General &Money SpinMeister on 19 Apr 2005 12:26 pm
Adobe’s Macro Diet
More of the same in software food chain evolution, Adobe announced it is acquiring Macromedia. Of course this is a big buzz all over the Internet, so I had to get my 2 cents in.
Many say it’s Adobe’s defensive move against giant Microsoft. Others say against Apple. Whatever the case, this is no surprise, and big fish eats little fish business as usual for many industries.
From my own experience, Macromedia’s upgrade prices have always been aggressively high, so just maybe with Adobe’s large product and license base, those costs might come down. Also there is some hope of better product integration, for those who bounce from Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop to Macromedia’s Flash.
Story behind the story, the illustration above was originally designed and created in Flash, but WordPress 1.5 doesn’t integrate Flash files yet, so what you see is a substitute animated GIF. Maybe Adobe will buy WordPress, and fix that, but for what price? WordPress is currently free.
2 Responses to “Adobe’s Macro Diet”
on 22 Jun 2005 at 3:50 pm 1.onepic said …
Photo Shop with its album features, home site etc… it’s all good, but what seems obvious to me is hardly mentioned: Adobe has a pretty good track-record on video editing software, allowing them to leverage the newly acquired Flash asset into something that allows Adobe to exercise more control over how broadband media is distributed.
There were times when I hear rumors about Microsoft acquiring Macromedia, and I though it was a brilliant move, so as to fold Flash technologies into media player or vice versa. It surprises me that Ballmer did not pursue it.
on 23 Jun 2005 at 5:38 am 2.SpinMeister said …
I met with a few Adobe product managers a little over a year ago for their demo of Premiere and pitch as an alternative to Avid’s editing products. A staff colleague of mine was not ready to make that leap and chose to stick with Avid. Premiere will also need to compete with Apple’s highly popular Final Cut. It’s a crowded space.
No doubt Flash technology will open more possibilities for Adobe products, including broadband media, and expanding the capabilites of PDF authoring.