They share an area code, a customer segment and a history dating back to the early days of personal computing. But Apple Computer and Adobe Systems, like many in long-term relationships, have seen the 20-years-and-counting bond between them run hot and cold, says News.com.
Apple, Adobe Drifting Apart
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Apple has often been very standoffish (at best) to its ISVs and VARs. Its bundling of apps is very much akin (or even worse) than Microsoft’s practice of doing so.
Blah. Adobe just stopped developing software that wasn’t selling. FCP took over all the area’s where Premiere was on Macs, they didn’t even try to have Encore compete with DVD Studio Pro. Adobe is still going strong with the titles that have always been sellers…Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (well, that last one’s new, but it replaced PageMaker). Apple knows that they can do a better job at certain pro apps, so they do. Adobe knows they can’t compete in certain areas, so they don’t. Simple. No one wants to waste money. Non of the applications from either company are bundled here, so it really is up to the customer.
…come out with an image editor. I always hoped Apple would work on a better productivity suite, but I bet they could corner the image editing market with a good piece of software. Adobe can be taken down on the Mac, and they are slowly being chipped away.
Preview is a great app! I don’t even have acrobat installed.
> I bet they could corner the image editing market with a good piece of software.
Dream on. It is not a matter of money or developers, it is a matter of time. It took Adobe 15 years to bring Photoshop to what it is today. If you think Apple (or Microsoft for that matter) can do it in 2 years, you are vastly mistaken.
Remember, we are not talking about “an image editing” appliction here, we are talking about beating the best (simply because all this fuss is done because of existing Mac photoshop professionals — these professionals will settle with NOTHING LESS than a Photoshop-beater). So, this can NOT be done in a timely manner that the situation currently presses, no matter how much money you got.
The only thing Apple can do regarding Photoshop is to pray/pay (choose one) Adobe will continue supporting it on OSX.
Apple was forced into developing Final Cut and Logic because of the lackluster support from companies like Adobe. Okay, that’s a yes and no… Apple was in a transition and had to have some killer apps that were real-deal media content creators… Adobe was not making much of an attempt with Premiere and Macromedia was goin’ for that WebGoldRing… The Mac was losin’ ground in the pro audio side too… there were a lot of apps for pc that people were goin’ ‘hey.’ What are ya gonna do?
The new Mac is truely built around Media and content creation… especially on the OS side… can we say that about Windows? Linux? CoreAudio and CoreMIDI is just the beginning…
Now we have th iLife suite… damn, these simple apps just get people up-n-runnin… CONSUMERS editing videos, hookin’ up digital cameras, playin’ music, MAKIN’ music… OUT OF THE BOX… no fuss. It ain’t perfect, and you can do a lot with a pc, but with a lot of FRUSTRATION. Speed, people will say is an issue, but from my experience they’re ‘fast enough.’ Geez, how many people remember how long it would to save a 600MB photoshop file wasy back when? And you know what, most people don’t need that much power… let’s face the facts…
Adobe should be lookin’ at iLife and providing the same solutions for the pc… one package that will getcha going… They do have some, like that Photoshop ExtraLite thing and that app for DVD authoring… ah, it should be a cakewalk for them to get all this stuff together… where is it?
Adobe can’t afford to loose their development for the Mac, and if they do the PC software will suffer… Premiere is okay but it takes some third parties to bring it over the top… Apple, well, they have apple.
All of this is in my humble opinion as a graphic designer, musician, videographer (well, almost). I’ve been working with computers for 20 years.
Adobe is more in direct competition with Apple now with Premiere Pro, which is more of a rip-off of Final Cut Pro. I have both programs on my mac and pc, and love both of them. I just wish Adobe would of done a better job on Premiere 6.5 for the mac, because more mac users would of used it more. Premiere 6.5 was a bad OS X port, because for one, it ate up so much cpu compared to Final Cut Pro. The ball is in Adobe’s court,,,,if they want to do a better job on their app’s mac pro’s will buy them or they will go to other companies such as Apple, Discreet, Avid, etc.
“I bet they could corner the image editing market with a good piece of software”
Adobe was worried when Apple invented iPhoto.
