# Still think I'm over reacting?



## serpicolugnut (Sep 4, 2003)

OK, I took a bit of flack a few months ago for suggesting that since Adobe was dropping Premiere for the Mac, that we should be wary of Adobe "reconsidering" Mac support in it's other key applications (PS, AI, ID and GL).

Most of you thought I was jumping the gun a bit (which I was, but that's not the point), and thought it next to impossible that Adobe would even consider going that route....

Well, take a look at this post on ThinkSecret about how Adobe feels about Apple, and how concerned they are about Apple developing their own creative suite.

ThinkSecret Story 

From the story...



> "Apple can be unpredictable," Adobe's plans say, according to a source. "We will need to keep a close eye on Apple."



Further more....



> Microsoft is another company Adobe will be watching. Adobe believes that with Microsoft's industry resources, it could quickly develop a Creative Suite competitor. However, sources said Adobe views Apple as a greater threat.



So Adobe is already twitching that Apple might develop their own PS, AI or ID competitors. Remember, Adobe dropped Premiere from the Mac primarily due to Apple having FCP. 

It's pretty telling that Adobe views Apple a greater threat than Microsoft, considering Microsoft is already attempting to supplant .PDF with .DOC for the portable document standard.

And now, for the unspoken conspiracy theories...

Remember Caffeine Software? They made a program called "TIffany". It was created during the NeXT days, and was considered a Photoshop competitor. Many of it's users still claim that it outshines Photoshop in many areas of functionality. Well, Caffeine Software disappeared earlier this year. No warning. No notice as to why. 

There's a strong suspicion that Apple hired the main developer away to work on a Photoshop competitor, that may/may not be in Apple's immediate plans. It could be to provide a trump card in case Adobe ever threatened PS extinction, or it might be part of Apple's plan to actually offer a PS type competitor to Mac users. 

Truth be told, there are several smaller products out there that could be ramped up and retooled to compete with Adobe's apps if Apple was under the gun to do so (Stone Studio's Create would make a good starting point for a serious Illustrator competitor).


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## tsizKEIK (Sep 4, 2003)

is FCP better than Premiere ? 
(just askin out of interest)

a friend of mine told me that FCP was very easy to learn & use (he was a beginner)


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## Jason (Sep 4, 2003)

much better

i personally dont think apple would touch ps, ai and id... fcp was another factor, it had to do with macs being billed as professional machines, and they needed something integrated i believe...

but, lets wait and see i guess, i hope adobe doesnt abandon ship


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## hulkaros (Sep 4, 2003)

Adobe IS valuable to Apple... Still, if Apple will offer something better than ANY given Adobe comparable product and Adobe will abandon the Apple platform, they will be SO full of HUGE B$...

They should improve their products instead of abandoning a platform just because a better product exists...


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## Pengu (Sep 4, 2003)

I agree hulkaros.
I'm not sure I'd like to see a world where Apple has its OWN apps for doing EVERYTHING (although this would be kinda cool) because you would ultimately get the argument (from a buyers point of view) that they dont have any of the "main" applications (people never think of what they want to do, they think of what they want to use...)


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## fryke (Sep 4, 2003)

Let's look at that quote again...

QUOTE: *"Apple can be unpredictable," Adobe's plans say, according to a source. "We will need to keep a close eye on Apple."*

Well, that's nothing we - or Apple - should be afraid of. The phrase instead means that Adobe is a bit afraid of Apple. FCP showed them that they're not, as they probably believed for a long time, _safe_.
A few years ago, we wouldn't have thought that Apple would try and attack other companies on the software market. But I think Steve Jobs (and his people at Apple) did the right thing. Apple needed profits. And the machines alone didn't cut it. So you had a basis. Apple lost money. Apple was a good hardware company. But also a good software company. However, they made no MONEY with their software, although they could. Now there was another problem: Too many players in the consumer area. So what to do? Yep. Destroy competition à la Microsoft. But better still. While Microsoft usually just killed competition by making their pro versions available for free (an old story, don't wanna go there), Apple made good and free consumer versions and even better, expensive (but still cheaper than the competition) pro versions. iMovie & Final Cut Pro. iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. They bought stuff and made it better. Now, they're suddenly looked at as a software vendor, too!

