Digital Workshop

So Adobe is absorbing/buying/merging with Macromedia. Do we think that's a good thing or a bad thing? Will PDF get Flashy or vice versa?

It certainly means increasingly more power in increasingly fewer hands and from our point of view Goliath has just put on a few pounds

Paul Harris

I hope the monopolies and mergers are looking into this! What'll be the competition?

My guess is that Adobe will focus on the web and Flash. This is where they are weakest and where the biggest revenue growth is seen to be. Applying Flash to mobile phones and other new media etc.

The competition will come from completely unexpected directions as technology shifts and someone seizes a new opportunity and the big platers can't respond quickly enough. The problem now is that the big US companies are now so entrenched it will take something very special to gain a momentum they can't silence and smother.

But we'll be doggedly offering our brand of competition and we'll be working on some new ideas once we've released the 05 versions.

Paul Harris

What about Avalon from Microsoft? I heard a bit about this being a sort of competitor to flash when it launches next year? I heard somethin about 3D application development for Longhorn ?

Will this be something that we can expect to see Opus working with in future? Or have I completely misunderstood the platform!?

Avalon is a new GUI for Windows, which in itself probably isn't that useful for Opus. However there might be related bits of technology that we can use. We'll have to see what happens with Avalon as I read one article saying it had been shelved, but if not it's still some way off before it becomes standard enough for us to use.

I must say, I'm not entirely surprised.

These two lumbering, prehistoric old thorns in the side of the multimedia producer are like kith and kin anyway. I loathe both companies, not for any other reason than their software is the most unintuitive, learning-curve intensive, bizarre-concept, festoonment of dockable windows with the most arrogant and rank exposure of the underlying parameters to their engine that I've ever seen...

In the past, I've had to endure their software due to their overwhelming monopoly, so I'm not unbiased when I say how glad I am to see genuinely productive and *better* alternatives like Opus, and I can only see the forthcoming merger as the next step in the corporation overbloat that will inevitably result in their downfall.

But, as I say, I'm totally biased and an optimist!

Melanie

I am sorry to hear this opinion about Macromedia and Adobe. These two companies have changed the way of the internet in a way that can not be way back.
I believe that the merger will provide not beneficial for the entire web community for one reason: monopoly.
Cybernaut

Uhm ... monopoly is good?

With each new release since 4, Adobe has made the Acrobat publishing process less intuitive and offered fewer features to the Reader side. With each new release of Director, Macromedia has made the programming more convoluted while feeding its obsessive compulsion to retain the "stage" and "actors" metaphor rather than evolve to the more intuitive "forms and objects" approach.

If Director were released today -- with its steep learning curve and Timeline limitations (unless you love writing code) it would be roundly rejected as clunky, unfriendly and requiring too many third-party plug-ins in order to complete relatively basic functions. Director holds a large market share due to its established brand name and a large installed base. Sure, honor the firm for establishing its product so well (and for doing so quite early in the game!); but it's ludicrous to celebrate the product's evolution into the dysfunctional beast it has become.

I have to agree with Robert about Director. It's amazing to me how many people still use that difficult "beast" when a product like Opus Pro, which is a good $1000 cheaper, does almost everything Director does and at a fraction of the time and effort spent.

However, I disagree about Adobe, at least with GoLive. I love GoLive CS. To me, it' very intuitive.

I'll take a look at GoLive. I was really thinking about how Adobe has tinkered with Acrobat (the full product) until now it resembles some bizarre mutant strain.

Come to think of it, PhotoShop has become pretty unwieldy, too, over the years. It's a good example of a great product at risk of succumbing to Feature Bloat. When Paint Shop Pro 7 competed, it was less robust but did most necessary jobs quickly & easily. PSP9 is more robust -- and more complicated as a result.

I agree about Photoshop - and Illustrator. They are far more difficult than they need be.