Forum Moderators: phranque
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
If I remember Cooledit was pretty affordable but Adobe added some features, called it Audition, and jacked the price to $300.
I wonder what will happen to Homesite?
Just what we don't need. Adobe taking away our tools and pumping out more garbage software that developers will now be forced to use.
So long Windows, I won't miss you!
I like Fireworks for the web too, but I use Photoshop for effects/detail in some cases. I'd hate to see Fireworks phased out. I'd also hate to see the MX stuff made over in the image of Adobe, I like the MX interface.
LisaB
Maybe the future new Web Designer CS will contain:
Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop?
This would mean less products for me to buy. Sweet!
Decisions decisions, oh the pain....
Maybe the future new Web Designer CS will contain:
Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop?
Those are the 4 best products for the job and now they are owned by the same company. I see this a good thing.
Maybe Adobe can fix Macromedia's interface.
With no meaningful competition, Adobe will bloat the software and prices, increasing burden not value. Just like MS did with internet explorer by not updating it in 5 years. You can count on photoshop 2010 looking much the same as it does today.
You will still have the option to NOT upgrade.
I have yet to upgrade from the Adobe Design Collection to CS or CS2 because nothing in those sets has piqued my intrest.
There is some overlap but the combined synergy could be good in the long term as both companies stop wasting resources on competing for redundant technologies. Perhaps some new innovation is possible with just those savings alone. Only time will tell.
There's still CorelDraw out there, somewhere, someone must be using it.
I'm guessing this will be the end of "fireworks"
Say it ain't so. I just got so I could use that thing...
With MM's popularity and wide-spread use, I find it hard to believe that Adobe would "phase-out" OR significantly change any of their products. If they altered the MM interface, it would force the entire MM using population to relearn an interface to a product they're already loyal to. I can't imagine a better way to alienate customers and guarantee that they never purchase an upgrade to that product. It would be foolish to make any changes to the MM suite of products beyond adding or updating features. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't.
cEM
I doubt it, to me photoshop is one thing, which I use for one type of image processing, and fireworks is another. Fireworks is excellent for web graphics, much better than photoshop, the product I would see going is image ready, which I've always seen as kind of a weak fireworks clone.
Personally, this will have no affect on me, since I've never seen any reason to upgrade either photoshop or fireworks, they were done pretty well to begin with, unless you are a pro graphics person. Plus the gimp is getting better and better all the time.
The link between fireworks and dreamweaver has more value than the link between photoshop and imageready, to me this is just adding a midlevel application suite to adobe's higher end stuff, it actually makes sense, unusually for big mergers, as Fiona can tell you now that she was fired for doing a really dumb merger, that made no sense at all.
growingdigital: Dreamweaver is the only reason I use Windows.
Any Idea of what's going to Happen to former Allaire Products like Coldfusion? I am not sure that Adobe is too into Application development.
MM also has AuthorWare, Director and Flash which are all more or less application development of sorts.
Besides, Cold Fusion crumbles under stress, I'm not sure PHP and MySQL is much better or worse and it's certainly cheaper so it wouldn't hurt my feelings to see Cold Fusion vanish from the mix.
Now after saying all that I would get very worried if adobe started cutting any macromedia staff but like I said before with macromedia doing so well in the first place there should be absolutely no reason to do that.
I am really excited about this blending of Macromedia and Adobe products. Adobe listens pretty well to its consumer base, which is more than I can say about Macromedia... There are pros and cons, over all I believe the end result will be sweet!
I must admit that I never looked at Macromedia´s PR before, but I don´t recall having Macromedia as an example of PR10.
Perhaps... Maybe... Who knows...
No, no, that´s not the way Google works.
Or is it?
It's not as bad as Microsoft buying Yahoo and Google, but it's still pretty disturbing.
Mr. Software
By FRED MOODY
New York Times
August 25, 1991
I see no good in either monopolies nor anti-trust (though we have yet to hear a clear definition of the latter). If someone has a great product you can't keep customers from buying it over another, and any attempt to do so would be undemocratic. What there are no laws against today is endocrinisation - first-time users being "educated" in one product before ever getting a look at what else is out there. I find it laughable that there is an anti-trust case against Microsoft about them shipping Windows Mediaplayer (their own product) with windows (their own product) and not Real's player (their competitor!) - when nothing at all has ever been done about Windows shipping already installed in every computer ever made with a Pentium (Intel) chip.
This is not at all the case with Adobe and Macromedia - they both are consenting adults - so there is no case for any anti-trust here. It is true, though, that the cosumer will have (yet) fewer choices when deciding "what's best" - and if things narrow down enough I do agree that the stage may be set for another "Quark saga".
when nothing at all has ever been done about Windows shipping already installed in every computer ever made with a Pentium (Intel) chip
Er, where did you get that from? I know several places that build Pentium based PCs with 'Nix.
This would mean less products for me to buy.
If the end result of Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia is fewer products, it's folly to think they will charge the same or less for those products as they do now.
Competition, over time, increases the quality and reduces the price of the products.
I'd feel much more comfortable using a product by a smaller "specialty' company that puts all its research and efforts into one area instead of trying to tie together all it's got.
Applying this arguement to Adobe with regards to MM products presumes that Adobe will be taking over the development of MM products with their existing staff, which is almost certainly not the case. Wouldn't you think they woule retain the services of the MM development team to continue working on the MM based product line?
cEM
Competition definitely has that end result, which is why it's important for goverments to strictly ensure that such competition continues to exist. When companies have monopoly or near monopoly market positions, there can be no competition. Since the US government decided to roll over for MS in its own antitrust legal process, I guess Adobe figured, hey, why not us too.
MS has been unable to break into the graphics area though they've actually tried, nobody ever saw their junk except people who bought the full office 2000 suite, which almost nobody ever did, and you never hear about it.
So now we have two virtual monopolies in the software industry: OS, Office suite, and graphics/publishing. Great.
"I see no good in either monopolies nor anti-trust (though we have yet to hear a clear definition of the latter). If someone has a great product you can't keep customers from buying it over another, and any attempt to do so would be undemocratic."
You kind of have to make a choice here, either governments force splits of monopolies and enable competition to happen again, or they don't, and you have to have monopolies. Monopolies are inherently 'undemocratic', since they bypass the rules of the market place completely, which is why they should be controlled. You can't have it both ways. Not doing anything, which would be the logical outcome of this position, would absolutely guarantee the formation of monopolies, and the loss of a democratic marketplace.
When the us government split apart the phone companies, prices plummeted, competition skyrocketed. It worked great. If the current president hadn't accepted huge campaign contributions from MS and then dumped the penalty phase of the antitrust law suites, we'd be seeing an extremely different competitive environment right about now.
Adobe obviously looked at the current climate and said, hey, this is the right time to move, nothing to worry about from the political arena.