Back to Adobe... What if Apple were to say: "Hey, we've watched Adobe do Photoshop long enough. They didn't always go where we wanted. Let's do that better." (Won't happen, I guess.) Well: Photoshop would, after YEARS, finally get some competition again. And that would be good for the customer. Remember: Competition's good.

Even if Apple got 30% of the 'Photoshop'-Market with their new product, Adobe would still sell lots of Photoshop licenses. And quite certainly, Adobe wouldn't leave the Mac market - only to see Apple open up their minds and say: "Hey! We can do this on Windows, too!"


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## pds (Sep 4, 2003)

> _Originally posted by fryke _
> * "Hey! We can do this on Windows, too!" *



That would be the bomb! Maybe they could shake up everyone by porting FCP! Now that would make Adobe mad!


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## Urbansory (Sep 4, 2003)

FCP is way better... Apple making a Photoshop type app, that i don't see happening, Apple needs the user base of Adobe products. If anything, Apple is forcing companies to up their game, what better way to force better products than through good ole competition. I remember MacPaint, was that by Apple? A lot of people are using Fireworks more and more, it opens PS files, it's a threat to Photoshop when it comes to lower end users, but not for the high end user. 

My PS is like a Swiss Army knife, it has the tools to suit all my needs, yet it gets better.


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## mindbend (Sep 4, 2003)

"Photoshop 8, Illustrator 11, InDesign 3, GoLive 7"

Apple has nothing that even comes close to competing with those packages. Photoshop cannot be beat by anyone, anywhere. AI is tough to beat too. Apple would be insane to get into the InDesign/Quark mix. Apple might be well suited to create or buy a low end HTML GUI editor, or maybe even a higher end package that is tightly integrated with X's Apache/Perl/etc. abilities, but I doubt they would bother.

FCP is a different story, because FCP sells boxes. An Apple branded HTML editor isn't going to sell boxes. For those who think/wish FCP would be ported to Windows, perish the thought. It will NEVER happen.

Yes, Apple is a competitor to Adobe in some areas. All Adobe is saying is that they need to monitor that for profitability. To me, there is no implication that they will wipe out Adobe Mac apps as part of that strategy unless (like Premiere) they believe they can no longer profit from it.


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## Arden (Sep 5, 2003)

The reason you'll never see FCP for Windows is because Apple wants to entice video editors to buy their hardware to use their fantastic software.  Sure, they could get Avid for Windows for $1500 more, but if they don't need the extra features, FCP will do nicely.

I'm not sure if it would be a good thing for Apple to make Adobe killers or not (besides FCP).  It could alienate Adobe from the platform, sucking away an awesome library of software, or it could get Adobe hopping to make their products better than they already are.  Imagine if you had 2 similar, compatible programs for editing photos besides simply Photoshop.  Prices would go down to entice users, and the feature base would increase, hopefully in a stylish and elegant way.


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## Decado (Sep 5, 2003)

The only problem i see with Adobes products lately is that they are beginning to be bloat-ware.
A simple test: put AI next to Freehand.
Freehand is a lot snappier (as snappy as it was pre OSX. both AI and PS takes forever to start when compared to how they performed 2-3 versions back. and they use a lot more memory.
p.s. i got a 700 kb disc here with illustrator 1.1 AND system 6 (or 5, dont remember).


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## Pengu (Sep 5, 2003)

There is one other factor that is against Any of the Adobe/Macromedia/Whoever companies that develop for both platforms simulatenously. I can't speak for PS as i dont use it, but i would image it is the same. Take a look at a program designed for and written on a Mac, using Coccoa. Apple were right. beautiful. Look at something like fireworks, a C++(?) app written for two platforms simultaneously, then applied to each's UI. The UI of the apps features though, remain the same. The collapse buttons in pallettes, pup up boxes. It all SCREAMS carbon/c++/port.
And sure, functionality is by far more important than how "pretty" something is, but if let's say, apple made a creative image application (lets use 'Create' for now) using GIMP libraries, (or acquired an existing app/company) and created a beautiful, intuitive, Coccoa interface that was a joy to use, which would you use? PS/FireWorks/Illustrator/etc or Create?