“Apple was forced into developing Final Cut”
Actually it was the Adobe Premiere team who thought of making the “Ultimate NLE App”, which Adobe sold the team to Macromedia(they started focusing on the web), and in turn Apple bought and turned it into Final Cut Pro,and focused on dv/firewire and took over the market.
Adobe is just trying to hedge their bets by sucking up to Microsoft because they know that domestically Microsoft is in the clear on anti-trust charges. Microsoft could now begin a wave of Adobe killers if they don’t suck up. The Macintosh is Adobe’s fall back territory in the event that Microsoft were to try to Netscape Adobe.
From a purely strategic point of view it would be suicide for Adobe to give up on the Mac market because that would cripple Apple, which would cause Microsoft to cancel Office probably and that’d finally kill Apple because John Q. cannot be bothered to use something free like OpenOffice or AbiWord (which is now slick and native on OSX).
With Apple dead, in no small part because of Adobe, Adobe would find itself stuck between GIMP on Linux and a growing wave of Adobe killers on Windows. I could see Jobs putting $20-$30M of his money after an Apple bankrupcy to royally fuck Adobe by hiring damn good developers to improve GIMP.
Remember, we are not talking about “an image editing” appliction here, we are talking about beating the best (simply because all this fuss is done because of existing Mac photoshop professionals — these professionals will settle with NOTHING LESS than a Photoshop-beater). So, this can NOT be done in a timely manner that the situation currently presses, no matter how much money you got.
What about a cheap, easy, simple image editor for “normal people”.. That’s something that is lacking on the mac IMO, something like PaintShopPro, or the Gimp but with an easy mac interface. A GarageBand for pictures.
Not all people that use a mac, are photoshop professionals..
Every one of the “mounting differences” is simply the appropriate action Adobe should’ve taken given what Apple has been doing.
Just a quick review:
Adobe dropping support for several Mac products, most recently its FrameMaker publishing software
FrameMaker is largely dead. I seriously doubt the Mac is the only platform we’ll see support dropped for.
and most notably its Premiere video editing application
There was no market for Premiere on the Mac. It’s grossly inferior to both FCE and FCP, not to mention higher end packages like Avid Xpress DV/Pro. No one interested in video editing who has purchased a Mac is interested in shelling out money for an inferior product when they could simply spend a little more on a superior one.
whose demise as a Mac application was attributed to strong competition from Apple’s Final Cut programs.
It’s not like Apple created Final Cut to compete with Adobe… they simply bought and bolstered an existing product to make the Mac more attractive as a platform.
Several new Adobe products have been introduced in Windows-only versions. In the case of Atmosphere, a new 3D animation application, the decision to skip the Mac was attributed to a small pool of potential customers.
The Mac is a niche player in the 3D animation market, which is already oversaturated with dozens of other applications. Adobe can only expect a small niche of this market across all platforms, so why would they target a niche of a niche? It simply doesn’t make sense from a business perspective…
In the case of Photoshop Album, a light-duty consumer photo application, a similar application was already built into OS X.
So why compete?
With its Encore DVD-authoring package, Adobe again pointed to competition from an Apple video application.
Again, another company (Spruce) which was competing with Adobe (with Maestro) which Apple bought out. Apple certainly lowered the barrier of entry, but this only makes their platform more attractive. It’s not as if Adobe wouldn’t be competing againt Spruce otherwise…
Adobe caused a stir among Apple devotees last year by republishing test results that showed certain Adobe applications running faster on Windows PCs than on Macs.
Certain applications being one application, Premiere, which was not optimized for the Mac very well, and at the time the Mac platform was not on par performance wise with PCs. This has certainly changed with the G5, and of course there’s the issue of Premiere being wholely inferior to FCE/FCP, which were substantially better optimized for the Mac. This is a moot point considering Adobe has dropped Mac support for Premiere entirely. This seems to be an intentionally misleading statement from the article’s author.
There was another incident where a single Adobe employee wrote a book (I don’t remember what product it was for) and mentioned that he prefered Windows. This was the statement of an individual and not indicative of Adobe’s corporate policy towards Apple.
Adobe, which could once be relied upon to turn up at any Apple gathering, has skipped several Macworld events in recent years.
