April 18, 2005

Adobe buys Macromedia "...we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings by the time the acquisition closes." So long, FireWorks. See ya, LiveMotion. Hasta la vista, FreeHand. US$3.4 billion to ensure fewer choices for designers such as I. Anyone wanna wager on the upcoming GoLive/Dreamweaver deathmatch?
posted by es el Queso 19 years ago
  • As an Illustrator/AfterEffects/Photoshop user, this sounds good. Full Flash integration is sorely needed. Of course, my line of work is based on video stuff; I`m sure webmonkeys will face hard times. Of course, as an user that still has kept away from the CS versions, and still jumps to OS9 for some chores (Illustrator 8 glides like hot butter on 9.2, version 9 stutters like skates on sticky mud on 10.3), the prospect of another bloated multi-headed app suite is daunting. Ha, finally, no more Freehand files from clients to worry about!did I say that out loud? oops...
  • Golive? they still make that junk??
  • Shit. Does this mean we're going to get Flash ads in .pdf files?
  • I'd rather they by Quark, so we can say goodbye to that awful company.
  • I do not see this as a good thing. In fact, this is a 900-lb nightmare with jalapeno chili shits. Adobe will most likely kill Fireworks, even though it is far better than Photoshop for it's specific area (web graphics). They'll also most likely kill Freehand, which hasn't been all that popular anyway, but does have better text handling and page management features than Illustrator (multiple page sizes in one document, anyone?). It might be survivable if Adobe doesn't try to make Dreamweaver and Flash conform to their interface requirements. It's not that their interface is bad, it just doesn't work well for everything like they seem to think it does. The worst part is the lessening of alternatives. Right now, there are no serious alternatives, and most likely there never will be now that Adobe will have comprehensive patents on everything involving interfaces for graphics design software.
  • Monkeyfilter: A 900-lb nightmare with jalapeno chili shits
  • Will the european union have anything to say about this merger? Didn't they kill the GE / Honeywell merger? I imagine they would have something to say about this one too.
  • Livemotion was axed long ago. (Sad, cause I thought it was awesome). If I'm a GoLive or Freehand developer I'm mailing out resumés STAT. Anybody wanna place bets on (once this deal is done) Apple acquiring Adobe?
  • I have a friend who is in tight with Macromedia people through his job and he said everyone is bummed out because Adobe is a horrible company to work for and that it's not exactly promising because Adobe doesn't exactly have a policy for innovating as none of their product line has seen any major changes within last five years. We'll see how ti works out.
  • Kimberly: I have a friend who [...] said everyone is bummed out because Adobe is a horrible company to work for [...]
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is a single-sourced opinion from someone with no first-hand experience as an Adobe employee. I doubt your friend, who isn't even a Macromedia employee, has any idea what "everyone" thinks.
    [...] Adobe doesn't exactly have a policy for innovating none of their product line has seen any major changes within last five years
    Firstly, "innovation", as it is popularly understood for software, is a false ideal. A decrease in user-visible changes is often as much a sign of a perfected product as it is a sign of stagnation. Secondly, I have a hard time believing that Adobe can maintain its significant dominance in digital and print publishing areas without being able to adapt and evolve. Thirdly, innovation is not a policy proposal. Yes, the company can encourage tinkering and experimentation or have a large R&D budget, but innovation has happened in the worst of conditions (Shuji NAKAMURA's invention of the blue LED), and failed in the best of conditions (the vast majority of the output of MSR never makes it to any product).
  • (Oops, I accidentally deleted an "as" in the quoted text.)
  • Of the two companies, I would choose to work for Macromedia instead of Adobe in a heartbeat. Adobe has gotten very corporate and self-important, not unlike IBM circa 1980.
  • I can't decide whether to drool or cry.
  • I'm going to keep high hopes for this all. Dreamweaver has a user interface that makes me want to hurt people should I really have to use it. Perhaps they'll skin Golive over it. I seem to be the only person in the world who actually likes Golive, but having grown up with the Adobe family its UI just makes sense to me. And most of the web development I do is pretty simple stuff. Ideally I farm out the serious coding and just do the design and content. Fireworks can get rolled into Photoshop, and Imageready can get lost in there too. One big program can come from them all. Illustrator will suffer. It really hasn't seen any serious innovation in years and now there's really no reason to develop it. I too really wish they'd buy Quark. Xpress really deserves a merciful death. Indesign is a lovely program and I've been using it pretty much exclusively in recent years unless a client absolutely demands otherwise.
  • I've already got Fireworks MX and I love it, but this thread actually inspired me to download purchase Photoshop on BitTorrent. I'm at about 95% of the purchase right now.
  • I seem to be the only person in the world who actually likes Golive..... Me too! And I'm not happy about this merger at all....
  • I like Dreamweaver - I found it easy to use before I even comprehended much basic html, let alone most complex software. Fireworks is terrific too - the latest version is suposed to make automatic galleries (very useful). My fiance can attest that I am damned annoying when trying to learn new software, so if I find it okay to figure out, it's probably very easy.