Comments on: Apple, Adobe drifting apart

The longstanding relationship between Adobe Systems and Apple Computer is showing strain lately from various competitive and business forces.

[richtestani]

Postscript is pretty

>>PostScript, a font technology that made it possible to achieve
attractive printed output from a PC.

David, is that your definition? Postscript is a page description
language that allows fonts to be printed out just the same it is
on screen.

[arosenbl0]

Eh? I wonder about some of these assumptions...

I wonder about some of these allegations of Apple pushing
people out of the Mac market by large scale bundling of its
applications. You see, MS made IE inseparable from the OS and
gave it away for free. Sure, Apple makes some applications in
the pro/content creation space such as FCP, Logic, and DVD
studio pro, but these are separate applications that live and die
on their own dime. They are not bundled as features of the OS
and cost a hefty $1000-$10,000 on their own. I think it needs
to be pointed out that while Apple may be scaring 3rd party
application developers by creating excellent applications for its
own platform, by no means does this mean that if a third party
application developer did it first or better that Apple would have
not even devoted its resources to creating an Apple product to
do the task. In fact, for Apple, it is much cheaper for a 3rd party
to develop a solution than for them to do it.

The problem is that with some of these App categories, Adobe
essentially sat stagnant for a while. Take premiere for example,
it was a pretty good pro-sumer video editing application but
really hadn't changed much in years. Since many video editing
customers used macs, and wanted an excellent video editing
package that did justice to the emerging DV market Apple had
to either get Adobe to make a better product, develop their own
better product, or risk loosing customers to windows only
solutions. Since adobe didn't seem to be making Premiere any
better, Apple chose the lesser of two evils and made FCP instead
of loosing customers. I am sure they would have much rather
had Adobe step up to the plate and make an excellent solution,
but they didn't do it.

Finally, I question Adobe's logic about Market segmentation
numbers for their products. Sure, there are way more PCs in the
world than Macs. That isn't really the question here, however.
The question is, what platform do Adobe's niche core customers
use. It really doesn't matter how many accountants, telcos,
bankers and secretaries use cheap PCs to type letters and run
spreadsheets, those people aren't significantly adding to the
market opportunity for product likes photoshop and premiere.
So what if only 3% of the total PC market uses Macs, what
matters is what percentage of the target market for creative
professional products are on Mac OS. And by these
justifications, abandoning framemaker on Mac OS but not solaris
doesn't make any sense. Mac OS installed base in publishing is
much greater than Solaris.

Finally, I am not wholly convinced Adobe has done anything
particularly competitive in the last 5 to 10 years. Photoshop
remains their cash cow and it has been incrementally improved.
However, looking at the pace of development for their other
products, it is no surprise that Apple (or anyone for that matter)
that cares about the creative pro space stepped in to create
better solutions. You don't see AVID taking their ball and
running in the DV space... I mean sure, we have PDF, but where
is my PDF word processor?

[dpetrosky]

Glad someone else sees this

People keep talking like apple stole other developers thunder
and forced them out of business when most of what they have
done was just the opposite. Apple did crush some good MP3
player but what they delivered with their product so dwarfs what
any of them did or planned it is hard to fault them. They didn't
just crush the competition they changed digital music as we
know it.

iMovie: Although this might stop some people from buying
Premier, it was hardly a competitor. Nobody had ever tried to
bring video editing to such a simple level. I often described
iMovie as only doing 10 things but they happened to be the 10
most common DV editing things you can do which made the
application easy to use. People who used iMovie were not going
to purchase Premier.

iPhoto: Point me to the product it replaced? Apple created a new
category of digital photo application and the product was
panned when it was introduced because of it. Reviewers didn't
understand it was a capture and cataloging piece of software,
not a photo editor. It was Adobe who latter introduced a similar
product (windows only because it was not as good as iphoto).

iDVD: There was one DVD authoring package available at the
time and it was about $500 and confusing as hell. The idea of a
consumer level DVD authoring program just didn't exist when
this was created.

GarageBand: Looks like they did it again. Another new entry into
the consumer space. There is nothing like this geared toward
home users.

And remember none of these are FREE! You get a bundled copy
with the purchase of a system (apple does this for other people
too) but then you have to purchase them.

Yes, FCP is a direct competitor to the high end video editing
software but it is far from free. It is just a great application that
takes advantage of Mac specific abilities. If 3rd party vendors
continue to develop poor ports of windows programs for the
Mac I hope Apple just continues to hire so the can continue to
deliver world class applications.

Remember, the Mac was so great not because you could copy a
file with a mouse, but because Apple delivered API's that allowed
programers to make programs on the Mac that could not be
created any where else. If developers have stopped trying to take
advantage of these API's (because there's no windows
equivalent), who can blame Apple for showing off what the
platform can really do.