This is perhaps the only comment which can legitimately be used to argue that Adobe has taken a disliking towards Apple. I’d simply argue that Adobe has much more to gain in the Windows market than in the Mac market, and that they don’t really need to evangelize in the Mac market when most creative professionals who own Macs are most likely already using all the Adobe products they are interested in buying.
The relationship between Apple and Adobe is strictly a business one. It’s certainly in Adobe’s best interest to continue top notch support for products which target predominantly Mac users, and when it’s mutually advantageous the two companies will collaborate, such as Apple bundling InDesign with new PowerMacs when Quark was dragging their feet on OS X support for QuarkXPress.
It’s ridiculous to think Adobe is “harboring a grudge” against Apple or anything of that nature, especially considering their main sources of revenue on the Mac platform are a few orders of magnitude more than the money they could stand to make by targeting lower end niche applications which compete with superior ones offered by Apple already. Adobe has reacted quite sensibly to Apple’s business maneuverings, and is sure to continue first class support for the Mac platform for as long as it’s making them money.
>What about a cheap, easy, simple image editor for “normal people”..
Graphic Converter does this job. There is also Canvas 9 and others too.
>Not all people that use a mac, are photoshop professionals..
You are missing the point. The whole fuss today IS about these professionals, because part of Mac’s legacy is these zillion hordes of Photoshop professionals. These professionals are the biggest identified group of Mac users, losing these customers will be devastating to Apple. When someone says “there is a problem with adobe” you immediately think of those people, not the JoeUser who just wants an easy-to-use Gimp or PSP.
>Dream on!
Hmmm… You might have said the same thing about Premiere. Or maybe Powerpoint is the best presentation software. I chucked that piece of crap for Keynote months ago. Adobe is disapearing from the Mac platform. Would that astute eye of yours caught that many moons ago? You think photoshop is the be all and end all forever?
Yes.
Keynote is not as powerful as Powerpoint btw (in case you didn’t know Keynote was written by a single person and tehn was purchased by Apple).
But again, you will need to think a bit more broad: Powerpoint is an office app and with a way or another you would be able to do what you ultimately want with Keynote or other software. But this is not the case with Photoshop. Professional artists that already use Photoshop will NOT change Photoshop to some new wannabe software.
I belive that Keynote was devolped so Steve could have presentation software for the Stevenotes. During the unveiling he mentioned that he was the only beta tester. I doubt that it was developed for the CEO outside of Apple. But hey, I may be wrong.
Adobe will market products to platforms they can derice profit from and are of strategic value. If they goof this and drop a viable platform or product, a competitor will eventually fill the hole.
Whats the problem?
Dream on. It is not a matter of money or developers, it is a matter of time. It took Adobe 15 years to bring Photoshop to what it is today. If you think Apple (or Microsoft for that matter) can do it in 2 years, you are vastly mistaken.
The technical aspects of photo editing software isn’t really that hard. And making a clone of photoshop wouldn’t take that long for a team of 10 talented people in a well managed project. I mean, most of the time Adobe spent on Photoshop was probably research, app/UI design and PR. Let’s not forget that they have also ported Photoshop to a number of platforms and have more or less rewritten it from scratch once. So by making a Photoshop clone for one single platform you’d be able to cut down the development time by many many years. The features in Photoshop aren’t very hard to reproduce, since they are all based on common techniques that are well documented. However, testing the application in various environments would require a lot of time and tweaking.
Though, I doubt that Apple would want to make a clone of Photoshop. They would want to make something original. So yeah, I’d say that it would take them 3-4 years to create something that’s on the same level as photoshop is today. But they’ll have to catch up with Photoshop along the way, making it a bit harder.
But it’s not like it would take 15 or even 10 years to do something like that. That’s like saying that it would take 10 years to recreate BeOS. And we all know that’s not true.
>That’s like saying that it would take 10 years to recreate BeOS.
That’s EXACTLY what I am saying. I suggest you read some JoelOnSoftware sometimes.
> And we all know that’s not true.
It IS true. It took Be engineers 10 years to bring BeOS to where it was with BeOS 5. If you think that a bunch of completely amateurs system programmers (with the exception of 2 or 3) within OpenBeOS can do it in 2 or even 5 years, you are deeply-deeply mistaken.
