!
They'll keep making them, but the Windows versions will always be the main focus. They'll get released with the new features first.
Actually, that's not too different than the way things are now.
I really hope Apple buys Adobe instead.
Microsoft Silverlight is a competitor with Adobe Flash. Neither are supported on the iOS platform. How will this help them team up against Apple? Let them buy Adobe. The only people who that will hurt are the people at Adobe.
"Nothing intrinsically wrong"
It is a business trust and it's illegal.
"we can look forward to bloated, insecure flash". Bloody hell, it's here today!
P.S. - Thank you developers of Flash Block
they used oss to build an os and a browser, among other things; maybe they can take the gimp to new levels. between that and the base they've built with aperture, i'm sure they could be competitive in the photo retouching world in short order.
as someone who lives on adobe software on a mac, i feel like a little kid watching his parents divorce. why can't they just get along?
do not read this line twice.
They could hit Apple where it hurts.
Adobe/MS could give an Update of the CS suite for free for anybody who has an CS for Mac OS X and switches to Win. Or: MS give a boiled-down Version of the CS (e.g. no CMYK mode in the free version would probably be enough to keep professionals buying the real product) for free with windows or they add it on to the MS office suite. In that case Adobe tools would be standard immediately, and people could use a decent editor for vector art.
And a discontinuation of Flash for OS X would make consumer consider to switch.
Last I checked, the number of Android handsets that will ship this year absolutely dwarfed the number of iOS handsets. Meanwhile, Flash is huge on Android.
I see more for Microsoft to gain from this arrangement than Adobe.
I'm fine with this if Photoshop is the new MS Paint.
I can't disagree more. The creative world is based on Adobe products: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, and Dreamweaver. 3D apps like Cinema 4D, Maya, and all the rest use PSD & Illustrator files as a base for compositions. AE is used in the film industry like crazy, and many docu film makers even use PremierPro as a primary NLE. Every app mentioned works flawlessly in CS5 on a Mac, and is critical for uncountable small businesses around the world. Granted, all of the above is way overpriced and ridiculously bloated, but it all does work, and in most cases, exceptionally stable. Talk of open source alternatives in this regard is just that, talk. So I can't imagine what MS could bring to the table to make an improvement, but I can imagine how it could frack it all up. So I for one hope this never comes to pass. I make my living based on Adobe software, and I don't want MS messing around in that. Here's to many more years of CS++, at least till I retire...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Remarkably similar to how they handled security, actually. MS has at least done a bit better there in the last few years.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Adobe doesn't manufacture gadgets.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Apple could release a program to compete with Photoshop and it might actually work all right. But I'm not sure they could make an entire line of products as good as Illustrator, Indesign, Flash, or Dreamweaver. It would require a great deal of effort and a large team of programmers to make viable alternatives to Adobe's stranglehold on creative products.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I suspect iTunes is in for a big overhaul soon, and not just because it uses Carbon.
Why is Final Cut Pro, Apple's own software, still in Carbon?
Because they're probably busy re-writing their many other apps in Cocoa. There's probably a Cocoa version of FCP being developed in the bowels of Apple as we speak.
3D apps like Cinema 4D, Maya, and all the rest use PSD & Illustrator files as a base for compositions
Yet for some reason most 3D artists use targa or tiff for most things (with a few crazy holdouts insisting on using IFF).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I don't think Microsoft ever profitably merged/acquired another company. Often Microsoft uses mergers to shut down competitors. But Adobe doesn't compete directly against Microsoft in Microsoft's only two profitable businesses: Windows and Office. Adobe does compete against Microsoft with Flash, but Silverlight is more of a hobby for Microsoft anyway. Acquiring Adobe is bound to be expensive, and if Microsoft has any business sense, they would continue improving Adobe's profitable product lines, including Photoshop for Macintosh. Otherwise, Microsoft is just wasting the share holder's money. I think as a share holder, I will join the calls for Steve Ballmer's removal if he blows a few tens of billions on this.
As bad as this would likely be, I can think of a single benefit: Adobe patches being deployable over WSUS.
At my work, I maintain the WSUS server that manages updates for a few hundred Windows PCs. Centralizing Windows Updates is a Good Thing, but we still have to send a minion around every month or so to make sure that Flash, Adobe Reader, Acrobat Pro, and non-MS browsers have all their patches. Being able to keep common threat vectors (Flash and Adobe Reader) patched easily and centrally managed would be a huge improvement. I'd imagine it being even better for larger organizations.
