“Apple Computer and Adobe Systems long have been allies in their underdog struggles against Microsoft. But in the aftermath of Apple’s recent shift to Intel chips, some of Apple’s most ardent fans are aiming bitter attacks at Adobe, the maker of Photoshop and Illustrator graphics programs,” Jon Fortt blogs for Business 2.0. “Their assertion: Adobe is taking too long to release a version of its graphics suite that fully utilizes the new Intel chips.”
Fortt reports, “A typical complaint was posted Tuesday on MacDailyNews, a site whose readers tend to be the most loyal supporters of Apple’s Mac platform. ‘Adobe has known about the switch to Intel LONG before the public did, and they STILL don’t have a Universal version of Photoshop,’ wrote a poster identified as mudflapper. ‘If it wasn’t for diehard Mac designers, photographers and retouchers, Adobe wouldn’t even BE here today.'”
“Though the posts on the MacDailyNews site were by no means uniformly critical — several posters defended Adobe — there was a familiar theme to the attacks. Adobe should be working faster, many implied, because loyal Mac users supported the company in the old days when Adobe was struggling. Apple is a powerful company now, and doesn’t have to take this kind of treatment from Adobe. Some have asserted that Apple buy Adobe. Others have suggested that Apple release more of its own graphics programs to compete with Adobe’s dominant offerings,” Fortt reports.
“Apple has the most to lose from the recent sport of Adobe bashing. Apple wants to rebuild its pro desktop business, and to do that it needs the support of strong pro software players. To grow market share, Apple will need to lure Web designers and cross-platform designers to the Mac — many of those folks use Windows now,” Fortt writes.
“They’re just not going to make the switch if the apps they use (such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash) aren’t supported on the Mac. Adobe gets the sale whether they stay on Windows or make the switch,” Fortt writes. “So Mac fans would be wise to pipe down. Yes, I know it’s frustrating to wait for apps. But sometimes in software, as in politics, diplomacy gets you better long-term results than dropping bombs.”
Full article here.
Pipe down?! Puleeze. Here’s a little business note upfront: Apple Computer. Inc. market value: $67,522,530,080. Adobe Systems, Inc. market value: $21,811,881,140.
Now, in the full article, Fortt seems to severely underestimate the Mac’s market share of the publishing and design markets. Adobe’s Mac customers should never “pipe down” if they are unsatisfied. No unsatisfied customer of any other company should keep quiet or be told to keep quiet, either. The customer is always right (unless you’re Adobe and your customers use Macs). Sorry, but that attitude just doesn’t cut it with us.
Adobe is painfully, obviously, and woefully late with support for Intel-powered Apple Macs. Adobe needs to shut up and start coding. And use Xcode this time.
Hint for Adobe: You should do something meaningful for the Mac users you’ve negatively impacted with your incompetence.
We believe that Adobe isn’t as attentive to Mac users as they should be. It’s up to Adobe to change our minds.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Adobe manager lashes out at loyal Mac-using customers – October 31, 2006
Adobe Soundbooth audio software released as public beta – October 26, 2006
Apple and Adobe at war? – October 06, 2006
Analyst expects Adobe Creative Suite 3 release on May 1, 2007 – October 04, 2006
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
Adobe prefers (and promotes) PCs over Macs – March 24, 2003
I may be in the minority, but I think Adobe’s decision to work on the next version of CS, rather than devote time and manpower to re-coding older products is the right move. I have one intel Mac along with my G4 and G5. I find that Photoshop on the intel runs fine under Rosetta for the moment (doing graphics for video).
I understand that for designing Posters it may be slow, but I would rather get CS3 quicker.
?what?…
Yeah, that totally surprised me. Hope I didn’t come off too angry.
But really, a free Universal Binary patch would’ve been so nice. Just a little gesture of goodwill to Adobe’s loyal Mac customers. Shoot, even Aspyr has been releasing free UB updates to old-ass games. Now there’s a company that loves the Mac platform and it’s users.
m
Here is the problem
Adobe certainly doesn’t intentionally want to p-off Mac users, they had a huge task retooling their development from CodeWarrior (I believe) to Xcode, they had/have to now maintain two development strategies one for Windows & one for Mac (too bad apple doesn’t extend Xcode to build Win apps).
And heres the rub, the perception of the Mac “faithful” that they have been slighted, is not good for Adobe, peoples perception are their reality, and this is the issue that Adobe has to address.
If Adobe is astute as I believe them to be they will address the delay, albeit likely with marketing hype they will introduce a better than windows application to placate the Mac faithful.
just my thoughts
MW: wish, as in I wish!