Remember, being feature-complete is ONE thing. Being stable and having a cohesive/documented/supported product is a whole another thing.
It takes 20% of your time to actually duplicate some code, the rest 80% of the time will be cleaning up.
It even took Apple 6 years to bring Mac OS X to a more stable/optimized state that it is today with Panther.
These things don’t happen overnight. Remember again: being feature-complete is only one thing, and it ain’t the one that takes most of the time.
Amen.
From your lips to Microsoft’s ears.
The problem with Junk software( Microsoft ) is that the programmers take the short cut All the TIME.
– The exceptions need to be coded.
– Every If Must Have an ELSE.
This is what seperates the Men from the Boys.
The Sun, IBM, Apple,BE and Oracle from the Microsofts.
But, that’s just my opinion.
But the ELSE’s cost Money, Money Bill won’t spend.
How do you thing he got that 50 Billion in the bank?
if apple deems it profitable to make a real competitor for photoshop then they will. if adobe doesn’t like it, then they can quit making ps for the mac. will the world come to an end? will apple die as a result? will chickens fly out my bum? doubt it.
personally i would welcome an apple branded image editor. more so, i’d welcome the competition.
It IS true. It took Be engineers 10 years to bring BeOS to where it was with BeOS 5. If you think that a bunch of completely amateurs system programmers (with the exception of 2 or 3) within OpenBeOS can do it in 2 or even 5 years, you are deeply-deeply mistaken.
Did I mention OpenBeOS?! I didn’t even say that it was going to be rebuilt by amateurs. What I meant is that it’s a lot easier to clone an allready existing application than to write a new one from scratch with fresh ideas.
Remember, being feature-complete is ONE thing. Being stable and having a cohesive/documented/supported product is a whole another thing.
I suggest that you actually read what I’m writing because that’s what I said.
It even took Apple 6 years to bring Mac OS X to a more stable/optimized state that it is today with Panther.
Even though Apple did get a lot for free, they also developed a lot of things from scratch with fresh ideas. They didn’t make an exact clone of another system.
Also, you have to consider how much time that they spent on the actual OS and how much they spent on the apps that comes with it.
“Adobe, which could once be relied upon to turn up at any Apple gathering, has skipped several Macworld events in recent years.
This is perhaps the only comment which can legitimately be used to argue that Adobe has taken a disliking towards Apple.”
Also note that even Apple is starting to skip Macworld.
I think Apple could probably take out Photoshop in about 2 years. The big issue would be keeping complete compatibility with Photoshop so you could share files. Not just sharing with Photoshop though, but with InDesign and Illustrator. That’s the hard part…especially if Adobe pulls a Microsoft and changes the format just to keep competing apps out.
They wouldn’t start from scratch though, they rarely do. They would either buy up an existing product and reshape and add to it until you didn’t know it used to be something else (hey, iTunes used to be SoundJam MP), or they would buy the development team from another company…lol, probably also buy up every ex-Adobe developer along the way.
Again though, the problem is compatibility with other applications. Most pros don’t work in just Photoshop, they have a workflow that includes more than just image editing. If they made a Photoshop killer, it would have to really be a killer, and they would have to give it 150% and go though with the whole suite, AND get it all out the door between the time Adobe releases a version of its suite, and the time they decide not to release any more Mac versions.
I have a feeling they are more concerned with a MS Office killer at this point. If MS drops Office for Mac, it won’t kill Apple, but they would still need to replace it. AppleWorks Pro or something. Still, compatibility is the key issue, especially with an office suite. I’m sure a lot of Mac users would love to be MS free, and with the rise of Linux and OO.o, MS won’t be able to charge $500 for an office suite for much longer.
Also, if you’re willing to spend $100, Photoshop Elements 2 is great on both Mac and Windows.
“Remember, being feature-complete is ONE thing. Being stable and having a cohesive/documented/supported product is a whole another thing. ”
What about Paint Shop Pro 8?
It is a prety feisty little app… actually it is pretty darn good…I definately chose it hands down over Photoshop Elements (it is more advanced than PSE and it is realy closing up to the main Photoshop).
I know some industrial designers that are using it, and some artists as well.
