7 Reasons For Apple To Acquire Adobe

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Rameses

Rameses

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Taken from a digg I saw, from thenextweb.com by Boris;

There has been a lot of talk about Apple’s aggressive stance towards Adobe lately. For years now the two companies have been on less than friendly terms with each other over several issues. Lately they’ve bickered about the alleged bugginess of Flash.

According to Steve Jobs, Flash is responsible for most crashes on the Mac and uses abnormal amounts of processing power which would drain the battery of any mobile device. Before that Apple and Adobe fought over licensing issues regarding PDF files and the slow pace with which Adobe updates is applications.
With everybody falling over each other to come up with reason for Apple’s tough talk I decided to add my own conspiracy theory: I think Steve wants to own Adobe and Apple will acquire Adobe somewhere in 2010.

I agree it seems a far stretch that this will happen. But if it does happen it certainly will explain a few things. If Apple does acquire Adobe and fix Flash it would find itself in a very interesting position. It could open source Flash, make it compatible with HTML5 and fix the bugs and security issues. It could add Flash to Quicktime (or vice versa).
Consider for a moment all those mobile device builders around the world realizing they would now have talk to Apple (their arch enemy) regarding licensing iFlash from them. Exactly the kind of position that Steves loves to be in.
If I’m right about this I expect to be awarded for my insight. if I’m wrong, well, who reads old blogposts anyway.
So, here is my list of reason why it is only logical that Apple will acquire Adobe:

1: It is cheap and affordable
Adobe hasn’t been doing too bad in recent years but certainly not as well as Apple. It has a market cap of about 18 billion and change. Apple has $25 billion in cash in the bank and a market cap of 190 billion. Apple could buy Adobe with stock and some cash and not even blink. Imagine the power, influence and freedom it would get them.

2: It would give them Photoshop and Illustrator

Photoshop and Illustrator are so called killer Apps for The Apple Macintosh. Without it a lot of designers, architects and other creative professionals would have no reason to buy a Mac. If Apple owned these applications they could redesign their flawed interfaces, optimize them for the Mac Pro and iPad and make sure they work seamlessly with all the other Professional Apple Apps.

3: So Apple could fix Flash, save the day and look smart

Steve contents that Flash sucks and is outdated technology. What if he suddenly owned that technology? I’d like to believe that Apple has a fix ready for Flash that would suddenly make it reliable, power efficient and secure. They would launch this new iFlash version (built into Quicktime no doubt) within a month or two and also add it to the iPhone and iPad. How cool would they look by not only adding a perfectly working version of Flash customized to Apple’s own products but also to desktops Macs and PCs.

4: Because they told us they would

Apple has made no secret about its desire to use its cash reserve to do acquisitions. It also stated that it won’t just do that to add revenue to their bottom line but also for strategic reasons. Adobe is a healthy company and would easily bring in a few billion a year. Especially if Steve would fire everybody as he morphs the company into Apple. And besides the cash it would bring in there are all the other reason that make it logical to own Adobe.

5: To become less depending on third parties

Once upon a time Apple took a small investment and Microsoft’s assurance that it would keep developing MS Office for the Mac. You could argue that if Microsoft would have stopped offering Office for Mac it would have seriously hurt the platform. Without the main applications (the Adobe and Microsoft applications) the Mac would be a lot less useful. The same goes for Adobe. If it would stop offering its applications for the Mac a lot of designers and photographers would HAVE to switch to the PC to do their work. Apple has alleviated some of that risk by developing iPhoto and then Apperture but it still needs Photoshop and Illustrator. Basically it depends on Adobe to keep making great versions of its software for the Mac. And Steve doesn’t like to depend on anyone and had made it clear he has little respect for Adobe.

