Welcome to our new docu-drama, "Adobe Under the Microscope!"
I'm sure Adobe still has the heart of the innovator as melgross, you so eloquently and calmly explained, but since we are kind of like little Cretaceous mice trying to get the dinosaurs to evolve faster I think it is useful to spend more time critiquing than defending.
I still run into people in school who, when they need to make a poster or flyer, ask me about that program that was easy to use and was "something like Photoshop I think." It was PageMaker and it was simple enough that with 30 minutes of playing around, you could make a cool little poster and move on to something else. Now I tell them, well they can use Illustrator, and it is great for many things, but they have to be aware that they can get lost in layer/raster vs. vector purgatory and waste 20 minutes trying to figure out why their text boxes aren't working the right way.
They know Word sucks, they may have tried Publisher, but when they send those posters to friends they don't open up and they don't yet (they are almost there) get the idea of putting everything to pdf so that almost anyone can see them and at the same time they can't accidently edit them.
So here are my points about Adobe and innovation:
1. PageMaker needed to be simplified and marketed to the 95% of the public that doesn't need InDesign. Apple buys the core of FinalCut and then makes FCExpress and maintains iMovie for normal people. Why doesn't Adobe do that? It is EASY to make a basic iApp now. People in their garages were making simple graphical programs 10 years ago and they were impressive, but they are not now - why? - because 15 years ago they might make a name for themselves and there was greater innovation industry wide - because the predictable consolidation and buyouts of companies had only just begun. Now with Core-graphics capability in OSX, the average joe could even do more. I bet even PageMaker could be written in 5-10% of its original lines of code. So Adobe deserves criticism for spending so much time tweaking Photoshop and creating the CS, and ignoring 90% of the market. That is why I give Apple higher innovation points than Adobe.
2. Lightbox looks to be cool and has some features Apple was dumb to ignore, BUT it doesn't take long watching their video tutors from the website to see how much Adobe borrowed from Apple. They have metadata editing with blue bubbles that look exactly like Mail addressing. They have UI toggles that act like Expose within the app and even have a function that greys out all of the menues and leaves the photo at full brightness. I'm surprised they didn't put their histogram controls in a separate layer that overlays on the image itself and call it Light*Dash*Board. Imitation is fine and they are SMART to do so, but it isn't INNOVATION. That said it looks better than Aperture in many ways, but then again it is still beta while Apple threw Aperture out probably prematurely.
3. Just because it is hard to add improvements to an app like PS, doesn't excuse anything. Yeah, we've heard it's "hard" to occupy Iraq, it's hard to be a pimp, and it's hard to rewrite code - look at Vista - but that is sort of their job. In the amount of time Apple moved from IBM to Intel and from 32-bit to 64-bit, what has Adobe really done? It created its Quark-killer and done well with it and it has made baby steps toward integrating the Creative Suite to something of good workflow. But it hasn't made ANYTHING easier, simpler, more elegant, more accessible to the average user. Photoshop Elements not withstanding, it has decided to yield the consumer ground to Microsoft. It has decided that only its high-end installed userbase is worth its time and development. Apple has not done that.
I love Adobe and I loved the days when Apple and Adobe were joined at the hip and both innovated well. You could even argue that Apple became lazy before Adobe did, but Apple got through that and now has a corporate structure that forces itself to innovate. Adobe is trying to do the same, but it seems to only be able to concentrate on one thing - a Quarkkiller or a CS. Also Adobe has let down its Mac customers needlessly. It innovated the Windows Lightbox separate from the Mac Lightbox and only now is making the features uniform. Why was that not on day one? Adobe probably just felt like Steve's younger brother, ignored and not appreciated and it wanted to make friends with the big kid on the block (Bill) and now that Steve is cool again, he wants to keep both happy. Well ladeedah, that may make Business 101 sense and is important in middle school, but it isn't innovative.
My last soapbox statements:
Corporate America needs to evolve beyond Business 101. If Business 101 textbooks really were how the real world worked then Business 101 professors would be the wealthiest people on Earth.
Innovation needs to be more than lip service - just look at Ford vs. Toyota ("...but we can't afford to build hybrid cars...").
Acquisitions and consolidation are not always the "smart" business move - just look at AOL/Time-Warner. Sometimes they are ethically lazy, banal, economic Darwinism gamesmanship between overpaid white boys who lost their sense of perspective somewhere between the getting corner office and the time they bulldozed the farmhouse overlooking the valley to put up their dream mansion.
Striving for marketshare shouldn't be the GOAL of your business. It should be one of many ASSESSMENT tools of your business - just look at McDonalds - what is more important, the number of stores you own or quality of food?
These are all problems when accountants, 20-something marketing geniuses and 30-something managerial wonks begin to outnumber your creative staff. They are also problems when you grow big enough that you need to keep shareholders happy enough every 3 months so that they don't fire you and hire the head of Coca Cola to run the company (I know Steve actually did that - he wasn't always smart either).