If Apple didn’t feel like starting from scratch, could they lure Jasc software in the Apple platform ?
an adobe buyout? Would be pretty awesome… Apple buys Adobe. Pro tools++….
But then again, I think Sun should open source java and merge with Apple… O well.
“an adobe buyout? Would be pretty awesome… Apple buys Adobe. Pro tools++…. ”
How much is Adobe worth? Apple’s got that $5 bill in the bank.
But – what if Microsoft buys Adobe ? – in an attemt to prevent Adobe in porting their main apps to Linux in the near future. What then? Should Apple just stand on the side line and watch ?
I doubt MS will buy Macromedia. But Adobe could become a feasible target as Linux is growing faster and faster on PCs
There are 3 governments (US, EU, and Japan) watching MS too closely about all this anti-competitive stuff right now for them to buy Adobe or Macromedia. Even if Apple bought Adobe they would have to keep Windows versions relatively on par with Mac versions.
“There are 3 governments (US, EU, and Japan) watching MS too closely about all this anti-competitive stuff right now for them to buy Adobe or Macromedia. Even if Apple bought Adobe they would have to keep Windows versions relatively on par with Mac versions.”
I agree, but Linux could change all that. Change the balance. In two years time MS market share will suffer. Maybe not dramatically, but just the trend alone will work in their favour, defending an eventual purchase of additional software branches against anti-competitive legislators arguments.
The “market-share-loosing trend” will be there, and work MS in favour. And the “ocean” of free OSS for both Linux and Windows will help MS in convincing everyone that there is no such stuff as “anti-competitive” tings going on, – at least not in a world where Linux is growing faster and faster
Would it be possible for Apple to buy Adobe?
One has also to take into account that the World has changed very much since the golden and glory days of PS and DTP. The need for super pro image and web apps is not rising. Less will do more often.
My feeling is that probably about 30-40% of the content on the Internet is made in MS FrontPage, the next 40% in various word processors, just presenting information and content in an unfashionable manner, and the remaining 10% in various hand coded editors and killer apps like DW and GoLive. Many of todays apps will retire along with the persons using them. The world is a dynamic place.
“Would it be possible for Apple to buy Adobe?”
Don’t know. But it would be entirely stupid of Apple to buy Adobe. Apple already has and owns all the ingredients needed to produce “good enough” apps replacing the apps in question.
Apple will never want to buy Adobe.
Unlikely. Apple is worth about $10 billion, Adobe is worth about $9 billion.
“But – what if Microsoft buys Adobe ? – in an attemt to prevent Adobe in porting their main apps to Linux in the near future.”
Firstly, Microsoft has not previously had any real interest in the multimedia market, except insofar as applications compliment their business products (Photo Editor being part of Office, and Publisher). All their actions have been, and I anticipate will continue to be for the short term, aimed at staving off Linux on servers and “office worker” desktops.
Secondly, PantherPPC had a point about antitrust, which also extends to customer perceptions. Microsoft would initially have to break through several well-established perception barriers to convince former Adobe customers to upgrade to Microsoft Photoshop XP (or whatever) with any great zest.
Thirdly… a company isn’t required to accept any and all bids to buy them, you know…
“All their actions have been, and I anticipate will continue to be for the short term, aimed at staving off Linux on servers and “office worker” desktops. ”
If anyone should not have noticed that this is exactly where we have been heading for the great many recent years. Office workers doing what pro’s where doing in the “older days” of computing. This is a trend, which is still growing in momentum.
The future will say: If you loose in the office, you loose everywhere! This is indeed the case with Apple. Apple lost in the office. And is still losing in the office.
I think all the recent cutting back of adobe’s software on the mac platform is just a precursor to their cutbacks on the windows platform. adobe has a lot of overlap in their products, and its time to cut the fat in their line. (streamline is sooo dead)
they won’t be cutting out their bread and butter products. in fact, the less cluttered the product line, the better they can focus on their core products.
Illustrator and Photoshop are all I care about, and I really don’t think adobe would kill them from the mac platform..
and I hardly doubt apple could ever make anything close to match adobe’s imaging tools for professionals. That, and iPhoto makes me giggle too much to take it serious actually
of which I am one would raise holy cain if Adobe decided to drop Mac support. Or better yet, even give an inkling along those lines.
