Apple, Adobe drifting apart

[MacBytes]

Category: Opinion/Interviews
Link: Apple, Adobe drifting apart (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040330181929)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[mvc]

Is news.com actually a Microsfot subsidiary or something, they always find a negative slant on Apple, with religious regularity!

Well, they say people don't like a computer that's friendlier than they are.

[montex]

"They really needed each other 10 or 20 years ago; that's clearly less important now," said Jeffrey Tarter, the editor of software industry newsletter Softletter. "Windows has finally become adequate as a publishing platform," he said, meaning graphics professionals can switch to a cheaper platform than the Mac.

What planet is he on? Nobody does any real publishing on Windows. Everybody knows that it's still cr*p. And when you figure in the cost of professional publishing apps (e.g. Quark, InDesign, Photoshop etc.) the difference in cost between a Mac or a PC workstation is insignificant.

I know who is buying PCs and using them for publishing, tho. Secretaries that have Publisher regularly dump thier POS newsletters on our shop. And what a joy that is!

Fact is, if you are using a PC for graphic design with the intent to go to press, then you are telling the world that you are a complete amateur who doesn't know what he/she is doing.

[mrsebastian]

ok, i have quite a few issues with this article and for starters:
"With (Apple's) shrinking market share, it's a simple economic decision..."
how is apple's market share shrinking? course i don't have actual numbers in front of me, but i'd guesstimate that apple is doing better than it has in quite some time. with the g5, powerbooks, and a probably completely revamped/updated desktop line in the next couple of months, it can't go anywhere, but up. the usuall the mac is dead or dieing thing is getting old.

why on earth would adobe not sell it's products for the mac?! sure there are some that don't make much sense and have thereby gone pc only, but the creative suite isn't going anywhere. heck, look at m$ office for mac, i'm sure they don't make gobs of money, but it's definately worth it... uh, wait a minute, this article was on m$ centric c-net... never mind.

[macridah]

I hope photoshop and illustrator don't go anywhere.

[mrsebastian]

..Secretaries that have Publisher regularly dump thier POS newsletters on our shop. And what a joy that is!...

those are my favorite! had one of our long time clients meet with me, one of my designers, and her ae as we've always designed their newsletter. in our meeting, i vaguely remember hearing this before i resigned my position as creative d. and went to my local bar for medication, "we thought we'd save some money by designing it ourselves in publisher. the guy at comp usa says it works great and any reputable printer will be able to output this for you. so my secretary spent 4 weeks learning the program to get it all together and so here it is... and oh yeah we used tons of cool clip art we found on the web." i looked at her, told her she should go to kinkos and wished her the best of luck. thank god for happy hour that day!

[winmacguy]

those are my favorite! had one of our long time clients meet with me, one of my designers, and her ae as we've always designed their newsletter. in our meeting, i vaguely remember hearing this before i resigned my position as creative d. and went to my local bar for medication, "we thought we'd save some money by designing it ourselves in publisher. the guy at comp usa says it works great and any reputable printer will be able to output this for you. so my secretary spent 4 weeks learning the program to get it all together and so here it is... and oh yeah we used tons of cool clip art we found on the web." i looked at her, told her she should go to kinkos and wished her the best of luck. thank god for happy hour that day!

No matter how stupid the customer is, dont you just hate it when the customer is always right!
( just because the customer was somewhat mis-informed is no reason to humiliate her in public, you are supposed to do that when you are talking to your workmates after she has left as you roll around on the floor laughing at her expense)

In any retail situation, as retailers/graphic designers/mac operators we have to realise that the clients/customers come to us because we can do the work that they cant. This also includes customers who have recieved dubious information from other sources in the industry.

A better way to "deal" with that "wonderful" customer would have been to take her job and charge her for the time taken to unravel the whole thing and convert her images to CMYK for printing.

[montex]

Yes, the customer is always right. But I still can't polish a turd. And every Publisher file I get always in blood and money on the floor. We automatically charge an hour of tech time on Publisher files beyond the usual set-up. Does that sound like a savings to you? I bill at $90/hr. How many Publisher files does it take to blow away the "savings" you get from buying a PC?

[winmacguy]

Yes, the customer is always right. But I still can't polish a turd. And every Publisher file I get always in blood and money on the floor. We automatically charge an hour of tech time on Publisher files beyond the usual set-up. Does that sound like a savings to you? I bill at $90/hr. How many Publisher files does it take to blow away the "savings" you get from buying a PC?\\

I agree, you cant make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Unfortunatley a lot of the secretarial/ PA population out there think that they are the proverbial "bee's knees" when they produce a bit of publishing in MS Desktop Publisher. Most PC workers who deal with MS Publisher think that because it is MS and desktop publishing that it must be good and it shouldnt be any problems sending it to a commercial printer because "everyone uses Microsoft"

I worked with a senior co-worker at a previous job who got the task of formating the companies inhouse news letter which had been set up in MS Publisher I think. He had to reformat it into a proper InDesign document
( not a fun process, plus the layout left a lot to be desired)

[Gymnut]

those are my favorite! had one of our long time clients meet with me, one of my designers, and her ae as we've always designed their newsletter. in our meeting, i vaguely remember hearing this before i resigned my position as creative d. and went to my local bar for medication, "we thought we'd save some money by designing it ourselves in publisher. the guy at comp usa says it works great and any reputable printer will be able to output this for you. so my secretary spent 4 weeks learning the program to get it all together and so here it is... and oh yeah we used tons of cool clip art we found on the web." i looked at her, told her she should go to kinkos and wished her the best of luck. thank god for happy hour that day!

lol, ahh..that's good stuff :p Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[nsb3000]

I have put together publications in Quark, Indesign, and Publisher...Indesign is the best, quark is a close second, and publisher...Let me just put it this way. I would recommend to bill gates that if they want to get serious in the desktop publishing market, they should delete all the code they have already written, and start again. To think that people actually use this POS on a regular basis...it just blows my mind. If I had a print shop, I would refuse to printer publisher files.

