Adobe tech chief likens Apple to 19th-century railroad

Adobe tech chief likens Apple to 19th-century railroad
Apple like railroads in 1800s: Adobe tech chief - MarketWatch

If Apple is an 19th century railroad, then that makes Adobe a Conestoga wagon.

I think it can be a valid comparison. The railroad barons controlled everything within their business, Apple has a similar philosophy. Of course, the big difference is that they were able to use that control to totally dominate the movement of freight within their areas of control, where Apple is only controlling development on their platforms, and leveraging that to exert influence on the market in general. Apple doesn't have the total dominance of certain regions like the railroads did.

But ultimately, Apple is getting big enough and influential enough that they are going to have the anti-trust people looking at the very carefully. And this fiasco with Adobe shows that Apple is more then willing to exert their influence on the market.

I just don't get all the bickering from them!? Here's a simple question: What will definitely be the future, HTML5, or flash? That's a no brainer… I think Adobe is losing sleep over this, while Apple is happily sleeping while dreaming of their new iphone!

idrinorbarsaku said:

I just don't get all the bickering from them!? Here's a simple question: What will definitely be the future, HTML5, or flash? That's a no brainer… I think Adobe is losing sleep over this, while Apple is happily sleeping while dreaming of their new iphone!

Click to expand...

Yup, IMO you've pretty much hit the heart of the matter.

Adobe should be more concerned about making Flash A LOT better or scrapping it for something totally new.

Let's just say if Adobe pulled all support for all their products and stop producing them for Apple, Apple would be in a world of hurt.

How many people that use Macs to do photography & design work use adobe's CS suite? If they didn't have it, the only real alternative would be to use Windows.

And it's not like this is the first time that Apple has screwed with Adobe. They stopped developing carbon 64 which forced Adobe to use the Cocoa platform which caused CS4 not to ship as a 64 bit version when shipping for the OS X platform.

Also have to consider that Adobe wants to keep Flash alive - it's heavy investment from when purchasing Macromedia back in '05 for 3.4B - so even if Flash sucks, they aren't going to let it go easily - they have too much invested in the technology both for the flash players and the authoring software (yes, I know Macromedia had other products like Dreamweaver and such, but Flash was a core, driving product).

What's also interesting - although there is this huge argument going on, and Adobe apparently "dropping" development of Flash for Apple devices (doesn't mention which devices, so that could be the entire Apple line - including OSX); one has to wonder how much Adobe is panicking about HTML5 and just using this fight with Apple as a diversion from their real concerns?

Village Idiot said:

Let's just say if Adobe pulled all support for all their products and stop producing them for Apple, Apple would be in a world of hurt.

Click to expand...

If Adobe did that, Adobe would be in a world of hurt too. Mac users are a lot of revenue to Adobe.

the8thark said:

If Adobe did that, Adobe would be in a world of hurt too. Mac users are a lot of revenue to Adobe.

Click to expand...

Until they switch to the only platform that supports their choice of software. It wouldn't make since to stick with a Mac if you can't get the software you want on it.

True then it'd be up to Apple to make a solution to this to keep the Apple customers. That's why I think Apple should be making their appeture (is that the right software, I think you know what I mean) as good if not better then Photoshop is. If they work on it now to make it the best, and completely compatable with photoshop files, then if Adobe pull Mac support it will not hurt so much.

And even if they don't pull mac support, they'd be making apperture a better product and more people would buy it.

Also pixelmator should be looking at this to make their app the best photoshop-lite killer. And I think they are on the way to it but still have a ways to go. Personally the only reason I don't use it a lot (I did buy it) was cause the lack of a crop feature. If they added it in, I'm sure I'd use pixelmator for about 80% of my photo edits.

the8thark said:

True then it'd be up to Apple to make a solution to this to keep the Apple customers. That's why I think Apple should be making their appeture (is that the right software, I think you know what I mean) as good if not better then Photoshop is. If they work on it now to make it the best, and completely compatable with photoshop files, then if Adobe pull Mac support it will not hurt so much.

And even if they don't pull mac support, they'd be making apperture a better product and more people would buy it.

Also pixelmator should be looking at this to make their app the best photoshop-lite killer. And I think they are on the way to it but still have a ways to go. Personally the only reason I don't use it a lot (I did buy it) was cause the lack of a crop feature. If they added it in, I'm sure I'd use pixelmator for about 80% of my photo edits.

