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Cringely: Buying Adobe -- The Payoff for Apple
by , 12:45 PM EDT, May 5th, 2008
Apple would have a lot to gain by buying Adobe, according to Robert X. Cringely on Friday. However, first Apple must get its monopoly-factor ducks in a row by unloading its pro apps: Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Logic and Shake.
The argument goes like this: Apple's professional apps has done well, made money and established Apple and Macs in Hollywood production, but there are bigger fish to fry. "...Steve Jobs tends not to think quarter-to-quarter so much as decade-to-decade," Mr. Cringely wrote. "This is a guy with a LONG horizon, which is why he appears, frankly, to be the only one of his peers with either a plan or a clue. As Jobs did with the iPod and iTunes and now with the iPhone, he is setting the standard and most Apple competitors are mainly waiting and reacting, which is hardly a way to lead anything."
Mr. Cringely claimed that clues have been accumulating for months. Apple's resistance to Blu-ray is an effort to slow the technology and pave the way for Internet downloads. Meanwhile, according to the author, Apple was quietly, very quietly, shopping its pro apps an NAB in order to avoid anti-trust issues prior to a potential acquisition. What Apple would be gaining is much more important.
"Apple's goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe's emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn't a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?" Mr. Cringely asked.
More to the point would be giving up some professional apps, acquiring Adobe's, and geting control of key Internet technologies. "They'd be giving up a sports car in Final Cut Pro, but end up effectively owning the road instead," Mr. Cringely concluded.
Observer Comments
Mon May 05, 2008 1:33 pm Subject: He's been right plenty of times.
And I can't believe anyone would compare him to Enderle. Sure, Cringely is wrong often to irritate the glass-half-empty folks, but so what? His stuff is interesting, and he's not a shill.
As for selling the Pro apps and buying adobe to get Flash and Air--seems a bit of a stretch to say the least. But interesting.
Mon May 05, 2008 2:17 pm Subject: I'd support the Adobe acquisition
...simply due to Adobe's crappy track record on the Mac these last few decades - most significantly demonstrated by the truly horrific Adobe Reader 8 (garbage!), with which I'm forced to deal deal (thanks, Windows users: crap solutions are "good enough", eh?)
What I don't see is the monopoly/anti-trust "issue" regarding an Adobe purchase w/ existing in-house apps. If Adobe wasn't smacked for eating Macromedia/Flash/DreamWeaver, I just can't imagine the grounds for legal action over Apple acquiring a co that has so little overlap w/ their in-house stuff.
But then, it *IS* Cringely...he's no better than Thurrot, Enderle, et al, but I don't resent him getting web-hits nearly as much as I do the others - he may be dumb, but he's not crooked...as far as I know).
Mon May 05, 2008 2:52 pm Subject: I am all for it
Wasn't Cringley harping about Apple buying Adobe over a month ago? At any rate, I think his argument makes sense, for the direction Apple's business is headed. Obviously, Flash is a very attractive acquisition - though, the theory that Apple is trying to unload its popular pro apps makes little sense to me.
QuoteYeah, I know their pro market is marginal compared to consumer sales these days, but it would definitely be to Apple's advantage to have priority placed first and foremost on their platform. Heck, CS 3 still doesn't play nice with Spaces (at least Illustrator). That way, Apple could say, "No, you ARE going to release a 64 bit Photoshop for the next version."Sir Harry Flashman wrote:
Mostly to see Apple serve up a steaming hot cup of Cocoa CS4 that plays great with Leopard.
Mon May 05, 2008 6:44 pm Subject: Pro Programs
Quotexmattingly wrote:
Yeah, I know their pro market is marginal compared to consumer sales these days, but it would definitely be to Apple's advantage to have priority placed first and foremost on their platform. Heck, CS 3 still doesn't play nice with Spaces (at least Illustrator). That way, Apple could say, ";No, you ARE going to release a 64 bit Photoshop for the next version";
I use Creative Suite (CS2) a lot, well a little less these days now that inDesign crashes frequently in Leopard and Distiller doesn't even work. CS2 Illustrator, PhotoShop, Acrobat Pro, and GoLive (may God have mercy on its soul) work fine.
Anyway, last week I delivered another job to the printer that I laid out using Pages. I had to distill the .ps file using CS2 Distiller from my iBook (running Tiger), a minor inconvenience. I could have exported the Pages file to PDF/x-1a, but they still are a larger file than one that was distilled.
Well where I am leading is how hard would it be for Apple to develop some CS type of pro apps. Pages has a good start, but I need a vector art and photo editing programs with layers and blending. Also a web authoring and management program that has a Mac like interface, DreamWeaver seems to be a giant step backwards.
Sidebar: I just watched my wife on TV. Turner Classic movies just ran a short documentary on the movie Soylent Green. My wife was an extra in the movie and I saw her in some scenes that had been cut. I need to get a DVD copy of that movie.
Wed May 07, 2008 3:38 am Subject: Or more likely
It's been said the rumor was put about by competitors. That would be to prevent users committing to Apple Pro Apps. And that would be because vendors have got wind of what's coming, and it will make competing even harder. And that could be that the ground-up rewrite Shake replacement code base will build more applications than just another Shake. I'm thinking of 2 targets: Photoshop (single frame compositing) and Flash (web deployment of video). But I'm far from knowledgeable on these topics.
Sat May 10, 2008 2:37 pm Subject: No need to unload ProApps, unload some of Adobe's assets
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