It’s not all about the app. It’s very much about the OS as well. To do so, would upset one group of people who’ve long fed and nourished Photoshop since it was a simple-palette baby, long before desktop publishing was everyday and normal.
“Dream on. It is not a matter of money or developers, it is a matter of time. It took Adobe 15 years to bring Photoshop to what it is today. If you think Apple (or Microsoft for that matter) can do it in 2 years, you are vastly mistaken.”
Yeah, right! Photoshop is just as bad today as it was 15 years ago. It really is an overrated and overpriced application.
“Professional artists that already use Photoshop will NOT change Photoshop to some new wannabe software”
This is a pretty glib statement Eugenia.
Can you point to proof? Is this quoting from a study I’ve missed? I am a creative professional and I would use the best tool for the job. As a designer, you move between tools all the time and there is a learning curve with every new release of even familiar applications (Flash4 to Flash5 to FlashMX anyone?).
These professional artists (and BTW, Photoshop is not primarily an art program, that’s more Illustrator/Freehand’s turf) would use whatever suits them best.
The Mac was losin’ ground in the pro audio side too… there were a lot of apps for pc that people were goin’ ‘hey.’ What are ya gonna do
That is bull. Back that claim up. From the top of my head, I can only think of ONE major app, Cakewalk (which was never available for the Mac anyway). Cubase SX, Digital Performer, ProTools (and the vast swath of PT plug-ins that are Mac only), Logic (they were still cross platform when Apple bought eMagic) are still quite healthy and very capable on the Mac. The Mac DOMINATES in the Audio realm.
“Yeah, right! Photoshop is just as bad today as it was 15 years ago. It really is an overrated and overpriced application.”
Totally agree.
Keynote is not as powerful as Powerpoint …wannabe software.
——————————–
Eugenia
We moved to Keynote because Powerpoint struggles with our data. In fact we frist moved to Freehand and exported into PDF for many years and not have move to Keynote because is more powerful.
MS should of called “Powerpoint” “Weakpoint”.
W
If only Someone would come out with something that beat Photoshop. I would jump ship so quick it would hurt! For now, Photoshop is simply the best tool for what I do, and that is to make art for games, graphic design, and random illustration. I paint in photoshop. I probably should be using painter or something, but that along with everything else does not offer everything that photoshop offers that I’ve grown to love and depend upon.
I have no loyalty to any one company, only to getting the job done as fast and as easy and as beautiful as possible.
Features I can’t live without.
-Layers and layersets. If I could have groups of layersets and a full heirarchical object file system for each piece of art I would be so happpy.
-Channels up the wazzoo. I love channels and what they allow me to do.
-Quickmask
-Layereffects. Good God, these make my life easy. Also having both Fill and Opacity for each layer is a godsend.
-File browser is a great addition to photoshop.
-Dynamic brushes. Love these.
I could go on… I would love to have all this in a free package like the gimp. Or even in another commercial package. I get really tired of not having a good choice between two competing products. I don’t like being a dependable source of income for any one company, I want them to work for me if they are going to be getting my money. I want them to feel the heat and be forced to improve upon the product.
“Would it be possible for Apple to buy Adobe?”
Don’t know. But it would be entirely stupid of Apple to buy Adobe. Apple already has and owns all the ingredients needed to produce “good enough” apps replacing the apps in question.
Apple will never want to buy Adobe”
Apple already has enough defected Adobe programmers and developers, and their own. Plus the aces they have aquired.
I would like to see Apple take Gimp and develope it into a mac app, like they did with their web browser and then give the code back to the open source community.
known Jobs, he probably already has something up his sleeve and Adobe probably all ready knows it, and is loosing sleep over it, like iPhoto did to them.
As has been said in several places since MS’s PDC, Avalon has the abilities of
-SVG
-PDF
-HTML
-XUL
-CSS
-Flash
-electronic forms
+compositing similar to Apple’s Quartz/Quartz Express
After Longhorn MS wil not need neither W3C nor Adobe. On the Longhorn platform it will probably be better for Adobe to rewrite its applications for Avalon vs. PDF.
Poor Adobe, they think they are escaping earth by running away from Mac when even worse disaster awaits them in the Windows world. At least MAC has built in support for PDF.
