CNN/Money has their own rehash of the merge up. They mostly look at this from a shareholder standpoint. This avoids the real issue here related to what these companies do (other than make money) and looks only to how adobe with be worth more int he future with its new baby. The end question of “Is the sector on the verge of a major wave of consolidation?” is interesting but doesn’t really touch on the fact that the only real players in the professional digital design field are combining. Sure you can do some of the same things that adobe and macomedia do with software from microsoft, apple and a host of other companies but adobe/macromedia are the standard that we live and design by.
Archive for the 'Web design' Category
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John Dvorak has his own version of the merger. He seems to think adobe bought macromedia so microsoft wouldn’t and so they could stay ahead of the competition. I don’t think i can completely agree here. Adobe hasn’t purchased its competitor to stay ahead of a software house that doesn’t know the first thing about making good design-ware(just look at the huge piece of crap called frontpage!) Adobe may be devouring this company to get ahead and stay ahead but this has little if nothing to do with microsoft, if anything this has to do with adobe looking to replace some products that it makes badly(goLive) and eliminating the best competition out there.
via /.
Ok, I may be taking this too far, but I really want to keep up with these design changes because this may mean really big changes for my software life especially when it comes to cost and application choice. Little Gamers put up a comic today about the merger and how they think the day of flash is over now we can look forward to the animate gif… ha. There is also a long rant that discusses what they think is good and bad with the merger… some of the points are good and they agree with me about the need to rid the world of goLive (the sooner the better!)
Wired News has a story from webmonkey that tried to soothe some of my worries. They think the coming merger will be good for cross application integration. I agree that i would love to have some of the application integration that macromedia has in its programs added to my design suite. I’d love to start a logo design in flash and then export it to any size in photoshop to finish up the work for publication.
MacSlash seems to think dreamweaver is going to get axed in this merger. This would be a monumentally bad idea on Adobe’s part because their goLive software sucks compared to everything else on the market and dreamweaver is the current standard for web based design worldwide.
The Register has a good article on the coming merger. They mention the idea of a coming monopoly in design and how the new aquisition shouldn’t hurt my dual loves of dreamweaver and flash. More info as I read it.
I’m sure all already know this but, it was announced today that Adobe is going to aquire Macromedia for 3.4 billion dollars in stock. This is a huge deal as to most used web design and animation products are put out by either of these companies. Plus the fact that the default standard for easy animation is Flash and the most open standard for document creation is the PDF. This can only be good for the world, but bad for the small developer. It is already impossible for a student to afford photoshop, does this acquisition mean the cost of macromedia studio is going to skyrocket?! Hopefully Adobe keeps the macromedia product costs down and developes a better pricing system as the over 1000 it costs to buy any of their products right now is just way to much!
Now some links to stories on the aquisition around the web:
themacobserver | macworld | gizmodo | Macromedia blog | theregister | newsday | dmn newswire