Click to expand...

Apeture doesn't compare to Photo Shop. It's more like Light Room which does light photo editing and not major design work. Even then you're missing out on Illustrator, and the rest of the Adobe CS programs.

I suspect that Apple already has a full "Pro Graphics Studio" suite in development as a back-up in case Adobe decides that a future version will be Windows-only. Just as it did with FinalCut when Avid (and later Adobe with Premiere) tried to abandon the Mac video market.

Aperture is just the only component that it's released publicly.

Apple also has enough cash to buy Corel and/or Quark, assuming the private investors that own those companies want to sell. That would give Apple pro-level drawing and layout apps. It could also buy Autodesk, or ACD.

More importantly, too many of Adobe's customers are on the Mac. Many of them would sit out an upgrade if it meant buying a new computer to run it on...which would give Apple even more time to assemble its own suite.

technologist said:

More importantly, too many of Adobe's customers are on the Mac. Many of them would sit out an upgrade if it meant buying a new computer to run it on...which would give Apple even more time to assemble its own suite.

Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. Most Apple users only buy the upgrades they need. Even now many Apple users (myself inclided) will skip an upgrade if nothing in the upgraded thrills them or is needed for work. Many windows users I know just buy software/hardware just for the sake of they have to have the best. Even in the previous version satisfied all their needs, they want to upgrade just cause they can.

I'm sure if Adobe cut the OS X support I'm sure most Apple users would hold out as long as possible before buying that new version for bootcamp. I'm sure most OS X users and also use abobe products would love to switch to an non-adobe brand. Switch to Apple or another software. It's just they need the features of photoshop.

In my opinion people are loyal to Apple (and would be loath to leave them) but they would run from the Adobe products given half a chance. It's just many industries almost force you to have and use photoshop.

If aperture ever matures to be better then photoshop one day, then I'm gone and my ties to Adobe products are forever cut.

Village Idiot said:

Let's just say if Adobe pulled all support for all their products and stop producing them for Apple, Apple would be in a world of hurt.

Click to expand...

My heart skipped a beat when I read this. It's definitely true that while Apple is the standard for most graphic artists/designers/photographers/etc., they're nothing without the software. I know there's rumors about an Apple a-bomb of sorts tucked away in the deepest dungeons of Infinite Loop, but even if that is true, I can't imagine all of the Photoshop users dropping everything and flocking to the newcomer.

Flash (and maybe Adobe itself) are slowly coming to the end of their life cycles, but I've honestly got to say that Adobe has the trump card with CS.

Village Idiot said:

Let's just say if Adobe pulled all support for all their products and stop producing them for Apple, Apple would be in a world of hurt.

How many people that use Macs to do photography & design work use adobe's CS suite? If they didn't have it, the only real alternative would be to use Windows.

And it's not like this is the first time that Apple has screwed with Adobe. They stopped developing carbon 64 which forced Adobe to use the Cocoa platform which caused CS4 not to ship as a 64 bit version when shipping for the OS X platform.

Click to expand...

You would have to be a pretty stupid company to do such a dumb *** move like that!

There might be some people who would go back to MS, but there are also people would would never consider it, not to mention there would be a company ready to replace adobe on mac(assuming your idea was real).

technologist said:

I suspect that Apple already has a full "Pro Graphics Studio" suite in development as a back-up in case Adobe decides that a future version will be Windows-only. Just as it did with FinalCut when Avid (and later Adobe with Premiere) tried to abandon the Mac video market.

Aperture is just the only component that it's released publicly.

Apple also has enough cash to buy Corel and/or Quark, assuming the private investors that own those companies want to sell. That would give Apple pro-level drawing and layout apps. It could also buy Autodesk, or ACD.

More importantly, too many of Adobe's customers are on the Mac. Many of them would sit out an upgrade if it meant buying a new computer to run it on...which would give Apple even more time to assemble its own suite.

Click to expand...

There may be one other option that I've not seen discussed but might be the best way Apple could fight back. Do like what they did with WebKit and invest heavily in Gimp. Whatever Apple adds to Gimp to make it more functional would filter back to the open source community and in turn make the Windows and Linux versions more capable. That could effectively kill Photoshop on all fronts.