ADOBE TO ACQUIRE MACROMEDIA

[scan300]

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

Quark today, I agree, is no monopoly. But I would argue it was, in the page layout genre, in the 90's and early 00's. Adobe quickly overtook Quark in the last 4 years with respect to growth in marketshare of it's page layout tools. And I attribute that to Quark's lack of response (complacency?) to Indesign's challenges: price, OSX readiness and feature set. (Outside of the US there is a big difference between the price of the packages.)

Repeatedly I heard comments from senior Quarks execs that they weren't worried about Indesign. That designers wouldn't switch. But they have.

Quark's development has been slow in the 90's up until about a year ago. Now we see faster development, and more competitive pricing. That's because they now have serious competition, and their marketshare has been seriously eroded.

 

[scan300]

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

I don't see that as a fault with Freehand, but more with the diversity of RIPs out there. I've used Freehand faultlessly for 11 years and it's only recently by changing suppliers from film houses to CTP printers that jobs are falling over.

In most cases it's newer, direct to plate RIPs, especially PS3 emulation RIPs which are at fault.

Is it a case of Freehand not supporting new RIP manufacturers or vice versa.

 

[daver11]

I think they will merge Dreamweaver and GoLive into a new product with a new name. Adobe WebWorks or something... All in all, I am cautiously optimistic. Hopefully, they will keep all the best features of both programs - GoLive's great interface - Dreamweaver's dynamic content, etc.

Fireworks and Freehand will die (and I won't miss them). Flash will live long and prosper.

I'm a GoLive user and I was about to buy Macromedia's StudioMX so I could teach myself Flash - I guess I'll wait and see what happens...

 

[edenwaith]

Hear me roar!

But Microsoft can't even copy anything anymore! Longhorn wont be out for over a year and a half, and it still won't have everything Tiger offers! We'll be looking at Cheetah or whatever by then.

(Off topic) What is the next big cat?

I'm going for Lion! I thought Lion was going to be Mac OS 10.4, but I was wrong. Wasn't Cheetah the name of OS 10.0 or 10.1? I think one was named Cheetah and the other was Puma.

 

[DavidFDM]

I think we are heading towards essentially four applications: a static graphics app (combining the benefits/features of Illustrator, Freehand, Fireworks and Photoshop), a dynamic graphics app (combining the benefits/features of Flash, After Effects and Premiere), a static assembler (InDesign) and a dynamic assembler (Director). They'll freely pass data back and forth amongst each other. I think processor power and RAM being where they are this is easily doable and may be preferred.

 

[woodsie]

microsoft buys adobe.

i've read others joking about this....

we'd all be surely screwed if that happens.

 

[stephenli]

The End of Freehand

"Adobe Freehand" is not likely to happen, right?
I switched to Illustrator since ver.8
freehand ppl always laught on us for a lack of multi-paging
but thats all for they could laught
hopefully Adobe could develop a better illustrator........then......should i cancel my order on CS2?!

 

[Rower_CPU]

Another shocked MacRumorer here...

I can't quite wrap my head around what this will mean yet for me on a day-to-day basis. I'm hoping better integration across the apps, as others have mentioned, but if it comes at the cost of product advancement/cost/competition it could get bad.

My hopes are similar to other peoples' in which apps continue on in the new über suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, DreamWeaver, Flash, Director.

Premiere will still live on, too, I'm assuming, but I could care less - haven't touched it since FCP 3.

 

[adamfilip]

There is the possibility that adobe will keep the macromedia brand and just run the two companies

until the next product release where
we will get

Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Adobe Indesign CS3
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
Adobe Flash CS3

Freehand will be gone and partially intergrated into Illustrator
Golive willl be intergrated into dreamweaver. but I think they will keep dreamweavers name as its more popular

 

[edenwaith]

Mergers, mergers, everywhere

For the most part, I'm not a big fan of mergers. Far too often, it just seems that the consumed company's products are brought in, MAYBE upgraded for a little while, or sometimes just a few choice elements used, and then the rest discarded. Consider products like PageMaker and AppleWorks...brought in, and then let out to the pasture to live out the rest of its days. Even Macromedia bought Allaire (sp?), but I'm not sure how successful (or lack thereof) some of those products (ColdFusion, etc.) have done under Macromedia's rule. And now those products will be going under the Adobe camp, it appears.

