Adobe turns back to Mac... again.

G

gerbick

poptart villain
don't hate me... I'm just the messsenger wondering what you guys think. Personally, I don't see any harm... it's only Framemaker.

Adobe Systems announced on Tuesday that it plans to drop the Mac version of FrameMaker, the latest sign of eroding support for the Apple Computer operating system.
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read about it here
 
Just more evidence that 4% market share is unsustainable. It's a downward spiral - the apps won't stay if the users aren't there, and the users won't stay if the apps aren't there...
 
gerbick said:
don't hate me... I'm just the messsenger wondering what you guys think. Personally, I don't see any harm... it's only Framemaker.here
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Then it's ONLY After Effects (who uses that anyway?), then ONLY Acrobat Reader (hey, we have preview!), then ONLY Powerpoint (Keynote rocks!), then only all of Office (well, there's um, OpenOffice and the rumored Apple suite), then Dreamweaver (hey, there are BETTER products for the Mac...right?), then ONLY Photoshop (erm...), then the entire Macromedia Suite and Quark (ack)...Then not too long after that:

In the news today, Apple was finally disolved as a division of Sony. The remaining developers will work on Apple's remaining product legacy, the "SoPod"
 
Hmm. When I raised some concern awhile back about Adobe cancelling Premiere, I was shouted down as an alarmist by many on this forum. "Adobe will never cancel Photoshop" was a line that many shot back with.

Well, consider this: Adobe cancelled the Mac version of FrameMaker - and kept the Solaris version. Do you honestly believe there are more Solaris FrameMaker users than there are Mac users? I doubt it.

Just to clarify - I'm not saying Adobe is going to cancel the Creative Suite for the Mac any time soon, but you can bet your bottom that Adobe is seriously looking at ways to consolidate costs and boost revenue. Cancelling the Mac versions of Premiere and Framemaker did just that.

I just hope that Apple has some good replacements in the que for the day that Adobe cancels some of the more critical Mac apps - Acrobat, GoLive, InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
 
I've always thought of CorelDraw as an OS/2 and Windows Vector app - my first introduction to CorelDraw was 2.5 or so. and Illustrator just seems like such a Mac Vector program... meaning, they just both fit the OS they were on when I tried it.

As far as Encore, Adobe saw that they couldn't go up against the more widely used apps on the Mac. A move, as a stockholder, I could agree with. Same for Framemaker - that's one acquisition that never quite made sense to me. But to assume that Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign are next... that's speculation.
 
Adobe has recently updated many of the apps in Creative Suite. A big difference in weeding the less-profitable items out and promoting the big money ones. Creative Suite has been a big $$$ maker for Adobe. Next some alarmist will say that Adobe is cancelling PageMaker and it spells doom for the Mac platform.
 
Randman said:
Adobe has recently updated many of the apps in Creative Suite. A big difference in weeding the less-profitable items out and promoting the big money ones. Creative Suite has been a big $$$ maker for Adobe. Next some alarmist will say that Adobe is cancelling PageMaker and it spells doom for the Mac platform.
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Didn't Adobe already announce that they are cancelling Pagemaker? Not just for mac, but for all platforms...InDesign is the replacement.

-JARinteractive
 
pagemaker ? what is that ? any1 used it ?

what worries me is Corel 12. why no corel 12 for the mac???

but on the other hand there is Apple. who usually takes care of things eg. Spoken Interface !!!

im think. there is nothing to worry about. i believe in Steve :p
 
Yes, Adobe's already announced PageMaker is on the way out. In fact, there's even an expansion pack available for PM users that eases the transition to InDesign. I was being sarcastic in the previous post.
I think Adobe will continue to support the programs that are purely profitable (Creative Suite) and scale back others. InDesign is the champ now, not Quark, so it would be bad business to drop it.
A company consolidating its product line doesn't have to be a bad thing. Nor does it automatically spell doom for the Apple platform or the other products in a company's lineup.
 
The author of the article was just trying to make a point and reached in his conclusions. FrameMaker was an OS9 app (which are becoming rarer and rarer these days) and the Adobe guy even admitted it was too expensive to create a version for OSX. That and it was mentioned that the products Adobe has dropped in the Mac line had a strong competitor.
Finally, the Adobe CEO sounded pretty fair in his comments. Some good between the companies, some bad. Sounds normal.
And finally, the author's conclusions were based on superficial evidence without hard numbers to back up the assertion from more than a purely speculative, argumentative stance.
 
