6 ms·

Adobe has been in a serious funk since they took over Macromedia. We shouldn't be surprised competition breeds better products.

maxharris 16y ago
Adobe should never have absorbed Macromedia. Adobe's mainstays (Photoshop, Illustrator) have taken a terrible turn for the worse (slower, buggier, non-native UIs), while getting more expensive at the same time. Adobe's software used to be indespensable to me, but now there's Pixelmator, which carries the true (old) Adobe legacy. Does anyone know if Pixelmator is going to make a vector tool? If they do, lots of designers will be completely Adobe-free!
- ChrisLTD 16y ago
  Yep. They've had no competition forcing them to do better. At least with Flash they now feel the heat from native H.264 playback and JavaScript/CSS animations.
  - maxharris 16y ago
    I voted you up, but I'm not quite sure that's the whole story. I think Adobe absorbed a bad corporate culture when they acquired Macromedia, and that better accounts for why they're making such bad products now. On top of this, Adobe will never be a successful platform vendor because they suck at making platforms, and the market has too many platforms already. Will competition somehow make Adobe good again? It might, but it's by no means certain. The long-term alternative for them is failure in the marketplace. Signs of things turning around for Adobe will be when they: > Make HTML5 the primary target for all Adobe software (make authoring for Flash not the default). > Dump Air. > Make the new Acrobat a slim wrapper around HTML5, facilitating a transition away from Acrobat toward standards. > Stop trying to be cross-platform. Use native UI in all software. Dump the installer on platforms where installers aren't standard (Mac OS X). > make completely new creative applications for iOS. An iOS-based desktop computer is probably coming. If Adobe was smart, it would try to make great native tools for creative professionals again. > Fire the executives they picked up from Macromedia and lay off legacy staff.

maxharris 16y ago

Adobe should never have absorbed Macromedia. Adobe's mainstays (Photoshop, Illustrator) have taken a terrible turn for the worse (slower, buggier, non-native UIs), while getting more expensive at the same time. Adobe's software used to be indespensable to me, but now there's Pixelmator, which carries the true (old) Adobe legacy. Does anyone know if Pixelmator is going to make a vector tool? If they do, lots of designers will be completely Adobe-free!

ChrisLTD 16y ago
Yep. They've had no competition forcing them to do better. At least with Flash they now feel the heat from native H.264 playback and JavaScript/CSS animations.
- maxharris 16y ago
  I voted you up, but I'm not quite sure that's the whole story. I think Adobe absorbed a bad corporate culture when they acquired Macromedia, and that better accounts for why they're making such bad products now. On top of this, Adobe will never be a successful platform vendor because they suck at making platforms, and the market has too many platforms already. Will competition somehow make Adobe good again? It might, but it's by no means certain. The long-term alternative for them is failure in the marketplace. Signs of things turning around for Adobe will be when they: > Make HTML5 the primary target for all Adobe software (make authoring for Flash not the default). > Dump Air. > Make the new Acrobat a slim wrapper around HTML5, facilitating a transition away from Acrobat toward standards. > Stop trying to be cross-platform. Use native UI in all software. Dump the installer on platforms where installers aren't standard (Mac OS X). > make completely new creative applications for iOS. An iOS-based desktop computer is probably coming. If Adobe was smart, it would try to make great native tools for creative professionals again. > Fire the executives they picked up from Macromedia and lay off legacy staff.