Business models need to change and our (consumer) view of them need to change so that real innovation isn't stifled by mundane market theories and so that the social and ecological capital of our communities aren't commodified and sold below actual value at your nearest Wal-Mart. <end rant>
Welcome to our new docu-drama, "Adobe Under the Microscope!"
I'm sure Adobe still has the heart of the innovator as melgross, you so eloquently and calmly explained, but since we are kind of like little Cretaceous mice trying to get the dinosaurs to evolve faster I think it is useful to spend more time critiquing than defending.
Nothing wrong with critiquing. I do it constantly when I beta test a program. When I had my company we spoke frequently. There are hundreds of pro's beta testing in the first round that goes out, and thousands in the second, and later ones. They get plenty of critique. Nothing wrong with doing it here as well.
Adobe is one of the more responsive companies out there. But they can't do everything. They are pulled many ways. Even with the pros out there, there is pulling in several different directions at once. What one group insists is required, another group insists will destroy the program. That's hard to reconcile.
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I still run into people in school who, when they need to make a poster or flyer, ask me about that program that was easy to use and was "something like Photoshop I think." It was PageMaker and it was simple enough that with 30 minutes of playing around, you could make a cool little poster and move on to something else. Now I tell them, well they can use Illustrator, and it is great for many things, but they have to be aware that they can get lost in layer/raster vs. vector purgatory and waste 20 minutes trying to figure out why their text boxes aren't working the right way.
They know Word sucks, they may have tried Publisher, but when they send those posters to friends they don't open up and they don't yet (they are almost there) get the idea of putting everything to pdf so that almost anyone can see them and at the same time they can't accidently edit them.
Pagemaker was one of my favorite programs. It was so natural to use, you didn't have to think about what you were doing. It didn't get in the way. My daughter started using it for her school projects when she was in 3rd grade. She picked it up quickly. She was sad when moving to X, because she would have to go to classic to use it. She's now in the 10th grade, in an art school, and while she uses InDesogn, and other programs, she still wishes Pagemaker was available for X.
Illustrator, as you say, is much more complex. But it was never designed for that purpose.
Publisher is a terrible program. It seems that the only "professional" use for it is for school yearbooks. Those companies insist on Publisher files because it's a Windows program, and it's cheap. Too bad its files aren't compatible with any useful publishing program.
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So here are my points about Adobe and innovation:
1. PageMaker needed to be simplified and marketed to the 95% of the public that doesn't need InDesign. Apple buys the core of FinalCut and then makes FCExpress and maintains iMovie for normal people. Why doesn't Adobe do that? It is EASY to make a basic iApp now. People in their garages were making simple graphical programs 10 years ago and they were impressive, but they are not now - why? - because 15 years ago they might make a name for themselves and there was greater innovation industry wide - because the predictable consolidation and buyouts of companies had only just begun. Now with Core-graphics capability in OSX, the average joe could even do more. I bet even PageMaker could be written in 5-10% of its original lines of code. So Adobe deserves criticism for spending so much time tweaking Photoshop and creating the CS, and ignoring 90% of the market. That is why I give Apple higher innovation points than Adobe.
Pagemaker, as I've said, is simple enough. It is available to Windows users as a business publishing program, rather than as a high end publishing program such as InDesign and Quark.
Adobe has a very good program which offers many PS features, and offers some that hadn't been available in PS. You can use it on a very simple, streamlined level, or can get underneath and dig into more sophisticated feature sets. It's also cheap. Very cheap for what it does. It's called Photoshop Elements.
People were writing programs in their garage 15 years ago because programs of all types were much simpler then. Now, it's harder to compete, because even those "garage" programs are far more complex and sophisticated from years of upgrades.
Those really simple programs do come out, but no one is interested. They are too basic. They are coming out all the time. But they die.
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2. Lightbox looks to be cool and has some features Apple was dumb to ignore, BUT it doesn't take long watching their video tutors from the website to see how much Adobe borrowed from Apple. They have metadata editing with blue bubbles that look exactly like Mail addressing. They have UI toggles that act like Expose within the app and even have a function that greys out all of the menues and leaves the photo at full brightness. I'm surprised they didn't put their histogram controls in a separate layer that overlays on the image itself and call it Light*Dash*Board. Imitation is fine and they are SMART to do so, but it isn't INNOVATION. That said it looks better than Aperture in many ways, but then again it is still beta while Apple threw Aperture out probably prematurely.
Don't assume Adobe copied anything from Apple. Lightbox's development was going on for quite a while before Apple came out with a premature version of Aperture. It's even possible, from the buzz in the industry, that Apple heard about Lightbox, and rushed Aperture out the door.
Also, as far as the way the program looks. Apple has developer guidelines as to how a program should work, and how it should look. If Adobe (and MS with Office) decides to try to adhere as much as they can to those guidelines, you can't quarrel with that.
Then when Apple breaks all of its own guidelines, you should wonder why, as many have done with their many odd, and changing, choices.