6: To fix Adobe’s crazy pricing

I have an official Adobe package which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, DreamWeaver and a few more Adobe Apps. If I want to upgrade it I am charged € 906.29. Yes, that is JUST for the upgrade. Now I know that these applications are really great, but seriously, € 906.29 for just an Upgrade? Apperture is $199.00 for the full package. That is not the Upgrade price but the full package. Just the Photoshop upgrade price is € 296.31! I imagine Apple would offer Photoshop for $199 with upgrades priced at $99. At € 906.29 I’m seriously considering just pirating the software. At $199 I am sure a LOT more people would avoid the hassle of illegal downloads. Once upon a time the Adobe prices were defendable. In the age of $1 Apps and sub $1000 laptops this is no longer the case. As an independent company Adobe can’t just slice the prices of their flagship applications. But as a part of Apple it can.

7: Because Steve is crazy

Okay, Steve Jobs isn’t really crazy. But he IS unpredictable, power hungry, filthy rich and very influential. Adding Adobe to Apple would make Apple a lot less dependent on Adobe. It would also give Apple new leverage with everybody who uses Flash right now. Adobe is just too important for the future of Apple to ignore it. So why not just buy it? By spreading the word that Adobe is a troubled company that can’t manage their own products well Apple will look good when it ’saves’ the company later by buying it.
Of course Apple doesn’t need Flash or Adobe. It is currently very actively pushing HTML5 which might completely replace Flash one day. It already has on Youtube and numerous other websites. Still, there is a lot to gain for Apple if it did one day decide to buy Adobe.
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Discuss....
 
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I don't think the Apple of today would want zillion line codebases that they probably consider to be packed full cruft & crap.

Though as a shortcut to running Flash in to the ground.. :p
 
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As long as he doesn't **** up lightroom I think its a good thing.

I've got a established LR2 library now, im NOT moving to Aperture at any point ever!
 
I think it's a good idea. Especially in terms of Flash and Photoshop. The article is right in saying that designers, architects and other creative professionals would have no reason to buy a Mac without Photoshop and Illustrator. What would happen on PC's though if Apple were to alter Flash to their needs?
 
If they did, I imagine they would make many of the Adobe apps Mac only, in a similar way that Logic Audio became Mac only after apple bought Emagic...
 
Absolutely stupid tbh. :p

What are the sales and use of Adobe products? I'd bet the vast majority of even things like PS are on windows machines, and will be where Adobe make most of their money.

As for Flash, loads of other mobile devices run perfectly fine with flash, it just has an inability to run on Apple products apparently... (Having said that it isn't the most conservative program on PCs, it still runs perfectly fine on windows mobile and Android however)

Pricing wise he has no idea what he is talking about. LR is around the same price as aperture, which makes sense as they are very similar programs designed mostly at amateurs and professionals. PS and Illustrator are much more in depth programs designed almost entirely for the professional market, explaining their much higher prices (PS essentially contains all of lightrooms features within its program). Just because we as individuals find the price high doesn't mean companies have problems with the price (where Adobe will get most of their money from).

As for point two, having PS and illustrator on Macs is not a reason to get a mac, an excuse maybe, but not a reason.

I can see the less dependence on third parties however. In the reasonably near future I can see Apple integrating something similar to their apps store into OSX making you buy all your software through Apples own software, meaning they get a cut on pretty much anything you buy for your mac.
 
I dont think this will ever happen (At least in the next 5 or so years).

Also if it did happen, I think Apple would keep the windows versions. I mean, they've released windows software in the past, and it's a huge cash cow. By making them Mac only they'd be cutting off a massive revenue source.
 
Xenoxide said:
Also if it did happen, I think Apple would keep the windows versions. I mean, they've released windows software in the past, and it's a huge cash cow. By making them Mac only they'd be cutting off a massive revenue source.
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Well on one hand yes. But there's no alternative to photoshop and many other adobe products for many people, therefore making them Mac only would be a massive cash cow for hardware sales.

It would also surely be deemed anti competitive behaviour by the EU at least (who've shown a willingness to label absolutely anything as anti-competative recently)
 
I don't normally look in here as its just a load of faithful pets dry humping job's Leg... But i saw the thread title and it was interesting.

I personally don't get this whole flash is buggy and crap, its marketing spin on badly written Flash Apps by amateurs. Professionally written flash apps are everywhere and are one of the main reasons the web is as interactive as it is today. It comes across as pure marketing bile to get around not having to put it on its iPhone platform and opening development to any OS with flash instead of tying app development into owning a mac and buying the SDK. Plus he said they could make it open source, judging by apples history towards lock in products they must be the least likely company in the world to buy a propriety source platform and make it open source.

