Comments on: Why Apple Should Buy Adobe

By: umer

umer — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:53:33 +0000

You are on of the biggest idiot i have ever seen know nothing about adobe and apple and just start posting your views and articles about adobe just go and do some research.

By: JayK

JayK — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:19:29 +0000

I think you are running on a lot of old news and assumptions. The amount of people DROPPING FCP for Premiere CS5 is unbelievable.

FCP is old. No real updates in forever, while Jobs is off playing with his new girlfriends, iPad, and Air…

You think AVID holds the crown in the $2,000 or less market? Uh… No…

Apple designed pro apps (Or bought them) in order to sell MAC Pros. Now Apple has other income streams that are more exciting.

By: simon

simon — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:38:48 +0000

Right on, this was the point I made earlier. People are so caught up in the iPhone/iPad hysteria (which is basically a new flavor of the 1980's "I want my MTV"... served in an instant gratification cone + some sprinkles), that they are missing the real emerging star of the show. And that would be great software that empowers people to "do" and "make" things... you know the "thing" your wanting to get to after the party if over and cake is put away. Adobe works incrementally to make the impossible (or out of reach) achievable: ubiquitous media deliver, universal document collaboration and sharing, real multimedia (little help from macromedia), printing, electronic media, simple video media production and sound design, typography, ubiquitous web development tools, unified media and software application development tools, web collaboration, first to market and best in class rich media solutions, etc. With Adobe it’s such a broad and rich compilation of products, tools and competencies that in comparison noobies to the rich media and communication market like Facebook and Apple iTunes seem juvenile or knee-jerk (a sort of social horror vacui)…. “must consume mass qualtities”.

This extended discussion is actually helping us cut through the fog and Jobs reality-field-distortion and see that soft underbelly of Apple, which is really the desperation of Apple to capture that significant market share we all more of less wish they have (with so many years in the trenches fighting Windoz). And there is fire in the belly for those pulling for this underdog because Apple is an American Innovation Icon and so thus something of a beacon of honor with ties to our roots as a nation of technologists and or innovators.

Sadly this patriotism is a tad misplaced. Good design and or technical innovation knows no geography or culture, it is not product of entrenched pride. This takes us back to Adobe and that little thing that brings about a repeated allergic reaction on the Apple epidermis…. Flash. Flash, so often mocked by developers as a toy and often portrayed by journalist as an ad-banner engine – is clearly the model of the future media delivery and has a deeper and richer history than most give it credit. The genesis of Flash was really formulated inside the Jonathan Gray’s SmartSketch drawing application from Go Corp (makers of the PenPoint OS)… that later sued Microsoft for collusion and theft of its technology… Microsoft supposedly used PenPoint OS concepts in the development of Windows for Tablet PC. Jonathan Gray was also the developer of emerging collection of Macintosh based vector drawing and painting programs that competed with Illustrator and Freehand back in the day. SmartSketch became FurtureSplash and Future Splash Animator and was brought to the internet… The developers tried to sell it Adobe in 1995 – but Adobe declined… later Flash was of course acquired by Macromedia. Much of the novelty with Flash in all of its incarnations is simply the delivery of vector geometry over the web. And this relates to why Flash fits into the Adobe ecosystem. Of course Adobe could have acquired Flash in 1995 for much less than the purchase of Macromedia.

Oddly enough this vector and animation engine evolved to many other things… where ever HTML standards fails and browsers continued to fight Flash prevailed… as it still does today. HTML delivers basic text content well… but details vector graphics and control (i.e. PDF type) web content is streamlined and consistent across all platforms and browsers – because of a free Adobe proprietary plugin delivery method. It’s the same convention used by Macromedia with Director and the Shockwave plugin… but with mass adoption and interoperability. And now H.264 Mpeg-4 video is flowing through the same pipe at no cost to the user. This is pipe that apple does not want to flow into their products.

