Adobe moving away from Apple

[elvis]

i can understand that apple are keen to make more software products that make them money, but i think this is some pretty strong evidence that flooding the apple market with apple-only software may end up backfiring on the company.

granted photoshop, quark, indesign and illustrator are probably the most popular imaging and publishing tools on the mac (and all non-apple), but nothing would surprise me if apple don't start to eat into this market within the next 5 years. if companies like adobe comepletely jump ship over to PC, apple are going to face some hard times.

i already know a few production companies here in australia who only use PCs with adobe premier and discreet combustion as their video editing suites.

[MadMax]

Apple has been eating up third party apps now for a couple of years.

Some were big name items that were widely used by professionals, and then Apple discontinued all versions except for Mac versions.

Long term this is not only bad for the entire industry, it's bad for Apple. Adobe is already watching thier backside realizing what Apple is doing.

A lot of production people were really pissed about Shake.

At this rate it won;t be long before you begin to see 3rd party apps dry up and developers take a f&^k Apple attitude.

[elvis]

It seems Mr Jobs and Mr Gates attended the same "how to run a business" lecture. :)

[raz-0]

http://www.jahshaka.com/news/appled.html might be of interest in the debate about where apple is going with software..

seems pretty irksome on apples part.

[MadMax]

That was a very interesting read, and very illuminating.

I especially liked this part:

At that point, i got the full picture. Now, we have dealt with many hardware companies and they all embrace any sort of development - especially Open Source. However, Apple is becoming a software company, and so if you are developing products that compete with theirs in any way then they will not assist you. This is sure death for their developer program - i mean who the hell wants to write software for a platform when your biggest competition is the company that owns the platform?

Apple is trying to become "Mini Me" to Microsoft. Becoming a software company might become a natural evolution for them as their hardware business is failing. Although this particular move seems to be fraught with major blunders and bad PR.

[beaker]

Most of Apple's software ventures have been into area's where the current 3rd party players were starting to suck. I don't think apple would have aquired the software if there was allready good 3rd party support.

Web Browsing: IE 5 has only been updated for bugs since OSX 1.0 4 years ago. IE 6 has been out for windows for how long?

Video Editing: Premeire(Sucked beyond belief), Avid(talked about moving away from apple, even told everyone that MC 8 would be the last version, till everyone got pissed off), Media 100: only developed 844x for windows, took them forever to release Media100i on OSX, etc... Apple bought up FCP and started stiring stuff up and all of a sudden everyone straitend up. Avid started innovating again. Adobe finally saw the light with Premere 7 even though it is for XP only. I doubt premire would have been even rewritten and still would have sucked without a little competition from other players(Avid and Apple).

Audio: Much of the audio software out there was taking their time moving to OSX. Being very sluggish. Apple buys up Emagic, releases OSX version 5 months later. Now all of a sudden everyone is getting off their asses and getting their OSX audio products out the door.

Compositing: AE, Combustion, Commotion are your big products on OSX, no real highend solution. Commotion is missmanaged so it wont be around for long. Discreet has been talking about dropping mac for a while. That only leaves AE, which is nice for motion graphics and low level compositing, but certainly not high level film stuff. Shake and Rayz announced OSX products but were lagging because of the crappy economy. Apple buying up shake and rayz caused more competition. Combustion lowered from 5k to 1k and now were definalty getting a 3.0(everyone thought it was going to get canned before). Nuke comes out for all platforms(OSX version is in the works too). It would have never been released if Apple didn't buy up Shake/SG.

BTW Apple your previous statement was untrue, they didnt dump all the non osx versions, Linux and Irix still exist.

It's called survival. If they didn't do this stuff, everything they are known for would dissapear.

granted photoshop, quark, indesign and illustrator are probably the most popular imaging and publishing tools on the mac (and all non-apple), but nothing would surprise me if apple don't start to eat into this market within the next 5 years
I doubt it. Only if those products all of a sudden started to suck and Apple started loosing market share to some other app that runs only on windows.

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by MadMax
Apple is trying to become "Mini Me" to Microsoft. Becoming a software company might become a natural evolution for them as their hardware business is failing. Although this particular move seems to be fraught with major blunders and bad PR.

If they remain on a proprietary platform, then it will probably not
be a successful strategy for them.

That article reflects an attitude surprisingly similar to what got
Apple's customers into the situation of feeling like 2nd class
citizens where 3rd party software support was concerned.

[rocarpen]

Beaker's post nails it nicely.

