“A major product refresh cycle is under way at Adobe Systems, and Wall Street is optimistic that it will provide significant growth for the company,” Patrick Seitz reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“Adobe plans to release Creative Suite 3, the next version of its popular collection of graphic design applications, in the first half of 2007,” Seitz reports. “‘As far as the next product cycle, everything seems to be lining up,’ said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital.”
“Adobe is now integrating into its own products the products it got from its December acquisition of Macromedia. These products include Flash, for delivering multimedia content online, and Dreamweaver, for interactive Web design. For instance, Acrobat 8 contains Macromedia’s Breeze software for Web conferencing. Creative Suite 3 also will contain former Macromedia products,” Seitz reports.
“There’s a pent-up demand for CS3 among creative professionals who use Apple Computer’s Macintosh PCs, he says. CS3 is the first version of the product suite to run on Apple’s new Macs using Intel chips,” Seitz reports. “About 20% of Adobe’s total revenue comes from the Macintosh platform, MacMillan says. The rest comes from software for Microsoft’s Windows PC operating system. But the Mac share could be about 40% for the creative solution segment of Adobe’s business, he says. The company’s creative solution business unit accounted for 56% of Adobe sales through Sept. 1. Adobe’s knowledge worker solution unit, which includes Acrobat, was the second largest contributor, making up 26% of sales.”
“Pyykkonen predicts that Adobe will release CS3 on May 1… Creative Suite 2 came out in April 2005. The Creative Suite bundles products — such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and InDesign — popular with graphic artists,” Seitz reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple, two birds, one stone: Buy Adobe and rewrite the apps properly with Xcode while discontinuing future Windows versions. (Hey, we can dream, can’t we?)
Related articles:
How long must we wait for Adobe to produce Universal applications for Apple’s Intel-powered Macs? – August 21, 2006
Adobe CS3 sneak peek shown on Apple MacBook Pro as Universal Binary application – May 25, 2006
Cringely: Apple must replace Microsoft Office, buy Adobe Systems for attack on Microsoft to succeed – April 28, 2006
Adobe CEO: Universal version of Photoshop due in spring 2007 – April 21, 2006
Adobe software engineer explains why Photoshop for Intel-based Macs is taking so long – March 24, 2006
Should Apple buy Adobe as leverage against Microsoft? – December 16, 2005
Apple really should to buy Adobe and reverse the lack of good Adobe software to the Windows world.
For example: make Flash player run slower in Windows for once. I mean, Flash player is even faster, emulated in Parallels with half the processing speed and 1/4th the RAM, than natively in OS X. That’s just bad.
‘popular with graphic artists’ … you meant ‘required’
Adobe sucks.
It is really great that one can do web development coding.
As for Photoshop, I really wish Apple released a Photoshop killer, but for no Gimp will do…
MAY!!??
That’s still 8 MONTHS!!! I’ve defended Adobe for a long time now over its slow progress in bring native CS apps to the Mac, but this is ridiculous. Almost another year before I can get CS out of Rosetta emulation??? I’m glad analysts are happy, because I’m pissed!
I thought it was over 40% Sales were to Mac users
I was going to upgrade to Adobe CS3, but I have decided to get Freeway 4 Pro and I paid for Graphic Converter too. GC does what I need it to do quite well.
Okay, so that means…let’s see, 17 months after the first Intel Macs were announced before we get any Universal Adobe products (still not sure if the new Acrobat is Universal or not).
Wonder what they’ll show at MacWorld SF in January. “We still don’t have a Universal Creative Suite…but just look at what you can do when you install Windows on your Mac…”
Crud…
Lessee…
I have a G5 Dual, that is now a year old. I have InDesign CS 2, Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, Acrobat 6, and Dreamweaver MX. Maybe I’ll upgrade to the whole Creative Suite when CS3 comes out.
Whatever, it is obvious that you don’t need the Creative Suite apps, else you’d have ’em.
James, I have Graphic Converter and Photoshop. I need both, as do most creative professionals.
Spark, Adobe released CS2 just before Apple announced the Intel Macs. Explain to me why the normal 18-24 month product cycle isn’t good enough. Some of us prefer to not upgrade constantly.
Veronica, the sales breakdowns in the article were by Unit not by Platform.
With Aperture, my need for Photoshop is much reduced. And hopefully with future versions of Aperture that will go down further.
So I will be sticking with PS2 and I’ll be happy to live with the slower performance for the occasional use.
Adobe has had a shedload of cash from me over the yeas and mostly I don’t feel the improvements they offered warranted it.
So what happen to
F
R
E
E
H
A
N
D
?
?
?
Can anyone out there please buy this software over?
Thank God at least Macromedia was not bought by M$.
Or else they will eventualy stop producing Apple version…
Please, Apple, please buy Adobe.
I *really* hope Adobe releases Audition for OS X.
Anybody heard of linform? It does 90% of what illustrator can do and its £79 and there is a demo, it recently won the Apple design award for best software.
http://www.freeverse.com/lineform/
There is also a photoshop clone called Pixel. Again try the demo.
http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12
The CS suite is just insanely bloated now, cut the fat by trying these programs.
