“I have nothing against Adobe. I use the excellent batch of products in Creative Suite and look forward to test-driving the latest versions of Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator (not so much GoLive, as I’m a Freeway Pro man). That said, I’m sorry to hear that Adobe has acquired Macromedia, which has long offered some strong competition for the folks behind Photoshop,” Dennis Sellers writes for Macsimum News.
“Yesterday it was announced that Adobe had agreed to buy Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at around US$3.4 billion (yep, that’s Billion, not Million). The deal has already been given the stamp of approval by the board of directors of both companies and should be finalized this fall. In a press release, Adobe and Macromedia officials made nice and said that they’re developing integration plans ‘that build on the cultural similarities and the best business and product development practices from each company,'” Sellers writes. Naturally, when two big dogs like Adobe and Macromedia merge into a single bigger dog, the two companies put a positive spin on it. But anytime a merger like this takes place, some folks’ favorite products will get chewed up in the process.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Adobe to acquire Macromedia in $3.4 billion stock deal – April 18, 2005
New products: MacroLive? GoWeaver? DreamLive?
I say GoLive, Fireworks, and Freehand are gone.
Didn’t Macromedia buy Allaire and then intergrated ColdFusion into Dreamweaver?
Maybe Go Live + Dreamweaver might turn into something good…
I wonder who will be giving Illustrator a run for it’s money if they intergrate Freehand.
Mac Yak:
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LiveWeaver
you lose your wallet…
I don’t like that Adobe bought Macromedia, but I rather Adobe have it than Mi¢rosoft…
What do you guys think?
New merged product: Frustrator
MM did not integrate Cold Fusion into Dreamweaver. DW is an HTML development environment, Cold Fusion is a server-side scripting language. MM *did* integrate Cold Fusion Studio into DW. Studio was Allaire’s CF development environment, based on Homesite.
My thoughts on the Macromedia apps:
How to perfect FreeHand: give it the Adobe standard palette interface, let it read/write the most current Illustrator format, give it a transform palette, let it write the InDesign format. If I have to draw a complex maps FreeHand is the best tool by far. And professional cartographers are the reason that FreeHand won’t die any sooner than Framemaker did. That said I spend most of my time in Illustrator because I usually do simple stuff, and FreeHand’s palette diarrhea is annoying.
There are plenty of HTML editors from many companies, the world will not suffer from the loss of either GoLive or Dreamweaver. Just give me a DW with the Adobe standard palette interface, ability to paste Excel data as tables, better speed and stability, call it GoWeaver, DreamLive, and I’ll be happy.
Maybe Adobe could resurrect Fontographer with the Adobe standard palette interface, the ability to read/write unicode fonts, open type fonts, and Illustrator’s drawing tools.
Obviously Flash is the crown jewel that Adobe has been salivating over. I hate Flash.
Adobe is also salivating over those server and collaboration technologies like Breeze, Central, ColdFusion, Contribute, JRun, and Captivate.
Director and Authorware will survive.
RoboHelp is the basis of Windows help systems.
I know a lot of people love Fireworks. I don’t. What does it do that either Photoshop or ImageReady don’t? Sell it.
I like Dreamweaver; I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. But I’m also a long time Freehand user, and I have a feeling that it’s gone. Sad day indeed.
I hope they at least integrate some of the page handling and long document features of Freehand into Illustrator. But since they are pushing InDesign for that I doubt they will.
I use Photoshop and Freehand for almost everything print. I rarely break out Quark or InDesign unless a client requests it.
Competition is what drives innovation. Windows, as bad as it is, would not be as good as it is without Apple, Linux and UNIX. The Mac OS is also better because of others in the space. The same is true in any market. Losing Macromedia as an independent company leaves one less perspective in the ongoing conversation of software for the creative markets. The only thing that would have been worse would have been a takeover by M$. Maybe Apple will have the good sense to hire some of the people who will be leaving Macromedia over the next 12-24 months.
I think Fireworks will be integrated with Dreamweaver like Freeway Pro.
everything stays…full suite of adobe products retail for $5000 … software piracy runs rampant!
I was going to try and chime in with something clever, but these two posts are wayyyyy to good to compete with:
donnie: “you lose your wallet”
twenty Benson: “New merged product: Frustrator”
Just in,
4-19-05 10:33
Adobe to cut 60% of jobs and products at both companys.
FreeHand to replace both Illustrator and Indesign. Stockholders rejoice as profits expected to exceed all time record.
not
Smaller developers (relative to Macrobe) are the ones who are rejoicing. What an opportunity for growth with the consolidation of the big two.
Btw- I’m not happy, but I wouldn’t mind being there for the geek fights to the death that are going to happen over interface philosophy….
