I can only imagine what must be going on at the office today….It is still pretty early here…I have only caught a glimpse of it late last night when everything was announced at midnight.
in the past, a lot of ‘features’ in either product were driven because of competition—adobe did x, so macr copied it. macr did y, so adobe copied it.
putting the 2 companies together, that means they pretty much dominate that software market—what are they going to compete with for new features? corel draw? and what are they going to compete with for price?
this has the potential to be detrimental and expensive to everyone who uses their software.
Every developer I know could care less about features for Flash, at least. It’s stability and UI improvements most folks want. The Ellipsis update was great and 8Ball will surely be good, but I would love to see Adobe take a swing at the UI. At least code the OS X version using Cocoa from the ground up combined with Apple/Adobe-like timelines and such…
I wonder how FlashPaper is gonna fare now, though…
I’m going to have to second that, Adobe hasn’t ever neglected its clientele before. I think they’ll be alright.
Just think, years and years and years ago, Quark nearly purchased Adobe. Now that is a funny idea.
Lots of talk about this in our office today, that’s for sure (we make a plug-in for After Effects). It sounds like it could be good and evil, all at once. I’m not sure how I really feel about this yet. Will wait and see what they say over the course of the next couple of weeks.
It would be sad to see some of the macromedia ‘competitive’ products go, though.
Adobe and Macromedia together as one? This really can’t be a good thing. Competiton is good for innovation – each company has it’s own view of the future of software. Macromedia has been pursuing great interactive endeavours and Adobe’s concentrating on the digital workflow. They each give the people in the industry different visions to pursue.
As a designer, I’m very upset that we will now have a monopoly in our industry. For the future of the web, print, and design industries we have no alternatives if Adobe doesn’t continue to put out “good” products. I have to say that there are still major issues with Illustrator’s stability and Photoshop’s type tool that have been around for several upgrades now.
We will be at the mercy of this new corporate behemoth on what applications we will have to build our sites, our brochures, our logos. What will it be like 5 years from now when our views have been limited to what sells the best for one company, makes the best profits for one company, and has been guided down one path? I don’t believe this is the best thing for such a young industry.
I guess some of my clients won’t be able to request “Macromedia Flash” for their websites anymore. I could never figure out why they wouldn’t just call it Flash.
After just talking my employer into letting me get the new CS upgrade, I sort of sighed a little when I heard this. :)
I’m not a very big Macromedia user. Dreamweaver, mainly for it’s ftp. At various points in time I had interest in Flash, but it’s interface always chased me away. Thats about it.
As far as Adobe having great sparkely products, I dunno. Illustrator has been a big pile of poo for several versions now (though the newest upgrade looks promising). Indesign, I love, but is slow as hell. Photoshop, I don’t really have any complaints about other than I wish it would stay focused on photoediting and stop adding webdesign and layout crap..and, I have had several mini-nitemares with the activation thing in CS.
Hopefully this will create better, more useful and stable products, but yeh….not big on the monopoly thing. Would have rather seen Quark absorbed.
I’m not saying that Adobe won’t make or provide upgrades.. what I am saying is that Freehand was Adobe’s big competitor. A lot of Illustrator features were in there not to make Illustrator a better product (though some were), but were there to make it more competitive with Freehand.
Macromedia and Adobe would also try to court each other’s users, offering cross-brand upgrade prices to try and make people switch. I doubt they would do this—but they could very well just drop Freehand and not offer cross upgrades any more, so Freehand users will have to buy the Illustrator Full version, and not the upgrade version that is 1/5 the price.
Interesting isn’t it?
So interesting indeed. I imagine things look most excellent for the fine folks who work there, too.
I can only imagine what must be going on at the office today….It is still pretty early here…I have only caught a glimpse of it late last night when everything was announced at midnight.