Apple has worked to provide solutions in areas that were previously under-represented on the Mac platform. High-end compositing, OSX-compatible audio, video editing, and truly world-class consumer apps. The results have been uniformly awesome, from Final Cut to the iTunes/iMovie/iPhoto/iChat/iCal suite. Other companies can try to compete (ie: the new OSX version of ProTools) or they can give up (ie: Premier).

I find it hard to fault Apple for making awesome applications.

:rolleyes:

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by rocarpen
Beaker's post nails it nicely.

ProTools) or they can give up (ie: Premier).

I find it hard to fault Apple for making awesome applications.


You missed the point, and so did Beaker.

Notice that Adobe did not give up, they left. They are still competing against Apple, but now they are not trying to do so on
Apple's proprietary platform, which means that mac users are
losing an option.

The fault is not for Apple making good applications, it's in Apple's
screwing the 3rd party software vendors.

[3DDave]

I bought a Mac and DVD studio Pro becuase I needed a low cost, reliable DVD authoring solution that was not available (and still isn't) on the PC.

Anyway, I think we are in a better position as consumers today than we were before the Apple aquisitions.

[rocarpen]

Originally posted by Thalaxis
You missed the point, and so did Beaker.

Notice that Adobe did not give up, they left. They are still competing against Apple, but now they are not trying to do so on
Apple's proprietary platform, which means that mac users are
losing an option.

The fault is not for Apple making good applications, it's in Apple's
screwing the 3rd party software vendors.

And I'm still wondering what on earth you're referring to when you talk about "... screwing the 3rd party software vendors."

Premier was canceled because it no longer made economic sense to support. Read: No one was buying it. Why would they, when Final Cut is so vastly superior?

Adobe was therefore left with the option of pouring money into an attempt to catch up with FC. They opted not to. End of story.

Again, please explain how Apple "screwed them?"

[beaker]

Originally posted by Thalaxis
The fault is not for Apple making good applications, it's in Apple's
screwing the 3rd party software vendors.
I don't really see that. Apple supports their developers very well. That Jahshaka article sounded to me like they wanted a hand out or something from Apple since they were porting to the platform. We don't even know enough about their situation. They said they were signing up as a developer, but it's probably the basic online membership (which is free). Does M$, Sun, SGI, IBM help every little developer port software to their platform that just installs the basic developer tools off the cd? If they paid for the "Premiere" service that costs 7k, plus 3.5k a year maintenance and Apple is snuffing them, then thats a different story(I doubt it though since its and opensource project).

We need more info about this before we pass judgement.

http://developer.apple.com/membership/

This reminds me of the days when maya first came out and some 3dsmax developers were looking at making plugins for Maya. Kinetix was really cool in the early days and would give away 3dsmax to developers along with free phone support. Maya on the other hand asked you to pay for the software and support if you wanted to develop. Many plugin developers were appauled that they actually had to pay for the software that they were making plugins for. They thought that since they were bringing tools to maya that a/w should be greatfull and should give them a handout. This was a big difference between the expensive workings of the SGI world and much cheaper software in the windows world of the time(Maya was 30-40k at this time).

[Thalaxis]

The fact is that Adobe IS going after FinalCut, but they are
choosing not to do so on Apple's proprietary platform in light of
the fact that Apple is also one of their primary competitors on
that platform.

[elvis]

Originally posted by beaker
Web Browsing: IE 5 has only been updated for bugs since OSX 1.0 4 years ago. IE 6 has been out for windows for how long?
microsoft have formally announced since the release of safari 1.0 that they will no longer be releasing versions of IE for mac, nor will they be doing any updates on their IE5 product.

microsoft are also bitching and whinging taht apple are not sharing code from OS X which makes it difficult for any third party developer to be able to properly optimise their software for the mac os x environment, and therefor apple's prebundled and fast alternative will always be better than a third party's.

it's highly amusing that microsoft do exactly the same with windows and third party developers, but they didn't seem to respond to those comments when apple rebutted. :)

[beaker]

elvis: can you post a link to an article that talks about M$ complaining about apple not sharing code in osx? I hadn't read about that and I am curious. The biggest complaint I heard from developers was just stuff in Carbon being full of holes(apple really wanted people to just skip carbon and use cocoa api's but that required alot more rewritting of their code since they had to use ObjC instead of C++). Also the other problems were in the first two years of OSX there was alot of stuff that just wasn't documented. So people had to rely on alot of guess work.

