ADOBE TO ACQUIRE MACROMEDIA

[kingslod]

Jeez...stop slagging GoLive

Everyone hates GoLive? I use it to design simple web sites because I'm a designer, not a coder. Not a programmer. Not a time waster. I do print design for a living, and GoLive works like Quark and InDesign in many respects. I've been using it since before it was aquired by Adobe. It's not the greatest program in the world, but it does what it needs to do. Oh yes, and it crashes a lot!

Still, maybe with GoLive they cut some of the bloat (as someone previously posted) and it becomes the new "PageMill" -- remember that? Web design for the masses. And Dreamweaver is the pro choice. But, I thought everyone used Flash now anyway. So, who cares?!

 

[paulypants]

This is solely my opinion... but it comes from someone who has managed advertising and creative departments, taught college graphic design, made a living as a freelance illustrator, and spent 15 years in the industry:

Freehand is and will always be superior to Illustrator.

Ask anyone who isn't a casual user and who actually has to live by these apps.

Freehand is vastly more intuitive.

Again, this is just my opinion.

I agree.

-F Brown

I respect your opinions and know some people that feel the way you do. However, I am not one of them. I am much more than a 'casual' user and have always found Freehand to be archaic compared to illustrator. I never liked the screen rendering in Freehand as it was never accurate to the ouput quality.

 

[trrosen]

my take

Freehand will be released back into the wild. Adobe has no use for it (neither did MM) but killing it will not go over with European regulaters.PS M$ already bought a illustration program

dreamweaver and golive merge into a new product leaving (fighting back chuckles) Frontpage as the only other option.

Flash replaces SVG in adobe's vocabulary.

Director is left on its own much as it was at MM.

Fireworks - dead

Coldfusion - ????? not really the kind of product Adobe has ever handled...anything could happen here.

big picture here is on company now controls flash and PDF and OWNS the HTML creation market.

plus side M$ would never be allowed to buy adobe now
minus side this could give adobe an idenity crisis and cause some floundering.

 

[atari1356]

The only Macromedia app I use is Flash... but I hate its klunky user interface. Hopefully Adobe can make it a bit more user-friendly.

 

[dornoforpyros]

dear god I hope this merger means we get the best of both sides in one suite.
I hope this means the death of go-live, that program produces the worse html since word/front page.

I have to say this annoucnment worries me.

 

[dornoforpyros]

Everyone hates GoLive? I use it to design simple web sites because I'm a designer, not a coder. Not a programmer. Not a time waster. I do print design for a living, and GoLive works like Quark and InDesign in many respects. I've been using it since before it was aquired by Adobe. It's not the greatest program in the world, but it does what it needs to do. Oh yes, and it crashes a lot!

Still, maybe with GoLive they cut some of the bloat (as someone previously posted) and it becomes the new "PageMill" -- remember that? Web design for the masses. And Dreamweaver is the pro choice. But, I thought everyone used Flash now anyway. So, who cares?!

I really hope your post is sarcasm, Go-Live produces garbage code and dreamweaver and flash are completly different programs.

 

[pgwalsh]

One killer suite

This means that I can now upgrade one killer suite instead of selected products.


I hope they integrate some of fireworks features into PhotoShop and ImageReady.

I hope we can upgrade LiveMotion 2 to Flash (don't ask why I still have livemotion, I just do).

I've been using GoLive for years and wont miss it if it goes. I'm still on 6, so I can't fairly grade the CS versions. However, if some of the same crappy code is in CS as in 6 then please don't let those developers get their evil hands on DreamWeaver.

Illustrator is a biznatch. I can use it to a certain extent, but if I don't use it on a regular basis, I forget how to. It's just not intuative. I can jump into PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, FreeHand and use them without touching a manual (and did). I've bene using Illustrator for a long time, but not on a regular basis and I'm always digging in the friggin manual. It's not intuative. Makes me realize why Illustrator users are such snobs. They must have gotten really anal when they tried to learn Illustrator.

For those of you who want PDF as web pages.. ha! ha! I can't stand PDF pages on the web. It's so friggin slow. I would feel sorry for the dial up crowd.

 

[joeboy_45101]

It could be alot worse! Microsoft could have bought Macromedia. Just imagine that!

 

[Hemingray]

Hm, now that I think about it, whatever happened to Aldus? I know they went down years ago, but did they get bought out by Adobe too? I remember both PageMaker and Freehand used to be Aldus products originally.

Also, now maybe Adobe will make a modern version of Fontographer! That would rock, since Macromedia had pretty much abandoned it.

 

[bit density]

What I think will happen...

This is largely about Flash. Adobe made a big mistake not buying Flash in the first place. This is an incredibly important thing for them...

Freehand/Pagemaker. These two products share a common UI philosophy (they should as they were both Aldus Products). If you used one, you understood the other.

Neither really fits into the Indesign/Illustrator/Photoshop UI philosophy.

You can like one or the other. But they are very difficult for a user to bounce between the two.