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## mindbend (Sep 5, 2003)

Adobe software has definitely become bloatware. In fact, if you look at the rumored features there for the upcoming suite, there's very little new substance, just fine tuning and small feature sets (which may be nice and all, but there's nothing groundbreaking). Hopefully they can now start the speed tweaking. Rumors have it that speed was a priority for AI. I'd like the same priority for InDesign. I'd pay full price for an upgrade across all apps if the only benefit was a speed increase. I'm really not looking for any new features (though I'm always surprised by one or two that are cool that I never thought of). 

As I've said before. Software developers are always playing catchup to the hardware. Also, they need to create a prerceived "need", which basically means they add so-called features so you feel you need to upgrade. The artists for The Hulk still use Photoshop 4 appararently because all versions after that are pure bloat. I'm hard pressed to argue with them, though I'd rather run a bit slower in X, than have to use 9.


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## JetwingX (Sep 6, 2003)

well apple is kind of pushing After Effects out of thier way with Live Type (part of FCP4). I know that a lot of people where i live use AE for making cool lettering, but apple makes it mind numbingly easy! (btw i am in love with live type and soundtrack)


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## Urbansory (Sep 6, 2003)

Even with Live Type, AE is a great program for more than just type. I use it for a ton of things, and when i find the time, i want to do more things with it within my flash projects. But i will have to say i want to get Live Type and make a few things that at this time would take too long t create within AE, well considering you have a life.


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## Arden (Sep 6, 2003)

You'd think, if a hardware company like Apple can make something like video type effects super easy to use, a software company like Adobe could too.

It's interesting how people just give up when Apple reveals their new iProducts and Products Pro.  Yes, it's extremely easy to use, it works very well, and it doesn't cost very much comparatively; well, the secret to successful competition is to make your product even better.  Software companies don't seem to be getting that.


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## mindbend (Sep 6, 2003)

Actually, Adobe's latest version of Premiere is a direct response to the now-dominant Final Cut Pro. Previous versions of Premier were a joke in comparison. Premiere Pro looks really, really good on paper (I haven't used it and don't plan on it, but I'm not blind either, it appears to be a very good app). So I guess my point is simply that developers like Adobe understand quite well what competition is and what they need to do to stay competitive. Their latest suite is an example of that.

Quark on the other hand has delivered a completely lackluster app and is once again resting on their laurels. I hope InDesign crushes them to dust.

Aside:
LiveType is wickedly cool, extremely innovative and very easy to use. It's also pathetically slow, very limited in its current font selection and not as properly integrated with FCP as it should be. LiveType is exactly what Flash should have integrated into the app.


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## RacerX (Sep 7, 2003)

> _Originally posted by serpicolugnut _
> Remember Caffeine Software? They made a program called "TIffany". It was created during the NeXT days, and was considered a Photoshop competitor. Many of it's users still claim that it outshines Photoshop in many areas of functionality. Well, Caffeine Software disappeared earlier this year. No warning. No notice as to why.
> 
> There's a strong suspicion that Apple hired the main developer away to work on a Photoshop competitor, that may/may not be in Apple's immediate plans. It could be to provide a trump card in case Adobe ever threatened PS extinction, or it might be part of Apple's plan to actually offer a PS type competitor to Mac users.
> ...



Okay, just to slow down some of the strange rumors, I have been working very closely with both Andrew Stone (Stone Design) and Stan Jirman (Caffeine Software) and neither of them have even hinted that Apple is even interested in them. Stan is still writing great software, but Caffeine was just more trouble than it was worth (for now).

All of their software (both Stan's and Andrew's) is some of the best I've used (currently I use the full versions of Create, PStill, TimeEqualsMoney, Curator and PixelNhance, and have used the full version of TIFFany for NEXTSTEP). I can't say enough about them.

The reason it is important to dispel these rumors is that neither of these guys is getting money from Apple for their work. Stan stopped developing TIFFany (for now) because he couldn't afford it. If people think Apple is going to be buying TIFFany, why would they buy a license now (which you still can by the way, Andrew has a TIFFany section of his Stone Design store for it).