But on the subject of buying Adobe for the CS and Illustrator i couldn't see it happening either, a large portion of sales for the CS suite must be for windows as its the most popular OS (i couldn't find any figures, but it must be a reasonable assumption) even if the designer types like apple companies are more inclined towards windows. Apple would want to tie people in to using Apple for PS etc and that would slash their sales figures of the creative suite by exuding 90% of the software market.

Also the author is complaining about pricing of the CS suite which most professionals don't mind paying as its not that much in terms of business. Its like people saying how Autodesk products are expensive, thats because they are professional products and can justify the costs because the sheer power and usability of the applications they offer are second to none. I don't think they would make it cheaper either as that just isn't how Apple role is it?

And as its from a blog:

blogging.jpg
 
iflash lol

never happen, steve jobs would only let developers publish flash to the app store, would require approval and nothing would get done.

and fix the bugs/glitches? that guy has no idea why flash is a resource hog OR why it crashes macs. For all we know it's macs fault and not adobes and the glitches/bugs there can't be fixed.
 
codec said:
iflash lol

never happen, steve jobs would only let developers publish flash to the app store, would require approval and nothing would get done.

and fix the bugs/glitches? that guy has no idea why flash is a resource hog OR why it crashes macs. For all we know it's macs fault and not adobes and the glitches/bugs there can't be fixed.
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So how can it be Apples fault?
 
_TubbZ_ said:
I personally don't get this whole flash is buggy and crap, its marketing spin on badly written Flash Apps by amateurs. Professionally written flash apps are everywhere and are one of the main reasons the web is as interactive as it is today. It comes across as pure marketing bile to get around not having to put it on its iPhone platform and opening development to any OS with flash instead of tying app development into owning a mac and buying the SDK. Plus he said they could make it open source, judging by apples history towards lock in products they must be the least likely company in the world to buy a propriety source platform and make it open source.
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Well there is ONE problem with flash on mac and its the inordinate CPU usage.

Infact, I can play 1080p flash in VMware and use less CPU time than doing it natively in OSX in Safari/Firefox, suggests somethings wrong with the mac flash side of things, no?

And also recently firefox has separated flash from the core browser thread to try and stop (admittedly any plugin) from crashing the entire browser.

Thing is after having an iPhone for 2 years now, actually, the lack of flash hasn't bothered me at all.
 
Ug, no thanks. The small amount of competition in the creative software industry does not need to be stifled any further. Otherwise I could see them charging £2500 for the base license of Apple Creative Suite 5 :( :( :(
 
I'm so glad youtube uses HTML5 on most of it's videos now! Much less CPU usage and much smoother playback.

If you want to view youtube in HTML5 just google "youtube html5" and enter the beta program.
 
reflux said:
Ug, no thanks. The small amount of competition in the creative software industry does not need to be stifled any further. Otherwise I could see them charging £2500 for the base license of Apple Creative Suite 5 :( :( :(
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LOL and you think this won't happen anyway?

I am not for the Apple purchase, but something does need to be done at Adobe. The pricing for the products is imense. It wouldn't be so bad, but there are some big usability issues/bugs that don't get fixed. If your lucky they might fix them in the next version, but that's yet more £££.

I think they are too big now, and with the lack of competition just don't really care anymore.

If there was a viable alternative to Illustrator and Photoshop, with the ability to integrate "seamlessly" with other applications like Flash, Premiere etc then I would be over the moon.
 
"andy" said:
and you/they think that MS would just sit back and let this happen ?
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MS don't give a monkeys. They developed Silverlight as a competitor to Flash and have never had a serious product in the graphics sector that Adobe (and Aldus and Macromedia who they acquired) traditionally develop for.
 
"andy" said:
and you/they think that MS would just sit back and let this happen ?
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Pretty much, the EC would probably say something about it however. If MS are fined massively for installing a default browser and media player then Apple should be massively fined for that sort of anti competativeness...
 
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