The Mac maker suffers a snub at the hands of software powerhouse Adobe Systems, manages to shuttle its Xserve G5 server out the door after a month’s delay, and gets a tip on the iPod and iTunes from RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, while Wal-Mart now offers cheaper song downloads at .88 cents.
For Apple, Ups, Downs and Unsolicited Advice
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Yay! 10 cents cheaper for music that is edited and in wma. Who cares.
Rob Glaser is up there with Napster’s CEO. Just plain ole bitchin that their companies aren’t doing too well in download music business. He and Napster’s CEO just don’t get it. Apple is number one here with iPod and iTMS. Sure, their marketshare probably won’t remain as high as it is right now but they get to do what they want right now.
Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong, but the iPod does support MP3. In fact, the iPod was released well before iTMS so you can put all the MP3’s you want on it (of course, within the limits of your HD capacity). It is him just whining because they are doing so poorly that he is telling Apple to open their format or support more formats. I wonder when Real will open their format. Honestly, I don’t see any Real problems here.
“Apple’s (market) share will go down if they continue to do this. The only way to presently put songs on an iPod is to (buy) them from iTunes,” Glaser said.
This is incorrect. You can also rip CDs you own to your iPod, and you can transfer your existing music collection using something like iPodRip (or maybe straight iTunes).
That Real Networks guy is a bozo. Apple doesn’t benifit at all right now by opening up the iPod.
So now Adobe drops FrameMaker. What did that one do again?
The XServe delay is a bummer though, but hopefully by now they don’t have an bugs.
That’s .88 dollars or 88 cents!
Adobe turns its back on Mac again
The software maker plans to drop the Mac version of its FrameMaker publishing software. It’s the latest of several apparent snubs against Apple Computer’s operating system.
And the conspiracy theorists united! please, Adobe dropped Framemaker because there was little demand for the product. Why on earth would a business continue developing a product with little customer demand? Also, if I understand it correctly, Framemaker is being phased out in favour of InDesign and new products possibily in the future.
About the only thing Apple did do, which was rather stupid, was not keeping its big names informed of the G5 and the eventual move away from Motorola to IBM PowerPCs. I think if the partners were given that information, Adobe for example would have been given a better glance at the future.
These people (like Glaser) who harp on AAC are whacked. They conveniently (or, more likeley, deliberately forget that the iPod also “does” MP3, which is as open a format as you can imagine.
As for Adobe, they dropped Premiere a while back when Final Cut Pro made it obsolete. Framemaker is not QUITE obsolete, but it’s pretty long-in-the-tooth. I expect Adobe will roll a few new features into InDesign, or else they’ll just have to take it in the wallet when all their customers migrate to TeX, which is FREE and opensource.
Other than Photoshop, Adobe is looking more and more like they are preparing to “jump the shark”. I mean, there other big product, Acrobat Distiller is becoming increasingly irrelevent with PDF being a native file format in OS X. Granted, Distiller still does things you can’t do JUST using Mac OS PDF capabilities, but for how long?
Adobe thought Mac was a safe haven from having to compete with the OS vendor on apps. It turned out not to be.
With what Novell is doing (cloning Microsoft, acting like Microsoft in taking over KDE and GNOME), Linux may not turn out to be a good place to compete either.
So Adobe thinks if they concentrate their resources on the big market (Windows), perhaps that will be best for them.
As much as there is declining customer demand for Framemaker, there is declining customer demand for Mac. So the decision is easy for Adobe — phase out Mac products over time, keeping the product only if there is a business case (Photoshop).
http://news.com.com/5208-1025-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=119&message…
I’m still wondering whether or not the AAC + FairPlay combo is open for all to use… neither are Apple technologies
Hi
MP3 format has patent rights all over it. its not open at all. the only viable thing that i am aware of is ogg codecs which has no patents over it and is available as free and open source codec implementations. its also of better quality and compression. winamp in windows and every player in linux supports it. i guess apple support is pretty good too
regards
Jess
Remember this is the same company that the recording industry was afraid of because its buying power would force them to limit who and what they sign, not to mention what they let their artists record.
There are several, which one are you refering to in particular..? — I would think you have the one in mind that Apple admittedly doesn’t earn a single Cent with their download service?! Yes, great joke ! What a lame business. If Walmart does it on the other hand, I am sure they earn something with it, no matter what the price is.
” I would think you have the one in mind that Apple admittedlydoesn’t earn a single Cent with their download service?! Yes, great joke ! What a lame business. If Walmart does it on the other hand, I am sure they earn something with it, no matter what the price is.”