Apple has, at times, brought some developers in-house (Renaud Boisjoly comes to mind), but they have also gone around developers like Dan Wood. 

It is important that we support the smaller developers. I hope that no one else in the community has to take the steps that Stan did, and the best way to make sure that doesn't happen is to buy software that you like by them. 

If you think TIFFany was great, guess what, it still is! So is Create! So is Watson! Lets help keep them making software. Buy now!

_-end shameless plug for friends-_


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## Arden (Sep 7, 2003)

It's important to support smaller developers and keep them away from the greedy clutches of the Evil Empire.  Microsoft has sunk their talons into too many companies, and for them to get more great companies like Caffeine would just perpetuate the cycle.


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## MDLarson (Sep 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *Microsoft has sunk their talons into too many companies, and for them to get more great companies like Caffeine would just perpetuate the cycle. *


<sniff>  I miss Bungie... <sniff>


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## texanpenguin (Sep 13, 2003)

Photoshop is the world's largest selling cross-platform image-editting program. People value the fact that it is exactly the same on both platforms, and thus, that work made on Macs is wholly compatible with PCs and vice versa.

If Apple created their own program, Adobe users would, inevitably, outlaw it. It would need to be SO far ahead of Photoshop 8 that it was essential for graphic artists. Then you face the problem with it being TOO far ahead, and losing compatibility with Photoshop.

Every revision of Photoshop seems perfect, and it just keeps improving. Apple, as a new contender, couldn't compete against the userbase and experience of Adobe. It's just wasted expense. Stick to what you're good at Apple - making visually striking hardware and software. And leave it at that.


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## Arden (Sep 13, 2003)

Right.  The reason Indesign is starting to do well over Quark is that Indesign is a superior, easier-to-use, better-supported application.  To beat Photoshop, an already excellent, easy-to-use, well-supported application, Apple's would have to be absolutely phenomenal, and we all know that they don't always make phenomenal software.  Often they do, but many times they fall short, and I don't think a Photoshop killer is up their creek.


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## RacerX (Sep 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by texanpenguin _
> *Photoshop is the world's largest selling cross-platform image-editting program. People value the fact that it is exactly the same on both platforms, and thus, that work made on Macs is wholly compatible with PCs and vice versa. *



Here is the problem with any program having too much power in it's area... if companies start feuding, we are the ones that get hurt.

The whole Premier/Final Cut thing isn't the best example because not only was Final Cut a good alternative, it was in fact just plane better all around. But here are some items that showed how Adobe has dealt with Apple and it's users:

*(1)* Adobe crippled Premier 6.5 for Mac. That is a major charge I'm leveling, but here are the facts to back this up. Premier doesn't support multiple processors with the default install on the Mac OS, and Apple has been making multiple processor systems the center of the professional line for quite some time now. In fact Adobe made the first multiple processor aware app (Photoshop) for Apple's first dual processor systems, the Power Macintosh 9500. Adobe posted a page called "PC Preferred" to show how much faster Premier was on a PC than a Mac. As it turns out, Premier comes with a second rendering engine which can be set up to work on the second processor and help out the first while rendering. In tests done with this set up, not only did a dual G4/1.42 out pace a Pentium 4/3.0, Premier almost matched Final Cut Pro's times while doing sum of the same types of functions.

*(2)* Photoshop for Mac OS X was held from being released. As most of us know, Photoshop has a special place in the Mac platform. Apple's transition to Mac OS X would have been greatly helped by the release of a native version of Photoshop. As it was, Photoshop was one of the last Adobe apps to be ported, instead of the first. Adobe gave a number of excuses as to why Photoshop took so long, but the problem with this is... Adobe demoed a Carbonized version of Photoshop 5 running in a special version of Rhapsody with an early version of the Carbon APIs (see attached image). The port took 9 days. It wasn't even done using the primary Photoshop engineers as they were readying the release of Photoshop 5.5. This was May 12th, 1998. They went on to release 5.5 and then 6.0. We didn't finally see a native version of Photoshop until February of 2002. Almost four years after the demo of a working Carbon Photoshop 5.0 which was running 9 days after Apple released the Carbon APIs to Adobe.

