Against Apple, Ballmer Floats Microsoft Merger With Adobe 520
Ebbesen writes "Ballmer had a meeting with the CEO of Adobe, and among other things: 'The meeting, which lasted over an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could partner in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.' Apparently MS has courted Adobe previously, but feared anti-trust regulations. With Google and Apple gaining, Microdobe might be possible."
Flash for Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see much of Adobe products surviving. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has replaced postscript with XPS. IE and Silverlight can display XPS, so goodbye Acrobat. Silverlight does video and RIA. Goodbye Flash. Expression Blend can do what Illustrator does, although it's not as mature.
And with no one giving MS a chance of succeeding in the mobile space, the time may be right to sidestep antitrust issues.
Microsoft gets a migration path from Adobe to Silverlight. Adobe shareholders get $$$'s and not uncertainty.
The uncertainty will come from the government.
Re:First post! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:First post! (Score:5, Interesting)
There wouldn't be any name change for Microsoft - the brand is far too valuable. Adobe would cease to exist; or rather they would become a subsidiary and only funnel money to Microsoft.
They have very few competing products, which is great for the customers of both. There would be far more integration, very little product loss.
It would be great to see Flash take on some of Silverlight's power and ease of development. Combining the best of the two would create a very worthy foe. Coldfusion has long had a few features that ASP should have had. FrameMaker could lend a hand to Word, and Visio could become an addin to FrameMaker...as all three are used very much when writing technical books.
After the scare Adobe received earlier this year at the hands of Apple, Adobe must realize at any time Apple holds the power in their relationship. Although Adobe is responsible for Apple's early dominance in the graphic and motion industry, Apple no longer needs them. In terms of sales, Adobe has always made most of their money supporting Microsoft's operating system.
Lately both companies have seen innovation only in the form of acquisitions of smaller, more nimble companies. Whatever they choose, they need to do it before the slide starts.
Death of Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:First post! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:First post! (Score:1, Interesting)
Not quite.
Logic was HUGE on Windows - especially in Europe.
The problem was that the ratio was 20% bought vs. 80% pirated. On the Mac, it was 80% bought vs. 20% pirated.
Emagic was close to going broke.
Apple did the only thing that made sense other than closing shop.
Re:I don't see much of Adobe products surviving. (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole reason Silverlight exists is because flash is not Microsoft. Break every browser flash game by going Silverlight only? Microsoft is not that stupid, if they owned flash then they'd be all over it. Same with most other of Adobe's apps, pretty much everything in their Creative Suite has much higher brand recognition than Microsoft's products.
Re:First post! (Score:5, Interesting)
Halo originally wasn't ever intended to be an XBox game. Back in those days, Bungie was a Mac-only game company.
Then Bungie publicly showed a demo of an early alpha version in action. M$ saw it and decided they wanted to have it as an exclusive for the new console they were developing.
To Mac users it was like Halo was stolen before it even left the womb.
XPS shows what is wrong with MS (Score:5, Interesting)
XPS shows everything wrong with MS, even with a rival (!) like Adobe.
They come up with a "document" standard and yet they didn't even ship a viewer (let alone some virtual printer) for OS X. I am not even mentioning Linux support which is big deal on corporate. I don't want to cost anyone their job at that weirdo company so not giving any examples but it seems, they do create a lot of docs on OS X, export to PDF (or PS), re-export to XPS on a Windows machine/bot.
That is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to PDF. Just imagine if XPS really replaced PDF. It wouldn't be a nice day for anyone not using Windows on Desktop/Mobile. I am not even sure if there is an official XPS viewer for Windows 7 Mobile.
I got creative friends and imagine my surprise when I find out about "Expression" software, as I am not in that segment, I asked them and they -too- didn't have a clue about that software. They had a good laugh when they heard they are supposed to use "that thing" (their words) to do work for Silverlight. You know, in dream World of MS (and Ballmer), designers even use MS Visual Studio and OS X using designers install Eclipse to do Silverlight. Yea, right.
Re:Bleeeechhhh (Score:1, Interesting)
Isn't adobe the only thing that ever f***'s up computers in those security tests? Not to mention responsible for nearly every browser crash. And the number one reason most don't switch to linux "omg I found the browser but it doesn't have flash yet installed wtf *delete*". And right when I thought adobe was on the right track and not screwing up anymore. . . tsk tsk
Re:Sure. (Score:3, Interesting)
When Apple did their 180 and pulled the rug out from under not only Adobe, but many other developers, it's their that they were expecting what was advertised? They spent money towards that Carbon 64-bit, and Apple screwed them. Seeing how Apple has been treating Flash like a dirty condom, I can't help but wonder if Apple planned it this way. Final Cut vs Premiere. Aperture vs Lightroom. Maybe this was a planned move to try to get market share away from Adobe.
Either way, what I was disputing with Final Cut, is that if Cocoa was 1: the way to go, and 1: ready, why didn't Apple get their FCP people programming in Cocoa long ago? According to all the fanbois, Adobe should have switched to Cocoa long ago, yet here's Apple's own FCP, one of Apple's software that could most benefit from a 64-bit edition. No moves there? Whats the hurry then?
Re:Bleeeechhhh (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I seriously want Microsoft to do this.
Pretty much what I was thinking as well. Not sure how that is a troll, as I thought it was fairly well thought out with some attention to detail. It wouldn't be hard to get the majority of people (RGB) who now pirate Photoshop to use Gimp if you could get it up to Photoshop 6 quality. Hell, I do commercial work all day now using Photoshop 6, as I haven't needed a reason to upgrade. As you likely know, piracy leads to sales. Microsoft used to know this, but of course, you don't need to build marketing momentum when you already have a monopoly.
And yes, if I was an executive at IBM, and MS bought Adobe, you damned right I would be looking at throwing some money at Gimp. Any good businessman *must* look at ways to knock the wind out of the sails of your competition. Microsoft did exactly this with giving IE away free, to cut the sales of Netscape. This is no different in many aspects, and obviously would be marketed under their "We love Free software" platform, which is a legitimate claim considering how much they have contributed.
As a final note: It is already insane how HUGE the Acrobat Reader installer currently is. I can install an entire operating system with a GUI using less space! This kind of bloat will be right at home under MS ownership. In two years, you will be able to order the Acrobat Reader two DVD install set.