That’s the funny part– the money is in the hardware; not the software. Walmart and others are rushing into a business where they are going to lose their shirts. Serves them right. Walmart is such a bad employer they get hauled into court over it even under a Republican administration!
“As much as there is declining customer demand for Framemaker, there is declining customer demand for Mac.”
And they have serious demand for Framemaker SOLARIS, which they are keeping? I think Adobe is bit sore at Apple for blowing Premiere out of the water.
No, Adobe is the next Corel. They have a little paper tag on their toe, and they are just waiting for Apple to come up with a Photoshop clone which will completely put them out of business.
He is somewhat right, if you have an iPod, it wont play any music from competing stores like Rhapsody or Napster. It will play mp3’s which don’t have DRM so no commercial music site uses it. What I don’t get is that it would be a good thing for Apple to allow the iPod to use .wma files as well as their own proprietary .aac format. Why? Well as most people know, Apple doesn’t make any money on iTunes, but they use it to sell iPods since only the iPod can play the .aac files. If they gave the iPod .wma support then more people could use the iPod. It’s a win-win situation. The only thing is that with all things Apple, they would never do it, just like they would sell more coppies of OS X if it ran on x86, they dont since they like their tight integration between all their products so everything works perfectly.
People should listen to a man responsible for inflicting RealNetworks on the world why?
“Ethics are . . . The thing with ethics is . . . Arrgh!”
*grabs gun*
It’s right there on the technical specs page.. the iPod supports:
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps) with or without Fairplay DRM, MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF and WAV
How many portable players support RealNetworks formats? Uh huh…
Huh? I believe that the Apple DRM technology is built into iTMS and iTunes. Both are designed to work together. iPod simply plays files that are synced to it from the computer that it’s setup to sync against. It just so happens that those music files must be of AAC or MP3 format. I don’t think the iPod has any DRM software on it per se (please correct me if I’m wrong). As such, it should be totally feasible for Napster and Rhapsody to create a plug-in for iTunes that connects to their respective music stores and provides AAC format files w/proprietary DRM encoding. *shrug* I’m guessing that there must be a plug-in API for iTunes.
For those posting before reading the article, he *does* say that the iPod can play non-DRM mp3s. His beef is that iPod users can’t play files downloaded from other online music stores.
Frankly, Apple is doing etremely well here and Real is probably selling nothing since they work with no portable players and their jukebox is subpar (and beta).
Apple doesn’t need to open up the iPod right now. They have the most popular player and music store. Why be open here. Later on, they can update the iPod if they find that they need to.
The guy is an idiot, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is at the core of the MPEG-4, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 specifications, it may not be as open as Ogg because like MP3 it has some patents related to it but it is much more open than almost anything else in the market. Especially Windows Media. There is nothing stopping other music vendors from using it.
It’s strange that all Apple’s rivals seem annoyed that the most popular music player doesn’t support the format that they sell in, even though it’s more open and better quality than that format and there is nothing stopping them from using it.
well actually he doesn’t that comment about MP3 and CD ripping was added by the article author correcting him.
“Apple’s (market) share will go down if they continue to do this. The only way to presently put songs on an iPod is to (buy) them from iTunes,” Glaser said, referring to downloads purchased from online music stores. In addition to iTunes songs, the iPod can play files encoded in the MP3 format, including tracks ripped from CDs.
You know, if I owed a music download business, and I owned an ipod, Id be a bit dissapointed if I couldnt use my business’s music on my ipod to.
The other download services make play there songs in the players and not as a tangible mp3.
Customers would be limited if iTMS was offering few songs. Since virtually all songs (and more) from competing services are available with iTMS, what are iPod owners missing?
The only limitation is for non-iPod owners. Since Real do not sell hardware, his only reason for calling for opening the iPod is to get a chance to sell songs to the other 50% of the market. Certainly not for the benefit of the end-user.
The whole debate about “choice” is ridiculous: all music stores are offering the same songs (in fact there are more at iTMS), and iTMS is arguably by everybody’s account the best designed site.
Regarding FrameMaker, Adobe have mostly abandonned it already. And as mentioned earlier, a Solaris version makes no business sense at all. A new version for OS X would need a major rewrite which cannot be justified. Likewise, Adobe would never invest in a major rewrite of a Windows or Solaris version. This is a specialised application with low sales in every platform.
licensing wma from ms will cost apple per ipod sold. encoding the media is free but the player needs to pay a fee to be able to decode it.