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3. Just because it is hard to add improvements to an app like PS, doesn't excuse anything. Yeah, we've heard it's "hard" to occupy Iraq, it's hard to be a pimp, and it's hard to rewrite code - look at Vista - but that is sort of their job. In the amount of time Apple moved from IBM to Intel and from 32-bit to 64-bit, what has Adobe really done? It created its Quark-killer and done well with it and it has made baby steps toward integrating the Creative Suite to something of good workflow. But it hasn't made ANYTHING easier, simpler, more elegant, more accessible to the average user. Photoshop Elements not withstanding, it has decided to yield the consumer ground to Microsoft. It has decided that only its high-end installed userbase is worth its time and development. Apple has not done that.
First of all, let's not bring the failure of Iraq into this.
And while I said that it's hard, I also said that Adobe constantly adds features. What is hard, is adding them in a rational way, into a program that is already loaded down with features that have been demanded by its users.
You mention Vista. That is certainly a poor example of how to go about doing it. They had to abandon all the code they wrote over several years, and rewrite it completely. Not with more new code, but with 2003 sever code. Something that was already old, but proven. Then they had to throw features out like seamen throwing buckets of water over the side of a boat while trying to stay afloat. And after all that, all they really seem to have come up with is a new look. Hardly worth it by most accounts.
A lot of what Apple has done is to go to Intel, and have them design mobo's for them. going back to 32 bits, by the way, and angering many.
I would also say that their professional products are NOT for the average user. They do, and should, require months of continuous, and hard work to master. That's the difference between Elements, a home program (that some digital pros on the basic level do use), and the Creative suite that is intended for career professionals to get major works of advertising, newspaper , and other forms of magazine, book, and additional commercial quality work out the door in a consistant and dependable way, every day—no excuses, and on deadline, where many millions of dollars are at stake.
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I love Adobe and I loved the days when Apple and Adobe were joined at the hip and both innovated well. You could even argue that Apple became lazy before Adobe did, but Apple got through that and now has a corporate structure that forces itself to innovate. Adobe is trying to do the same, but it seems to only be able to concentrate on one thing - a Quarkkiller or a CS. Also Adobe has let down its Mac customers needlessly. It innovated the Windows Lightbox separate from the Mac Lightbox and only now is making the features uniform. Why was that not on day one? Adobe probably just felt like Steve's younger brother, ignored and not appreciated and it wanted to make friends with the big kid on the block (Bill) and now that Steve is cool again, he wants to keep both happy. Well ladeedah, that may make Business 101 sense and is important in middle school, but it isn't innovative.
Sadly enough, Apple parted from Adobe, before Adobe parted with Apple. Instead of trying to work something out with Adobe years ago, when Apple was much bigger, and Adobe was much smaller, over the expense of Type 1 fonts, Apple instead went to MS to develop the Adobe busting Truetype fonts. At the time, fonts were the largest source of profit at Adobe, and they felt that Apple had betrayed them. The loss set them back financially for several years. That's a good part of the reason why Adobe backed away from Apple as Apple's sales began to fall in the mid '90's. They no longer felt comfortable with Apple. They had to protect the company, as well, from MS's growing presence in their markets.
It's also why they went with MS to develop the newer OpenType. Apple was later asked to join, but declined.
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My last soapbox statements:
Corporate America needs to evolve beyond Business 101. If Business 101 textbooks really were how the real world worked then Business 101 professors would be the wealthiest people on Earth.
Innovation needs to be more than lip service - just look at Ford vs. Toyota ("...but we can't afford to build hybrid cars...").
Acquisitions and consolidation are not always the "smart" business move - just look at AOL/Time-Warner. Sometimes they are ethically lazy, banal, economic Darwinism gamesmanship between overpaid white boys who lost their sense of perspective somewhere between the getting corner office and the time they bulldozed the farmhouse overlooking the valley to put up their dream mansion.
Striving for marketshare shouldn't be the GOAL of your business. It should be one of many ASSESSMENT tools of your business - just look at McDonalds - what is more important, the number of stores you own or quality of food?
These are all problems when accountants, 20-something marketing geniuses and 30-something managerial wonks begin to outnumber your creative staff. They are also problems when you grow big enough that you need to keep shareholders happy enough every 3 months so that they don't fire you and hire the head of Coca Cola to run the company (I know Steve actually did that - he wasn't always smart either).
Business models need to change and our (consumer) view of them need to change so that real innovation isn't stifled by mundane market theories and so that the social and ecological capital of our communities aren't commodified and sold below actual value at your nearest Wal-Mart. <end rant>
That's too much to comment on separately.
But, while I agree on theoretical grounds, as one who has had two business's over a period of 35 years, I can say that theory and practice rarely meet up in the real world. with all the best intentions, companies must do what works. That isn't always what some would want, but it is what has to be done.
A company's first responsibility is to stay in business while attempting to make a profit, and stay at a size that will allow the business model to function.
We all try to have the best products possible. But what that means differs between reasonable people.
Sometimes it means copying products, to a certain extent, while adding your own (hopefully) unique, and worthy additions, or differences. Sometimes it means coming out with something entirely new, if you think there will be a market for it.
A router company makes routers. There isn't much any one company can do to innovate, because the standards won't allow it.
