Cringely: Buying Adobe—The Payoff for Apple

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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: Appleis 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. Appleis 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.

"Appleis goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobeis emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasnit 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 Adobeis, and geting control of key Internet technologies. "Theyid be giving up a sports car in Final Cut Pro, but end up effectively owning the road instead," Mr. Cringely concluded.

John Martellaro

John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer and has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include skiing, chess, science fiction and astronomy. You can follow John on Twitter at twitter.com/jmartellaro.

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