Adobe buys Macromedia

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-04-20 02:35pm

Frankly, I'm shocked there hasn't been any posts on this, but a visual scan and a search revealed nothing.

Adobe bought Macromedia.

http://macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/ ... media.html
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrela ... media.html

Yup.

How long until we see Adobe Flash?

Melchior · Post by **Melchior** » 2005-04-20 03:13pm

I hope that they continue to market both Freehand and Illustrator, i can't stand Illustrator.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2005-04-20 07:47pm

Great, now Flash will also cost $900.

Spacebeard · Post by **Spacebeard** » 2005-04-20 08:42pm

Melchior wrote:I hope that they continue to market both Freehand and Illustrator, i can't stand Illustrator.

Well, they continued to market PageMaker for years after buying it from Aldus, and were selling it in parallel with InDesign for some time. I'd guess that Freehand will get at least one major upgrade before they discontinue it. (I've always preferred Illustrator myself, but it's almost entirely a matter of taste, and of which application one is most used to).

Combined with their recent "product activation" scheme, this definitely eliminates all doubt that Adobe is now the Microsoft of the Mac world, however. There's now zero competition in the graphic design market.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2005-04-21 02:16pm

There's always Jasc's Paintshop Pro, for whatever competition that's worth. But it's not for Mac, as far as I know...

But wow, first Syntrillium and now Macromedia? It's official; Adobe is now evil too... I wonder what will happen if they decide that the flash and shockwave players should cost money...

Spacebeard · Post by **Spacebeard** » 2005-04-21 09:41pm

Dooey Jo wrote:There's always Jasc's Paintshop Pro, for whatever competition that's worth. But it's not for Mac, as far as I know...

Even if that were a professional quality application (which it doesn't look to be from brief Googling), it would only serve as competition for Photoshop, which hasn't had realistic competition since Aldus Digital Darkroom was discontinued. With Macromedia gone, Adobe's only competitors on its own tier are Quark (QuarkXPress versus InDesign / FrameMaker), Apple (Final Cut Pro versus Premiere), and maybe Microsoft (Frontpage versus GoLive / Dreamweaver). Illustrator is now uncontested.

But wow, first Syntrillium and now Macromedia? It's official; Adobe is now evil too... I wonder what will happen if they decide that the flash and shockwave players should cost money...

<flamebait> Hopefully they'll die a well deserved death. I think Flash is even more annoying than the HTML blink tag. </flamebait>

Honestly, I don't think they'll do that. Remember that Acrobat Reader has always been free. It's in their interest to ensure that consumers have unfettered access to content, while milking as much money as possible out of producers.

Natorgator · Post by **Natorgator** » 2005-04-22 01:35am

I personally hope that they'll integrate InDesign CS2 with Dreamweaver, which would make an uber web development tool.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2005-04-22 03:05am

Natorgator wrote:I personally hope that they'll integrate InDesign CS2 with Dreamweaver, which would make an uber web development tool.

InDesign CS is a publishing tool. Dreamweaver is an HTML development tool. The two are completely different realms.

Adobe has its own Web development tool in the Adobe CS, but it's basically crap compared to Dreamweaver.

Natorgator · Post by **Natorgator** » 2005-04-22 03:41pm

Crayz9000 wrote:
Natorgator wrote:I personally hope that they'll integrate InDesign CS2 with Dreamweaver, which would make an uber web development tool.
InDesign CS is a publishing tool. Dreamweaver is an HTML development tool. The two are completely different realms.

Adobe has its own Web development tool in the Adobe CS, but it's basically crap compared to Dreamweaver.

Err, I was referring to GoLive CS2-my mistake. Supposedly it has some really powerful CSS tools, which would be awesome if integrated into Dreamweaver since its CSS tools aren't really that great.

Melchior · Post by **Melchior** » 2005-04-22 05:13pm

Spacebeard wrote:
Melchior wrote:I hope that they continue to market both Freehand and Illustrator, i can't stand Illustrator.
Well, they continued to market PageMaker for years after buying it from Aldus, and were selling it in parallel with InDesign for some time.

After all, it isn't the first time they own both programs, now that I think about it.