Adobe Systems is set to announce new versions of its video products–but Mac users will be out of luck when it comes to video editing,” according to David Becker, Staff Writer, CNET News.com. “Adobe Systems plans to announce new versions of its video-editing software Monday, including a Windows-only application that marks another high-profile defection from Apple Computer’s Macintosh operating system.”
“Adobe, a specialist in publishing and imaging applications, will announce a new version of Premiere, its main application for editing digital video. The new Premiere Pro will work only on PCs running Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, ending years of support for the Mac OS… David Trescot, senior director of Adobe’s digital video products group, said the new edition of Premiere is a complete rewrite of the application and it didn’t make financial sense to support the Mac anymore,” Becker reports.
“‘We were rewriting Premiere from scratch, and it would have taken a lot of work to have cross-platform support,’ Trescot said. The Mac already has several competing video-editing applications, including Apple’s Final Cut family of products, making for a small and crowded market, he said. ‘If Apple’s already doing an application, it makes the market for a third-party developer that much smaller,’ Trescot said. ‘I think you’re going to find that more and more–if Apple’s in a software market, third-party vendors are going to skip it,'” Becker reports.
Becker writes, “Apple greeted Adobe’s decision as a vindication of its video business strategy. ‘With the announcement of the new Power Mac G5 and the innovations in Final Cut Pro 4, there has never been a better time for Premiere customers to make the switch,’ Apple said in a statement. ‘Even with this, Adobe and Apple continue to have a great relationship, as evidenced by Adobe’s recent support of the new Power Mac G5 with Photoshop performance that is twice as fast as before.'” Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is all well and good, since just as Safari blows the doors off Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac, Final Cut Pro makes Premiere look and feel flimsy. Experienced Mac editors choose FCP, not Premiere in that class of NLE applications. Still, keep an eye out for the mainstream press who will report this as “another example of less software for the Mac,” even though the software for the Mac is vastly better.
Adobe sucks ass!
I don’t really get Apple’s software strategy… On one side, they really, really want software developers to come on board, however, at the other end they’re closing out the Mac consumer’s traditional software market. Now I understand why getting rid of MS is good, but Adobe?? Adobe is struggling enough with the market (especially when their traditional clientele is being hurt by the economy (marketing depts and budgets slashed) so killing another revenue stream can’t be good.
Here’s an idea Apple, if the product doesn’t meet your standards, work _with_ the company to advance the product…
I see no incentive for software developers to come to Macs. The scenario would be simple:
spend money and port application to Mac;
establish a customer base in the Macintosh world and start earning back the R&D costs;
Apple swoops in and steals your customers and bankrupts your company.
I guess this will complete the cycle for Apple’s dominance in its “small pond”: hardware, operating system, all applications. I guess I’ll need to find out the routing numbers to Steve Jobs’ bank account so I can just have all my money directly deposited…
I think this is unfortunate. The lack of competition on the Mac OS slows innovation. Adobe wimped out… instead of making their product better… they simply dropped the platform… and why not when there are so many more windows boxes out there to get their wares on. This new strategy may backfire on Apple… hope not.
Apple had this same issue many years ago with MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, etc. Many ISVs complained loudly to Apple and to the media Apple was closing them out of the market when Apple was selling these products (initially included free and then unbundled and sold separately). Apple even went so far as to form a separate subsidiary for its software — Claris. Finally Apple killed that except for its database product.
Did this increase the number of ISVs for the Mac? Definitely not. How many word processing packages existed for the Mac in the late 80s when MacWrite still existed — 6, 7, 8? I truly don’t remember. How many exist today? Really only one (Word), but there are a couple more with a couple percent market share each but not any real competition to Word. Did Apple giving up MacWrite help inclease the number of word processing packages on the Mac? Definitely not.
Now Apple is getting back into the application software game on a few, select examples. Is Apple going to kill the ISV market in those channels. It should not. Companies should write software to compete with Apple. If Apple can’t compete it will stop its products. If the ISV can’t compete it will stop its product.
