Adobe may launch its own office-application suite, taking it into direct competition with Microsoft. In an interview, Mike Downey, group manager for platform evangelism at Adobe, said that, although he could not reveal any plans at the moment, the possibility should not be dismissed.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Competition is always good.
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.
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2005-07-08
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.
Member since:2005-07-06
“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.
Member since:2006-03-10
Member since:
2006-01-28
Make it cross-platform, which it would be, if it ends-up being browser-driven, cheap, and make sure it supports ODF and I am there.
Competition is always good.