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ADOBE TO ACQUIRE MACROMEDIA

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

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.
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I know we're going off topic here, but I remember when Flash MX was unveiled and it supported "video"!! Whoooah... it was if the Grim Reaper himself had told us the news as the end for Director was in sight!!

And now, with the imminent release of Flash 8 [aka MX05/8ball] supposedly supporting some form of ImagingLingo 2, to many developers this is also destined to see the end of Director!!

I just hope the two stay within the same company as they work extremely well together - I'm no ActionScripter, but I am all for Lingo and it would be a very sad day to see it come to pass!!

Now I know how all those Authorware developers felt as Director encroached on their territory... what goes around comes around...
 
Corporate strategy grid ...

What goes and what stays? Let's look at the old social science matrix ...

Here's a few examples - the question is where products belong:

High Revenue - High Income: Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver?
High Rev - Low Income: Acrobat, InDesign ?
Low Rev - High Income: Director
Low Rev - Low Income: Fireworks,GoLive , Freehand?

It's obvious to keep the high revenue, high profit products - these are a company's crown jewels.

And it's obvious to dump almost all low revenue, low profit products (unless it's a new product that the company hopes will be a star some day).

That leaves the two problem areas: can high revenue, low profit products increase their profitability to become future stars? And do high profit, but low revenue products have the potential to increase their market share (since they still use up precious management resources).

My issue with products like Director (my bread and butter) is that while it's a great product (all those people who thing that it's just Flash on Steroids don't know a thing about it!), it will always be a niche product.

It seems that Adobe wants to develop products that will be on EVERYONE'S computer in the creative field - i.e. Photoshop for InDesign users who need to touch up a placed image. But Director doesn't fit this mold at all, which is what scares me.
 
Noooo! Fireworks is soo much nicer to use then ImageReady. I love Photoshop, but I hope Adobe don't axe too many Macromedia apps....
 
At first I said, "Holy ****!" next it was, "Oh no!"

I think all in all this is going to change everything. I was hoping for a long time that MM would buy out quark. I really hope Adobe has the guts to say that Fireworks is a better app than Image Ready, and that the integration of Fireworks and Flash is FAR more powerful than the measly integration between Photoshop and Image Ready.

What I want:

Creative Suite - Web Edition - $799
Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Flash
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Fireworks

Creative Suite - Print Edition - $999
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Acrobat Pro

Creative Suite - Premium Edition - $1199
Everything Listed Above

This is potentially a great thing, and a potentially horrible thing, time will tell which is which.
 
Talk about a monopoly here!

I guess I shall add my 2 cents worth in this thread.

If Freehand does go I will miss it. There are somethings that Freehand does that I have yet been able to do in Illustrator. It was what I "grew-up" on in Community College.

Have not used Dreamweaver at all so I can not make a comparison of it to GoLive. Although, this summer I may try to learn both programs and build a website for myself.
 
I am reminded of the whole Fractal + Metatools = Metacreations fiasco. Bryce and Poser bounced all over the place, for awhile there. ;)
 
Sorry to repeat what other people have already said, but I'll put my own print/web designer perspective on it. This news has brought me out to post on this forum since last year. I saw this news last night on Adobe's web site and had the same OMFG reaction as many others. I was waiting for Dreamweaver MX2005 to come out. I think Adobe will get rid of freehand because IMO Illustrator is far more useful and interesting. They will probably keep Dreamweaver (cooler name) and bring in some GoLive features like the graphical CSS support mixed with hand coding. Dreamweaver is great at combining code with wysiwyg. That's the future of web design (not web development for you programmers that love pure code and do database magic). I had thought Adobe was killing GoLive until CS2 was announced. I have no love for GoLive and use Dreamweaver but will probably check out GoLive CS2 because of its new features.

Off topic sort of: I hope this doesn't lead to more flash on the web. Flash has its place as elements in a design or in advertising, but whole sites designed in flash are horrendous. The text is usually not selectable or searcheable and links cannot be opened in new tabs. And don't even get me started on pressing the browser's back button. Other than that, I hope Adobe improves Flash's interface and integration with Illustrator :)
 
irmongoose said:
What are you blabbering about? Apple doesn't want or need to make a rival product to Photoshop. Why would they do that? The only reason Apple does stuff in-house is to fill in the areas that 3rd party companies either don't have products for or the products that do exist are second-rate. How will Apple benefit by trying to dump the de facto standard?
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then how do you explain iwork? i hate to say this, but office is much more developed and is by no means second rate.
 
virus1 said:
then how do you explain iwork? i hate to say this, but office is much more developed and is by no means second rate.
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After using pages for a little bit, i'm not so sure apple is fighting MS Word with this one.... i felt more and more like I was in design school again learning quark....
 
This merger only benefits Adobe and its shareholders, not the consumer. (Though if they resurrected Fontographer I would be a little more happy.)

Apart form consistency measures that will be introduced in the products, creativity and risk taking will be lost from the mix, which is what usually happens when you become a monopoly. (ref Quark).
 
scan300 said:
This merger only benefits Adobe and its shareholders, not the consumer. (Though if they resurrected Fontographer I would be a little more happy.)