I agree with every single word:
“Adobe is painfully, obviously, and woefully late with support for Intel-powered Apple Macs. Adobe needs to shut up and start coding. And use Xcode this time. Hint for Adobe: You should do something meaningful for the Mac users you’ve negatively impacted with your incompetence. We believe that Adobe isn’t as attentive to Mac users as they should be. It’s up to Adobe to change our minds.”
“Yes, I know it’s frustrating to wait for apps. But sometimes in software, as in politics, diplomacy gets you better long-term results than dropping bombs.”
This little quote gives me cause to use the eff word here, which I’ve only done once before on MDN, but let’s just say, for now, that it seems that most Adobe using Macsters are not being fooled or bullied for one moment.
Yes, -sometimes- in politics diplomacy can get you somewhere, but in software sales blackmail will never work, at least not with Macintosh users. I recommend and approve software products for Macintosh on our production line, and thankfully most of our production line only uses Adobe products as supplimental software for FCP, Motion, et. al. I absolutely guarantee you that I will not ever recommend further purchases of any Adobe produts unless it is ABSOF@#!INGLUTELY necessary. Several points on our video production line are already experimenting with open source tools to see how fast development is progressing, and ultimately to find out if we can transit completely away from Adobe products within the next year or two.
America is a free market, and no one strong arms me into any product for any reason. Good luck Adobe. –And congradulations on the MS Most-Arrogant-of-the-Year Award.
Adobe is always late these days. InDesign itself too forever to get out the door. Setting us loyal Adobe PageMaker users up for all kinds of shit from pre-press people and other layout issues.
Adobe let Quark beat the pants of them esp. with Q’s v4 in pre-press ease and we were literally forced by print shops to switch to Quark or told our jobs would pay more for our jobs to be output. So we switched and for THREE years we languished in the poor user interface that is Quark-land. FINALLY, with InDesign 2 I was able to show pre-press some solid reasons we could return to Adobe. By CS2 everyone on all sides could see the improvements and advantages, and Quark was so far behind with OSX, it was they who were at a disadvantage.
Now it’s back to Quark getting on the ball faster than Adobe. If anything, that alone should put Adobe to shame. Same ying and yang went with Illustrator and Freehand.
For all the loyalty from way back when their products were Aldus, and the hundreds of copies I have sold for them by convincing switchers from Q. to ID and Freehand back to Illustrator, they owe me a damn upgrade faster than this. And that has nothing to do with Apple as a company. It’s a “do the right thing” ON TIME for your loyal base of Mac users who’ve stood by you products since the ’80’s before WinDUHZ was even IN the picture!
who cares if adobe announced cs3 months ago? that mitigates nothing. they’ve dropped the ball & seem to be in no hurry to pick it up.
why is this topic so unusually tense “all of a sudden”? because adobe has us backed in a corner. there’s nothing we can do & we’ve been stewing about it for months.
i’d love to vote with my dollars & tell adobe to drop dead, but i can’t, dammit!
Adobe needs Apple. A number of years ago Microsoft bought Expression, a Mac & Windows app from Creature House. It has since morphed into a new line of products aimed directly at the core of Adobe’s business model. With the launch of Vista and Office, they are also going after the other part of their business- the PDF standard.
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX100487411033.aspx?pid=CL100571081033
Adobe cozies up to Micro$oftopoly at the risk of becoming the next Corel or Netscape- losing the markets that they once defined.
Adobe Systems, Inc. market value: $21,811,881,140.
If you were to split out th eMac portion of Adobe’s business, then $9.3 Billion of the above is attributable to Mac users.
For me, that’s enough argument for Apple to either buy Adobe, or compete with them.
Actually, I’ll refresh a fun story that I heard several years ago from a friend of mine who was on the QuickTime team.
I think it was NAB ’98. Apple and Adobe were both at NAB. Apple was showing Adobe Premier in it’s booth. Adobe was showing Premier as well. However, Adobe’s booth was full of Windows machines. Not a Mac in sight.
From what I understand, Apple people approached the folks at Adobe and asked them if they would show a Mac running Premier in their booth. Apple even agreed to provide the Mac. Adobe said no. It turns out that Adobe had signed some agreement with Microsoft that they would not show Macs running Adobe software in return for marketing dollars from Microsoft. Microsoft does this with other companies, too. So it would have cost Adobe alot of money to show a Mac running Premier in their booth because they’d have probably ended up sacrificing tens of thousands of dollars worth of co-marketing money.
“With friends like these, who needs enemies?” thinks the Apple people. That’s when they bought Final Cut from Macromedia.
You whiners are pathetic. I bet that the ones crying the loudest are teens who don’t even own legal copies of CS2.
CS2 runs fine on MacIntels. Sure, I’m excited about CS3, but Adobe’s been up front from the start.
I’d rather have rock-solid Photoshop than a shaky, rushed-to-market version.
OK, go ahead and throw yourselves into a lather, boys!
