Microsoft and Adobe Executives Meet to Discuss Apple, Possible Merger

bit density said:
Microsoft would gain a lot. A ton of intellectual property to go with what they have.

Postscripts rendering model is far more flexible and superior to windows GDI model.

It doesn't deprecate existing windows devices, but new devices can be much more capable. Postscript rendering is much more mature in its ability to write to any specific color set, but especially inks. Office has long had an issue in that the renderers were not good enough for sophisticated printing.

Office sharing the renderer with the rest of the CS suite (this is the superior strength of the CS suite compared to other solutions) would be phenomenal.

The word spacing and breaking algorithms of Indesign, the Video components of AE and Premiere, the vector capabilities of Illustrator, the edge detection and manipulation as shown in PS, Trapwise, and AE.

The suite of programs provide a ton of innovative growth into the microsoft customers. Providing program growth and acceptance into a wide range of products.

Flash. This really isn't an Adobe product and could probably use the most help of Microsoft and pockets for security and speed improvements. A lot of the stuff created for IE 9 is sure to make it into VBA and Flash as well. Silverlight as a product will be deprecated into flash that can read silverlight and accomplish silverlight DMA. The lighter and faster that they can create flash, the more they own the tech for now, and when HTML 5 becomes mainstream. The better that they are at rendering which Adobe has huge strengths, and microsoft is developing in-roads the better.

PDF becomes an even bigger player in everyones life, and will not be a printer or something bizarre in windows, but simply a save setting. PDF also shares the Postscript renderer at its core. The ability to store docx and exls files directly without weird workaround, and get faithful pages, and faithful page editting will be a huge benefit to the customer pass.

Quartz is an interesting question. Who knows how this is licensed to Apple and what are the promises going forward. There is a TON of the OSX rendering that depends on quartz. Which is the PDF rendering engine at its heart (from Adobe). Getting the quality of rendering so high and so many services for free, Apple actually released a new operating system that barely did or ran anything, because they new that they would be able to focus on other things in OSX.

A switch of rendering to Postscript, instead of GDI would allow IE to actually run on other platforms with relatively small amounts of engineering.

Imagine a strong core of common content and rendering tools. From authoring to output. And this strong core could be extended and added and conformed for workflows or greater creativity that would support an army of workers joined by a file, where each can add to the file their expertise and training. Authors, designers, illustrators, craftsman, printers, consumers. It has been impossible to do this effortlessly. Different platforms, different customers. It was difficult to actually do the above, and it didn't get done often cuz it was so hard. The merger will have tools to actually make that easy.

Integrating and making the workflow better and easier is much multiyear work. Exploding to even greater utilization of the products suites world wide. This is good for Microsoft, this is good for people that want to make their lives easier.

The intellectual property at Adobe is deep and profound in a number of important pathways and work flows. And monopoly in patent is perfectly LEGAL.
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Probably the only comment of worth...thank you.
 
Microsoft, if it really wanted to could destory a good proportion of Apple's user base:

Microsoft buys Adobe, immediately discontinues all Apple products...
* Destroy Apple's creative base virtually overnight with no realistic competitor to Photoshop.
* No MS Office - destroy a good proportion of small business user base - there is OpenOffice but when you need to rely on 100% compatibility, its just not there. iWork is too limited.
 
andiwm2003 said:
apples track record with developing professional software isn't great either. just look how underdeveloped iWorks is.

Apple never really supported the business sector so if Apple buys Adobe that would not be good.
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Are you kidding? iWork isn't aimed at professionals.

Apple's track record on Pro apps is fairly good. Logic is #1 DAW, Final Cut is the best non linear editing tool which doesn't require expensive hardware to work.
 
This thread seems to be evenly mixed among people who are familiar with publishing and multimedia and people who haven't got a clue.

Sure, most home users and even some freelancers could get by without Adobe/Microsoft products on a Mac but any large company (you know, the ones that buy thousands of Macs at a time from Apple every 2-3 years along with licensing on the OS, AppleCare, etc, etc) relies on these things and would not settle for using 2-3 year old versions of the respective developer's suites if they were to discontinue the Mac products. It would be a huge hit to Apple's bottom line.

iWork is nice for a college kid, but it doesn't cut it in an Exchange dominated business world. Same goes for things like Acrobat, Illustrator and the Adobe Type Libraries which are all industry standards.

Of course, all of this is moot anyway since it would be ridiculous on so many levels for Microsoft to buy Adobe only to kill all Mac-native products, but it's still very possible they could buy them and shift the focus away from Macs.
 
Well, at least both of those companies have one thing in common -- they both make COMPLETE CRAP.

However, this is exactly why Apple should have bought Adobe years ago.
 