As a corollary think of Microsoft. Microsoft decided to give away IE for free. Many browser vendors complained loudly. MS didn’t even hesitate. MS went one step further and put the hooks in place so that IE was, for all practical intents and purposes, part of Windows. Many browser vendors complained even more loudly. The US Gov and 20 states (droppig down to 19 near the end of the trial) sued MS for anti-trust violations. MS was convicted of illegally using its monopoly power to maintian its market share and sell its OS. The final settlement (even after appeal) still has MS as convicted of illegally using its monopoly power. However, the settlement amounts to MS agreeing to “play nice” from here on out.
Does anyone — and I mean literally anyone — think for one second that if MS decided including a Premier or FCP package as part of its OS were critical to maintaining its huge market share that MS would hesitate for even one minute before bundling a Premier or FCP clone into its OS? Absolutely not. MS will bundle anything it thinks is necessary to maintain its advantage. If the US Gov sues them again then so what? They’ve gone this route before — twice. Both times the only penalty has been for them to “play nice” in the future.
Check the one below before reading this one. Sorry it got so long and wordy.
Apple has backed out of markets when ISVs complained. MS has not — even when losing anti-trust suits. Every ISV should remember that.
The bottom line for me is Adobe just decided it could not compete with FCP. Thus it dedided to kill the Mac version. The real story is Adobe admitting they were so far behind on the power curve they couldn’t catch up. My company has been seriously considering switching from Pemier to FCP for over a year. Now the decision will be easy.
When Apple sees software development languishing in certain areas such as browsers or video editing, Apple decides to show us how its done. Apple could easily take over software dominance on the windows platform (as it will show with iTunes for windows) but until now has chosen not to. Apple will continue to get plenty of competition from the Windows world so there is no worry about their software falling behind IMO.
There is nothing stopping anyone from making a better program than Apple.
I believe that Apple is tired of being an afterthought for software developers, where their Mac version is just a poorly ported Microsoft version that doesn’t utilize important Mac features and strengths, as well as not complying with Apple GUI standards.
Making their own software is often the only way that Apple can show the true power and speed of their computers. Using poorly ported software is like running your Porche on contaminated gas.
Apple does not hide (unlike Microsoft) how ANYONE can write such programs, but the software developers are too focussed upon the short term financial gains by producing crappy, unusable, software based on regurgitated older version so they can print an impressive list of features on the over-priced box rather than actually placing time and energy into quality products.
Whether it’s selling hotdogs, Porches, computers or software, the basic business credo is still valid: Innovate or die!
Adobe just couldn’t make a FCP, that’s all there is to it. in my view Adobe really has zero class. i know this is business and everything but there would be NO ADOBE ANYTHING if it were not for Jobs & Co. it just seems to be poor form is all.
i personally haven’t used Premier for Mac since vers. 5.x RT. it pretty much sucked ass… at which point I’m fairly certain the Windows version was much better… Adobe neglecting Apple –once again no class. we’ve all heard the reviews of FCP. everyone is absolutely mad about FCP –everyone loves it. I haven’t heard anyone say they loved Premier since Premier 4… those were different times. it should be interesting to see how the new Windows version of Premier stacks up though.
I think Adobe is going to be in trouble. Apple Mac is the premiere platform for multi-media work. They are basically leaving the space when they leave the Mac.
I’m done being mad at Adobe (for now). currently there’s no way for Adobe to compete with Apple in the video editing space. the problem here is that FCP for the Mac only. Adobe’s Premier has very tough competition on the Mac platform with FCP… as I’ve said earlier, I haven’t used Premier for years but, from all the reports I’ve read, Premier has a long way to go before going head-to-head with FCP on ANY platform. that competition doesn’t exsist in the Windows world though as there is no FCP for Windows. while it may not be smart, it WOULD be entertaining if Apple developed FCP for Windows.