He should download iTunes for free.
Press control, click, convert to MP3.
if you are not gonna support Wal-Mart, do it for the right reason…they employ slave labor in 3rd world countries!!! they contract factories who force their children workers to work 18 hours per day and make 2-7 cents per hour. if they are not keeping up on the hourly quota, they are beaten.
that is a much better reason not to support Wal-mart.
Adobe is pissed about a lot of things. Sure, the Final Cut Pro was a swift kick in the butt, but Premeire sucked to start with. That’s why is wasn’t taking business away from Avid. What really got under their skin was OS X PDF code. Adobe makes a lot of money by licensing the PDF format, well, actually they license the code for the format. Apple wrote their own, which turned out to be better and faster, and best of all, royalty free. But Adobe isn’t exactly stupid, so they continue to develop the products that make money. Their Creative Suite sells about the same numbers on both platforms, so they keep it up. I’ve never met anyone who used FrameMaker, but then again I don’t know anyone who still uses PageMaker either.
“He should download iTunes for free.
Press control, click, convert to MP3.”
Good idea, but it doesn’t work that way. iTunes won’t convert DRM songs to MP3. That doesn’t make them uncrackable though. If you get ready to burn them but instead make a disk image, you can take the now ‘cracked’ songs right off the disk image. Same works for all DRM formats.
hey, thanks Pather PC…works great with Roxio, but does it work with the mac disk utility?
I should be pointed out (as it was in an extreme tech article) that wma is much cheaper to license (for implementing in commercial applications like iPods and jukeboxes) than either mp3 or aac.
He should download iTunes for free.
Press control, click, convert to MP3.
Transcoding makes the quality worse and is not recommended since AAC and Mp3 uses different psycoacustic models. And the music purchased wasn’t CD-quality in the first place (might not matter much if you only use the music on the iPod).
Since iTMS is not the source for profit for Apple but the iPod is, then it really makes little sense not to open the iPod for other formats. Opening it later, when the competition have caught up, is just for desparate measures. Apple needs to show that it is a leader i portable-digital-players and wants to stay ahead. Ogg-on-iPod-now!
yes, it is cheaper to license, but not significantly cheaper I think.
I mean, Ogg is the cheapest of all, and no one is grabbing that and using it.
price is not the issue.
Burn your ACC to an audio CD. Then re-rip them into MP3. Now you are using any vendor MP3 player with iTunes. It is not a big deal, it is not a secret, Apple just doesn’t advertise that you can do it. I wonder why
[quote]What really got under their skin was OS X PDF code[/quote]
I doubt it. Adobe has recently been spending advertising dollars on making the PDF format more ubiquitous. Apple is fostering Adobe’s ideology by integrating PDF into OS X the way they did. Did Adobe loose money when Apple didn’t license the PDF code? Sure. But in the end, I’m sure Adobe is much happier about the fact that their file format has been given a nice nod from Apple.
I mean, Ogg is the cheapest of all, and no one is grabbing that and using it.
price is not the issue.>>>
“Ogg Vorbis” sounds, well, stupid. It sounds like a half-orc wizard you’d D&D.
Ogg? Wasn’t that a smelly ogre from Time Bandits?
AAC, MP3 … short, catchy … techno cool names.
The Oggvorbii need to ditch that name and come up with something much shorter and sleeker.
And “OGV” isn’t it.
These comments are just out of this world! CEO from RealNetworks just needs to shut his mouth and worry about his product! Keep your eyes on the important issue, Windows Media Player – not Apple iTunes!
The iPod is fine just how it is, why should they open it up to other music stores. They created this new outlet for music and they’re rolling with it.
iPod supports a healthy amount of audio support; AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF and WAV. That touches the main ones, MP3 being the biggest! Who the heck cares about Windows Media Player format. Plus people are already starting to create third party applications so that the iPod will work with other audio players like WinAMP and products like that.
If Apple wants to open it up to a larger market then so be it, but right now they have the power to keep the quality good by keeping it close to specifics. Opening it up will probably increase market share, but will just make the unit more cluttered with worthless formats that half the people even use! I’m surprise that the iPod supports WAV, I have yet to meet a person that uses that audio format!
Burn your ACC to an audio CD. Then re-rip them into MP3. Now you are using any vendor MP3 player with iTunes. It is not a big deal, it is not a secret, Apple just doesn’t advertise that you can do it. I wonder why
So you spend money, break ITMS license agreement, and get worse quality then from not so legal sources? So what is the point of actually using ITMS here?
