This Story Posted:
January 5th
10:06 AM/CST

 
 

Monday, January 4th

[10:06 AM]
Adobe Buys GoLive, Will Move Cyberstudio To Windows
Adobe Systems announced yesterday that it had purchased the assets of GoLive, the maker of Cyberstudio. The company is moving to bolster its position as a total solution on the web and in print. According to John Warnock, cofounder and CEO of Adobe:

"Combining GoLive CyberStudio with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, Adobe ImageStyler, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat gives Adobe the only full suite for professional Web design and publishing. CyberStudio, PGML and our breakthrough page layout technologies are key components of our strategy to expand the opportunities for our customers in professional Web and cross-media publishing."

Cyberstudio is a Mac only web publishing system that has totally taken over the high end professional side of web design. Featuring excellent WYSIWYG capabilities and site management tools that can not be found anywhere else, Cyberstudio is a great asset to many design teams. With GoLive publicly saying that they don't do Windows, but privately hinting that a Windows version may be in the works in the future, Adobe may be an ideal buyer. Macintouch reported yesterday that Adobe would in fact immediately port Cyberstudio to Windows. According to Macintouch:

"Adobe VP Bruce Chizen said that the product will continue to be published on the Mac, but that 'we will use our cross-platform development expertise to bring the product over to Windows platform at Internet speeds.'"

Cyberstudio has a remarkable degree of interaction with the Finder and it is unclear how that will take shape on Windows.

The sale will move ahead immediately, though it is unclear when CyberStudio will begin bearing the Adobe brand name.

The Mac Observer Spin: The Mac Observer is published using GoLive Cyberstudio. In fact, the job we do would be almost impossible without the suite or a ton of CGI programming. It is with some nervousness that we see this move by Adobe as GoLive obviously thinks more of the Mac than Adobe seems to these days. It also seems as if The Mac may be losing another stronghold. Many of the premier apps on either platform began life solely on The Mac, and several of those were Adobe apps. Cyberstudio was a great reason for many design teams to withstand the desire of IT pinheads to move to Windows and that reason will soon be eliminated.

On the other hand it is possible that having Cyberstudio be multi-platform may actually make it easier for more businesses with web design continue to be a mixed house. One thing is clear, it will be good for Adobe's shareholders to move the app to Windows as it will probably be a huge hit among those few professional designers who use Windows.

It could also be a boon to designers on both platforms who may be looking for more interoperability between Cyberstudio, Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, and ImageStyler.

An interesting aspect of this will be whether CyberStudio continues to be developed on the Mac and ported to Windows in the future, as much of Premier is rumored to be, or will make the transition to being a Mac port in the future. Cyberstudio is so utterly a Mac product that many of its features may have to emulated on the Windows side.

Only time will tell, but the benefits hopefully outweigh the downfalls. Good luck to the GoLive and Adobe teams!

GoLive - Adobe