Surely it’d be in their best interest now to set up a New York City office. ;]
Yeah, now that we bought a house…..
i dunno if its a good thing…
in the past, a lot of ‘features’ in either product were driven because of competition—adobe did x, so macr copied it. macr did y, so adobe copied it.
putting the 2 companies together, that means they pretty much dominate that software market—what are they going to compete with for new features? corel draw? and what are they going to compete with for price?
this has the potential to be detrimental and expensive to everyone who uses their software.
Every developer I know could care less about features for Flash, at least. It’s stability and UI improvements most folks want. The Ellipsis update was great and 8Ball will surely be good, but I would love to see Adobe take a swing at the UI. At least code the OS X version using Cocoa from the ground up combined with Apple/Adobe-like timelines and such…
I wonder how FlashPaper is gonna fare now, though…
I’d love flash to be more stable too…
but this isn’t flash stuff—Macromedia also makes things like Freehand, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver that Adobe competes with
Freehand and Fireworks are now dead. DW will live on.
I know some illustrators who are going to be super upset to see Freehand go bye bye.
yep. and illustrator could possibly now charge more, and stop doing competitive upgrades
who knows… maybe everyone will flock to Corel…
full circle.
I don’t see Adobe not providing a great product or offering upgrades.
I’m going to have to second that, Adobe hasn’t ever neglected its clientele before. I think they’ll be alright.
Just think, years and years and years ago, Quark nearly purchased Adobe. Now that is a funny idea.
Lots of talk about this in our office today, that’s for sure (we make a plug-in for After Effects). It sounds like it could be good and evil, all at once. I’m not sure how I really feel about this yet. Will wait and see what they say over the course of the next couple of weeks.
It would be sad to see some of the macromedia ‘competitive’ products go, though.
Adobe and Macromedia together as one? This really can’t be a good thing. Competiton is good for innovation – each company has it’s own view of the future of software. Macromedia has been pursuing great interactive endeavours and Adobe’s concentrating on the digital workflow. They each give the people in the industry different visions to pursue.
As a designer, I’m very upset that we will now have a monopoly in our industry. For the future of the web, print, and design industries we have no alternatives if Adobe doesn’t continue to put out “good” products. I have to say that there are still major issues with Illustrator’s stability and Photoshop’s type tool that have been around for several upgrades now.
We will be at the mercy of this new corporate behemoth on what applications we will have to build our sites, our brochures, our logos. What will it be like 5 years from now when our views have been limited to what sells the best for one company, makes the best profits for one company, and has been guided down one path? I don’t believe this is the best thing for such a young industry.
I guess some of my clients won’t be able to request “Macromedia Flash” for their websites anymore. I could never figure out why they wouldn’t just call it Flash.
Amen sister.
After just talking my employer into letting me get the new CS upgrade, I sort of sighed a little when I heard this. :)
I’m not a very big Macromedia user. Dreamweaver, mainly for it’s ftp. At various points in time I had interest in Flash, but it’s interface always chased me away. Thats about it.
As far as Adobe having great sparkely products, I dunno. Illustrator has been a big pile of poo for several versions now (though the newest upgrade looks promising). Indesign, I love, but is slow as hell. Photoshop, I don’t really have any complaints about other than I wish it would stay focused on photoediting and stop adding webdesign and layout crap..and, I have had several mini-nitemares with the activation thing in CS.
Hopefully this will create better, more useful and stable products, but yeh….not big on the monopoly thing. Would have rather seen Quark absorbed.
I’m not saying that Adobe won’t make or provide upgrades.. what I am saying is that Freehand was Adobe’s big competitor. A lot of Illustrator features were in there not to make Illustrator a better product (though some were), but were there to make it more competitive with Freehand.
Macromedia and Adobe would also try to court each other’s users, offering cross-brand upgrade prices to try and make people switch. I doubt they would do this—but they could very well just drop Freehand and not offer cross upgrades any more, so Freehand users will have to buy the Illustrator Full version, and not the upgrade version that is 1/5 the price.