If Apple did try and compete against such a media-powerhouse, what I'd love to see, would be something that would be like a combination of Photoshop Elements & Illustrator. Not quite as powerful as Photoshop or Illustrator, but more powerful than AppleWorks Drawing or Painting. I think that would be an interesting application which could be a bridging application between iWork and iLife...it could be bundled nicely into iWork, yet have some similiarities (and strong integration) to iPhoto.

What would be really scary would be if Adobe did try to consume Quark. I can imagine Adobe: "You thought our products used to be expensive?! Well, look at them now! Bwahaha!" But I figure that there probably would be some anti-trust dealings with that. It's also interesting to watch how large Adobe is becoming, especially after this merger.

 

[sacear]

I'm going for Lion! I thought Lion was going to be Mac OS 10.4, but I was wrong. Wasn't Cheetah the name of OS 10.0 or 10.1? I think one was named Cheetah and the other was Puma.

Version 10.0 was code named Cheetah internally at Apple, and version 10.1 was codenamed Puma. Version 10.2 was named Jaguar in Apple's product marketing, and 10.3 was similarly named Panther. Version 10.4 has been named Tiger. Apple has also registered the trademarks Lynx, Cougar, and Leopard for future use.

 

[redeye]

Not Happy

Adobe let us get burned by Premiere until Apple finally gave it competition. I don't see any advantage of an Adobe monopoly.

 

[MacTruck]

So now everything will take forever to load, pester you to register and bug the hell out ouf you to check for updates. Great.

Acrobat Reader is in my opinion the worst app out there. Apples preview is 10000 times faster and almost does the same thing. Adobe has been making bloated software for years and Macromedia has been on the cutting edge since forever.

Look, microsoft makes stuff for mac because its profitable, but its not profitable to make the stuff for mac better than the windows versions. Thats why there is no outlook for mac, IE 6 etc.. Internet explorer was soooo bad on the mac that apple had to step in and create their own browser. Apple can't replace office because it is the defacto standard, period.

So what will happen? Adobe will phase out many products and almost completely stop new development. Why would they do that? Why should they make it better? They have no reason to. The will just come out with newer version that don't provide an upgrade reason at all. They certainly won't be better by an means because there is nothing out there to compete with.

These mergers happen all the time and every day I am blown away. Look at Lenovo buying IBM computers. WHAT? IBM sold their PC division to the Chinese. Never saw that coming. Heck, Microsoft could buy Apple in a second. What then?

So look forward to less inovation, higher prices, more possibilities for apple to get less software (if adobe gets pissed at apple for any reason), more bloated software that takes 10GB of ram to run. Time for a new company to step in here. I can't believe that only one company in the world can make a quality graphics app. How many programmers are out there? Millions.

This sucks!

 

[alexf]

I think they will merge Dreamweaver and GoLive into a new product with a new name. Adobe WebWorks or something... All in all, I am cautiously optimistic. Hopefully, they will keep all the best features of both programs - GoLive's great interface - Dreamweaver's dynamic content, etc.

Fireworks and Freehand will die (and I won't miss them). Flash will live long and prosper.

I'm a GoLive user and I was about to buy Macromedia's StudioMX so I could teach myself Flash - I guess I'll wait and see what happens...

Finally someone who agrees that GoLive has a much better interface than Dreamweaver, after all this GoLive bashing!

Let's just hope that whatever Web design application Adobe comes out with now will integrate the best features of both of these programs, each of which is both superior and interior to the other in different ways...

I don't quite understand why everyone here seems so obsessed with application names.

 

[bretm]

Because there would have been no point at all for Adobe to buy Macromedia if it wasn't for Dreamweaver, and at least the coding power of Fireworks - which will probably end up being the guts of a newer better Imageready.

Having been beaten in the Flash wars, they now own it.

GoLive was not one of Adobe's own. In fact, Adobe has only created a couple products from scratch.

And let's not foget that Macromedia bought flash. it was called FutureSplash.

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...)

 

[bretm]

Dreamweaver is a more powerful tool. Cleaner code, more dhtml and css under the hood, better integration with testing servers, client modules like Contribute, et al. The whole reason to buy Macromedia is for it's Multimedia development. Years ago Macromedia ditched it's bitmap programs that compete with Photoshop. Adobe ditched their multimedia apps like Livemotion. Adobe's strength is Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere. Macromedia's is Flash, Director, and Dreamweaver. Put the Adobe name in front of all those and look for that lineup - all integrated, with the best of any overlapping apps integrated into each.