But I do not think there is a decent customer for the product as there was before the Adobe/Aldus merger (the A in adobe came over from Aldus). But there *is* another way. GPL Freehand and PageMaker. This in one swoop kills off scribus. It keeps the products "alive". But seeing the progress of things like open office, etc. It will overwhelm the FOSS community from moving the product significantly forward, without giving up much in the way of crown jewels.

DreamWeaver and Cold Fusion Will have to be sold off/spun off. My guess is that this will go into an Adobe funded start-up, and either succeeds again or dies.

Fireworks may get Open Sourced as well. I suspect that Adobe will revisit the whole of the baby photoshops (Image Ready, Elements, After Effects, Illustrator, In Design and I am sure that there are others that now have the Photoshop engine inside) and see if there is not some better way to slice and dice the package.

Director is tough. The "moving" images world is becoming a pretty thin space. But, there may be a move to make and AE central version of Creative Suite. Something that includes AE, Director, and Premiere. Which in many ways goes up directly with Apples Suite. I am not sure the market here is large enough to support both. The battle may be over HD which may indeed mean that the battle is actually over the future of film.

But the interesting thing about all this is... 3.4 Billion is an aweful lot to pay for Flash. While flash is very cool and very pervasive, I just don't think that you are ever going to get back your investment...It is an extraordinarilly good tool for what it does. But doesn't everyone who needs flash, already own it? How do you significantly grow this market?

 

[512ke]

My biased opinion based not on facts but intuition is that Adobe doesn't like Mac. They view Apple as a competitor not a collaborator. Therefore, they will migrate away from Mac. Mac will become a platform for consumers not professionals unless Apple itself can keep coming up with its own superior programs.

 

[0098386]

as much as i love Photoshop and Flash, they are essential parts of my course, i think this is a bad idea.

sure the big daddy Flash will stay but i've just been getting into Dreamweaver and its quite a nice application. certainly beats using Frontpage.

i suppose to the end user, in a financial sense, could be quite good. all packages rolled into one would probably cost less than purchasing both Studio MX and CS Studio (is it called?). oh well.

 

[tstahmer]

Adobe's Plans for Macromedia

Adobe will keep Dreamweaver since it has the larger market share. However, by the time all the dust settles it will look more like GoLive than the current version of DW.

Freehand is history, probably Fireworks too. There's no reason to kill Director but Macromedia was moving that package and Flash closer and closer so they may wind up as two versions (Flash and Flash Professional?) of the same program.

Flash and Cold Fusion are safe since those technologies are probably the primary reasons why Adobe is buying Macromedia. I'm wondering where other MM products like Breeze (a remote conferencing tool) will fit in Adobe's strategy.

 

[wildmac]

Freehand is dead. (Unless Adobe is forced to sell it by the FTC).
GoLive becomes low-end (pagemaker) to Dreamweaver high-end (Indesign).
Flashpaper gets integregrated into Acrobat
Director lives.
Flash gets true SVG support, and a core revamp (Thank God!)
Contribute lives with Dreamweaver.
Fireworks dies. (Parts get pulled into Photoshop/Imageready)

Apple would be smart to buy Adobe, as Adobe is going more and more PC centric. Do it before MS does.

 

[paulypants]

as much as i love Photoshop and Flash, they are essential parts of my course, i think this is a bad idea.

sure the big daddy Flash will stay but i've just been getting into Dreamweaver and its quite a nice application. certainly beats using Frontpage.

i suppose to the end user, in a financial sense, could be quite good. all packages rolled into one would probably cost less than purchasing both Studio MX and CS Studio (is it called?). oh well.

LOL. Frontpage isn't even in the same league as Dreamweaver. Financially it could be quite bad, since there is now no major competitor in the field they can now charge whatever they please, and people will have to pay it.

 

[neutrino23]

Adobe is bigger than Apple -- I don't believe that it will ever happen.

Adobe's market capitalization is about $13B.
Apple's is about $35B.

Apple is roughly three times as large as Adobe. However, it would still be very difficult for Apple to acquire Adobe. However, it would be a bold and exciting move. Surely Steve could find the financing if he wanted to try it. Maybe acquire them then spin off some parts.

 

[Windowlicker]

The next big news

The next thing is Apple buying Adobe

Not gonna happen.. I can't even think of the consequenses if apple indeed bought adobe and dropped windows support as they did with logic. Only dropping photoshop would cause riots.

Is there anything comparable to photoshop right now?! Gimp, I suppose, is still pretty far from being a real option for pros.. is it?

 

[cgmpowers]

Random thoughts about mergers & advanced OS

I really don't see Adobe killing Flash or Dreamweaver. I can see them killing GoLive or maybe merging the best of GoLive with the best of Dreamweaver into a new quazi program.

I don't see anyone buing Adobe for right now, but hope Apple would.