RRmalvado said:
Really? So how come they haven't done so?
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They have. I guarantee that Apple has fully functional page layout and photo-editing software on par and beyond Adobe ready for market at the flip of a switch. Most likely based on Pages on steroids and their video editing suites.
 
avidos said:
As a designer I've used illustrator and photoshop for a VERY long time.

However, I've seen no reasonable upgrades since AI8.5 and PS7.

So, Adobe to my mind hasn't done much other than blote out it's software for years to the point where it is slow and hard to use.

That being said it is still the best product for the design industry at present.

Personally I'd jump to a sensibly priced, faster and more streamlined set of design products if available.
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QFT!

I am in the exact same boat.
 
hugodrax said:
Simple, look at all the complaints on the forums when Adobe was behind in the 64bit release.

now image Microsoft announcing no more adobe products, guess what happens next. An exodus to Windows desktops.
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Adobe products are used on more than just Macs. Microsoft killing 100% of Adobe products would piss off 100% of Adobe's customer base. And that is just bad business.
 
Microsoft would benefit by acquiring the rights to Dreamweaver so that they can finally ditch FrontPage once and for all.
 
This meeting only lasted an hour? Geez either this people are the most productive people in the world or it was more of "Hey guys here's a slide where we show how cool it would be if we merged. See we Photoshoped all of us having a barbecue outside Microsoft HQ. Alright moving on..."
 
I too thought Apple should acquire Adobe ever since the big ordeal this year over the "no Flash on iOS" debacle. Apple could then streamline the company, or better division (Adobe) and either fix Flash to work right or create an alternative. It would also be nice to have Adobe's applications rewritten for OS/X better than they are now.

When I upgraded to Snow Leopard I was very mad because many applications kept crashing. After a month or so of trying to figure it out, I found it all had to do with Flash. Once I either got rid of, or turned off pieces of Flash, Snow Leopard ran great and has to this day. Even iMovie would crash every time a rendering would finish and as far as I know, Flash has nothing to do with iMovie.

I use Dreamweaver CS4 a lot and it could really use some tweaking for OS/X and I think Apple are the ones to do it with an Adobe acquisition.

A marriage between Microsoft and Adobe would be a disaster. A disaster for them I think! I just don't see the innovation in either company that Apple has. It would be the dead leading the dead if they merge.
 
Wow.

Just...wow.

As a former Adobe employee, this just validated my decision to leave Adobe. That, and the fact that I didn't trust Shantanu at all.
 
scotty321 said:
Well, at least both of those companies have one thing in common -- they both make COMPLETE CRAP.
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So what Microsoft and Adobe programs do you use?

Parts of Adobe's CS are far and beyond the best tools in the industry. Some suck, yes, but some are the best you can get. Microsoft may have a bad reputation for Office on Mac (rightly so) but Office is not a bad suite. Excel is the finest spreadsheet program out there, though I think there are great replacements for Word. Keynote is much more enjoyable than PowerPoint. Where Microsoft excels is in other areas, such as Visual Studio, which is an excellent product (for Windows developers at least—I hate it as a web designer).

They both make some crap. They both tend to bloat their software. But they do not make complete crap by any means.
 
iBug2 said:
Are you kidding? iWork isn't aimed at professionals.

Apple's track record on Pro apps is fairly good. Logic is #1 DAW, Final Cut is the best non linear editing tool which doesn't require expensive hardware to work.
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As an actual audio engineer that makes a living from the trade, Logic is far from #1.

Pro Tools is the industry standard. Open up a phone book, or go online and call any studio you can find. I guarantee you none that are of professional grade will be running Logic.

That being said I rather like Logic :)
 
The ignorance in this thread is astounding. Microsoft wouldn't want to purposely destroy everything being sold for the iOS/OS X systems. Business 101 students would know this, and I can assure you Ballmer has most likely taken that course. It would be the quickest way for Ballmer to be ousted from Microsoft. (Not the immature M$ crap everyone here spews)
 
aristotle said:
What that tells me is that you are a bad designer and nobody should hire you ever. Why? Because you rely on your tools too heavily. A real designer should be able to use even Gimp for crying out loud and create good work. All of the basic tools are there.

Pixelmator has been making progress in leaps and bounds and I don't doubt that either Apple or a third party like the Pixelmator guys would step up and fill the void. I don't see this being a likely scenario but I have to laugh that you would instantly jump when your existing versions should continue to work for some time and you should not be relying on any single tool that much.
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Well your clearly an idiot.. First of all the industry standard is Photoshop and Illustrator. Just like the industry standard for word & excel is Microsoft Office.. Second of all us designers have been using Photoshop and Illustrator for years, there is no other software around that offers the same amount of features and flexibility. You think just because Apple decides to not support Adobe we should learn new software and applications all over again?

