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Adobe has now officially swallowed up Macromedia in an attempt to keep both companies alive a little longer in the face of growing competition from the two companies that you never want to mess with on their own turf: Microsoft and Apple. Both have been quietly threatening Adobe and Macromedia for a while, and this merger may be a (probably futile) effort to fend them off. You just can't compete with companies that make operating systems; they decide that they want to make more money on applications like yours, and either you're bought out by them or your products are history. Microsoft has proved this several times over the years. Why does Adobe think that things will be different this time?
We all know Adobe for it's Acrobat Reader for PDF files, and for Photoshop and its ubiquity in the graphic design realm. You can get most of Adobe's software for either the Macintosh or Windows platforms; GNU/Linux has only an afterthought edition of the Acrobat Reader available.
Macromedia is famous for its Flash animation tool and player, and for the Dreamweaver and Fireworks Web design programs.
This merger is not just of two companies, but of two of the Web's most annoying content formats. Perhaps now we will be able to view a Web site with a blinky Flash advertisement that has an embedded PDF for us to download, and if a browser crash can possibly be thrown in there as well, all the better.
More seriously, Adobe has designed new software suite bundles to accommodate the Macromedia software they just acquired. Here are the prices:
- Adobe Design Bundle: $1600 for the full version; $950 for the upgrade. Basically it's Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium (Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2, Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Version Cue CS2, Bridge, Stock Photos) with Flash 8 Professional.
- Adobe Web Bundle: $1900 for the full version; $900 for the upgrade. This is Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium plus Macromedia Studio 8 (Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3, FlashPaper 2)
- Adobe Video Bundle: Not yet released, but it'll include at least Flash 8 Professional and Adobe Premiere.
Isn't it a little strange how the full version of the Web Bundle is $300 more than the Design Bundle, but the upgrade is $50 less? Must be an upgrade incentive for current Macromedia Studio users.
One glaring problem I see with these slapped-together suites is that Macromedia has been working hard for years -- since before the Macromedia Studio suite was even announced -- to integrate their products with one another. There are commands and options within Flash and Fireworks to work directly with Dreamweaver. How is Adobe going to make Flash work with GoLive and Photoshop? With a lot more hard work, I guess, and that's not going to be evident in this release.
How will Microsoft kill these suites? By introducing their own. Microsoft Expression is not yet available, but I'll make a prediction about it... it'll be less than half the price of the Adobe/Macromedia conglomerate suites, it'll work better with Windows Vista (maybe even be integrated with it somehow), and Internet Explorer 7 will come with a Sparkle plugin natively, whereas users will have to download the Flash plugin separately. Then the next edition of Microsoft Office will include export filters for PDF and Sparkle, and then for Adobe/Macromedia it will be all over but the lawsuits.
And Apple? Aren't they making Aperture into a Photoshop killer? Is there any other use for Adobe products on a Macintosh except for Photoshop?
Of course they could move to GNU/Linux and/or Solaris, but why do I get the feeling that, like Corel, Adobe/Macromedia will never consider such blasphemy? Maybe because it was dealing exclusively with the major players that got them where they are today. Ironically it will also be the instrument of their demise. Microsoft and Apple are making it clear that there is no room for Adobe/Macromedia on their platforms. Instead of fighting them on their own turf, why not join with their operating system competitors? I'm surprised that Sun and IBM aren't publicly petitioning Adobe/Macromedia to port their software to Solaris on SPARC and GNU/Linux on the POWER architecture. Both companies are even in a position to offer financial incentives to Adobe/Macromedia -- even to finance the porting development entirely. Then you'd see Sun Blade workstations and IntelliStation POWER systems marketed specifically as design tools. Hey, if you're going to drop $1900 on a software suite, you probably have the additional funds for an $8000 64-bit multi-core RISC workstation as well.
Sources
Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan.
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