OSX is about 100x more open the m$'s operating systems since huge chunks of it is open source. Also they give away all their development tools and documents where you have to pay for VisualC++ and pay $400 a year for technical documents(technet).

[3DDave]

Adobe sells software, what it runs on is probably secondary to how many units they will sell. Premier probably wasn't a good seller on the Mac so they pulled the plug. That's smart business.

[moovieboy]

But fair competition isn't Adobe's only concern, according to Trescot. He said it's conceivable that Apple could, at any time, make its pro applications available for free to boost sales of Mac hardware, which would cut third-party developers out of the picture entirely. Not that Apple has announced any plans to do so, but, he said, it's possible. And that's enough.

Was Trescot drunk when making these statements? If anything, Apple has been drawing fire for charging money for everything from iTools/.Mac to each OSX release and iLife... And suddenly, Apple's going to start giving away $500 - $1,000 apps like DVD Studio Pro and and FCP? Trescot says "it's possible?" Sure, it's possible... right after Adobe releases After Effects 6 for free and throws in a free hooker because they're feeling "naughty."

Give me a freaking break...:annoyed:

And why are companies, and for that matter CGTalkers, acting like Apple directly competing is a relatively new thing?

One word: Claris!

Anyone remember them? They had writing programs, drawing programs, ol' FileMaker, Claris Works, etc...

All those programs got crushed by Office and Word, Illustrator, Freehand and Photoshop so eventually all but (Apple)Works (EDIT: oops, and Filemaker!)went away... Despite using some of those programs a looooong time ago, I wasn't outraged because supposedly better programs had rightfully assumed the throne...

How is Premiere getting whupped by FCP any different? If Final Cut DID exist in the Windows world, and proved to be far more popular than Premiere Pro... would Adobe cry foul again and then pull support for all but Amigas???

I agree that yanking Premiere is probably more about business... but what's with the backhanded bitch-slaps just because there's honest competition? Adobe should grow up. No software maker should be treated as a sacred cow if the milk's getting stale...

grrrrrrrrrr[/rant]

-Tom

[moovieboy]

Hey, suddenly my PhotoShop's not running... what the?

:p

-Tom

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by moovieboy
How is Premiere getting whupped by FCP any different? If Final Cut DID exist in the Windows world, and proved to be far more popular than Premiere Pro... would Adobe cry foul again and then pull support for all but Amigas???

I agree that yanking Premiere is probably more about business... but what's with the backhanded bitch-slaps just because there's honest competition? Adobe should grow up. No software maker should be treated as a sacred cow if the milk's getting stale...


There IS honest competition... and Adobe is going after it. It's not
as if they are alone in the Windows market.

Besides, they're still competing with FinalCut.

[moovieboy]

Looks like Apple is responding to Adobe's Premiere move!

Here's the link (http://www.apple.com/finalcut/offer/)

...and the tussle continues.:shrug:

-Tom

[ages]

As a mac user we are fed up with the half assed software coming from certain companies lately, we always miss stuff like plugins, optimisiations etc that the pc users get. Premiere is a big culprit, Lightwave is another, and not having Maya unlimited is another.

So why would you care if apple takes the approach of "want something done right you have to do it yourself" attitude.

The only reason I could see anyone getting upset was if there was no Prem and Apple never had an alternative.

Its Adobe being the greedy ones, do u all remember how long it took PS to be carbonized?
Do u all remember the PC preffered web page at Adobe?
Do u all remember the threats made if Apple used Quartz in their oSX which is based on pdf?

Adobe should make their own OS, that runs their own appz, like that big companies will have a small I.T footprint to take care of. That would make everyone happy.

[elvis]

Originally posted by ages
Adobe should make their own OS, that runs their own appz, like that big companies will have a small I.T footprint to take care of. That would make everyone happy.

interesting... adobeOS. it would certainly illiminate adobe's problems on the cross-platform arena, but at the same time introduce a whole host of other issues. (networking compatability, security issues, etc, etc).

perhaps a custom adobeOS built up from linux would be the answer? still no walk in the park to integrate 100% successfully into an existing corporate network.

[moovieboy]

Originally posted by ages
As a mac user we are fed up with the half assed software coming from certain companies lately, we always miss stuff like plugins, optimisiations etc that the pc users get. Premiere is a big culprit, Lightwave is another, and not having Maya unlimited is another.

The rational, non-flame counterarguments to that these days are usually:

a) then why'd you buy a Mac in the first place?

b) why not just buy both platforms?