A software company has more leeway, but not so much that they can do whatever they want. They have to do market assessments first, as any company must. It's fine to come out with a unique product. But if you spent millions of dollars developing it, and there is no market, you've not only thrown away the money, but the time of those valuble people involved on the project.
I have heard a lot of ideas from customers for new features and programs, but most are so tied to that one persons needs, that they wouldn't fly.
The one advantage I've had was having hundreds of pro customers from many different sectors, for many years. It's why I was able to talk to adobe and Apple.
Pagemaker was one of my favorite programs. It was so natural to use, you didn't have to think about what you were doing. It didn't get in the way. My daughter started using it for her school projects when she was in 3rd grade. She picked it up quickly. She was sad when moving to X, because she would have to go to classic to use it. She's now in the 10th grade, in an art school, and while she uses InDesogn, and other programs, she still wishes Pagemaker was available for X.
Illustrator, as you say, is much more complex. But it was never designed for that purpose.
Publisher is a terrible program. It seems that the only "professional" use for it is for school yearbooks. Those companies insist on Publisher files because it's a Windows program, and it's cheap. Too bad its files aren't compatible with any useful publishing program.
We certainly agree.
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Adobe has a very good program which offers many PS features, and offers some that hadn't been available in PS. You can use it on a very simple, streamlined level, or can get underneath and dig into more sophisticated feature sets. It's also cheap. Very cheap for what it does. It's called Photoshop Elements.
That's why I mentioned Elements.
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People were writing programs in their garage 15 years ago because programs of all types were much simpler then. Now, it's harder to compete, because even those "garage" programs are far more complex and sophisticated from years of upgrades.
Those really simple programs do come out, but no one is interested. They are too basic. They are coming out all the time. But they die.
That is why Apple developed CoreAudio and friends. Web-based apps will also lower the bar to creating good code. The problem is not just in having to make your apps more sophisticated as you say, but in also being able to get anyone to notice or care. We will need a little renaissance in "garage" programs as coding becomes more sophisticated - the promise of object-based languages. But if the powers that be see them as threats they will continue to work the system in their favor and further limit the horizon for small companies.
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Don't assume Adobe copied anything from Apple. Lightbox's development was going on for quite a while before Apple came out with a premature version of Aperture. It's even possible, from the buzz in the industry, that Apple heard about Lightbox, and rushed Aperture out the door.
I didn't. I know Adobe was working on Lightbox before Apple worked on Aperture. I was not comparing the two. But Apple developed Expose and Dashboard and Mail long before Adobe was working on Lightbox.
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Also, as far as the way the program looks. Apple has developer guidelines as to how a program should work, and how it should look. If Adobe (and MS with Office) decides to try to adhere as much as they can to those guidelines, you can't quarrel with that.
And again I'm not quarreling with that. I'm simply stating that adhering to guidelines is not the same as innovating.
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You mention Vista. That is certainly a poor example of how to go about doing it.
That's why I mentioned it.
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Sadly enough, Apple parted from Adobe, before Adobe parted with Apple. Instead of trying to work something out with Adobe years ago, when Apple was much bigger, and Adobe was much smaller, over the expense of Type 1 fonts, Apple instead went to MS to develop the Adobe busting Truetype fonts.
Thanks for mentioning that, I didn't know.
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But, while I agree on theoretical grounds, as one who has had two business's over a period of 35 years, I can say that theory and practice rarely meet up in the real world. with all the best intentions, companies must do what works. That isn't always what some would want, but it is what has to be done.
My point is that it is inherent in the system that business are put in that situation. And the free market is great and it is "healthy" to promote competition and all, but it is also important to realize that people invented the system and it can be changed if enough people want it. It is a tool, not an end.
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A company's first responsibility is to stay in business while attempting to make a profit, and stay at a size that will allow the business model to function.
And it is government's first responsibility (however onerous it may seem) to make sure that business has the freedom to operate but the responsibility to do so in a way that doesn't too adversely affect our social and ecological needs.
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A router company makes routers. There isn't much any one company can do to innovate, because the standards won't allow it.
That is when a discovery/invention becomes a commodity. That is the difference between Apple and Dell. One concentrates on best practices in producing and delivering a commodity, while the other is trying to maintain a continually evolving experience based on pushing the boundaries of devices that are soon to become commodities.
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They have to do market assessments first, as any company must. It's fine to come out with a unique product. But if you spent millions of dollars developing it, and there is no market, you've not only thrown away the money, but the time of those valuble people involved on the project.
Thus venture capitalists!
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The one advantage I've had was having hundreds of pro customers from many different sectors, for many years. It's why I was able to talk to adobe and Apple.
And you've helped me understand a lot more about it. Thanks.
Nice catch TenoBell! I wonder how much Adobe's profits have been affected as well?
don't forget that Avid almost went out of business once because they were dropping their support for Apple on the high end. They ended up firing management, and reorganizing the company. They needed more money as well.
They should have learned from that.
Adobe is much less dependent on Apple than they are. PS has no more than about 30% of its sales to Mac users. That's still a lot. But it's no company buster.
