Forums | MacLife

The will certainly be interesting.  I wonder what my upgrade options will be in the near future.

i use both Macromedia (aldus anyone?) and adobe software. i like them both. i still prefer freehand over illustrator and dreamweaver over golive. macromedia doesn't have a photo or text editor, though. that's why i use photoshop and indesign. still, this is bad news. smells like monopoly here.

what's next? adobe buying quark? although that would be a stupid move on adobe's part.

All Macromedia had left is Flash, really.  Adobe rapidly added new features to Illutrator while Freehand has remained stagnant since version 7, which prompted me to drop Freehand in favor of the faster, more feature-rich, easier to use Illustrator.  Fireworks is eclipsed by Photoshop and ImageReady.  GoLive was doing the same thing to Dreamweaver that Illustrator was doing to Freehand.

Adobe improves and updates their apps, Macromedia doesn't seem to make much of an effort to do the same.  This really isn't an end to competition, because Macromedia hasn't made much of an effort to compete for about 5 years anyway.

Hopefully, Adobe will incorporate some of the nice things from Freehand and Dreamweaver into Illustrator and GoLive, respectively, and release a Flash authoring app that isn't a bass-ackwards pain in the neck to use.

I prefer Freehand to Illustrator, so for me, this news sucks.  Adobe, IMO, has made a Microsoft-like shift in their thinking...adding clutter and bloat to their products.  I haven't felt comfortable with Photoshop's interface "enhancements" over the year's...all they have done is provided 7+ new ways to do commonly bad design techniques for noobs.  I still use version 3.0.5 for the vast majority of my work, venturing into newer versions only occassionally.  OTOH, I have upgraded my version of Freehand several times, and I always enjoy the latest version over the older one.  I use Illustrator on occassion, but only grudgingly, as it suffers from the same bloat and feature overload as Photoshop. 

To top it all off, Adobe and Apple's relationship has grown more and more tense over the years.  I could easily see Adobe slowing development on the Mac platform and costing Apple's final corporate stronghold.  Adobe has shown little desire to make all their products Mac compatible, and some of them have all the performance of a cheap port (After Effects).  If Apple releases any more products that even look sideways to Adobe, I would expect this trend to continue, and if it does, the small section of Macs doing design in the basement of many corporations will dissappear. 

Nope...this is not good news.

volk wrote:

To top it all off, Adobe and Apple's relationship has grown more and more tense over the years.

I never did believe the Apple - Adobe rift stories, I just never could see them drop support so long as Apple was selling computers to Adobe users. But, i never thought they would buy Macromedia either.

Twisted Guy wrote:

Hopefully, Adobe will incorporate some of the nice things from Freehand and Dreamweaver into Illustrator and GoLive, respectively, and release a Flash authoring app that isn't a bass-ackwards pain in the neck to use.

I just spent 12 hours this weekend in Flash, and the entire time I was going "I wish Adobe would make a program that did this - it wouldn't suck, things would work the way you think they would".

This news brightness my mood today.

ConnertheCat wrote:

I just spent 12 hours this weekend in Flash, and the entire time I was going "I wish Adobe would make a program that did this - it wouldn't suck, things would work the way you think they would".

Adobe already tried it.  It was called LiveMotion.  It really sucked. 

MM has a focus on web dev that Adobe has never been able to touch.  They inovate and actually lead with technologies.  Adobe tries to catchup by buying existing tools.  (funny, just like this.)

This is simply huge for the graphics pros of the world. Like jondaris said, I think this *could* be bad for us. No competition means uh, you know what it means.

volk wrote:

I haven't felt comfortable with Photoshop's interface "enhancements" over the year's...all they have done is provided 7+ new ways to do commonly bad design techniques for noobs.  I still use version 3.0.5 for the vast majority of my work, venturing into newer versions only occassionally.

You seem like one of the guys I work with -- scared to venture into something new. Either that or you don't do any real work in Photoshop. Adjustment layers. Layer styles. Have fun in PS 3.

Hey, it *could* have been worse ..... what if it had been the other way around?

Twisted Guy wrote:

All Macromedia had left is Flash, really.

Hardly.  MMs server technologies, content authoring and other tools are sucessfull.  In addition Flash is huge.  It's like saying all Adobe has is Photoshop.

Twisted Guy wrote:

Adobe rapidly added new features to Illutrator while Freehand has remained stagnant since version 7, which prompted me to drop Freehand in favor of the faster, more feature-rich, easier to use Illustrator.

Yea, it was once really nice, but since the shift of focus to the web, it has got little development attention.

Twisted Guy wrote:

Fireworks is eclipsed by Photoshop and ImageReady.

Not really, FW is very different product thatn Photoshop.  (IR is nothing more than a plugin for PS).  FW is designed ground up for creation of web graphics, PS is a image manip tool.

Twisted Guy wrote:

GoLive was doing the same thing to Dreamweaver that Illustrator was doing to Freehand.

Nope.  Similar apps, but DW has always lead that race, and is the dominate product.  GL has caught up, but very unlikely to surpass.  Web-dev is MM's baliwick.

Twisted Guy wrote:

Adobe improves and updates their apps, Macromedia doesn't seem to make much of an effort to do the same.  This really isn't an end to competition, because Macromedia hasn't made much of an effort to compete for about 5 years anyway.

that is only true if you haven't been paying attention.  MM has been inovating, breaking new ground, new technologies and making significant advances.  AS2 was amazing, Flex is slick, the data server techs are pretty sweet. Adobe just updates PS/AI and tries to find new ways to market PDF/Acrobat.  Other than GL, they really haven't had much play in the web market. (well, other than failures).

Twisted Guy wrote:

and release a Flash authoring app that isn't a bass-ackwards pain in the neck to use.

Flash is amazingly powerfull and the interface is only hard if you don't know how to use.  Sure there are always room for improvements, but it is hardly bass-ackwards.  Besides, most of the time you are in a text editor.  Adobe already had a dumbed down easy to use version of flash, and that sure worked out well for them.

What really sucks is that the MM interfaces on the Win versions of their products are far superior to the Mac versions.  If you don't like the DW/FW interface, try the Win verision, you will probably like it better. 
At least Adobe keeps their bloated interfaces consistant.