*(3)* Acrobat for Mac has not had the same feature set as the Windows version since the release of Acrobat 3. Acrobat 4 was missing a number of features (many added with a later update) that the Windows version had. With Acrobat 5, one of the best features, paper capture (a built-in OCR engine) was removed. Fortunately, most of my clients upgraded from 4, so moving the elements that were needed to 5 wasn't too much of a hardship. But the Windows version continued to have the feature (as a scaled down version of their enterprise app Acrobat Capture... which is also Windows only). Also Acrobat 5 was released after Adobe said that every new version of it's software would be Mac OS X nature (with some exceptions, i.e. FrameMaker, PageMaker). Acrobat Reader 5 was native to Mac OS X, Acrobat 5 was not. It wasn't until months later that they released an update (5.0.5) to make Acrobat 5 native... but not Distiller. I use Acrobat 5.0.5, and I don't have _Classic_ on my system for running Distiller, so I use PStill instead. Still, Adobe could have handled it better (though not having Distiller sure did make InDesign look that much better).
The point is, be it Adobe, Microsoft, Quark or Macromedia, any company with a lock on any given area is going to abuse it's position, and we are the ones ultimately hurt by it.

Sorry for the quality of the screen grab attached, one way to tell this is Rhapsody is the small iconized window at the bottom of the screen (if this was running in Blue Box, you would be able to see the Yellow Box area)


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## RacerX (Sep 14, 2003)

Just so you can see a clear picture of iconized windows, here is that feature enabled in Rhapsody on my ThinkPad.


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## Arden (Sep 14, 2003)

BTW: "plain better," not "plane better."[/nitpick]

I think Adobe is toying with us.

*RE: ps5 on rhapsody:* I'm melting, melting!  Oh what a world, what a world...


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## RacerX (Sep 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *BTW: "plain better," not "plane better."[/nitpick]*



The spellchecker on my system brought up three choices for _"plaon"_, and at 1 AM in the morning I picked the wrong one.

Future reference: proper posting etiquette would have been to over look such mistakes.

Lets just hope that you don't the the IRL equivalent, though it would explain the large numbers of posts.


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## chevy (Sep 14, 2003)

What we need on Mac is a reasonably priced version of FrameMaker. Everything else can be left to Adobe and Microsoft.


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## Arden (Sep 15, 2003)

Yeah, I know I should have skipped the typo, and I typically do, but you usually don't make errors like that and I just wanted to make sure you made it.


> Lets just hope that you don't the the IRL equivalent...


 The the what?  This I didn't understand at all.

My post count would be a lot higher if I were a stickler about misspellings.


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## Cat (Sep 15, 2003)

You don't know IRL? It's a high-resolution real-time environment, with 3-D audio and visuals. You would need a lot of parallel computing though ...
It's comparable to LARPG (Live Action Role Playing Games). It also has a/v chat, a very complex mood system, and instant feedback.


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## gravy (Sep 15, 2003)

I'm a small business owner, and have been using Adobe products for quite some time (AI88 and PSD 2.0). The problem for me really would become workflow. I, as well as others would need to start all over. 

The beauty of the Adobe products is that they are cross-platform. Large companies will insist you use Adobe apps which enable them to make minor modifications if necessary. Unless Apple intends on releasing products to both Win/Mac simutaneously for less which are seamless with Adobe products, I don't think they have a snowballs chance. This is a tall order.

Also, unlike video where the workflow is somewhat contained, print apps like AI10 and ID2.0 have the additional print step where things can get quite messy. Adobe is tried and true in this area (although quirky). Service bureaus would be slow to adopt, which hurts. Look how long it has taken InDesign to get traction.


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## Arden (Sep 15, 2003)

Where has anyone actually seen some hard evidence that Apple is even considering entering the desktop publishing arena head-on?  In a way, it's a good thing that Photoshop is so ubiquitous because it's a standard.  If there were 4 or 5 different, awesome photo manipulation programs, they would have to be fully compatible with each other or everyone would have a headache on their hands.  You can see this from the whole Mac/Windows situation.


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