Finally someone who agrees that GoLive has a much better interface than Dreamweaver, after all this GoLive bashing!

Let's just hope that whatever Web design application Adobe comes out with now will integrate the best features of both of these programs, each of which is both superior and interior to the other in different ways...

I don't quite understand why everyone here seems so obsessed with application names.

 

[alexf]

Dreamweaver is a more powerful tool. Cleaner code, more dhtml and css under the hood, better integration with testing servers, client modules like Contribute, et al. The whole reason to buy Macromedia is for it's Multimedia development. Years ago Macromedia ditched it's bitmap programs that compete with Photoshop. Adobe ditched their multimedia apps like Livemotion. Adobe's strength is Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere. Macromedia's is Flash, Director, and Dreamweaver. Put the Adobe name in front of all those and look for that lineup - all integrated, with the best of any overlapping apps integrated into each.

Yes, Dreamweaver is more powerful, but GoLive has a better interface and is more intuitive from a designer's (but perhaps not a coder's) perspective.

The two programs are conceptually different, so I think it may be different to integrate the two. My preference would be for Adobe to keep GoLive yet integrate the Dreamweaver features that you mentioned into it (especially cleaner code and client modules).

I know some of you may cringe at this, but I think it would be great if Adobe would integrate some of the elements of the now deceased LiveMotion into future incarnations of Flash. Although there is no doubt that Flash was always a superior app for SWF output, LiveMotion was better in other ways (and much easier to learn).

 

[bretm]

Look, microsoft makes stuff for mac because its profitable, but its not profitable to make the stuff for mac better than the windows versions. Thats why there is no outlook for mac, IE 6 etc.. Internet explorer was soooo bad on the mac that apple had to step in and create their own browser. Apple can't replace office because it is the defacto standard, period.

What? Microsoft has Entourage on the Mac side. Almost same app. Integrates with same system. IE 5.5 was revelled as much better than it's PC counterpart. They were built independently to foster competition within the company to make the best product possible. The Mac 5.5 version still displays most code more compliantly than the latest PC version. You can bet Microsoft made it for Apple just for the click through sites and ads that were in the bookmarks when you installed it. Links to microsoft too. When their contract with Apple lapsed, and Apple made it's own browser and quit installing IE, obviously Microsoft quit making it.

Look for this as an opening for Apple to start creating it's Apps on the PC side. It might even force the issue. Apple and Adobe are not the buddies they once were. Apple is afraid of Adobe completely leaving. Adobe couldn't do that until they owned everything on the PC side. For example, they couldn't yank GoLive because Macromedia would gobble up all the Mac users with Dreamweaver. Ditto with Illustrator/Freehand. Macromedia sold Final Cut to Apple. Odd, eh? That spurred all this software development at Apple. Rumor has it that FCP (which was built originally on PC underpinnings) has a Windows version, like OSX, that keeps being updated just in case a time like this comes to pass. Apple claims to be a hardware computer company, but it has quickly become the best software design company out there with Motion, FCP, iMovie, iTunes, etc. They are strategically filling the gaps left by Macromedia and Adobe. But you can bet they're ready to overlap and compete when the time is right. It's coming. Once that is successful, and Apple is competing with Microsoft and Adobe, look for them to potentially ditch the hardware (not gadgets).

 

[bretm]

Yes, Dreamweaver is more powerful, but GoLive has a better interface and is more intuitive from a designer's (but perhaps not a coder's) perspective.

The two programs are conceptually different, so I think it may be different to integrate the two. My preference would be for Adobe to keep GoLive yet integrate the Dreamweaver features that you mentioned into it (especially cleaner code and client modules).

I know some of you may cringe at this, but I think it would be great if Adobe would integrate some of the elements of the now deceased LiveMotion into future incarnations of Flash. Although there is no doubt that Flash was always a superior app for SWF output, LiveMotion was better in other ways (and much easier to learn).

They're not very different apps at all. I'm a designer, not a coder, and DW is a better interface IMHO. But they're so similar. What is it that people think is so different? I can jump between the two so easily. The pallets are almost the same... CSS, Behaviors (Actions), Layout View, Code View, Inspector Pallette (and whatever the bottom DW pallette is called), highligting tags at the bottom of the wysiwyg window, the site window, templates work exactly the same, smartobjects/fireworks objects, etc. It's pretty straightforward to move back and forth.