Director and Dreamweaver!
If Adobe kills Director they could sell it to some other company though. It has no true competition.
If Macromedia can’t have it though I’d rather Adobe keep it.
We use all the basic Adobe apps and some of the Macromedia apps.
There’s not much overlap, though there is some competition. DW and FW are competition for GoLive, but less overlap. Freehand is overlap, though not much competition.
I’d expect Freehand to disappear OR become Illustrator Lite, similar in vein to Photoshop Elements.
I’d almost expect GoLive to disappear as Dreamweaver is very capable and does better in the marketplace. GoLive is a horribly complex product.
I don’t know about Fireworks. For web graphics work, FW is easier to use than ImageReady or Photoshop and integrates nicely with Dreamweaver.
All the other Macromedia products are pretty much standalone so they should integrate well in the Adobe lineup.
In the end, it’ll come down to segmentation of the market and cost to maintain each product.
If I were Adobe, I’d drop Freehand, I’d drop GoLive, package Dreamweaver and Fireworks for one price, then begin the process of integrating Adobe’s tools into both, and integrating Adobe apps into ColdFusion Studio.
Don’t look for anything of value until this time next year. It’s also possible there’d be some regulatory concern as both companies are graphics powerhouses. Nah, just kidding.
Tera Patricks
Mac360.com
Please don’t tamper with Flash too much. I’m only just beginning to get my head around it. It’s only taken me about 6 years.
But if you can make it easier, do it.
I’m an artist not a programmer Captain.
Really Adobe needs to take FreeHand and put their look and feel on it…and just rename FreeHand, and call it the new Illustrator CS 3 and add just the few things that Illustrator does well, like tracing.
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The more we think about and study Illustrator it would be a massive set back in our production, time, and functionality to have to switch to Illustrator if Adobe doesn’t either continue both or integrate almost everything.
Here’s another major feature that is used all the time “Find and Replace for Graphics, Objects, and Colors”. (This one is also an absolute need)
Below are more of the same comments I had before, but reworded with more detail.
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Here are a few features that are critical to many graphics houses, textile printers, and service beuros. I used to work for Apple and I have many businesses around town that still only want me touching their machines after all these years…so from my after hours technical help and experience, after my already more than full time job as the Systems Manager at Church Art Works.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> I can tell you with a united voice of at least 45 FreeHand (FH) users that many of the features listed below are the main reasons why people use FH and have not already switched.
These are some big issues that some ‘switchers’ don’t think about before they jump. Allot of the time people do jump without fully thinking about anything other than…”well, everyone else is using Illustrator…I should too because other people think I’m nuts not to use Illustrator…or that’s what they teach in schools so I need to switch, because that’s all my new employees know”, when in reality, when really compared. The best tool for the job by far, is FreeHand.
Items that set FH apart or need to be integrated into Illustrator:
A) There needs to be a tool that translates old FreeHand files perfectly, the main problem being FH’s term of ‘paste insides’ or Illus’s term ‘masking’. (Including things like the shifting TIFF’s from legacy to MX files.) Many business have a decade or more of files that they still call upon, and more often than one might think.
B) Integrate the Spot Color ability of FH into Illustrator, along with the easier to use color palette.
C) Be able to have RGB and CMYK colors in the same file.
D) FH Separations & Spot Separations. (Separations are huge, it’s a need not a want)
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E) Find and Replace for Graphics, Objects, and Colors. (This one is also an absolute need)
F) FH ‘Envelope Tool’ has always been not good to say the least.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Everyone I know still uses an old third party plug-in call ‘KPT Vector Effects’ in FH 8 & 9 when they need to ‘warp’ type correctly. Someone should purchase this old software from the old KPT folks, and integrate it into Illustrator.
G) FH Color Sync Settings have always been very good as well. Much more precise than Illustrator (We get out of our printers what we see on screen w/our custom profiles)
H) A tool in Illustrator that would let old FreeHand users change the key commands so they could get up to speed more quickly.
I) Multiple Pages in one document is a must.
J) Many people use FH to do small brochures and catalogs. Most people I know, don’t really like Quark, and would rather eat worms.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Artist are so right brained. They don’t want to have to learn many thing to do one thing, they want to create. They don’t want to know how the paint brush works…they just want to get the paint on the paper. If you know what I mean. I’ve noticed that for many artist, simple brochures and catalogs, it’s nice to be able to do everything in one program instead of having to learn two different programs to accomplish the same thing.
K) The supper small optimized Web Graphics (GIF’s) that FH can export with the built in FireWorks export engine makes things go super fast from small brochure or catalog to web in no time. Without going to yet another program for graphics.