Also I'm an awesome designer and I know it. I wouldn't have any trouble getting hired. My works are among the best. Infact I was the best designer out of all the students in my Media class... Your saying "Your a bad designer", based on what? I rely on tools? All designers do, some prefer other tools over the one I use.. but most of us rely on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I've used CorelDraw, Fireworks, Jasc Paint Shop Pro.. I've used all of them.. none of them compare to Adobe Photoshop..

Your basically saying a painter should use a pencil instead of a brush.. Everyone rely's on tools, If a painter did use a pencil there would be a learning curve.. the same thing applies to software.. most of us cannot master all applications and software it takes a great deal of work.. You have no idea how many filters and effects are on photoshop, hundreds.. If you use software like Autodesk 3DSMax there are thousands!!! There is absolutely no one who can remember all these for all softwares..
 
I find it quite comical with all the responses we keep seeing over and over in nearly every single Adobe thread. Adobe + Flash + Microsoft = BAD and Adobe + Apple = GOOD.

As much crap as the MAC community spews towards Adobe's direction, I am shocked that Adobe has not told MAC users to shove it and drop all development. The fact is many of those who bitch and moan about Adobe and their "bloatware" etc.... are the same ones that use it daily and would throw a fit if Adobe treated them the same way they were treated.

And even if Adobe/MSFT did drop development for MAC, Apple has done the same thin with other product lines in the past when they dropped them from Windows. Mac users bitch about Flash performance on OSX but fail to realize that QT support on Windows sucks just as bad if not worse.

Furthermore, it seems many here blindly pat Apple on the back whenever they do things like this and are quick to defend Apple when others sue or do the same things Apple has done. Apple has not cared one bit in the past several years about their ProApps that its main competitor offered a 64 bit NLE on Apple's own OS before Apple did. The way that it appears is it will be at least another year before Apple has 64 bit for FCS giving Adobe a 2 year head start.

And for those that think Apple is the lions share of Adobe's business think again. The more Apple focuses on being a gadget company and less of a hardware/software developer, the more true desktop computing companies will grab what market share they have.

The same posters here pointed out that the release of Windows 7 was Vista with bug fixes and offered nothing new. However, the same could be said about 10.5 and 10.6 yet those same posters act like it was an earth shattering release from Apple.

Apple will not buy Adobe because Apple can hardly manage to produce software as it is and would fail miserably if they took on 8-10 more complex apps. Disagree? How is Phenomenon coming along? How is FCP 64 bit coming along? How about iLife 11?

Apple has always said they were a hardware company that provides software to its users and that software sales provided little in the way of profit margins. So to wish (dream) that Apple would buy a company that they would have to generate actual sales and profit margins to make it worth the purchase in the first place is foolish especially with the posters only wanting Apple to buy Adobe to kill Flash.

As a Windows and Mac user, I could care less if Microsoft and Adobe merge. It would be kind of nice actually because maybe Apple would stop relying on other companies to provide more compelling products for the hardware they produce. Adobe does not need Apple, Apple needs Adobe. If Microsoft and Adobe do merge, there is no need for MSFT to continue developing for Mac and is not free money as the poster above stated. They would still need to develop and port their apps to OSX and if MSFT was smart, they would lock out Mac access to the ProApps much like Apple did in tying FCS to their OS only.

Remember, Jobs said Apple's goal is not to have everyone own a MAC and that their target market was people that want quality products on quality hardware. If Adobe apps stop appearing on MACs, Apple will have to spend even more money to make up for those apps that are no true alternatives to on the MAC.
 
Eidorian said:
Built-in PDF support in Windows without using the gaping security hole the size of Mordor called Adobe Reader? Question mark...
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Microsoft could do that now if they wanted. PDF is a documented, open standard which is why Apple can do Quartz which is effectively Display PDF.
 
Oh lordy! We all should know that MS would completely screw-up Adobe products by making them soOoo over developed that you could hardly view a photo without layers upon layers of abstract options with windows on top of more windows. It would mean the end of simplicity as we know it. Do any of us really need or want to know the ancestry and DNA graphical chart of the person we’re calling? :eek:

Seriously! Have you guys seen the latest screen shots of Outlook for the Mac? It looks like an L.A. freeway cloverleaf during rush hour on a Friday.

Regards,
 
Either Apple needs to buy Adobe, or Apple needs to come out with their own creative suite.

But I'm really sick of listening to Adobe whine.
 
bdkennedy1 said:
Either Apple needs to buy Adobe, or Apple needs to come out with their own creative suite.

But I'm really sick of listening to Adobe whine.
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Same could be said about MAC users. They always seem to think anything Adobe does is out to hurt Apple and if that were the case, their products would have never found its way back to the MAC to begin with.
 
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