SIDENOTE: To fellow OSS members that have decieved themselves into thinking that Avalon is basically a XUL ripoff you are not fully wrong or right. Looking at the list above i can see several technologies that either cannot be done in XUL or will be extremely difficult
sorry that was menat to read Adobe thinks it is escaping death…
I agree with the writer who commented that Adobe simply dropped non-selling Mac apps. It was the marketplace which dictated his decision.
It would be a disaster for Mac users, of course, if Adobe ceased supporting what it now calls Creative Suite. Apple couldn’t devote sufficient resources to sufficiently plug this hole, and graphic pros would likely rather switch to Windows than learn another platform or toss their software investment.
But it’s not likely to happen. By Adobe’s own admission, Creative Suite is selling very well. Adobe will stay in as long as there’s profit involved, and that’s likely to continue for a very long time.
Same goes with Office. It sells, so Microsoft develops (witness Office 2004, coming soon to a G5 near you). Good thing, too. If I were Apple, there would never be an Appleworks 7.
No need to panic. Now, back to our regular programming . . .
Did any of you notice this is the second time in a short period that c|net is pulling this Adobe is devorcing from Apple episode? Sometimes I have the feeling when the Apple stocks are rising too fast, c|net comes with another quite meaningless Apple bashing artice.
A lot of posters make very good points and Apple proved already that they are not solely a hardware company and that they launch really nice apps themselves. C|net is trying to tell us that Apple is presumably loosing market share on the desktop if favour of their musical adventures.
Any company dropping support for a secure and productive platform like Apple only loses in the long run. It is funny how c|net writes the same days about how expensive it gets for companies to keep the Windows computers running with all the plagues.
just my 0.02 euros
“Same goes with Office. It sells, so Microsoft develops (witness Office 2004, coming soon to a G5 near you). Good thing, too. If I were Apple, there would never be an Appleworks 7.”
Right now NeoOffice (OOo) is the only Unicode Office Suite on the Mac platform. This will probably also be the case after the MS-MacOffice2004 start this Summer, as MsMacOffice 2004 will probably still not support Unicode fully. Apples international customers (not every one live in the language regions supported by MS Office v.X and AppleWorks. (try to edit or open a Russian OOo document in either MS Office or Apple works on the Mac.
So Apple better come up with a Unicode Office app the supports and works with the Unicode facilities in Mac OS X. Otherwise Apple will lose the office work space for the second time in its history, and this time to the Linux platform. At lest they could support the OpenOffice porting to Mac.
I’m an vector-graphics guy. It’s my second nature. I can dream Illustrator, but I get more and more dissapointed by the improvements Adobe makes to it. They just hack some old code together to present a stupid new feature. And it gets less stable every time.
Really, I’d wish Adobe stopped making Illustrator, Apple will have to jump in and we’ll finally get a decent OSX vector editor.
And it’s not that hard at all. Quartz has the same possibilities as adobe’s graphics layer, so most of the work will be the intersection algorithms to get the combine/divide paths working. (just a bit of mathematics)
I’ve tried some simple osx native editors, and I assure you, illustrator is slow as a slug compared to them.
Photoshop is overpriced, and overly complicated. Each year they add a handful of features and extract another upgrade fee. You know what happens when you get fat and lazy? Someone hungrier comes along. Print publishing is slow anyways. If Apple thought this was a growth opportunity, they’d do a Photoshop. They still might.
I rely on Adobe’s software to make a living and run a business. One thing that hasn’t been pointed out in all of the “what if Adobe dropped Apple” conjecture is the fact that people who rely on apps like photoshop to make money would have to switch platforms Adobe dropped an app like Photoshop for the mac. There are two main reasons: a) Most folks don’t have the time to learn a new application while they’re trying to work for a living b) THERE IS NO REPLACEMENT for photoshop. Those folks who say you can use gimp instead of photoshop are not professional users and do not know what they’re talking about. I for one, would have to start using XP if Photoshop was dropped for the Mac. I would hate it, but I would do it because I don’t have the time to wait for a replacement or try to learn another image editor.
Also, whoever said Photoshop was not an “Art” application is a total moron.