I’ve been hearing “Apple should buy Adobe” for at least five years, and I place that idea in the same category as “Apple should buy SGI/Sun/Whatever”.
Buying Adobe would take a huge amount of Apple’s equity, and it would make Adobe’s founders some of the largest AAPL shareholders. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to see Geschke and Warnock holding more AAPL shares than SJ.
Apple could completely replace Adobe’s product lineup for a whole lot less than 21 billion dollars. If Apple put out an image editor based on Core Image and Shake, it would blow Photoshop away in capabilties, and probably cost less than $10M to get out the door (development and marketing costs).
I think that the question Apple ProApps should look at very hard, is “will people buy an image editor that takes full advantage of our platform?” and if so, go ahead and write it. It’s been obvious for many years that such an app isn’t going to come from Adobe any time soon.
-jcr
I haven’t read any reports when Adobe plans to release a version of Photoshop for al Intel-based Macs. One might infer that there is no plan at Adobe to release a Universal version of Photoshop.
Still, I don’t use Photoshop. My gripe is waiting for a Universal version of DiskWarrior.
Final Cut has already killed Premiere. Let slip the Photoshop killer!
Adobe can suck it.
Apple’s pro apps all beat Adobe at its own game. By alienating Mac users, Adobe is only inspiring Apple to offer superior products for Macs only. For example, Aperture gives an entire generation of Intel Mac users a superior alternative to Photoshop for digital photographers needs. Apple’s pro video apps kick arse over the toys Adobe sells. Now Adobe thinks it can jump into the music scene without supporting PowerPC Mac users. I wonder if Photoshop CS3 will be Intel only…
I haven’t read any reports when Adobe plans to release a version of Photoshop for al Intel-based Macs. One might infer that there is no plan at Adobe to release a Universal version of Photoshop.
Adobe has confirmed CS3 will be universal, and Photoshop is part of CS.
maczealot:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/09/18/adobe.previews.ps.cs3/
maczealot,
Amen brother. Diskwarrior saved my G5’s ass at work, just yesterday. If the drive acts up on my Intel iMac at home, I’m hosed.
m
I hope apple will drop a big software turd on adobe, a major upgrade to iPhoto and a pro version. I feel it’s in the pipe.
We are all just zealots.
Hint for Adobe: You should do something meaningful for the Mac users you’ve negatively impacted with your incompetence.
I dont care about native apps as much as it really hacked me off the way they totally screwed people who owned the Macromedia suite when it came time for upgrades.
My MW should be ‘gouge’.
apple would like nothing more than for another software company to come along and develop a viable competitor to photoshop.
the only problem is theres not much happening as far as i can see.
apple want people to use their OS, they want to concentrate on developing the OS and making great harware products too, they really dont want to have to develop pro level apps for every god damn market as well.
theyve done it where its needed to be done – final cut for example. the market was open, and adobe was lagging in its innovation of affordable video editing software.
i just dont think they want to do the same for graphics apps.
the video editing game was a different story when apple entered it and took it over basically, it was an industry dominated by big-money, purpose built equipment, very expensive avid machines etc.
the print and web industry is totally different.
i really believe apple would rather software developers do their thing. Apple must be pissed at adobes poor showing though. how long before they say ‘ok lets do this thing our way !! ‘
And I would love to see them blow the doors off photoshop without so much as a warning. de ja vu Premier.
It’s rather unfortunate that there are some people in Adobe who give the impression that they are doing Mac users a favour by dealing with them at all. It’s happened with more than one of their product ranges and has happened for a number of years, so it’s not merely a one-off unfortunately phrased comment.
They have much to learn about dealing with customers. If you don’t treat your customers well, those customers won’t stay loyal when circumstances change.
People whose families were killed by exploding automobile gas tanks, and those who simply bought expensive lemons should pipe down because loud, peristant carping could eventually hurt sales, thus threatening the jobs of thousands and, in turn, the economy.
In other news, Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Honda plans to export cars to North America. What an exercise in futility that will be. However, not to be outdone, Japan’s Datsun and Toyota outlined plans to do so, as well. It takes a special kind of nerve (some would say madness) for Japan to take on all the might of Detroit.
I predict this Japanese “competition” will have met its match in under a year. You read it here first.
Come on guys, chill. This is CS3 we are talking about. Making it UB and also adding new features… It’s not like CS3 is available for Windows now anyway. Also, it is a bit unfair to put the blame on Adobe, when it was Apple and the PowerPC chip maker who can’t iron out the problem with G5 chips.
The suggestion of Apple buying Adobe is just absurd. I was really disspointed when Apple decided to make Aperture obsolete on PowerMac G4, but I can run Motion just fine with realtime effects on my G4? Thank god there’s Lightroom. Don’t you agree?
God bless Apple and Adobe.