Replies to post #826 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[tomm]

I agree with this cribbed piece from TMF

Whether FCP is a better product than Adobe Premiere is really immaterial. The important news is that Apple is squeezing third part developers out of its platform. If Adobe abandons Premiere, will that decision play a factor when it comes time to code the next version of Photoshop or Illustrator?

As LongHook has stated many times, the health of a platform is dependent on the developers who are willing to code their applications for it. As Apple gets into the habit of competing with developers on its platform, it may be heading for a future where all major commercial applications are Apple-coded.

That would appear to be a foolish move because the whole point of having third party developers is to help spread the risk and capital investment that software development projects entail. Taking control of the entire software market may increase profit margins in the short term, but would most likely hurt long term growth.

The same trend is much further along with Apple's channel control where distribution and retail partners are getting squeezed into oblivion with the combination of the Apple Store web site and the Apple Retail venture.

The worst-case scenario for Apple is for the remaining ISV's to look at the plight of Apple's hardware-sales partners and decide to pre-emptively discontinue Mac versions of their software rather than wait passively for Apple to invade their turf in search of a bigger slice of a smaller pie.

To avoid that particular path, Apple should reconsider its apparent software strategy of pre-emption instead of cooperation. Stabbing partners repeatedly in the back only works if there are no viable alternatives. That's how Microsoft get away with it, and how Walmart keeps squeezing its vendors/competitors. Both are so big that not doing business with them isn't really an option. Apple doesn't have that luxury and this strategy seems short-sighted, IMO.

[Jim is Jim]

Who needs many ADBE products?

I'd like to see a new incarnation of ATM Deluxe for OS X, but it won't happen.

I've upgraded Acrobat faithfully over the years, but am beginning to think that with Panther, I won't be using many parts of Acrobat any more... or at least not very often.

I still use Photoshop.... versions 5.5 and 6.... since I haven't even learned 15% of Photoshop's abilities, I'm not going to upgrade to 7 unless I have to for some other reason (can't think what that would be right now).

I'd like to use InDesign or PageMaker for much of my pubishing work, but my bosses have decided to mandate Frame from now on -- I would speculate that Frame will become a Windows-only package in the not-to-distant future. I may as well be right now, considering how clunky it is.

I use Illustrator 10 to do light illustrating/revision work when I can do it faster than handing it off to one of our illustrators.

Dunno about the rest of you, but it looks like the handwriting is on the wall concerning ADBE and Mac OS support. I'd bet it's a long slide into nothing ADBE for mac eventually.... which will mean a lot of publishing houses and service bureaus will be forced into VPC or buying Dulls at some point. 2-3 years ago, I'd have said this was an impossibility, but now I think it's only a matter of time.

I blame MOT. Looking at the IBM timeline for PPC development beyond the 970, if MOT had not been holding back AAPL hardware for so long, the hardware and software market would look mighty different today, IMO.

With some luck and continued IBM progress on the HW side, maybe ADBE will reverse course, but it will be a struggle either way for those of us using macs to make a living in publishing -- something I thought I'd never say.

Jim
(is Jim)

[weco_guy]

Re: Premiere..

I have it, tried it once or twice, luckily for me it was a find at a flea market, a collection of several versions, but the first included the serial number, so it was a simple matter to download the very latest at the time.. all for $12... :) But, with the move to OS X, there is now way I'd go back to OS 9 for it, and it's very doubtful I' spend real money on the package.. They (Adobe) did the right thing, one more thing I can cart ot to the garage..

weco