Comments
5 CommentsA quote:
It seems obvious to me, however, that there is only one real reason why Apple would sell off its professional applications and that’s to avoid antitrust problems when/if Apple buys Adobe Systems as I predicted at the beginning of the year. Final Cut Pro competes directly with Adobe Premiere. While in my opinion the Apple video software is clearly better, Jobs couldn’t be at NAB trying to sell Premiere — software he doesn’t yet own. Maybe there’s a planned bait-and-switch, seeing who is interested in Final Cut then trying to shift them to Premiere.
The major point here is that Adobe is in play, or at least Apple thinks so. The company has plenty of cash and stock to do the deal and plenty of incentive, too. Apple’s goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe’s emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn’t a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?
That's a sneaky move. Controlling Flash and Air would really stick it to Microsoft. Instead of wasting time on Yahoo perhaps they should have been looking at Adobe.
However, with video becoming more popular it is a risky move to get rid of Final Cut Pro. In that respect, why doesn't Apple create their own software to compete with Flash, Air, Silverlight, etc? As web developers would be against using their product in your applications/sites/etc? As a user would you be against downloading yet one more application?
JPhill
Written May. 9, 2008 / Report /
Why re-invent the wheel? I don't know the answer to this, but would it be cheaper to just buy Adobe? I'd think that it would be less of a headache for both Apple and developers, that way Apple controls a great company, and developers don't have to learn another technology "hoping" that it catches on.
Tyme
Written May. 9, 2008 / Report /
That's what I thought too until I thought about it a bit. Selling off Final Cut is stupid to me, since it is superior to Premiere.
But what concerns me more is the lack of competition. There should be choices, should be options but Adobe has held a monopoly on Flash forever. When companies hold monopolies there isn't a reason to improve because there isn't any competition. If Apple developed their own and threw it into the iPhone, placed it on their computers, etc. would it be that big of a deal for developers to actually have to decide which application they want to use?
Keep in mind I'm not a developer though. I'm the user that comes up with the ideas that creates work for developers. :)
lalindsey
Written May. 9, 2008 / Report /
Hmm, I'm not sure. I actually read some stuff 2-3 days ago about Adobe and Apple having a big feud because Photoshop CS4 (and possibly other CS4 apps) will not be available for Mac users and will only work on Window's Vista 64bit editions (see: Slashdot). Also, I read one other article (very technical and I didn't understand a lot of it - think it was here (John Nack) which basically said Apple had originally told Adobe that they were going to one type of platform ("Carbon") but instead used "Cocoa" (to all the hard core software programming people I'm sorry if I messed that up, but it's over my head as of now). I'm not sure what that means, but in the end I guess it made the next possible version of PS incompatible with Apple computers....
I don't know though, anything is possible in the tech world.
RightOn
Written May. 9, 2008 / Report /
Apple to buy Adobe has popped up I think 4,000 times since Jobs returned to the helm... it's a popular rumor, I just don't see WHY it would happen really.
davidhayes
Written May. 9, 2008 / Report /
I'd note two more things.