Comments
I'm sure Adobe still has the heart of the innovator as melgross, you so eloquently and calmly explained, but since we are kind of like little Cretaceous mice trying to get the dinosaurs to evolve faster I think it is useful to spend more time critiquing than defending.
I still run into people in school who, when they need to make a poster or flyer, ask me about that program that was easy to use and was "something like Photoshop I think." It was PageMaker and it was simple enough that with 30 minutes of playing around, you could make a cool little poster and move on to something else. Now I tell them, well they can use Illustrator, and it is great for many things, but they have to be aware that they can get lost in layer/raster vs. vector purgatory and waste 20 minutes trying to figure out why their text boxes aren't working the right way.
They know Word sucks, they may have tried Publisher, but when they send those posters to friends they don't open up and they don't yet (they are almost there) get the idea of putting everything to pdf so that almost anyone can see them and at the same time they can't accidently edit them.
So here are my points about Adobe and innovation:
1. PageMaker needed to be simplified and marketed to the 95% of the public that doesn't need InDesign. Apple buys the core of FinalCut and then makes FCExpress and maintains iMovie for normal people. Why doesn't Adobe do that? It is EASY to make a basic iApp now. People in their garages were making simple graphical programs 10 years ago and they were impressive, but they are not now - why? - because 15 years ago they might make a name for themselves and there was greater innovation industry wide - because the predictable consolidation and buyouts of companies had only just begun. Now with Core-graphics capability in OSX, the average joe could even do more. I bet even PageMaker could be written in 5-10% of its original lines of code. So Adobe deserves criticism for spending so much time tweaking Photoshop and creating the CS, and ignoring 90% of the market. That is why I give Apple higher innovation points than Adobe.
2. Lightbox looks to be cool and has some features Apple was dumb to ignore, BUT it doesn't take long watching their video tutors from the website to see how much Adobe borrowed from Apple. They have metadata editing with blue bubbles that look exactly like Mail addressing. They have UI toggles that act like Expose within the app and even have a function that greys out all of the menues and leaves the photo at full brightness. I'm surprised they didn't put their histogram controls in a separate layer that overlays on the image itself and call it Light*Dash*Board. Imitation is fine and they are SMART to do so, but it isn't INNOVATION. That said it looks better than Aperture in many ways, but then again it is still beta while Apple threw Aperture out probably prematurely.
3. Just because it is hard to add improvements to an app like PS, doesn't excuse anything. Yeah, we've heard it's "hard" to occupy Iraq, it's hard to be a pimp, and it's hard to rewrite code - look at Vista - but that is sort of their job. In the amount of time Apple moved from IBM to Intel and from 32-bit to 64-bit, what has Adobe really done? It created its Quark-killer and done well with it and it has made baby steps toward integrating the Creative Suite to something of good workflow. But it hasn't made ANYTHING easier, simpler, more elegant, more accessible to the average user. Photoshop Elements not withstanding, it has decided to yield the consumer ground to Microsoft. It has decided that only its high-end installed userbase is worth its time and development. Apple has not done that.
I love Adobe and I loved the days when Apple and Adobe were joined at the hip and both innovated well. You could even argue that Apple became lazy before Adobe did, but Apple got through that and now has a corporate structure that forces itself to innovate. Adobe is trying to do the same, but it seems to only be able to concentrate on one thing - a Quarkkiller or a CS. Also Adobe has let down its Mac customers needlessly. It innovated the Windows Lightbox separate from the Mac Lightbox and only now is making the features uniform. Why was that not on day one? Adobe probably just felt like Steve's younger brother, ignored and not appreciated and it wanted to make friends with the big kid on the block (Bill) and now that Steve is cool again, he wants to keep both happy. Well ladeedah, that may make Business 101 sense and is important in middle school, but it isn't innovative.
My last soapbox statements:
Corporate America needs to evolve beyond Business 101. If Business 101 textbooks really were how the real world worked then Business 101 professors would be the wealthiest people on Earth.
Innovation needs to be more than lip service - just look at Ford vs. Toyota ("...but we can't afford to build hybrid cars...").
Acquisitions and consolidation are not always the "smart" business move - just look at AOL/Time-Warner. Sometimes they are ethically lazy, banal, economic Darwinism gamesmanship between overpaid white boys who lost their sense of perspective somewhere between the getting corner office and the time they bulldozed the farmhouse overlooking the valley to put up their dream mansion.
Striving for marketshare shouldn't be the GOAL of your business. It should be one of many ASSESSMENT tools of your business - just look at McDonalds - what is more important, the number of stores you own or quality of food?
These are all problems when accountants, 20-something marketing geniuses and 30-something managerial wonks begin to outnumber your creative staff. They are also problems when you grow big enough that you need to keep shareholders happy enough every 3 months so that they don't fire you and hire the head of Coca Cola to run the company (I know Steve actually did that - he wasn't always smart either).
Business models need to change and our (consumer) view of them need to change so that real innovation isn't stifled by mundane market theories and so that the social and ecological capital of our communities aren't commodified and sold below actual value at your nearest Wal-Mart. <end rant>
Welcome to our new docu-drama, "Adobe Under the Microscope!"
