- Related Stories
-
Adobe to take Photoshop online
February 28, 2007 -
Adobe: Make room for Photoshop Lightroom
January 29, 2007
(continued from previous page)
How does Adobe monetize this? How do you make money on it?
Chizen: A few ways. First of all we will provide tools. Any Flex or Flash app can be easily turned into an Apollo app. So we get to sell more Flash authoring and more Flex data services, the traditional tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. The second way is that there will be some apps that we will build that will be Apollo apps. For instance, the Digital Editions project we are working on, the e-book reader, that will eventually be built on top of Apollo. We just announced the Video Remix product. Eventually, that will be an Apollo app. Right now, it's a Flex/Flash app.
But there's no reason that can't be Apollo, so you can actually remix those videos offline on your desktop. We've demonstrated something called Philo that is a Flash video player that can do some neat things like content-sensitive advertising. So those are three examples of apps that we can build and you'll see us do that, in the same way that we built Acrobat for PDF and we have LiveCycle for the enterprise around PDF and Reader. We'll take advantage of Apollo.
How far will you use this internally, given that you say Apollo has all of these desktop advantages?
Chizen: Ultimately, you will have hybrid applications. The big challenge with host-based apps is that the capability of the PC still outperforms by a high margin the experience you get through a broadband connection. So if you are using a heavy-duty app like Photoshop today to edit your images, the last thing you want to do is do most of your image editing over the Web, because it would be horrendous. But there are some features, like color collaboration, that you might want to do over the Web as part of your Photoshop experience and there is no reason why over time some of that, or all of that, couldn't be an Apollo app. So you can imagine us using Apollo to adjunct the existing apps, and in some cases, some of the less-intensive apps, like a Photoshop Elements, could then switch completely over to Apollo. So we foresee making money on Apollo in those ways.
It also is a great way for us to continue to extend PDF and Flash. For the developer and the content creator, it's evolutionary. For the user, the experience will be revolutionary, which we think is the right formula. You don't want a revolutionary experience for the developer because that's work. In many ways, that's what Microsoft is doing with Windows Presentation Framework and their Expressions tools. Great experience for the user, but it's a lot of work for the content creator. We're saying, hey, use your existing tools and you can give your user a revolutionary experience cross-platform.
What's the time frame for Apollo?
Chizen: For the first developer release, we're targeting June or July. The hope is for some time in March to do something on Adobe Labs and to have the first release in the fall.
The hybrid model--that's also coming out of Microsoft these days, with their software plus services agenda. Is that where you want to take Adobe in general?
Chizen: In general, but it really varies by product, by solution. And for those computing-intensive solutions, most of the work still has to get done on the desktop--apps like Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign. It's not a great experience to lay out a magazine remotely. Contributing to a magazine, that could be a host-based experience. So they will all be hybrid, but how much work is done on the host, and how much is done on the desktop will depend on the application. Real-time collaboration and the Acrobat Connect stuff, that's all host-based. So it's really going vary by user, by app.
But you expect that all apps will have some aspect that is hybrid?
Chizen: Over time, yeah. In fact, even on Creative Suite 3, most of the apps will take advantage of the color management stuff we have in Adobe Labs today. Clearly, there are some apps that will need to be so sophisticated and tie so closely to the operating system, you will still want to use C++ and heavy-duty programming.
Let's talk about Creative Suite 3 and Vista: Will CS3 take advantage of some of Vista's new graphics capability or other new aspects?
Chizen: No. One reason was the timing on when Vista would really ship and our own time frame. We didn't really know. Also, another reason is how many customers are really on Vista in the installed base and is it worth the work, especially in the creative customers? And we have no desire to really showcase Microsoft's technology. But we will be compatible with Vista. Whereas, with Mactel, we're really taking advantage of that fully. We had to recompile the apps to be Mactel compatible.
Do you expect Microsoft to really come after your creative customer base?
Chizen: I don't know if they are going after Adobe, but they certainly are going into many of the areas where we already participate. So I don't know if it is a direct attack or a byproduct of what they are doing. We have more reach to the end user, with PDF and Flash, than anyone, including Microsoft. It's greater than anyone else in the world, from a device perspective. I suspect they don't like that. You can ask them.
What I guess they also don't like, if you look at the standard for exchange of documents, other than the standard for creation of documents, which is .doc, is that the standard for sharing documents is PDF. I don't think they really like the fact that PDF is the standard, or that Flash is the standard for animation. And I don't think they like the fact that people use the Adobe solutions for the creation of information other than text and spreadsheets.
If you are Microsoft, you try to displace PDF. XPS is their attempt. You try to come out with tools that leverage their developer community with Expressions. They are big, they have a lot of revenue, they have a lot of resources. They are a monopolist. So I don't trivialize anything that they are doing, but we are moving full speed ahead. We have anticipated that they would come after us. It's taken a lot longer than we ever imagined. With that said, I do worry about them because they have a lot of money and they can go at it forever and ever.
See more CNET content tagged:
Bruce Chizen, Adobe PhotoShop, Photobucket, Adobe Systems Inc., Macromedia Inc.
Josh Chandler
http://www.techoriphic.com
Website's will still need to be website's and not flash/flex Apollo driven entities for the next few years at least.
applications it seems to me that they are almost identical to the
iTunes experience.
Vinge envisions a society based on "wearing" wherein your clothing, and a variety of innocuous attachments, are all part of the "connected" experience, including user "on the fly" content creation, WebCam live always connected, and more.
"Second Life" is also on the way to a magical future. Your web Avatar alter ego may actually lead the life you want to live...or not. It may depend on your "skill set" in developing and managing your Avatar's success.
Entrepreneurs take heed!
To the extent Chizen can see a future for Adobe and partners on which the focus is facilitating content creation and management, I agree that is the way to go. The technical impediments he sees in broadband speed limitations will be solved, sooner rather than much later. Demand will manifest the very moment capability is achieved.
The depth of future demand for web-delivered services, content, information and entertainment is at it's earliest stages; achieving Vinge's vision will require much in technological advances, but my own view is that it is doable. Whether it is necessary, even desireable, remains to be seen.
Mediaman
(Barry Dennis)
- Think out of the box :)))
- by oligofree March 10, 2007 12:34 AM PST
- What can I say? That's more than enough http://www.whatisinthebox.co.uk/
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(8 Comments)