The whole debate about “choice” is ridiculous: all music stores are offering the same songs (in fact there are more at iTMS), and iTMS is arguably by everybody’s account the best designed site.
Not really. In fact, last time I cheched, iTunes didn’t have “metal” category at all, while places like emusic do have it. Of course, p2p is better then all of that if you are interested in non-mainstream
.
These comments are just out of this world! CEO from RealNetworks just needs to shut his mouth and worry about his product! Keep your eyes on the important issue, Windows Media Player – not Apple iTunes!
iTunes and QuickTime are direct competitors with RealNetworks’ products, there’s no reason for him to ignore Apple just because he also has to compete with Microsoft (and MS’ music store hasn’t launched yet, and isn’t tied to a Microsoft-built hardware product). Besides, the EC just awarded a huge fine against Microsoft as well as some other items Microsoft will have to address to continue in the European market, thanks to complaints from Real & Co.
The iPod is fine just how it is, why should they open it up to other music stores. They created this new outlet for music and they’re rolling with it.
I think Apple may have a real problem on their hands if iPod continues to gain in market share, but for now they’re perfectly fine sticking with iTunes. If it were limited to RealPlayer, I’d definitely see a problem, and have a harder time understanding it’s popularity.
iPod supports a healthy amount of audio support; AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF and WAV. That touches the main ones, MP3 being the biggest! Who the heck cares about Windows Media Player format. Plus people are already starting to create third party applications so that the iPod will work with other audio players like WinAMP and products like that.
The issue is primarily that other music stores don’t use those formats, but they do use WMA. The reason they don’t use those formats is pretty obvious: they lack DRM, and the RIAA isn’t likely to let them sell music without DRM.
If Apple wants to open it up to a larger market then so be it, but right now they have the power to keep the quality good by keeping it close to specifics. Opening it up will probably increase market share, but will just make the unit more cluttered with worthless formats that half the people even use!
You mean 1 or 2 more formats on a unit that already supports 6 (by your own claims) is going to make a mess? Most people won’t notice what formats it uses unless they try to use it with a format that’s unsupported. That’s the way codecs are supposed to work in the first place, they’re unobtrusive and simple, unless you don’t have the one you need.
I’m surprise that the iPod supports WAV, I have yet to meet a person that uses that audio format!
Don’t tell anyone, but CDs use a format that can be converted to wav format without compression, thereby making a copy of a song basically loss-less. The unfortunate side-effect is that 74 minutes of music takes up quite a bit of space compared to most of the other formats the iPod supports.
There seem to be some misconceptions about FrameMaker. As a long-time FrameMaker user on multiple platforms, I’ll respond to a couple:
“And the conspiracy theorists united! please, Adobe dropped Framemaker because there was little demand for the product. Why on earth would a business continue developing a product with little customer demand? Also, if I understand it correctly, Framemaker is being phased out in favour of InDesign and new products possibily in the future.”
That there was “little demand for Mac FrameMaker over the past couple years” (Adobe’s quote), but it should be noted that in that timeframe Adobe didn’t release a current version of Frame for the current version of Mac OS. Adobe had promised to release a Mac OS X native version of each of its “flagship” apps as each went through its next major release cycle, but FrameMaker 7.0 came and went without a Mac OS X native version, and FrameMaker 7.1 was never even released for the Mac. FrameMaker is heavily used in the world of publishing as it’s (bar none) the best application for long document generation. FrameMaker has always been a niche app, but it dominates that niche. How many publishing houses do you know that don’t have at least some Macs? One of the greatest things about Frame is that it worked well across platforms (MS-Windows and UNIX in addition to Mac OS) as people on different platforms could easily share documents.
It’s long been rumored that Adobe is attempting to drop Frame in favor of InDesign on all of its platforms, but there are some pretty big obstacles in the way of this happening. The first is that InDesign quite simply doesn’t do what FrameMaker does — InDesign is a great PageMaker replacement, but it’s not a FrameMaker replacement. InDesign is fine for a newspaper or magazine, but I wouldn’t want to use it for a book, a thesis, a long technical paper, or a complex XML/SGML document (areas in which FrameMaker excels). The second is that InDesign doesn’t work on UNIX, one of FrameMaker’s key markets.
“And they have serious demand for Framemaker SOLARIS, which they are keeping? I think Adobe is bit sore at Apple for blowing Premiere out of the water.”