Apart form consistency measures that will be introduced in the products, creativity and risk taking will be lost from the mix, which is what usually happens when you become a monopoly. (ref Quark).
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First off, i'm normally the last person to defend Quack, err... Quark. but Quark is HARDLY a monopoly.

Adobe, at this point, is more of a monopoly than Quark ever was. You could have argued before the web explosion, that Adobe was a monopoly back then-- you couldn't be a graphics pro without Illustrator, Photoshop, ATM Deluxe, and my personal favorite of all time, Adobe Streamline. ;) Adobe always had more on our desktops than Quark did.

The only change to that came with the web revolution followed by WYSIWYG with Dreamweaver and Flash following soon after. Then all of the sudden, as graphics pros became web designers, Adobe's share of what was on our desktop was lessened.

But everyone who keeps calling Quark a monopoly... sheesh. Harrrrrdly. Quark WISHES it were a monopoly.

That said, i'm glad i went with my gut and bought a bunch of macromedia shares at the end of 04. S&P just raised Macromedia's 12mo target to $47, up from $32, which means *maybe* i'll buy CS 2! :)
 
Good for Adobe, Bad for all Customers.

I use several Adobe products, but, feel they have dropped the ball over the past 5 years because they release buggy software and then don't issue updates to fix them. Instead you have to buy the next upgrade to get any bug fixes a year later. That's horrible product support, IMO.

I also use Macromedia products, and felt they were more on the ball with product updates and more software innovation. But, now I'm worried that MM products will be handled in the same bad Adobe way, and that they will kill off products better than their own, such as Dreamweaver or Freehand.

More consolidation usually means fewer choices and less innovation, so, that's exactly what this deal will mean.
 
ChrisH3677 said:
How can some one who NEVER uses Freehand know if its worse or better than Illustrator?
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Hey, I NEVER use Illustrator and I still admit it's better than Freehand which I use daily.

Freehand has been in freefall for years. :(
 
Imagine the offspring

Mitthrawnuruodo said:
If this is really true I cannot see why they should sustain both Dreamweaver and GoLive... one of them has to go (no pun intended ;))...

My money's on GoLive to survive... Why would Adobe kill one of their own...? (Just as Freehand will be slaughtered and Illustrator will go on...)
Click to expand...

Adobe bought Golive as Cyberstudio from another company becuase it's own product, Pagemill, was, well like the Pagemaker of Web publishing. I've always preferred Golive, but I think Dreamweaver is more commonly used. They may try to integrate features from each other or ditch one, but I don't think we can be sure which.

And I've always been a FreeHand user, it was and still is so far ahead of Illustrator in many ways - for a design environment. However I seem to find myself dipping into Illustrator on a regular basis for some superior features.

Frankly, if they can mate the best of each competing product and come up with the perfect software baby, I'll be a happy chappy... Adobe FreeStrator anyone? GoWeaver?
 
I use Dreamweaver and Flash religiously ... Never use GoLive

Same with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign ... Never use Freehand, but use Fireworks once in awhile.

As long as they don't disolve these apps I'm OK with the change. :)
 
Adobe A Monopoly?

Moxiemike said:
First off, i'm normally the last person to defend Quack, err... Quark. but Quark is HARDLY a monopoly.

Adobe, at this point, is more of a monopoly than Quark ever was.
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Sorry, but I must of missed this one, (somewhere in between the 5 odd years in between updating Quark 4 to 5 perhaps?) And I think we all know what a joke that upgrade was.

I sometimes think that being a programmer at Quark must be the cushiest job of all. Just spend 5 years doing absoloutely nothing, then whack a few third party plugins into Quark 4 and call it an update.

Anyone who has dealt with Quark and Abobe customer support will soon tell you which one has the monopoly.
 
Freehand Better Than Illustrator?

RocksInMySocks said:
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.
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It certainly is your opinion, just ask anyone who works in Pre Press which is superior, and it certainly isn't Freehand.
 
wow!!

is this the end of competition in creative software?. will certainly mean the end of freehand. will be interesting to see what happens with dreamweaver....

very interesting times ahead. :rolleyes:
 
They've done it before, they'll do it again

Keep in mind that Adobe bought Silicon Beach. And in one fell swoop, Super3D, the first GUI 3D app (afaicr) was killed off. Soon after that, SuperPaint got the axe (arguably better than Photoshop, but not invented there), and then SuperCard. As I understand it, SuperCard escaped because the engineering team broke off from Adobe and bought the rights to the program from Adobe.

I personally don't expect any one program from either company to remain unscathed, with the possible exceptions of Flash and Photoshop, and I'd bet the Adobe apps stand a better chance of making it through the transition than the Macromedia ones.

-Chilton
 
deanbo said:
It certainly is your opinion, just ask anyone who works in Pre Press which is superior, and it certainly isn't Freehand.
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Completely! Illustrator all the way.

As far as web design, someone said it the page before. Flash is now a bit too overused and longwinded. I have clients who want less and less flash and more straight, to-the-point websites. But if used correctly, Flash can really add to some parts of a site.
 
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