[Doc HM]

With their huge $40 billion cash mountain and Steve's comments that Apple need to "think big" with regard to spending it on acquisitions, what effects would Apple buying Adobe have? Would it be a good or bad thing. In the past Apple have not fought shy of producing or securing the software that they think they need for the Mac platform and buying Adobe would certainly help secure commitment to Photoshop et al for the platform plus draw a line under the flash/no flash farrago.

I can't think of a whole pile of downside but I'm sure there would be.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

I can't think of a whole pile of downside but I'm sure there would be.

Downside: Apple either has to maintain huge development efforts for Windows, or shut the Windows versions down.

The later will not be allowed by the regulators, as it would be seen as a move to kill competition in the hardware area.

-t

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Nevermind the downside... what the hell is the upside?

What do Abobe have that Apple wants or can't do better on their own that they need to spend millions/billions to buy?

Wouldn't it just be awesome if Apple runs off and buys the company the CEO was just calling lazy with crashy/slow/CPU intensive software? Great idea.

[Big Mac]

Guaranteeing proper Mac development of their products, I suppose.

[The Final Dakar]

I swear this just got debated in the past 12 months.

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Nevermind the downside... what the hell is the upside?

What do Abobe have that Apple wants or can't do better on their own that they need to spend millions/billions to buy?

Wouldn't it just be awesome if Apple runs off and buys the company the CEO was just calling lazy with crashy/slow/CPU intensive software? Great idea.

But positive spin to say that the software was so important to the platform that they couldn't allow it to continue to be developed in such a sloppy and half hearted way for the Mac.

Given that macs are now Intel based continuing to develop for the windows side of things shouldn't be a huge issue for Apple. Apple "could" produce all this software themselves but it would be a long haul. Their v1 issue would almost certainly suck. Adobe is profitable so Apple would get mature apps plus a positive revenue stream. It's not like they would be throwing their investment billions away.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Guaranteeing proper Mac development of their products, I suppose.

Being what? Photoshop? It's not great but it's not a disaster or holding the Mac market together.

Flash? Dreamweaver? Most production is done on PC but is this really a market Apple needs? They used to be only in schools and Production houses but now they are making more money from iPods/iTunes/iPhones that this is hardly something worth billions.

Final Cut Pro already beat Adobe Premiere.
iPhoto and aperture is good for most photo retouching.
PDF's already being used in OSX.
Flash - will slowly be replaced with HTML5 for most uses.

Still can't even see a reason to spend 50 million on them.

[olePigeon]

Apple should buy my consulting company for $10 million.

[Big Mac]

I mostly agree, analogue. In the past I thought it was a better idea, but given Apple's high amount of success and gadget focus these days it's hard to see the relevancy or efficacy of such a purchase.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

But positive spin to say that the software was so important to the platform that they couldn't allow it to continue to be developed in such a sloppy and half hearted way for the Mac.

Right no more adobe apps for Mac's and there goes 3% of apples customers who buy the Pro Towers and pay for CS4.

Apple should not buy a company and its personal who you call "Sloppy and Half hearted". So what they are buying the rights to a sloppy, bloated product which they will now clean up with the same staff?

I hate to tell you but for 1 billion Apple can create their own photoshop from scratch using core technologies and have it work better. If they thought that was so important they would have released it back with final cut 1.0.

Remember how long Adobe took to come out with CS1 to run on OSX? And now they are behind on Open CL and 64 bit. They also use non-standard interface's and totally mess up the Mac's usability. Even the fact that you have to allocate RAM and scratch disk is something the OS itself should be handling on the fly. Lazy bastards.

[Laminar]

http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lou...-to-buy-adobe/

Is Dark Helmet who I think he is?


Here's another one:
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applicati...buy-out-adobe/

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lou...-to-buy-adobe/

Is Dark Helmet who I think he is?


Here's another one:
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applicati...buy-out-adobe/

Oh hell ya that was me. Back that it was important and I liked Adobe and saw potential in their direction. Apple was not selling iPhones yet or cleaning up in the consumer market. Aperture sucked, flash still mattered and InDesign was saving us from Quark.

Since 2008 I cannot stand adobe and they have become far less relevant. Quark vs InDesign doesn't matter much when the print industry is on its way out. CS4 isn't much better than CS1 except it treats you like a pirate even when you pay. Turns CS1 is good enough for what we use today. There is nothing in photoshop holding todays productions back that we need Apple to come save us from Adobe.