I'm sure Adobe still has the heart of the innovator as melgross, you so eloquently and calmly explained, but since we are kind of like little Cretaceous mice trying to get the dinosaurs to evolve faster I think it is useful to spend more time critiquing than defending.
Nothing wrong with critiquing. I do it constantly when I beta test a program. When I had my company we spoke frequently. There are hundreds of pro's beta testing in the first round that goes out, and thousands in the second, and later ones. They get plenty of critique. Nothing wrong with doing it here as well.
Adobe is one of the more responsive companies out there. But they can't do everything. They are pulled many ways. Even with the pros out there, there is pulling in several different directions at once. What one group insists is required, another group insists will destroy the program. That's hard to reconcile.
I still run into people in school who, when they need to make a poster or flyer, ask me about that program that was easy to use and was "something like Photoshop I think." It was PageMaker and it was simple enough that with 30 minutes of playing around, you could make a cool little poster and move on to something else. Now I tell them, well they can use Illustrator, and it is great for many things, but they have to be aware that they can get lost in layer/raster vs. vector purgatory and waste 20 minutes trying to figure out why their text boxes aren't working the right way.
They know Word sucks, they may have tried Publisher, but when they send those posters to friends they don't open up and they don't yet (they are almost there) get the idea of putting everything to pdf so that almost anyone can see them and at the same time they can't accidently edit them.
Pagemaker was one of my favorite programs. It was so natural to use, you didn't have to think about what you were doing. It didn't get in the way. My daughter started using it for her school projects when she was in 3rd grade. She picked it up quickly. She was sad when moving to X, because she would have to go to classic to use it. She's now in the 10th grade, in an art school, and while she uses InDesogn, and other programs, she still wishes Pagemaker was available for X.
Illustrator, as you say, is much more complex. But it was never designed for that purpose.
Publisher is a terrible program. It seems that the only "professional" use for it is for school yearbooks. Those companies insist on Publisher files because it's a Windows program, and it's cheap. Too bad its files aren't compatible with any useful publishing program.
So here are my points about Adobe and innovation:
1. PageMaker needed to be simplified and marketed to the 95% of the public that doesn't need InDesign. Apple buys the core of FinalCut and then makes FCExpress and maintains iMovie for normal people. Why doesn't Adobe do that? It is EASY to make a basic iApp now. People in their garages were making simple graphical programs 10 years ago and they were impressive, but they are not now - why? - because 15 years ago they might make a name for themselves and there was greater innovation industry wide - because the predictable consolidation and buyouts of companies had only just begun. Now with Core-graphics capability in OSX, the average joe could even do more. I bet even PageMaker could be written in 5-10% of its original lines of code. So Adobe deserves criticism for spending so much time tweaking Photoshop and creating the CS, and ignoring 90% of the market. That is why I give Apple higher innovation points than Adobe.
Pagemaker, as I've said, is simple enough. It is available to Windows users as a business publishing program, rather than as a high end publishing program such as InDesign and Quark.
Adobe has a very good program which offers many PS features, and offers some that hadn't been available in PS. You can use it on a very simple, streamlined level, or can get underneath and dig into more sophisticated feature sets. It's also cheap. Very cheap for what it does. It's called Photoshop Elements.
People were writing programs in their garage 15 years ago because programs of all types were much simpler then. Now, it's harder to compete, because even those "garage" programs are far more complex and sophisticated from years of upgrades.
Those really simple programs do come out, but no one is interested. They are too basic. They are coming out all the time. But they die.
2. Lightbox looks to be cool and has some features Apple was dumb to ignore, BUT it doesn't take long watching their video tutors from the website to see how much Adobe borrowed from Apple. They have metadata editing with blue bubbles that look exactly like Mail addressing. They have UI toggles that act like Expose within the app and even have a function that greys out all of the menues and leaves the photo at full brightness. I'm surprised they didn't put their histogram controls in a separate layer that overlays on the image itself and call it Light*Dash*Board. Imitation is fine and they are SMART to do so, but it isn't INNOVATION. That said it looks better than Aperture in many ways, but then again it is still beta while Apple threw Aperture out probably prematurely.
Don't assume Adobe copied anything from Apple. Lightbox's development was going on for quite a while before Apple came out with a premature version of Aperture. It's even possible, from the buzz in the industry, that Apple heard about Lightbox, and rushed Aperture out the door.
Also, as far as the way the program looks. Apple has developer guidelines as to how a program should work, and how it should look. If Adobe (and MS with Office) decides to try to adhere as much as they can to those guidelines, you can't quarrel with that.
Then when Apple breaks all of its own guidelines, you should wonder why, as many have done with their many odd, and changing, choices.
3. Just because it is hard to add improvements to an app like PS, doesn't excuse anything. Yeah, we've heard it's "hard" to occupy Iraq, it's hard to be a pimp, and it's hard to rewrite code - look at Vista - but that is sort of their job. In the amount of time Apple moved from IBM to Intel and from 32-bit to 64-bit, what has Adobe really done? It created its Quark-killer and done well with it and it has made baby steps toward integrating the Creative Suite to something of good workflow. But it hasn't made ANYTHING easier, simpler, more elegant, more accessible to the average user. Photoshop Elements not withstanding, it has decided to yield the consumer ground to Microsoft. It has decided that only its high-end installed userbase is worth its time and development. Apple has not done that.
