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I'd hate to sound this bitter at this early in the morning (7:35am where I am) but I doubt it'll be multiplatform - remember folks, this is the same company who got 3/4 of the way through and was almost ready to release Framemaker for Linux and then cancelled it. This is also the same company who treat *NIX customers who great contempt with their refusal to provide their applications on Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD on the x86 platform, refusing to properly maintain their Acrobat/Flash products and worse still, their refusal to even work with wine to allow better interoperability between their Windows product line up and wine compatibility.

Have we forgotten Macromedia so quickly?

Adobe bought Macromedia, Macromedia no longer exists.

As I've noted before, there is a massive design synergy between the WYSIWYG office suite and the WYSIWYG Web-2.0 development suite.

The only way it makes sense for Adobe to enter the office space is as a part of a universal content creation suite for AIR. Adobe is arguably the industry leader in most aspects of multimedia content creation. The next step is to map this expertise onto the Web-2.0 notion of unified rich content.

An Adobe "office suite" will most likely treat ODF and OpenXML as limited import/export targets. The key for Adobe is making AIR the most compelling Web-2.0 framework. While multimedia and applications are the big-ticket items, the pathway to content framework dominance goes through the basic document.

The document is the volume market. Then Adobe can leverage this installed base to deliver premium creation modules such as animation and application development. All based on AIR, of course, and ready for consumption both online and offline. Decent strategy, huh?

Now you see how important it is for the free software community to get behind the lesser of the Web-2.0 evils. At least with Silverlight we can follow open specifications to create free software runtimes and tools. Adobe AIR is the proprietary Web, our worst nightmare.

“At least with Silverlight we can follow open specifications to create free software runtimes and tools. Adobe AIR is the proprietary Web, our worst nightmare.”

Right. On whose teaching did you decide:
Silverlight is open.
AIR is not.

Neither is a good idea, so stop misjudging them.

You had me up to "synergy". Are you in marketing?

I agree. Even with plenty of memory, striped hard disks, fast CPU and good video card, Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver take ages to load.

"Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver take ages to load."

Hell, even a small app like Acrobat takes forever to load...if they can't even get that right, how will they get a full blown office suite to run quickly?

And have a product matrix that looks like an ant farm.

> Bye, Adobe! You're now toast! ;-)

Yeah, MICROS~1 that has taken the extra effort of porting MS Office to the Mac for years will be happy with this slap in the face.

ahh... you can have iWork. It's great for simple layout stuff.
But actually Adobe could instead lower the prices on the CS. Last thing we need is yet *another* proprietary office format. It's also going to be heavy if the latest CS3 is any indication. Its "Device gallery" or whatever actually installs not one, but two versions of Opera on a Mac! And they all show if you do an "open with" on an html file. That's afwul.

i'd love to see iWork for windows! Pages is leaps and bounds better then Publisher... but is Mac OS only! Since 100% of Publisher users are on windows... that not the replacement i'd hoped for! Since AppleWorks was cross-platform... i'd really hoped to see its replacement as cross platform. Maybe apple will surprise us!

CS3 is indeed pretty bloated and "heavy", but it has to be for what it does!!!! I would hope that a skinny version of ID would be just that...Skinny!

It doesn't have to be heavy, take a look at Pixel for example: http://www.kanzelsberger.com ... and few screenshots of upcoming Beta: http://www.kanzelsberger.com/temp/beta8mac.png and http://www.kanzelsberger.com/temp/vista.png ... download package is about 12-13Mb

A little OT so apologies up front, but i've been using Pixel for about 6 months now, on PCLOS at home and XP at work. Overall, it's very nice to use but it does have its' quirks.

I'm yet to figure out why it's less stable on XP than it is with Linux, but if you're a casual user frustrated with the GIMP's gui or you're looking for a Photoshop replacement that doesn't cost the earth, it's well worth a look.

I just tried out the Pixel demo, and it sure does seem worth the money. It's not too big, has a lot of features and so on..I'm not a professional so Photoshop is way out of my league, but GIMP isn't much better: you get exactly what you pay for..It's ugly, confusing and I absolutely hate it opening dozens of new windows >_<

Thank you for the best laugh of the week tryphcycle. Punisher was classic.

I agree that Adobe is a formidable competitor. The products they produce in the markets they choose to pursue are superior. Notwithstanding resource requirements and cost.

Scribus 1.3.4+.

http://www.scribus.net

The changes they've added make it much more powerful than Publisher and a lot less expensive than InDesign.

It's interesting to see this happening just as document standarization is gaining ground. The office market used to be quite vibrant but, like the OS market, it's stagnated over the past decade of Microsoft dominance. It's good to see it picking up again.

At least in the business space, IBM is starting to sneak in their (ODF-friendly) content editors for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. by incorporating them into Lotus Notes, for example.

Edited 2007-08-17 03:51

"dobe should focus on unifying the user-interface in its Creative suite (it looks a disheveled inconsistent mess) and work on taking all the bloat.

CS3 is in dire need of a consistent and predictable user-interface with consistent keyboard shortcuts across the applications. That's step number one. After that the need to trim the fat. The entire thing is way too resource-intensive and taxing. "

Adobe HAS focused on unifying the interface!!! In every new version, each application has come closer and closer to feeling like one unit!!! of course, trying to make 10 different kind of creative apps act exactly alike is got to be the toughest thing in the world! especially considering the many of the apps began life at another company!!! (ie, Dreamweaver, flash, pagemaker>indesign,)

Personally...I think the app that needs the most help is Illustrator! even though it IS an adobe original.... it is so inconsistent and so faulty when compared to InDesign.. and Photo Shop! InDesign... and a Grand F'N Slam, though...

You're right that Illustrator does need the most help. And, yes, there have been attempts at tying the applications together. The problem, though, is that it's still very much inconsistent across the board.

Part of the problem is that each application has its own bloat. It doesn't appear to me, as an end-user, that there is even any code-sharing going on at Adobe. It's like each app team has their own version of the wheel and aren't willing to share.

It's a managerial problem as I see it. The thought of them thinking of tackling a Productivity suite is more proof of that.