Both, objectively can be valid points. But I think it's a shame that technology in general has strayed from giving all customers equal treatment.

In general, I don't agree with such things as "exclusive to only us" technology, whether it's coming from Apple, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, DTS, Intel, whomever... I understand why it "has" to be there, but I've never been a fan of it.

And whether you're a PS2 fan who wants to play Halo or Mario, or a Mac head who wants Unlimited... it's a free country. Write to them programmers and be heard. ;)

-Tom

[JahShaka]

I was checking out this thread and figured i would let you know what really happened with Apple and us... If you read the story on our site, www.jahshaka.com/appled.html then you kind've get the picture however a user above said that maybe we were asking for handouts.

First, the lady at Apple gave me her card and told me to contact her. I was not asking for anything other than infomation that any developer would want - such as what programs are available, how to get started as a official apple developer, what they thought about what we were doing and their opinions on open source... however we did not even get that far.

I have been a long time apple user, having owned or used at one time or the other other pretty much every model of mac out there. I actually started programming 3d on the mac way back in the day on a powerbook and made my living for a while doing custom apple support.

I am really ashamed at their actions... all the lady had to say was go and sign up on the website, or there are different developer programs availble, or speak to this dude in this department - the answer i was looking for at the time was more to get pointed in the right direction not to be told to go to hell.

Currently my OS of chice is linux - the software isnt there yet but its slowly moving over and i dont have to deal with companies who change their business model every 2 years, or whos ego's are too large to swallow... plus it lets me run on whatever hardware i desire, letting me build the fastest box possible.

The Jahshaka project is cross platform and open source and we hope to make it available to anyone who would want to use it. Its slowly getting better, despite the fact that we have no revenues and depend on the graphics community for assistance, and it will continue to get better until it eventually meets the big guys head on in functionality.

If i were a apple user, i would make some noise as it seems like they have somewhat of a communist strategy over there "join the party or go to hell". Use our tools or go to hell. I am sure adobe would port premiere to OsX but instead of working it out with them Apple's press release was basically "who cares, buy final cut pro" This is not cool...

A better strategy for apple, like the one microsoft built their success on, is to invest in other companies and help developers as much as possible. They didnt have to buy shake, all they had to do was invest in the company... Build the developer market... and focus on brand name and loyalty. Did you know that Final Cut Pro was based on a product they purchased from Macromedia - the original developers? If they gave developers incentives you would see a host of new and amazing applications for OsX instead of the handful that are now available.

Apple should really be spending their money making a better OS and better hardware... thats why people buy systems. There was nothing really revolutionary about the G5 now was there? it was just a G4 with a new chip, not a box that was 100x faster or 100x better that whats out there. I remember back in the day when the newton came out and you could say that apple was innovative... noboday had anything like that on the market. I cant really say that today.

Remember that its the users who support the company, not the other way around. When Avid announced they were dropping the mac platform a few years ago it was the users who forced them to change their strategy...

-Jah Shaka

[X3M]

What Adobe should do is port their apps to Linux. Most of the high-end companies are using or thinking about using it. Lot of them did not make the move yet because of Photoshop, and we all hate dual boot. If I could use all my apps, or equivalent, I will drop both Windows, Mac OSX today without any question asked.

[ages]

Originally posted by elvis
interesting... adobeOS. it would certainly illiminate adobe's problems on the cross-platform arena, but at the same time introduce a whole host of other issues. (networking compatability, security issues, etc, etc).

perhaps a custom adobeOS built up from linux would be the answer? still no walk in the park to integrate 100% successfully into an existing corporate network.

Adobe could use BEos. Its better and was made for both platforms.

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by ages
Adobe could use BEos. Its better and was made for both platforms.

BeOS is now in Palm's hands. I'm not sure that Adobe could use it
if they wanted to, now.

[beaker]

Originally posted by X3M
What Adobe should do is port their apps to Linux. Most of the high-end companies are using or thinking about using it. Lot of them did not make the move yet because of Photoshop, and we all hate dual boot. If I could use all my apps, or equivalent, I will drop both Windows, Mac OSX today without any question asked.
Unfortunatly Adobe is a big company. If they don't see a potential of 50,000 copies sold, I doubt they would do the port. I don't think linux version would sell that many in the first year.

You could do like many companies now and just run Crossover office to run your adobe apps in linux:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/
The guys at Disney gave them money to get pshop running in linux with their product and now it works.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.