First of all, let's not bring the failure of Iraq into this.
And while I said that it's hard, I also said that Adobe constantly adds features. What is hard, is adding them in a rational way, into a program that is already loaded down with features that have been demanded by its users.
You mention Vista. That is certainly a poor example of how to go about doing it. They had to abandon all the code they wrote over several years, and rewrite it completely. Not with more new code, but with 2003 sever code. Something that was already old, but proven. Then they had to throw features out like seamen throwing buckets of water over the side of a boat while trying to stay afloat. And after all that, all they really seem to have come up with is a new look. Hardly worth it by most accounts.
A lot of what Apple has done is to go to Intel, and have them design mobo's for them. going back to 32 bits, by the way, and angering many.
I would also say that their professional products are NOT for the average user. They do, and should, require months of continuous, and hard work to master. That's the difference between Elements, a home program (that some digital pros on the basic level do use), and the Creative suite that is intended for career professionals to get major works of advertising, newspaper , and other forms of magazine, book, and additional commercial quality work out the door in a consistant and dependable way, every day—no excuses, and on deadline, where many millions of dollars are at stake.
I love Adobe and I loved the days when Apple and Adobe were joined at the hip and both innovated well. You could even argue that Apple became lazy before Adobe did, but Apple got through that and now has a corporate structure that forces itself to innovate. Adobe is trying to do the same, but it seems to only be able to concentrate on one thing - a Quarkkiller or a CS. Also Adobe has let down its Mac customers needlessly. It innovated the Windows Lightbox separate from the Mac Lightbox and only now is making the features uniform. Why was that not on day one? Adobe probably just felt like Steve's younger brother, ignored and not appreciated and it wanted to make friends with the big kid on the block (Bill) and now that Steve is cool again, he wants to keep both happy. Well ladeedah, that may make Business 101 sense and is important in middle school, but it isn't innovative.
Sadly enough, Apple parted from Adobe, before Adobe parted with Apple. Instead of trying to work something out with Adobe years ago, when Apple was much bigger, and Adobe was much smaller, over the expense of Type 1 fonts, Apple instead went to MS to develop the Adobe busting Truetype fonts. At the time, fonts were the largest source of profit at Adobe, and they felt that Apple had betrayed them. The loss set them back financially for several years. That's a good part of the reason why Adobe backed away from Apple as Apple's sales began to fall in the mid '90's. They no longer felt comfortable with Apple. They had to protect the company, as well, from MS's growing presence in their markets.
It's also why they went with MS to develop the newer OpenType. Apple was later asked to join, but declined.
My last soapbox statements:
Corporate America needs to evolve beyond Business 101. If Business 101 textbooks really were how the real world worked then Business 101 professors would be the wealthiest people on Earth.
Innovation needs to be more than lip service - just look at Ford vs. Toyota ("...but we can't afford to build hybrid cars...").
Acquisitions and consolidation are not always the "smart" business move - just look at AOL/Time-Warner. Sometimes they are ethically lazy, banal, economic Darwinism gamesmanship between overpaid white boys who lost their sense of perspective somewhere between the getting corner office and the time they bulldozed the farmhouse overlooking the valley to put up their dream mansion.
Striving for marketshare shouldn't be the GOAL of your business. It should be one of many ASSESSMENT tools of your business - just look at McDonalds - what is more important, the number of stores you own or quality of food?
These are all problems when accountants, 20-something marketing geniuses and 30-something managerial wonks begin to outnumber your creative staff. They are also problems when you grow big enough that you need to keep shareholders happy enough every 3 months so that they don't fire you and hire the head of Coca Cola to run the company (I know Steve actually did that - he wasn't always smart either).
Business models need to change and our (consumer) view of them need to change so that real innovation isn't stifled by mundane market theories and so that the social and ecological capital of our communities aren't commodified and sold below actual value at your nearest Wal-Mart. <end rant>
That's too much to comment on separately.
But, while I agree on theoretical grounds, as one who has had two business's over a period of 35 years, I can say that theory and practice rarely meet up in the real world. with all the best intentions, companies must do what works. That isn't always what some would want, but it is what has to be done.
A company's first responsibility is to stay in business while attempting to make a profit, and stay at a size that will allow the business model to function.
We all try to have the best products possible. But what that means differs between reasonable people.
Sometimes it means copying products, to a certain extent, while adding your own (hopefully) unique, and worthy additions, or differences. Sometimes it means coming out with something entirely new, if you think there will be a market for it.
A router company makes routers. There isn't much any one company can do to innovate, because the standards won't allow it.
A software company has more leeway, but not so much that they can do whatever they want. They have to do market assessments first, as any company must. It's fine to come out with a unique product. But if you spent millions of dollars developing it, and there is no market, you've not only thrown away the money, but the time of those valuble people involved on the project.