I'd like to see Apple release OS X for the PC. Maybe OS 10.5 or 10.6 will run on a WindowsPC. Along with that, run OS X on a Mac thant can run Windows applications out of the box (no emulation, a dual processor that runs OS X but can load PC apps and run them. It could happen and it could revolutionize the computing industry.

Imagine running either a PC or a Mac and running the SAME OS, the same software. OS X and Windows merging? No...just making it possible to run Windows on a Mac and run mac software on a Windows machine.

Christopher Powers

 

[jamdr]

Wow, this makes me sicker than when M$ copied Apple's operating system and gained 95% of the market. This is TERRIBLE news for consumers because now there is literally no alternative in the creative market to Adobe. They are a monopoly now. Adobe = the M$ of the creative market. I strongly dislike some of Adobe's overpriced, bloated products (Acrobat, GoLive) but now we'll all be forced to buy whatever crap they decide to force down our throats at whatever price. I can't believe this was allowed to happen

 

[sinisterdesign]

adobe is not stupid. they bought MM BECAUSE it has good software, not to kill off the competition (entirely). i don't think Adobe would just scrap programs like Dreamweaver to replace it w/ GoLive. DM has a bigger user base & better name recognition. they'll likely merge some of GoLive's features into DM, but i would be surprised if Adobe kept an inferior product around JUST b/c it was Adobe's.

here are my suggestions for new software titles:

DreamLive (GoDream? GoWeaver?)
Freestrator (IlustraHand? - sounds like a lotion)
FireReady (ImageWorks - eh, generic)

so is Corel going to scoop up Freehand now so they can finally have a respected illustration program??

 

[iGav]

Director is tough. The "moving" images world is becoming a pretty thin space. But, there may be a move to make and AE central version of Creative Suite. Something that includes AE, Director, and Premiere. Which in many ways goes up directly with Apples Suite. I am not sure the market here is large enough to support both. The battle may be over HD which may indeed mean that the battle is actually over the future of film.

Director isn't an editing or post production/effects app though, in a nutshell it's a massively powerful multimedia authoring environment for the creation of CD-ROM's, Enhanced CD's, DVD-ROM's, Kiosks, 3D games, animations etc.

You don't edit film or add effects in it, Apple has nothing in it's stable to compete with Director, and neither does Adobe. Actually the only product that I know of that 'compares' is Tribeworks iShell app, but even then that has no where near the capabilities of Director.

How many years (and rumors of its death) did we go through before it was resurrected? The worst fear is that it becomes too small of a product group (based on revenue) inside the larger Adobe - even though the last MM earnings conference call spoke of it as a steady cash cow.

If you listen to the Flashturbators... then Director's always about to be killed off has been since Flash 1.0 was released.

I very much doubt that's about to happen though, it'd be a mighty pair of boots to fill, and Flash ain't up to the job of filling them that's for sure.

 

[Porchland]

You must not use Photoshop much at all. While iPhoto '05 definitely brought in some neat tools to quickly help the novice with Levels, Color Correction and the occasional red-eye, it is nowhere near the sophistication of Photoshop. Couple that with brandname recognition, and only a company begging for a losing propostion would consider going head-to-head with Adobe Photoshop.

I didn't say Apple was about to open a can of whoop-ass and squash out Photoshop. I said that I don't use Photoshop as much now that I have iPhoto 5. When I had Photoshop and iPhoto 4, I used Photoshop for adjusting levels, adjusting contrast, straightening photos, etc., all of which I can now do in iPhoto. When I do MORE ADVANCED THINGS -- like buffing out power lines, replacing colors, etc. -- I still use Photoshop.

iPhoto isn't competing with Photoshop as much as it is Photoshop elements. I'm just saying that in my experience, I'm using iPhoto now more than Photoshop.

Now, that said, professional photo editing and management is a big market that is completely dominated by Photoshop, and I think Apple could deliver a great product if it set out to build a more pro version of iPhoto.

 

[Lacero]

Why is everyone saying this is bad? I think it's a great move. I personally have never used any of Macromedia's products. So if Adobe can integrate the best features from Macromedia's assets into their own programs, it would all be made better, especially I'm a staunch Adobe user.

Freehand was originally from Aldus, as was Pagemaker, they've just been absorbed by both companies, but now they all have found their homes in Adobe.

 

[chelseasian]

I am so shocked by the news, like many of you I am concerned by Adobe monopolising the creative market- since they are the dominate company, they set the industrial standards, and having one major player in the market does in a way gives them the power to decide for the rest of the industry- so that is disturbing.

I use both PS and Fireworks. I have to say that despite similiarity between both applications, they serve different purpose for me. I tend to use FW for web graphics, i.e. layouts, etc. but I tend to use PS for editing graphics themselves. I like the PNG format also because I can use that in say Powerpoint without having to reexport it from PSD file.

Just my 2cents.

 

[winmacguy]

Bloody Hell!

Well spotted...

Kiss goodbye to Freehand.
Adobe shows its hand and is getting mega-serious. Dreamweaver, Flash etc now all Adobe products...

Aren't you glad I spotted this one?!