Adobe gets Hammered – from two sides…
Adobe, maker of PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign and others is taking a hammering in the press over the last few weeks. Many readers of this weblog know of course about the Apple iPad, and its’ inability to play Flash movies; content created by Adobes proprietary File Format. The web is currently full of Flash applications, and many times you have downloaded them without even knowing.
Steve Jobs Is Not Happy With Google, Adobe by Stan Schroeder
Here’s a couple of Steve’s (inexact) quotes from the meeting: “Adobe is lazy. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.”
I’m sure that battle isn’t over, but Steve Jobs and others make compelling cases for the use of the upcoming HTML 5.0 specification, which will provide similar multimedia experiences as Flash does now; with no need for some other proprietary software.
The advantage of HTML 5 is clear, as it is an open standard. Many ‘web companies’ are supporting HTML 5 as the new standard; Apple, Google, Mozilla.
At one time- Adobe’s Flash was the reliable way to download video and animated content through the web. Flash became the standard because it worked. Flash still is one of the most powerful methods to delivery interactive content, but they are in for some competition.
In January, printing expert Frank Romano wrote about the abandonment of the print industry by Adobe. Romano concludes that Adobe is leaving print for the screen delivered world. The fact that Adobe is pulling back from their best users is made compellingly in this article.
Adobe, you’re breaking my heart By Frank Romano
[Excerpt] I realize that giant corporations must make hard business decisions. But I think that Adobe is making a grave mistake in abandoning print. It reminds me of Wang Labs. They built giant buildings in their heyday, but then lost their way, and now people visit those buildings and wonder who Wang was. Some day, they will visit San Jose and ask who Adobe was, because the transience of pixels will never replace the permanence of print.
Adobe has built some of the best applications for creating content. PhotoShop (their most widely known tool) is a cultural iconic term: ‘Photoshopped’ similar to ‘xeroxed’ or ‘kleenex’. They make many other powerful tools, used to create, adjust, organize and distribute the content we all see everyday.
No one involved in the professional world of imaging, print publishing and multimedia will be giving up on Adobe’s tools anytime soon. Adobe will still make millions from these advanced tools. But for the millions of users who just want to put photographs or videos on line, as well as those feverishly building applications for the upcoming IPad, Adobe may fade away – maybe not as quick as some may thing (Romano), but with these two developments – Adobe’s in a heap of trouble.