No, MS only promised to develop Office:Mac for another five years, and that was two years ago. And the Mac only became the success it is today because Microsoft developed Office for it in the first place. And, not to forget, Apple would have disappeared into void long ago if Microsoft and Apple hadn't settled their lawsuit and Microsoft's money had saved it when Apple was close to bankruptcy. (I know that Fanboy-version of history is completely different, but I won't go there.)
Winni, please stop making such patently untrue arguments; your statements of fact are anything but.
Yes, you are right that MS only promised to develop Office Mac for five years--13 years ago! Not two. Since then Microsoft has only seen the Mac market grow and realizes that stopping that production would be like shooting ones self in the toe, painful and potentially crippling, though not necessarily life-threatening.
As for the 'threat' of bankruptcy, even at Apple's lowest in the mid-90s, Apple Computer Inc. had some 10 Billion dollars in assets, though almost all of it in long-term investments which didn't give them any cash for R&D. Steve Jobs went to Bill Gates and got an 'unofficial loan' (selling non-voting stock) of a few hundred million dollars to give him the cash he needed to create the iMac. That 'loan' was repaid in full within 2 years and now Apple's stock is worth nearly 6000% what it was in '95--counting splits. Microsoft? Their value has only gone up about 800% when counting splits over the same time period.
If Adobe stopped developing for the Mac, their entire user base would switch to Windows in a heartbeat. It's as simple as that. Their users need Adobe software more than they need Macs, and I know of many agencies in Germany that have switched away from Apple a long time ago. Adobe nowadays primarily develops for Windows and even Linux already has a 64-Bit Flash plugin while something like that still cannot be seen for the Mac. That should tell you something about their priorities.
What would Mac users do if Adobe dropped their product support? There are no alternatives.
Wrong. While I accept that some--maybe even most--of Adobe's user base would switch, by no means would all of it switch. Apple has already released a number of apps that serve Professional photographers as well or better at a significantly lower cost. Photoshop Elements has at least two direct competitors on the Apple platform and the full version of Photoshop itself is countered by GIMP, which is fully as capable, and absolutely free. I will admit that GIMP isn't quite as easy to use, though that's merely a matter of scale since PS itself isn't exactly easy either.
So yes, there are alternatives to Adobe's products--across the board. But the the people who would 'switch' to stick with Adobe are the ones who do all their work in Adobe and wouldn't be willing to use one of those alternatives. Oddly enough, this particular argument is reminiscent of the OS X/Windows argument, where Windows is losing customers to OS X at an ever-increasing rate.
What would you do when Microsoft dropped Office for Mac? Use iWork? Ha. Hahaha.
Yes, as a matter of fact. Yes. While I might admit that Office might have a lot more 'features' than iWork, there is almost nothing you can do in Office that can't be done in Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Outlook is covered fairly well by the combination of Mac Mail and iCal--which seem to be significantly more reliable at getting messages and calendar events to their intended destinations than I've witnessed Outlook doing. I can't tell you how many Outlook calendar events arrive at their destinations minutes--and even hours
after the event! Not once has iCal let me down in that manner.
And if you just HAVE to have a full office suite, Open Office performs just as well and is almost fully compatible with Microsoft's formats.
Apple's survival strategy lies within their iPhone/iPod/iPad gadgets, and they know it. They think that unlike a real computing platform, they can control their gadgets and protect them from competition. Well, why I agree that their survival as a corporation is bound to the gadgets, I also think that they are completely mistaken with the latter. But they didn't learn any lessons from the Mac vs Windows disaster - and for Apple, this was a disaster. Windows might have been a Macintosh rip off, but it is technologically ahead of the Mac and it is infinitely more successful.
Just like the Roman Empire, Microsoft uses a "divide and rule" approach, while Apple wants it all for themselves. And that never worked for anybody on the long run.
Maybe you should look again; Apple's strategy is not to provide mere gadgets, but to make the devices they build work
better than their competiton. This concept became most visible with the first iMac and has only improved with each subsequent device. Name one other company who has so fully integrated desktop/laptop computing, an MP3 player
and a smart phone to the point that they can work so closely together? Then add in the AppleTV, which so many of you call a failure yet, despite this, still sells and still gets regular updates from Apple.
Apple's strategy is to become an integrated and coherent part of your home and office; Apple is both personal and corporate capable. Where everybody else is making single, separate devices that can maybe connect through your computer, Apple has them all working as part of an overall environment. The iPad is merely another piece of this incomplete puzzle.
