“Folks a lot smarter than I have wondered over the years about potential Apple mergers and acquisitions driven by Steve’s bloodlust. Apple-Disney, Apple-Google, Apple-TiVo, even Apple-Sun come to mind, but the only one that makes any sense to me at all is Apple-Adobe,” Cringely writes.
“If such an acquisition were to take place it would have to be in 2008 while Avid and Microsoft still present credible competition to keep the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission from opposing such a merger. It would go easier, too, on W’s watch. I knew he was good for something,” Cringely writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve long hoped that Apple would buy Adobe and, since we love the ruthless Steve, begin phasing out Windows versions of applications a la Shake. At the very least, Mac users would get much more timely updates from Apple than from Adobe. That interminable wait for a Universal Photoshop really soured us on Adobe.
Look at that, it’s the rumor that keeps on rumoring.
Another wacky Cringley dream. This just isn’t in the cards
I like Cringley.
Even when he is wrong I learn a lot about the industry.
I hope Apple does buy up Adobe before Microsoft buys them up, or has a third party buy them up for them.
I REALLY hope this happens. Photoshop could be much improved, and Adobe doesn’t seem to want to do it. Dump the legacy Windows support, or at least bring the Mac version of it to XCode.
This again? sheesh.
Adobe’s market cap is currently $22bn, roughly $7bn under Apple’s current rumored stash. I really doubt this happening any time soon.
It’s funny how MDN refers to him self in plural. I wonder if Smigel is behind MDN? Or maybe it’s Gollum.
In any case Adobe’s 65% business is Windows. Why would anybody want to kill 65% on any venture? I personally think Apple already has Adobe’s customers as far as creatives. So how would this benefit Apple?
Competition good, monopoly, not good.
Apple… and we as Mac users… could only benefit from this.
Bring back Freehand!
Or at least fold some of the Freehand into Illustrator, too.
Biggest bunch of nonsense I have seen for awhile on the Apple rumor circuit.
I love it. That would be awesome.
A few years back, Apple acquired E-magic (formerly C-Lab) with its Logic software. As soon as this happened, they announced that there will be no more Windows versions.
Apple can still acquire Adobe with a partial stock deal. They may not want to cease development of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and such right away. However, pushing Mac versions on the front burner and discontinuing Windows-only products would make an expected end result. It is likely, though, that Premiere would be killed, as Final Cut would have preference. Just like GoLive died its inevitable death when Adobe bought MacroMedia.
I doubt that Apple would want to burn through all of its $15B stash on just Adobe, as significant as it may be. There is no major motivation for Apple to reign in Adobe. With Mac share climbing, Adobe will only be improving its Mac offerings.
It is time for Bob to change the bongwater
Do it, Apple!
Aplobee. I like it!
This question has been asked before. I think it would be silly:
Should Apple buy Adobe. That would be no.
This was a deal that ought to have been made a long time ago.
Predrag, when companies acquire other companies, they rarely use cash to do it. Apple might put up 1 or 2B in cash (if any cash is involved at all) and then give Adobe shareholders the rest in Apple stock. So, they wouldn’t have to dip into their stash of cash to buy Adobe at all.
Mr. Reee,
I totally agree with you with bringing back Freehand. Best vector drawing software ever made.
I really don’t think many people understand the concept of a merger. When you do that it is to gain an advantage in market share or profitibility in that line of business. You don’t want to kill the market share by not making software for windows like mac-nugget said. Also, as mac-nugget said, how would buying adobe benifit apple if they cut windows out? It wouldn’t do anything but lose apple a lot of money.
Don’t get me wrong, I have had a mac since I can remember, and it’s all i use outside of my work laptop, which is a dell. But I find it funny to see all of these “Mac addicts” “fan boys” etc etc talking about what apple as a company should do when they don’t even understand simple business models. A lot of what I read on this site is funny. Like someone suggesting apple should buy sony… That make a lot of sense considering sony is much much bigger than apple. Apple has it’s niche market with trendy technology and they are doing wonderful, why change that? Sure you want to make it better, and continue to grow in market share but why get away from doing what you are good at?
I’ve gone back and forth on whether Apple would/should buy Adobe many times but now I hear Cringely thinks it will happen …
I *know* it won’t occur.
Buy them or write their own Creative suite. Adobe has treated Apple customers as second class citizens for so many years. Yet treated Windows users as first class citizens. Apple should buy them or compete.
New iPhone coming!!! Edge and 3G combined!!
To Mittens Romney,
I totally agree and that’s exactly what I was thinking; someone further up (Jay-Z, I think) had suggested that Apple couldn’t buy Adobe even if they wanted to, since they don’t have enough cash to buy out Adobe’s outstanding stock. Apple would still have to dip into their own stash of AAPL in order to pay Adobe’s share holders, though.
I agree with Jeremy. Can someone point out any example of when Cringley has been _right_ about apple? This won’t happen. Apple could much less expensively create a competing product if they wanted, and their primary concern with creating software is to make sure good software exists for the mac. There’s no chance Adobe will abandon the mac, unlike, say, MS Office which gives MS leverage over apple.
Considering AAPL’s cash + market cap, a cash-stock deal may make a lot of sense and would not not necessarily have to deplete the cash hoard.
Would acquisition of Adobe add shareholder value? You bet.
Is it likely to happen? Maybe, maybe not.