I hope a word processor and spread sheet are next (with full
Office document compatibility) followed by a much closer tie in
between Mail, iCal, Address book.....etc. I already have a name
for the bundle apple....Call it MyLife.

Mac vs PC Cost Myth

Good to see CNET is still perpetuating the PC vs Mac cost myth. I
just sourced two PCs for my business and both were as
expensive and in one case more expensive than a comparable
Mac system (once I added wireless, RAM, firewire, flat panel
displays and larger hard drives). Why must writers continue to
perpetuate the myth of Mac's being more expensive than PCs.
Today's PCs are just as expensive. In fact, all computers are still
more expensive than they need to be. Macs included. The real
problem for Apple is that people are still being fed gloom and
doom about the Mac as a platform (will it be here tomorrow, etc)
and hence marketshare keeps slipping as more and more users
adopt the "safer" standard. In reality, font and color
management are still better on the Mac. Adobe is just pissed
that Apple has taken a big bite out of their market segment with
products like iPhoto and Final Cut Pro. And Apple is too busy
worrying about short term growth via iPod and music to notice
that there is problem (this was the case when I worked there
too).

That's the real reason for Adobe pulling away from the Mac.

my take....

Here's my take on the relevant bits (feel free to differ)...

First, the only major competition Apple has given Adobe
was with Final Cut Pro vs Premiere.

I say that is good on Apple's behalf due to the fact that at
the time (and now, and going forward) Apple needed
(needs) to have another "Pro" market to go after. Final Cut
Pro (and Express) is not included as part of Mac OS X so it
can't be considered in the same light as Microsoft's
bundling activities.

Framemaker is dead and (please correct me if I'm wrong)
hasn't had an update in ages. Big loss.

Adobe came out with Photoshop Album (Windows only) as a
direct Windows alternative for iPhoto. iPhoto does not
compete with Photoshop nor Photoshop Elements directly
so it can't (shouldn't) be labeled as competition for either.
iPhoto was introduced and marketed as an easy way to
import/organize photos... not as a Photoshop replacement.

Adobe announced Audition (Windows only) well after
Soundtrack was released by Apple. Here, Adobe had no
product in this space and decided to release a "Windows
equivalent" after Apple had shown a market for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Adobe announced Encore DVD
after Apple had brought both DVD Studio Pro (the market
Adobe is after) and iDVD to bear.

To quote: "Adobe is more important to Apple than Apple is
to Adobe right now,' Adobe customer Dumas said. 'That's a
reversal of history.' The Mac company is concerned that
Adobe will abandon it as a platform, 'so Apple has no
choice but to begin developing Adobe-killer products,' he
said."

Really? Then explain to me why the only "Adobe-killer"
product Apple has is Final Cut Pro.

Explain to me this quote: "If you recall, Adobe was one of
the first companies to have an optimized version of their
software running on a (Mac) G5, using the 64-bit
functionality of the G5 processors."

That last quote is referring to Photoshop (7 at the time).

So, I'm not trying to be all "pro-Apple" but just laying down
the facts as I see them. Please, by all means, refute my
post. I welcome any and all constructive criticism of it so
long as you bring proof to the table.

"...Adobe has been slow to adapt its products for OS X..."

Regarding the following comment from Ralph Martin in this article (see below):

The actual reason Adobe had to wait to release its products on OSX was due to major bugs in the initial release of OSX, which forced Adobe to wait until Apple resolved the problems in release 10.1. This is why Adobe products require OSX 10.1 or higher to run.

Since then, any Adobe product that is developed for OSX is always developed simultaneously with the same Windows version of that product.

Now let me go read that "Outsourced Jobs" article I have some recent experience in that area... ;c)

tom (former employee of Adobe, so I'm biased)
-----

"But another Mac user, Ralph Martin of Seattle architecture firm Burgess Weaver Design Group, said Adobe has been slow to adapt its products for OS X, and that's why Apple is selling competing products.

"A vast number of Apple users prefer the Apple software versions" of its video and photo production products, he said, "primarily because Adobe dragged their feet in developing any software for Mac OS X for such a long time." Instead of putting out Photoshop for OS X, Martin said, Adobe waited until its version for Windows XP was developed, so it could launch with Microsoft's delivery of XP. "Is Apple just supposed to wait and see" if Adobe will do a product? he asked."

[all2tropical]

Big fat carrot... $ and marketshare

Of course Adobe is chasing the big fat carot offered up by the
Big M....
remember, it's "show me the money"
Besides, OSX was going through it's usual set of engineering
gyrations before it landed it's feet on the 10.3.x. pad. Adobe
wants solid platform to work with... and XP was going to be
there first.
jlemcke