Well, I guess on that day the Mac Pro will truly be the performance equivalent of yesterday’s Dell PC.
No wonder Apple’s having to keep the price down on those units.
indeed, wtf is Adobe’s plans for Freehand? Even though I work as much in Illustrator as I do in FH, there are just too many things that you just cannot do properly (or within a decent timeframe) in AI.
BTW, how come there are about 10 new 3D modelers and 5 new compositing, tracking, grading – apps released every year – but no good plain 2D vector or graphic apps, say? I don’t mean some crap shareware toys – I mean truly professional stuff. Should there be one really good alternative to illustrator or Photoshop on OSX/UB now – that company would get rich pretty quickly. I mean, look at Adobe’s Apps. Does anyone else feel like Photoshop is heading the M$ Word route?
Maybe we should set up an award for developers; €100K for the best Photoshop and/or Illustrator killer running natively on OSX/Intel. Adobe would shit their pants. IMHO, that would be worth a couple of hundred bucks alone.
Apple buying Adobe sounds really Zune
Haha, that’s a good idea.
Let’s advertise ‘Zune’ as something that’s really stupid.
“You’re Zune man”, “That sounds really Zune” etc.
By the time CS3 comes out, humans will have evolved into some sort of fish. I have a strange thing under my skin at my elbow, could be a dormant fin?
Turtle, there’s so much Zune coming out of your mouth I’m gonna Zune myself!
Yes Tommy Boy, it is true that I don’t need it because I pay a professional designer that does use CS2. In fact, I’ve been working with that designer for years and he did a lot of work for my company with Aldus PageMaker and Adobe Photoshop when those apps were state of the art.
My point is, the quality of Adobe’s offerings has been declining and will continue to decline as they bloat their apps and bloat as a company as well after the buyout of Macromedia. It is not healthy to have a company control so many important apps for the Mac community.
Obviously, their code base is huge and has some serious technical difficulties to be ported to Xcode and become a full nice Cocoa app. Funny thing is, the only really NEW app coming out of Adobe (and that only happened after Apple released Aperture…), Lightroom, has 40% of it wriiten in an obscure scripting language called Lua!!! A desktop app that has 40% of it wriiten in a scripting language is way telling of the Adobe development system, at least, that’s what I get from this.
The only thing I would find worse than the current situation is if Apple really did buy Adobe as some folks and MDN suggest. Appart from the joke side of it, like screwing Windows user after a few months, it does not make any sense. Apple can develop an image editor and an illustration program, it even has code in house to do this, it wouldn’t need to really start from scratch.
Daring Fireball has nice takes on Adobe here:
http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/brand_new
http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation
About Lightroom and Lua:
http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-world-lua-brazil-and-adobe.html
http://www.sqlabs.net/blog/2006/01/adobe-lightroom-and-lua.html
And finally, an Adobe enginner gives some clues about the real situtaion at the company techwise:
http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/03/macintosh_and_t.html
My Minions,
Apple will not buy Adobe. Look for my Apple to eventually create its own set of professional software apps. to compete with Adobe.
Adobe is pure evil. There is a reason why they have not switched over to Universal yet…Adobe was created by Lucifer’s half-brother’s roommate’s sister, twice removed. So it is, by its very roots, evil.
Suffer the Adobe stranglehold that you must endure, but rest easy…I am working on it.
Yeah, dream of buying a very profitable software company, kill 60-80% of their revenue. Brilliant. Apple shareholders would love that.
I knew when I finally switched to InDesign from Quark that I was playing with fire. I feared that Adobe would basically become the MS of the graphic arts software world. Based on all of the above, my worst nightmares appear to have come true.
Spark, Adobe released CS2 just before Apple announced the Intel Macs. Explain to me why the normal 18-24 month product cycle isn’t good enough. Some of us prefer to not upgrade constantly.
The reason, Tommy Boy, that 18-24 months is not good enough in this case is because of the complete change in the Mac architecture of course. This is not a typical product cycle. The CS2 that I purchased is crippled on my current state-of-Apple’s-art Macs. Apple has completed a complete hardware transition. Its Pro machines have moved to Intel. All those Intel Mac users, and there are a lot of us, are having to contend with the drag of Rosetta emulation. While amazing in its capability, it is still a step backwards in performance.
Adobe’s early and primary success is largely due to Apple and the Mac embracing PostScript and ushering in the “Desktop Publishing” revolution. Mac users still account for a dissproportionate share of Adobe’s profits. So, under the circumstances I think it is a real slap in the face from Adobe that that they consider a “normal” cycle as adequate. It isn’t. Their Apple customers have special circumstance and needs during this particular cycle and there is no evidence that they’ve lifted a finger to accomodate us. I’ve been a big time Adobe customer for almost 20 years, so if I want to complain about them, I think I’ve earned the right.
Before you buy new computers do a little research.
Will my main production apps run on it?
If not, don’t upgrade your computer until the software has upgraded.
Computing 101.
evan, sounds like a brilliant idea. but i’m not sure 100.000€ would be enough to attract truly great devs. would also be funny to have it support all apples core image functions etc. you can bet that adobe will still not have core image included in CS3. anyway, i would donate 200€ for such a cause.