Here's the #1 reason I like DW better. The pallete. GoLive's inspector pallette has tabs. DW does not. Everything you need to do is in one simple pallette. GoLive has you hunting through 3 tabs for the most basic stuff.

I can edit a GoLive page in Dreamweaver If I open a DW page in GoLive, it will break. End of Story.

 

[the dairy giant]

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

Well that might depend where you are when you ask. For some reason, FH has always been very popular in New Zealand, I would use FH to do 32 page brochures rather than Quark, which I always despised. Never any problems with output.

Our usual printer probably receives 40-50% of their files in FH, the rest these days mainly ID, plus some vestigial quark, hardly any illustrator. They are using direct to plate now. Never any issues with FH.

Having said that, its been easy to tell that MM didn't care about FH, and I find myself missing a few things that Illustrator can do. But whenever I use that app I feel most frustrated, I guess its what you're used to. I'm pretty up to speed with ID now, but still feel more productive in FH (as long as I don't want to use any transparency...). I guess I'll have to break out that scary Illustrator manual.

So here are the things I will miss from FH, multiple pages that can be moved anywhere, be different sizes, and don't have to conform to a linear set of spreads. before anyone says why would you want this, its handy for designing things like a stationery suite, or a series of different size newspaper ads, just one file, export the separate pages (via distiller of course) as pdfs.

And the way Illustrator has all those quaint undefined colours with pretty names makes it seem like a kiddies app. (nit picking I guess)

But the biggest thing I miss when using Adobe apps is a functional snap-to-point, and snap to object. In Adobe apps you can only snap guides to a point, in FH I can drag out a rectangle and have it snap to any point of any path, and with snap to object it will snap to any part of a path. This may sound minor, but it make it very easy to do accurate artwork intuitively, you know things will just line up without resorting to measurement pallettes and dragging out guides that you will only use once and clutter up your artwork. If I'm forced to drop FH, I will really miss this!!!

 

[JFreak]

Wait a minute, they still make FREEHAND? And let me get this straight: people still use it? Why?

it is widely used in prepress jobs because freehand is so much better with press printers. you really get what you see. illustrator just isn't cutting it. maybe they do the "quark's" and just keep selling it because people have got used to it? remains to be seen. i have it and i just love it, and, i just love the fact that i can send a freehand file to any print house and they will just deliver what i want. b-e-a-utiful

 

[eXan]

I think they will merge Dreamweaver and GoLive into a new product with a new name. Adobe WebWorks or something... All in all, I am cautiously optimistic. Hopefully, they will keep all the best features of both programs - GoLive's great interface - Dreamweaver's dynamic content, etc.

Fireworks and Freehand will die (and I won't miss them). Flash will live long and prosper.

I'm a GoLive user and I was about to buy Macromedia's StudioMX so I could teach myself Flash - I guess I'll wait and see what happens...

I use Dreamweaver, so Im up for it this time

 

[winmacguy]

here is an update to the situation
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf...256FE70032FF25?OpenDocument&pub=Computerworld

 

[jnasato]

It's not *that* bad...

This will make Abobe HUUUGE.

Huge.

 

[MacTruck]

What? Microsoft has Entourage on the Mac side. Almost same app. Integrates with same system. IE 5.5 was revelled as much better than it's PC counterpart. .

What are you talking about? Entourage is not even close to the same app, infact its entirely different. Let me just mention one thing... PST FILES. PST files are the foundation for every business and corporate entity today. Every manager, worker, ceo in america and beyond has their life embeded in PST files. Entourage does not support PST files and never will. If entourage did many people in corporate america would be using it. Entourage is useless to them. Microsoft won't ever make entourage PST compatible period. If they did they would lose the risk of losing a windows licence because lets face it corporate america is what is making microsoft rich, not mom and pop user.

This is also why you will never see Microsoft Access for the mac. PST support and database support is what stops so many firms from using macs. I have worked in some very well knows companies and trust me they would all love to sport a powerbook but because IT says they can't that is why they don't. IT can't sync the mac with exchange and that alone makes the mac unusable for their client group.

IE 5.5 for the mac was the slowest crapiest browser out there. I have heard so many complaints about IE for the mac its sick. Yes the license did run out and because of the complaints apple made their own. The mac version was horrible compared to the windows version.

Microsoft does its little tricks to stay ahead of apple. Its business.