My 2 cents.

[realityisterror]

this whole article is sort of scary... but it'd definitely slanted. imagine adobe and apple growing apart. and apple is losing market share. ha! but imagine if apple did go bankrupt one day in my life time, i may have to contemplate suicide! where's the :gulp: emoticon??

reality

[TwitchOSX]

Fellow pre-press/designers.. i feel your pain.. do you guys ever hang out on the Adobe InDesign forums? Im there every day.. have a couple good threads going on the nightmares of crap files that we get.. the main forum is here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx
14@138.IBQCcjrceUE.582762@.ee6b330

And the fun one were the topic was "Creating a list of clueless designers" is here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@138.IBQCcjrceUE.582765@.2cd0bc9a/0

I work for a small print shop in southern oregon and I am the sole pre-press / graphic artist there. Ive only been doing it for a little over a year.. before that was all web design so InDesign and Quark and Illustrator are fairly new to me... .. as I have only been using them for about a year where I have used Photoshop since version 2.5. Anyway.. we get Publisher files and they are the worst. The worst part is actually that Publisher crashes 99% of the time and I cant fix it. Its a small mom and pop business and I cant get them to upgrade everything. I have tried my best and so far I have gotten them to upgrade to OSX, InDesign, PS 7, purchased Suitcase and got an external firewire HD for backup instead of the CD's, ZIP's, and Floppy's they were using before. But still, its a 500mhz G4 with a 1200mhz upgrade card and its still really slow.. compared to my Dual 800 at home. I wish they would see the light. Everything takes me forever to do there AND they want to take in every single job possible. Understandable for a really small shop but if they upgraded everything, it would save me so much time that I could dedicate that extra time to getting other things done like work on the website which I created and host for them on my server. I would have more time to work on the file upload script which I am having problems with .. yadda yadda yadda.. im sure you all know the drill. It sucks. I would never run a company where a client can come in with a file from a newer program than we have. Email me if you want to chat or maybe I will see you on the InDesign boards on Adobe's site.

Chris
chris@neoliquid.com
www.neoliquid.com

[winmacguy]

Fellow pre-press/designers.. i feel your pain.. do you guys ever hang out on the Adobe InDesign forums? Im there every day.. have a couple good threads going on the nightmares of crap files that we get.. the main forum is here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx
14@138.IBQCcjrceUE.582762@.ee6b330

And the fun one were the topic was "Creating a list of clueless designers" is here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@138.IBQCcjrceUE.582765@.2cd0bc9a/0


Chris
chris@neoliquid.com
www.neoliquid.com

Might have to add the forum to my list.

[TwitchOSX]

I have had no formal training in InDesign.. or Quark for that matter.. and the Adobe InDesign forum is a GOD SEND! I would not be near where I am right now without that forum. They are awesome. I posted in the Adobe Illustrator forum and didnt get much of a response.. when I post in the InDesign forum.. i can get at LEAST 3 reply's within a few hours which is awesome. Just had somebody fix a problem I was having with a Quark file not printing to our DPM. He suggested that the problem with the font when I opened the Quark file in InDesign was a font issue and that it might work to re-create the font line in Illustrator and convert to lines and save and import to InDesign. I did that, it worked, and bam.. the RUSH job got sent to press. I love that place. Hope to see you there.

Chris

[winmacguy]

I have had no formal training in InDesign.. or Quark for that matter.. and the Adobe InDesign forum is a GOD SEND! I would not be near where I am right now without that forum. They are awesome. I posted in the Adobe Illustrator forum and didnt get much of a response.. when I post in the InDesign forum.. i can get at LEAST 3 reply's within a few hours which is awesome. Just had somebody fix a problem I was having with a Quark file not printing to our DPM. He suggested that the problem with the font when I opened the Quark file in InDesign was a font issue and that it might work to re-create the font line in Illustrator and convert to lines and save and import to InDesign. I did that, it worked, and bam.. the RUSH job got sent to press. I love that place. Hope to see you there.

Chris
Might have to do it when i get home tonight

[x86isslow]

ah, consider yourselves lucky. publisher? if only i could use even that. As editor in chief of the school magazine, i do both proofing and layout with MS WORD!!! Publisher, Indesign, XPress... only in the dreamland where we get a budget.

/rant.

[TwitchOSX]

Get used to it. Now is the time to start bitching about your low end crap that they give you. We all bitch about it. Might as well write a nice letter to the administration about how using MS Word to create a newsletter does nothing for your future. It teaches you nothing important and wont prep you at all for a future. Let them know that if they want to get you prepared for the future that they need to provide professional programs.. which can be had by educational institutions for VERY cheap. Anyway.. if they are going to force you to use WORD for a newsletter.. even the the class is fun, bring up a strike type of thing.. or just tell them that you dont want to learn the "cheap and un-professional" way to do things. Remind them that you know more than them and that Word is not an industry standard for printing that you expect proper programs to be taught or even at least offered. I wish I had those options or at least people telling me what to do when I was in high school.

Chris

[paulypants]

Fact is, if you are using a PC for graphic design with the intent to go to press, then you are telling the world that you are a complete amateur who doesn't know what he/she is doing.

WOW...couldn't have said it better myself.

[winmacguy]

ah, consider yourselves lucky. publisher? if only i could use even that. As editor in chief of the school magazine, i do both proofing and layout with MS WORD!!! Publisher, Indesign, XPress... only in the dreamland where we get a budget.

/rant.

what about Adobe Education deals?