And again there are $60 apps now that do most of what photoshop does much better.
Pixelmator

Adobe was awesome back in the day but became far to bloated and need to clean their apps and company up bigtime.

Remember how everyone thought that is Office for Mac was discontinued Apple was dead? 90% of new mac users I know don't even know it was an option at all.

Times change.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I swear this just got debated in the past 12 months.

A true and tested MacNN tradition!™

(while Apple could probably buy Adobe, it would get Flash in the bargain.. talk about a toxic bargain)

[besson3c]

If you take a marketing class you'll look at "cash cows" and "stars". A cash cow is a product that sells like crazy and makes a ton of money, but is not really growing like a star product does. Microsoft Office, Windows, and Adobe CS are examples, IMHO, of cash cows. Buying a company so you can inherit these cash cows is not necessarily a terribly good strategy if there is no real strategy to sustain or grow these product lines. What will compel people to buy CS5, or the next version of Office?

It may be many years before a competitor comes along that can compete with Office or CS enough to be able to replace these products, but putting yourself in a position where you cannot grow puts the company in a vulnerable position. Every company wants to turn their cash cows into stars, cash cows are a sort of mixed blessing.

Adobe also has products like ColdFusion and Flex which they might hope can be stars, but is this enough? Is this a growth strategy? Adobe is doing well right now, but they need some star products. I can't really think of any made by Adobe. It is not necessarily smart to buy other company's cash cow products unless you are flush with cash and think that you can turn these products into stars.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

What will compel people to buy CS5, or the next version of Office?

It's new.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

And again there are $60 apps now that do most of what photoshop does much better.
Pixelmator

Absolutely. We've saved thousands of dollars by installing Pixelmator instead of PS. For 95% of the work it is more than good enough. The remaining 5% go to the PS workstation.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

It's new.

I'm not sure if you meant this tongue-in-cheek or in earnest? Probably tongue-in-cheek, but if not, how would one explain all of those users sticking with Windows XP over Vista?

People might be trigger happy with their purchase decisions, but you still have to give them a good excuse and semi-coherent rationale for doing so.

[lpkmckenna]

The old properties worth anything to Apple are Illustrator and Photoshop. Everything else Apple already has.

And both Illustrator and Photoshop are already collapsing from feature fatigue. There's no point in buying software that really can't be much improved besides some bug fixes.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I'm not sure if you meant this tongue-in-cheek or in earnest? Probably tongue-in-cheek, but if not, how would one explain all of those users sticking with Windows XP over Vista?

1. Vista got a ton of bad press that stunted its adoption rate especially in the upgrade market;

2. XP was a pretty decent release of Windows that's very well supported because it has been out for years now;

3. People are slower to adopt new OSs than upgraded application software.

[Salty]

I'll agree with the general sentiment, a few years ago when Graphic artists were one of THE major Mac markets, this would have made more sense. However Apple would be much wiser to buy Pixelmator and hire a couple more developers for it and turn it into a photoshop and illustrator killer. Does it need to be good enough to beat Photoshop? Nope it just needs to be good enough to be a contender to make Adobe work for their market on the Mac. Far less expensive and it doesn't get Apple saddled with a lot of the crap Adobe's involved in.

Back in the day I loved Adobe and Macromedia, but it seems when both merged they got the worst of both worlds, and they became a lot too pompous. People are stuck with their suites now, but that dominance won't last for forever.

[exca1ibur]

Once Adobe bought Macromedia everything got worse for the consumer. If Apple did buy Adobe, I just hope they pass out cyanide pills to the Flash team.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

1. Vista got a ton of bad press that stunted its adoption rate especially in the upgrade market;

2. XP was a pretty decent release of Windows that's very well supported because it has been out for years now;

3. People are slower to adopt new OSs than upgraded application software.

Yep.

[Sealobo]

Apple wants to kill Adobe, photoshop and flash are the splinter in Apple's eye.

go Aperture 4/5/6 and HTML5.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

2. XP was became a pretty decent release of Windows that's very well supported because it has been out for years now

XP before SP2 was horrible.

[olePigeon]

Maybe Apple should buy Valve.

[hayesk]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

Given that macs are now Intel based continuing to develop for the windows side of things shouldn't be a huge issue for Apple.

The CPU matters very little as they're not writing machine code*. Windows code is C++ and calls Microsoft's C++ frameworks. Apple using Intel Macs doesn't affect the Windows code one bit, and the Mac code has not suddenly changed to be more Windows-like.

*Except for a small amount of code in performance critical areas such as photoshop filters, but that is negligible.