I doubt they're going to produce a Flash-based phone with Photoshop thrown in.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If they make money, Microsoft will keep making them.
It's not always as simple as that in these big companies.
If you have two departments doing essentially the same thing and both pull in $1,000,000 per year while costing $600,000 per year, it is quite common to merge the departments, get rid of a number of staff and wind up with a single department that you hope will bring in $2,000,000 per year but only cost around $900,000. The numbers may vary but the idea remains much the same.
* blank stare *
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I was about to argue that point, then I realized that both Final Cut and iTunes are in Carbon, which means you believe Apple is too stupid to live.. Kudos to you, you are smart little Apple-fan.
Between Expression, Silverlight, FrontPage, Movie Maker and the like on the desktop and various server offerings, I think Microsoft has a direct competitor to almost everything in Adobe's product line. The two notable exceptions are Adobe's Soundbooth and Premier. To my knowledge, Microsoft does not have professional grade audio and video software.
I don't see a merger getting past The Man without a firesale of most of the present Adobe product line. But that product line would be the entire reason Microsoft would want Adobe. Consequently, I don't see a merger happening anytime soon. I suspect that the real reason for the scuttlebutt about a possible merger are negotiations both companies are having with third parties.
As a user of Photoshop since 2.0 on the Mac, a user of most of Adobe's other products since they were owned by other companies I might offer a bit of a different take on this:
Adobe used to be a valued partner both in business and spirit for Apple. Both companies grew. Apple maintained much of its entrepreneurial spirit. Adobe didn't. Since the early days, Apple has transformed numerous times in numerous ways. Apple's newest direction indeed takes it more towards broad consumer 'data ubiquity' devices much like what Ford's did with cars. That doesn't mean they are abandoning the Mac "truck" (to use Steve's analogy) line, but that line is mature.
In the same time, Adobe has done about a millimeter beyond porting their software to different architectures and platforms. I've watched them do nothing year after year. I like the heal brush, and I use it occasionally. I like the increased integration of pdf/illustrator. To be fair, InDesign is nice, but largely unrealized and unpolished. Is that 15 years of development? When Adobe was a bright star, the applications were written by teams in the 2-digit range. Adobe has adopted the Microsoft 4-digit development team strategy, and it shows. Watching Adobe's fit about Apple's (good) decision regarding flash was simply sad to watch, and I knew how bad things must be in SanJose.
Today, I dread launching any Adobe product, especially on anything less than a 8-core Mac Pro. I use it when I must because its the mortar between the bricks.
What Adobe doesn't understand is that today, to write a Photoshop killer, an Illustrator killer, even an InDesign killer is possible and Adobe's monopoly stranglehold on the graphics industry has almost decayed completely from a technical point of view. If the merger happened today, I'm afraid Apple would have (superior) replacements available quickly. I look forward to these. People will migrate easily, and then the inevitable; some Windows-users will actually switch just to get them, and Apple gets stronger. (If this seems like a fanboy fantasy look into the history of Safari/webkit, Final Cut Pro, and Aperture.)
I already miss the old Adobe, I won't miss the current husk that it is now.
Suggestion to Adobe: instead of merging with another bloatware company, consider focusing on efficiency, hiring some imaging-technology innovators and axing the old guard.
What are you disputing? That Apple didn't tell people Carbon was a crutch, ten years ago? They did. I was there.
Apple did make a mistake. They kept Carbon going for too long, and they did mention 64-bit Carbon. Both were dumb. Both were likely done to try to keep Adobe functioning.
As for FCP, Apple just hasn't gotten to it yet. Hints are that they finally have.
Actually, I was the one defending the weak and the special needs kids from the school bullies.
You're welcome. No thanks required.
"... Apple does know a thing or two about developing closed software packages"
Because Microsoft and Adobe are such bastions of open software...
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Adobe's next release should this merger happen will be called Adobe ME (Microsoft Edition) which will be closely related to Windows ME. Not only that, it will be integrated in the Windows Explorer further adding value and innovation to our customers by allowing many exciting media manipulation tasks without having to load additional programs! Min. Sys. Requirements: Dual quad processors, 48 GB Memory, Flux capacitor and 10 TB of usable storage. ROFL. Good morning...
How about a little known guy named "Steve Jobs"? He can do math too.
link
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Even better, check the endgadget coverage of the 2006 WWDC. IT'S RIGHT ON THE BIG SCREEN. Article
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If you think Adobe was the only large company to get screwed by Apple's change, read a Nokia technician's perspective on this: link
But Adobe isn't finished buying out the myriad of small companies it uses to supply all the smaller stuff in their suites. RoboHelp, InDesign, FrameMaker, Captivate, Dreamweaver, Flash to name a few, were all developed by smaller companies bought out by Adobe. They are now in the unenviable position of trying to make all those products work well together and have a similar look/feel. They are failing. If Microsoft buys all that stuff out, I'll probably be done with Adobe products (other than AE and PS).
