http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PUJYKMW5XFXQQQSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleId=170100800&printableArticle=true
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/18/adobe_macromedia/
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html
_Adobe and Macromedia say they now have the shareholder votes needed to complete their proposed $3.4 billion merger.
The deal, announced in early April, is slated to close this fall pending government approval. On Thursday, the companies said nearly 99 percent of the outstanding Adobe and Macromedia shares voted were cast in favor of the deal._
For anybody involved with publishing or graphic design, the merger will be a big deal. The last barrier to the merger is government approval. So what does this leave, Corel?
Corel, and Microsoft. I'm sure that if Adobe/Macromedia would loosen up their grip on their market, MS would be the first to put out a similar product to fill the gap. There have been indications (Expression Studio, XAML, Metro...) that MS is thinking of taking over some of the graphics market share.
>>2
There is a problem. They can't. Professionals out there work with the industry standards that everyone else uses. A good example is Adobe InDesign. When it was first released, it was touted to be the "Xpress killer", the new nemesis of Quark. It didn't turn out like that in many areas of post-production and pre-press/graphic design. Many studios and places out there are still using Quark's stuff. Even if it's old, and uses a very cave man interface. In terms of software and print media, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
In terms of Corel, no body uses their shit. I know of some sketchers that use Painter, mostly because it's very cheap and has relatively good tablet support.
What will be interesting to see is how Adobe's web products evolve. What will happen to ImageReady and GoLive? What about Fireworks and Dreamweaver? More importantly, what about the other various tools of Macromedia; Authorware, Shockwave, Flash, Contribute etc. etc. I honestly do hope that the only changes occur at a business level, and not so heavily at a software level. God knows what could happen as a result.
Another reason why Microsoft can't take over some of the industry: Too many in the graphics industry doesn't use them, as many use Macs. The large-format printers I worked for used to pride themselves on the incredible stability and power their G4 quicksilver workstations had, and hated to mention how often the print-servers/RIP terminals running NT/2k would get restarted from crashing. Sure, Microsoft could take a portion out of the consumer level, but those wanting to either be or work with professionals will be using whatever the industry uses, and I highly doubt it will be made from someone located in Redmond.
Why did Metacreations sell Painter to Corel anyway?
>>5
because they auto-exploded after racking up -$12,4 mill. in 1998?
>In terms of Corel, no body uses their shit.
Huh, you know that Corel bought Jasc/Paint Shop Pro, do you?
PSP is very popular in the low end.
>>5
"MetaCreations announced yesterday (2-3-00) a loss of earnings and they are divesting the entire MetaCreations graphics product line."
www.designertoday.com/tabindex-4/tabId-7/itemid-363/DesktopDefault.aspx
IOW the shareholders had a loss that year, so the company sold all the graphics programs in the hope to make a profit anyway.