Apple has made its recent mark on the mobile device market with a specifically optimized set of software and hardware that creates reliable interaction. This early market penetration won’t last because where content and context are king… Adobe owns the space. The mobile hardware state of the art will advance to the point where requiring Objective-C and very detail memory management for mobile media consumption will be silly (especially legal requirements that mandate things like Apple’s Cocoa Touch API and development tools for Mac OSX for iPhone). Apple should have been headed down the path of a close partnership with Adobe – some time ago… and blended its Unix/Linux OS into a ecosystem for Adobes great software. Now we have a situation where the damage is irreversible and other more progressive Adobe partnerships with Windows, Linux OS systems and Google’s Chrome OS is a much more favorable option. Sorry Apple – you’re own your own now.

By: Simeon

Simeon — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:42:28 +0000

I think the review is purely biased, leaning on the mac side. Can Apple buy Adobe? Please! I don't think so. Yes it's true that Adobe is guilty of minor improvements with each release sometimes, and I have seen them take features from competing apps like Painter X ( live rotation of canvas ) and calling them "new features". They took really long to allow AI to use multiple page documents although it could have been done with a few steps and involve some math. The truth is Adobe should buy Apple or pay them to develop a machine that runs adobe software perfectly and speedily. An "Adobe OS" if you will, maybe "Adobe Creative Platform". I am one who thinks they should develop for linux ( Ubuntu, Mandriva ). Linux is faster and more efficient than Windows and crashes less often than Mac or Windows, if at all. Not all linux are near perfect though. Oh yeah, you said kill Acrobat!? Acrobat is one of the single most important software in the world. Print and web Production will come to a halt. As I said, great article, too biased.

By: msbob

msbob — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:59:08 +0000

You lost me at "why is premier even needed"..... 1. competition 2. it does video editing differently 3. final cut pro has issues and big learning curve 4. in many cases can be faster than FCP

(I love FCP, but apple really needs to be updating it MUCH more often... competition helps)

Apple should buy adobe so it can make all apps first on Mac, and best on Mac (eg 64bit lag in photoshop).

By: DCHammers

DCHammers — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:13:10 +0000

The company Apple needs to buy is Intuit. These folks just can't seem to bring their financial software into the Mac world. How many thousands are still using their PC's because they can't use Quicken on their Macs and don't want to go to the expense and hassle of running Windows.

By: tobylane

tobylane — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:17:37 +0000

I agree with everything you've said, but you want to cut down what a sub company offers on its own owners OS, and 'similar' on the competitors OS? Bad.

I agree with Chris, it would be a good chance to clean up Windows and be known for it, like iTunes.

Adobe has little or no people or intelligence Apple wants, just ubiquity, which Apple does fantastically well without.

By: William Carr

William Carr — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:21:14 +0000

No.

OS/X is based on UNIX, not Linux.

OTOH, Apple does contribute to Open Source.

By: creativegal

creativegal — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:10:20 +0000

Anyone who thinks Apple merging the Adobe suite into simple proprietary apps like iDraw, iPrint, iWeb etc. is a great idea is obviously not familiar with the extensive features of CS.

Yes many of these apps are blotted and buggy…I won’t argue with that….but as a creative professional who’s been using Adobe for years (before Ps even had layers) I can tell you NOTHING comes close!

BTW…I did some design work for Adobe when Macromedia was still around…they were quick to admit that they were releasing stuff that was buggy and written on top of (old) bad code because they were in the rat race with Macromedia. Direct competition was a good and bad thing. Now no competition is a mixed blessing (Apple is not DIRECT competition for most of its suite)

Apple buying Adobe doesn’t make much sense right now..and yes the mobile market is too important for them to be messing around with rebuilding Adobe.

In the meantime, I will be using Flash 5 to develop apps for the iPad/iPhone on my inexpensive 27″ iMac :)

By: Shawn S

Shawn S — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:32:36 +0000

I read your comment once I posted mine.
That expains everyones fury here very nicely.

Well done.