I have heard a lot of ideas from customers for new features and programs, but most are so tied to that one persons needs, that they wouldn't fly.
The one advantage I've had was having hundreds of pro customers from many different sectors, for many years. It's why I was able to talk to adobe and Apple.
Pagemaker was one of my favorite programs. It was so natural to use, you didn't have to think about what you were doing. It didn't get in the way. My daughter started using it for her school projects when she was in 3rd grade. She picked it up quickly. She was sad when moving to X, because she would have to go to classic to use it. She's now in the 10th grade, in an art school, and while she uses InDesogn, and other programs, she still wishes Pagemaker was available for X.
Illustrator, as you say, is much more complex. But it was never designed for that purpose.
Publisher is a terrible program. It seems that the only "professional" use for it is for school yearbooks. Those companies insist on Publisher files because it's a Windows program, and it's cheap. Too bad its files aren't compatible with any useful publishing program.
We certainly agree.
Adobe has a very good program which offers many PS features, and offers some that hadn't been available in PS. You can use it on a very simple, streamlined level, or can get underneath and dig into more sophisticated feature sets. It's also cheap. Very cheap for what it does. It's called Photoshop Elements.
That's why I mentioned Elements.
People were writing programs in their garage 15 years ago because programs of all types were much simpler then. Now, it's harder to compete, because even those "garage" programs are far more complex and sophisticated from years of upgrades.
Those really simple programs do come out, but no one is interested. They are too basic. They are coming out all the time. But they die.
That is why Apple developed CoreAudio and friends. Web-based apps will also lower the bar to creating good code. The problem is not just in having to make your apps more sophisticated as you say, but in also being able to get anyone to notice or care. We will need a little renaissance in "garage" programs as coding becomes more sophisticated - the promise of object-based languages. But if the powers that be see them as threats they will continue to work the system in their favor and further limit the horizon for small companies.
Don't assume Adobe copied anything from Apple. Lightbox's development was going on for quite a while before Apple came out with a premature version of Aperture. It's even possible, from the buzz in the industry, that Apple heard about Lightbox, and rushed Aperture out the door.
I didn't. I know Adobe was working on Lightbox before Apple worked on Aperture. I was not comparing the two. But Apple developed Expose and Dashboard and Mail long before Adobe was working on Lightbox.
Also, as far as the way the program looks. Apple has developer guidelines as to how a program should work, and how it should look. If Adobe (and MS with Office) decides to try to adhere as much as they can to those guidelines, you can't quarrel with that.
And again I'm not quarreling with that. I'm simply stating that adhering to guidelines is not the same as innovating.
You mention Vista. That is certainly a poor example of how to go about doing it.
That's why I mentioned it.
Sadly enough, Apple parted from Adobe, before Adobe parted with Apple. Instead of trying to work something out with Adobe years ago, when Apple was much bigger, and Adobe was much smaller, over the expense of Type 1 fonts, Apple instead went to MS to develop the Adobe busting Truetype fonts.
Thanks for mentioning that, I didn't know.
But, while I agree on theoretical grounds, as one who has had two business's over a period of 35 years, I can say that theory and practice rarely meet up in the real world. with all the best intentions, companies must do what works. That isn't always what some would want, but it is what has to be done.
My point is that it is inherent in the system that business are put in that situation. And the free market is great and it is "healthy" to promote competition and all, but it is also important to realize that people invented the system and it can be changed if enough people want it. It is a tool, not an end.
A company's first responsibility is to stay in business while attempting to make a profit, and stay at a size that will allow the business model to function.
And it is government's first responsibility (however onerous it may seem) to make sure that business has the freedom to operate but the responsibility to do so in a way that doesn't too adversely affect our social and ecological needs.
A router company makes routers. There isn't much any one company can do to innovate, because the standards won't allow it.
That is when a discovery/invention becomes a commodity. That is the difference between Apple and Dell. One concentrates on best practices in producing and delivering a commodity, while the other is trying to maintain a continually evolving experience based on pushing the boundaries of devices that are soon to become commodities.
They have to do market assessments first, as any company must. It's fine to come out with a unique product. But if you spent millions of dollars developing it, and there is no market, you've not only thrown away the money, but the time of those valuble people involved on the project.
Thus venture capitalists!
The one advantage I've had was having hundreds of pro customers from many different sectors, for many years. It's why I was able to talk to adobe and Apple.
And you've helped me understand a lot more about it. Thanks.
You need to have at least 50 posts before you're allowed to question me, so shut your pie-hole!
absurd
Avid's shares drop 14% because Apple's Intel computers are selling well and it did not offer its UB version of ProTools HD faster.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2006/0...markets08.html
Nice catch TenoBell! I wonder how much Adobe's profits have been affected as well?
don't forget that Avid almost went out of business once because they were dropping their support for Apple on the high end. They ended up firing management, and reorganizing the company. They needed more money as well.
They should have learned from that.
Adobe is much less dependent on Apple than they are. PS has no more than about 30% of its sales to Mac users. That's still a lot. But it's no company buster.