Attention Mac Pirates...

[serpicolugnut]

For those who think that pirating an application isn't stealing and doesn't hurt the platform, look no further than the recent killing of Premiere for the Mac by Adobe. Sure, FCP is a better product - but it only got that way by having a healthy competitor in Adobe Premiere.

Now, Mac users are left with just Final Cut Pro. Do you really believe Apple will feel just as compelled to be innovative with a user base that has no other options? I would like to think so, but I'm not quite that naive.

And for those who keep saying "Who cares? So long as Adobe keeps making Photoshop for the Mac, I'm good", listen to this statement from the Premiere team leader...

David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group, said the new edition of Premiere is a complete rewrite of the application and it didn't make financial sense to support the Mac anymore.

"We were rewriting Premiere from scratch, and it would have taken a lot of work to have cross-platform support," Trescot said.

It is estimated that Mac Premiere sales were between 10-20% of the total sales of the product. The last numbers I had seen for Adobes total sales breakdown by platform were 73% Wintel, 27% Mac. Let's say that figure drops to 19% Mac. Still think it's a stretch for Adobe to kill off some of it's other key Mac applications (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, etc.)

Consider this next time you fire up that pirated copy of Illustrator and Photoshop, and how the next releases of these applications might be the last for the Mac if sales figures don't improve.

I'm not trying to be a chicken little and claim the sky is falling, but there is cause for concern.

BTW - I predict that Adobe will next announce that Live Motion 3 will be PC only.

[lnoelstorr]

Originally posted by serpicolugnut
Now, Mac users are left with just Final Cut Pro. Do you really believe Apple will feel just as compelled to be innovative with a user base that has no other options? I would like to think so, but I'm not quite that naive.

I think Apple are now actually more likely to try and make FCP better than Premier (and infact any other similar software available on the PC). With Premier and FPC there were two reasons to consider the Mac platform. Now that FCP is the only option, Apple had better try and make it damn tempting so as to get people across to the Apple platform.


With regadrs to piracy - I'm not really sure why you feel piracy is to blame for this. Why blame the pirates? Adobe didn't seem to mention it as a problem. Is piracy more of a problem on the Mac than the PC?

I'm not saying piracy isn't a problem, I'm very anti-piracy, I just doubt it was the major cause for this and you don't seem to have presented any evidence to suggest that it is.

[serpicolugnut]

With regadrs to piracy - I'm not really sure why you feel piracy is to blame for this. Why blame the pirates? Adobe didn't seem to mention it as a problem. Is piracy more of a problem on the Mac than the PC?

I should probably clarify my remarks...

I'm not saying that piracy was a factor in the decision to drop Premiere, mostly because since Apple has the better product, more people probably pirate it than Premiere on the Mac...

However, Photoshop is a heavily pirated Mac application. Many of these pirates actually make money with it, and are not the garden variety students who wouldn't end up paying for the software anyway (not that it makes them any less guilty). Since the Mac market is smaller, piracy's impact is felt much stronger here than in Windows land, where piracy is that much worse.

It's no longer a forgone conclusion that Adobe will release a Mac version of it's software. If sales figures don't justify it, and the engineering effort would be simplified by dropping the Mac, they will choose that road now, if it makes financial sense for them to do so...

So, the point I'm making is - How long will it be before disappointing Mac sales (affected by attrition and piracy) causes Adobe to drop Mac support for it's major Mac apps (PS, AI, ID, GL, AE)? Just the possibility of losing any of these apps is a serious concern for Mac users, and should be taken seriously.

[hulkaros]

I think the problem is not piracy... The problem is Adobe! It was easier for them instead of improve their crap apps on Mac where they have a worthy opponent in the face of Apple, to go more and more Windows oriented because they actually have no competition there...

Also, I think that the software piracy is actually more of Wintel platform based than anything else out there...

Now, if only Apple would bring FCP and others to Windows...

Seriously though, I hope that with the G5, Adobe will reconsider their software strategy towards the Mac platform because I think that all those pro-Wintel apps or even worst only-Wintel apps, were created when Adobe felt that the G3/G4 based Apple had no future... Or at least a tiny one...

[cfleck]

if you want another side to the story, osnews has a discussion going on about it.

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3976

try not to get caught up in the mac vs windows discussions though. there are a few intelligent thoughts there if you can avoid the crap.

[toast]

Originally posted by serpicolugnut
Photoshop is a heavily pirated Mac application. Many of these pirates actually make money with it.

I don't, so I'll carry on reading something else. *flies away*

[hulkaros]

I think there is no reason to overreact! Adobe is with Apple for now! Them not supporting the Mac platform at the maximum is a big problem but we cannot do anything! Unless each one of us (the lonely Mac user) can make 5 of our family/friends members to buy a Mac and an Adobe app! That way, all of a sudden the Apple & Adobe users will become more than 50 millions, easily

[serpicolugnut]

I think there is no reason to overreact! Adobe is with Apple for now! Them not supporting the Mac platform at the maximum is a big problem but we cannot do anything! Unless each one of us (the lonely Mac user) can make 5 of our family/friends member to buy a new Mac and 1 Adobe app!

Well, if you don't know anybody who's pirating Adobe (or anyone else's) software, there isn't much you can do. But if you do, give them a hard time about it and guilt them in to getting legal. If you've been using a pirated copy, get legal.

Most of the time you can buy a previous version off of eBay quite cheaply. Although Adobe isn't happy about this practice, with a simple form, you can transfer ownership of the application and then upgrade to the newest version for half of what the new version costs. It's perfectly legal and gets you legal for less.