Well, well, well. FrameMaker was an important application for creating technical manuals and the like. It'll sure be missed, although I've never needed/used it myself. Corel? Well, we _really_ don't need that one. Macromedia and Adobe have a very strong hand in vector graphics. Corel just didn't make any money on their Mac versions, so it was quite clear it'd have to go. If you wanted professional vector graphics, you _never_ chose Corel, anyway. PC or Macintosh.

And, yes: Adobe _is_ commited to the Mac platform with their Creative Suite - which is the _important_ part.

PageMaker was bought by Adobe at version 5. The _only_ version bringing really new features Adobe ever did was version 6. After that, it was just 'keeping it alive', or rather "We don't let that one die right now, but we'll cut the line in the future...". Which has already happened. And InDesign is more than enough of a replacement from the _same_ house.

I don't get why people make such a fuss about it. It's not like whole companies are working together in FrameMaker and now choose to go PC instead of Mac. I rather see Adobe doing well and focused. Gives them the money to create even better software instead of hangin' on to problem children.

The _other_ thing is that Apple, despite everyone saying the opposite, needs more market share. Not only because the platform's losing applications (it's also winning some, btw.), but rather because the press will then be more positive about the platform in general.

Btw., serpicolugnut said: "Do you honestly believe there are more Solaris FrameMaker users than there are Mac users? I doubt it."

Of course not. But quite probably there are more Solaris FrameMaker users than Mac FrameMaker users. Like I said: FrameMaker is mostly used in technical environments, where Sun is strong and Apple is not. Also: If one's a user of FrameMaker - he/she can still use it on the Mac, although in an old version. Who says that by 2005 there won't be a replacement? (That's when Adobe is going to cut support for the Macintosh version.) Maybe even from Adobe?

Rather than swearing about Adobe kickin' FrameMaker for Macintosh, we should do positive thinking and actually act, so that in the future there _is_ a solution. Be it from Adobe or not.
 
Just to add another point in terms of the Solaris FrameMaker. Solaris hasn't actually changed their underpinnings in such a drastic way as our beloved Apple.
Solaris is Solaris. Apple is no longer on OS 9 and changing to OS X does take a lot more resources than making some minor tweaks to the software when Solaris gets an update.

Just my thought as to why the Solaris build is also still available.
 
Yep, quite surely, it's mostly a money-matter. Counting development costs against possible revenues. That's why there's a Mac version of Creative Suite. That's why it doesn't run on OS 9 any longer (no-one's talking about that, eh?).
 
Fryke, you are correct, no one ever mentions these kinds of things. I wonder why. Is it because of poor research? Is it because everyone in the Windows camp loves predicting the death of Apple at any cost?
I find it increasingly more difficult to persuade people that Apple ain't going nowhere, with stories like that. :)
 
diablojota said:
Just to add another point in terms of the Solaris FrameMaker. Solaris hasn't actually changed their underpinnings in such a drastic way as our beloved Apple.
Solaris is Solaris. Apple is no longer on OS 9 and changing to OS X does take a lot more resources than making some minor tweaks to the software when Solaris gets an update.

Just my thought as to why the Solaris build is also still available.
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Hogwash. FrameMaker was ported from UNIX to the Mac and then to Windows. The NeXT port of FrameMaker was a major application on NeXTstep. Most MacOS X APIs are OpenSTEP APIs, which are updates of NeXTstep APIs, which are based on UNIX. Apple may have changed the underspinnings of its OS, but it changed them from one familiar set of APIs to another familiar set of APIs. I have been a FrameMaker user for more than 10 years. I am young enough to accept change, but I am also old enough to know when I am being lied to. Adobe is lying to me, and not for the first time.
 
It's just a simple business decision. I am not alarmed at all. Premiere had not hope on the Macs with FCP. Easy call. So long Premiere.

I assume Framemaker wasn't bringing in the coin either. Whatever.

We don't have access to Adobe's accounting books, so we're all just guessing as to what is profitable and what isn't.

I'm here to tell you, with no actual hard evidence, that Indesign, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and many more like them are NOT going anywhere on the Mac platform.

In fact, I'll bet anyone here right now that in five years those apps will be going strong on the Mac. You name the price.

Any app that does fall to the wayside has so far been one I never used or found a better alternative for anyway (Livemotion being one exception, but at least they killed it altogether).
 
Yeah *sips coffee* I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Corel has one application that needs to remain Mac-compatible: Painter.
Yeah, and Fryke? Can you have those TPS reports ready for me in the morning? Thanks champ
 
Painter is great. Corel has made it clear that they have no intentions of dropping it. Course, what would they say..."We plan on dropping Painter for the Mac in nine months."? I've got to believe Painter has just big enough of an audience to sustain itself (on the Mac), not to mention a fairly minimal amount of resources at this point to keep it updated.
 
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