According to the Adobe sales reps, the Solaris sales are quite significant. Remember that 1) Adobe charges extra for UNIX versions, and 2) most sites that use FrameMaker on Solaris use a LOT of licenses. I’ve worked at various software houses, government contractors, and R&D facilities through the years, and most of the local branches where I was stationed had literally hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of copies of FrameMaker licensed for Solaris and HP-UX. The UNIX boxes are solid workhorses, and so is FrameMaker, and the two work well together. Plus, while there aren’t really any serious alternatives to Frame in the Mac & MS-Windows world, there are even fewer in the UNIX world. It’s a niche market for sure, but Adobe has a monopoly over it. A significant fraction of the books we read and the operating manuals we all ignore were created in FrameMaker, and a goodly fraction of them (especially in the latter category) were churned out on UNIX machines.
“Regarding FrameMaker, Adobe have mostly abandonned it already. And as mentioned earlier, a Solaris version makes no business sense at all. A new version for OS X would need a major rewrite which cannot be justified. Likewise, Adobe would never invest in a major rewrite of a Windows or Solaris version. This is a specialised application with low sales in every platform.”
The extent of the rewrite required for Mac OS X is much disputed. Consider that Adobe has a current UNIX version, and almost-current Mac OS 9 version, and a long-in-the-tooth NeXT (NEXTSTEP / OpenStep, the precursor to Mac OS X’s Cocoa) version. They already have the majority of the pieces and it’s mostly a matter of assembling them appropriately. The amount of real work making a native OS X version is most likely dwarfed by the amount of real work making a Longhorn version, and so many are expecting that the release of Longhorn in the MS-Windows world will officially kill FrameMaker there, too.
I say “officially” though because it’s now already practically dead. Adobe bought FrameMaker from another company and never really did understand its market. Now that it’s no longer cross-platform, they’re not just going to lose sales in the Mac market, but in the MS-Windows and UNIX markets as well. You can further bet that all those companies who have to run through hoops and hurdles coming up with in-house solutions to replace Frame are going to not be friendly toward Adobe in the future, and as one who uses several Adobe apps can tell you, migrating from FrameMaker is the most difficult — dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. is trivial in comparison. Does Adobe really expect that giving its customers a slap in the face will not have repercussions to the sales of all of their products?
Nah. It’s all about the music quality.
Ogg rocks.
That’s the funny part– the money is in the hardware; not the software.
Isn’t that exactly what a company by the name of IBM thought years ago when MS licensed an OS called DOS to them ?
I’m not saying that in the current music download biz that the money is not in the hardware but other companies have made the mistake of thinking this way in the past.
Real networks has been out how long? There software is still buggy garbage and now its full of Spyware as well. I don’t think they should be telling anyone how to do anything.
Why should, apple open up the ipod? so they can help their competitors. iTMS exsist only to sell iPods..it doesn’t make any sense to open it up. Why doesn’t real come out wih their own ipod killer? Napster is trying it.
Ogg may cost nothing to licence but implementing it will mean real development coss for Apple as they implement the new firmware required to decode it, for the benefit of …
….about 9 people worldwide who use Ogg, 8 of whom are free software types who probably don’t own a mac or an iPod anyway.
Apple is a business. There is no profit to be made for them from appeasing a microscopic community of fanatics. I am glad they don’t support WMA – it doesn’t stand up in terms of quality and frankly I don’t want to subsidise Microsoft when I buy an Apple product.
The only thing that should happen is confirmation of the technology required to download DRM media to an iPod, so that other online stores can support Fairplay AAC and the iPod, as currently the only wany to guarantee iPod compatibility is use of a non-DRM format like mp3, which although excellent for the end user is difficult to licence from the recording industry.
If Microsoft wants secure WMA employed on the Mac platform they should build it into WMP for Mac. Currently it doesn’t support it!!!!!!!
Lastly, I look forward to Real disappearing. Bad software, bad quality, appalling marketing techniques.They don’t deserve Apple’s support.
These WMA store are just doing what PC companies have always done…looked at raw numbers, and, as usual, they looked at the ones that don’t really mean anything.
A company that goes into this with only software needs to understand that for the time being, hardware makes the money. They look into how many players support WMA and AAC. More support WMA, so they go with that, thinking that now they are supporting the most hardware, which should in turn support the most users. What they need to be doing is using AAC so their stuff can play on iPods, which by far have the most users, instead of complaining about the iPod not supporting them. The iPod is bigger than any music store right now, so it’s up to the stores to support it, not the other way around.