MS Paint might actually become usable if they acquire that secret cropping function that Photoshop has had since 1990!
Why would you spend the enormous amount of money to retool your applications into Cocoa when Apple is advertising 64-Bit Carbon?
When Apple did their 180 and pulled the rug out from under not only Adobe, but many other developers, it's their that they were expecting what was advertised? They spent money towards that Carbon 64-bit, and Apple screwed them. Seeing how Apple has been treating Flash like a dirty condom, I can't help but wonder if Apple planned it this way. Final Cut vs Premiere. Aperture vs Lightroom. Maybe this was a planned move to try to get market share away from Adobe.
Either way, what I was disputing with Final Cut, is that if Cocoa was 1: the way to go, and 1: ready, why didn't Apple get their FCP people programming in Cocoa long ago? According to all the fanbois, Adobe should have switched to Cocoa long ago, yet here's Apple's own FCP, one of Apple's software that could most benefit from a 64-bit edition. No moves there? Whats the hurry then?
It's getting better. It's still an abomination, but it wears a bag over its head of very sheer material that you can only mostly see through.
I wished to, one day, see a native version of Adobe creative products running on Linux... if the deal goes forward this will never happen.
Tomorrow is another day...
It can't possibly be worse. We've all heard a thousand times how wonderful and "standard" Photoshop is, but have you ever actually used it?
I've heard how wonderful it is but standard? I don't know I've ever heard that. As you say, it's a huge departure from convention regardless of platform it's on...
But to paraphrase an old quote, it's the worst graphics editor except for all the others. I myself mostly use other editors too but I do a lot of photographic work and sometimes you just have to work in Photoshop.
I wouldn't fear a Sliverlight photoshop so much as breaking UI conventions, as just simply breaking... though honestly it would be good for everyone probably as it would force people to find alternatives (after CS5 stopped working on any modern hardware ten years hence or so).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple has been neglecting FCP for a long time. You'll notice they didn't do any NEW development in Cocoa, and any old products that were getting any kind of major development got rewritten in Cocoa.
As I said, Apple should have cut Adobe off at least five years ago. They had plenty of warning. Any talking about 64-bit Carbon Apple did was also over and done with years ago. Adobe still hasn't made any moves. They've had LOTS of warning.
They should have been moving over to Cocoa long before 64-bit Carbon was even a possibility. It wouldn't have been an enormous project either. It's just the UI and a few other bits and pieces. Photoshop et. al. could use a UI rethink anyway.
But I can see, by your use of "fanbois" that you're probably not going to be swayed by rational argument anyway.
pulled the rug out from under
You keep using that phrase, but it doesn't mean whatever it is you think it means when you have ten years warning that Carbon is going away.
Windows Mobile 6 and before were pretty open. It was only after Apple's success with the iPhone that WP7 will be locked down.
-]Phreak Out[-
I guess they must be old school; everything that I do in 3D goes into PSD layers for further work, or straight out to animations (.mov), or out to AE projects. tiff and targa are just output targets that seem to have little use these days, at least in my world.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Don't buy the next version of Photoshop because it's now winshop. Way to take a good thing and fuck it up.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
From what I've seen most 3D artists use TIFF or targa for both input files (textures and maps) as well as output. Part of it is probably tradition but also the fact that occasionally 3D software screws up when dealing with PSD files (since the level of complexity is higher than with TIFF or targa) and it kind of sucks to realize after running a long render job that either your textures weren't loaded properly or the output data is corrupt to everything but the application that created it...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
We use Poser 2010, C4D 11.5, Maya 2010, PS CS5, Vue X-Stream 8.5, Mac Pro w/ OSX 10.6.4, and never with a Tiff nor Targa with no problems whatsoever using PSD layers. We render all day all week. If renders are getting corrupt or textures don't work, it's a system problem. But even so, I can't see anyone doing this work and not being a PS expert and using PS to create the tiffs/targas anyway.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I've seen plenty of corruption when trying to use PSD files with other software, it's been getting better over the years but like most people who have ever wasted a lot of time due to trouble reading/writing PSD files I've ended up using file formats I know will work (while obviously keeping copies of all textures and maps in PSD format).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4