As for opening up the iPod to WMA, it’s not going to happen now, and might not ever, depending on how the next few years play out. Apple is trying to give iTMS the biggest marketshare it can, and they are using the iPod to do this. Whether iTMS makes money or not (and right now, as of last time I checked, they are actually making a few cents per song), it will later, and securing the top position as soon as possible is certainly what they are going for. Music stores are popping up everywhere these days, but iTMS isn’t losing customers, or marketshare. As odd as it sounds for a growing market, all these WMA stores are just dividing customers between themselves instead of taking them away from iTMS. Rhapsody is hardly making a splash, Napster is in a lot of debt already and recently lost most of it’s top management, and the soon-to-be MS Music Store will probably be a wash seeing as MS can’t seem to do anything right unless it has a monopoly in the market. Other than Windows and Office, which are pretty much monopolies, nothing MS has done has really taken off.
“I doubt it. Adobe has recently been spending advertising dollars on making the PDF format more ubiquitous. Apple is fostering Adobe’s ideology by integrating PDF into OS X the way they did. Did Adobe loose money when Apple didn’t license the PDF code? Sure. But in the end, I’m sure Adobe is much happier about the fact that their file format has been given a nice nod from Apple.”
Apple was fostering PDF’s with Adobe’s code before they wrote their own though. Adobe of course wants PDF to be everywhere, why wouldn’t they? But in doing so they are making a lot of money from it. Printer manufacturers must license it also, not just PDF readers. Look at how much money Postscript pulled. Apple has most of the print market, and that’s a lot of cash flow taken away from Adobe.
if you are not gonna support Wal-Mart, do it for the right reason
There is no wrong reason to withhold support from Wal-Mart. Sweatshop abuses are more heinous than most, but it’s also valid to distrust them because of thier general damaging effect on economies and communities. Moreover, since they have to prove it daily as a retailer on the streets of America where customer service and value are supposed to be important, then hating them for being arrogant and treating the customer as though they aren’t important is entirely appropriate.
What counts the most is that Wal-Mart’s abusive behavior is not rewarded. We much prefer Target; prices are comparable, customer service is superior, the company’s ethic is not predatory, and thier charitable giving record is a world away from Wal-Mart
I find it somewhat insulting that somebody thinks that I, as a consumer, are so price-fixated that I’ll drop everything and run over to whatever excuse for an online music store Wal-Mart will come up with to buy songs that are essentially censored just because they cost ten cents less.
What do I get for an extra dime? I support a company I actually like; I don’t have some music nanny making decisions on what I’ll be seeing based on what they feel I ought to be wanting; I am denying Wal-Mart business.
There’s price, and there’s value. The American consumer cares too much about the cost but places too little importance on what they get in return for what they pay for-or don’t, as the case may be.
Then again, Wal-Mart could make thier songs free and I wouldn’t go there…
Well, I s’pose it’d be nice if Adobe published X versions of everything they did.
Maybe I have a different impression of thier strategy. It looks like they aren’t competing with Apple where it doesn’t make sense to. And why should Adobe produce software Mac users aren’t buying?
I think the reports of Adobe’s lack of concern for X are slightly off the mark. Whenver I fire up any of my CS apps, I see what has to be the result of a company that actually cares very much for X. Those apps are dynamite, no doubt about it.
“Maybe I have a different impression of thier strategy. It looks like they aren’t competing with Apple where it doesn’t make sense to. And why should Adobe produce software Mac users aren’t buying?
I think the reports of Adobe’s lack of concern for X are slightly off the mark. Whenver I fire up any of my CS apps, I see what has to be the result of a company that actually cares very much for X. Those apps are dynamite, no doubt about it.”
Exactly. You can’t compete with Apple software on a Mac. Apple doesn’t make their Pro apps any cheaper than anyone else, and they don’t bundle them, they just make the best, so not many people buy anything else.
<em>Maybe I have a different impression of thier strategy. It looks like they aren’t competing with Apple where it doesn’t make sense to. And why should Adobe produce software Mac users aren’t buying?</em>
How does that relate to FrameMaker? There’s nothing else on the market that competes with it, by Apple or otherwise. Furthermore, it doesn’t have any sales figures since there hasn’t been a current native version on current Macs in around the last four years.
Going back four plus years, its sales for the Mac were supposedly quite strong (according to a post on Slashdot at http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/24/1512211 which obviously isn’t the best source in the world).
I’m not disagreeing that Ogg Vorbis is an excellent compression scheme.
I just think the name puts people off to it.
What you *name* your product has a lot to do with how it is percieved — any marketing major can tell you that.