Robert Cringely is one of the higher profile tech pundits, and like all pundits, is only barely credible based on predictions coming to pass.
But he brings up again the possibility of Apple buying Adobe.
Actually, he says flat out it's going to happen. His reasons are a teensy bit more interesting this time, plus "inside sources," but I wasn't persuaded before and I'm not now.
He uses the Final Touch acquisition as an example of Apple's commitment to pro apps, and it is...but Final Touch wasn't a $36 billion purchase, as Adobe is likely to be.
Another example he uses is just flat out wrong: "Of course content creation has been the heart of Apple's business ever since the original LaserWriter and the invention of desktop publishing...."
Sorry, try again. Apple didn't own any desktop publishing software. Clarisworks was interesting, but they killed it for good reason. It was a distaction from their core business of building computers and OSes.
Although Apple's core business is changing -- which Apple acknowledged when it dropped "Computer" from its name -- but look at how it's changing.
The first big clue was QuickTime, which is still being used far far FAR more as a distribution and consumption platform than a creation platform. Seriously, QT is critical to us, but are there hundreds of millions of us? No. And the most compelling content being sold in the iTunes Music Store is sometimes only marginally created with QT at all. (I said sometimes.) And even there, the big money is in distribution and consumption.
iPods? Distribution and consumption.
The iPod/iTunes infrastructure is especially interesting to me. It used Mac users as a beta test before rolling it out to the whole world...which is frankly what non-Mac users comprise. Although Apple is growing far faster than the rest of the industry, it'll still be a while before it breaks out of single digit market share, and will likely never reach the heights Apple had before Mac.
(In fact, until stabilized at 3%-ish for a while, and starting a meaningful rise this year, Apple's market share has plummeted at least 90%. Discuss.)
My point here isn't primarily about market share, but about strategy: nobody, and I mean NOBODY, who's playing for keeps can do it on the Mac alone. (Sorry FCP.) Apple's iPod/iTunes business didn't change the world until the whole world could use it.
iPod. iTunes. Distribution. Consumption.
Not creation. You can barely use 'em to create anything.
Add iPhone to the mix: one-to-one distribution, if you will, on a massive scale.
Look, I'm an idiot. I don't know a thing. But I only barely see Adobe fitting into this. Macromedia? Absolutely. I was among the thousands of people who thought Apple should have bought the whole company when they bought FCP from Macromedia. They could have gotten it for a song compared to what Adobe paid.
(Speaking of which, I believe that Adobe paid to be taken over by Macromedia -- the best money that Macromedia never spent. Discuss.)
I say that because Flash is a far bigger distribution platform than QuickTime, and because of its dynamic nature, is part of business infrastructure in ways that QT never will be. Websites are just the beginning. QT may never be useful in a database driven infrastructure. Flash is already being used as an actual driver interface in cars!
So where does the rest of Adobe fit into this. Photoshop might seem like a big fish, but I've heard Adobe folks tell me that they see this as the most vulnerable app in the portfolio: being undercut by digital cameras, iPhoto, Aperture and the like. Those apps are forcing Adobe to change their game to meet Apple's challenge. So why buy it? Maybe to get at Pshop's science and medical business, but that's awfully niche-y.
After Effects? Meet Motion. Encore? Premiere? Encore? Buh-bye. Not that these don't all offer some superior aspects, but $36 billion?
After Flash, PDF is the other central Adobe technology...and Steve spent a full 45 minutes spanking Flash at the WWDC a couple of years ago. Included side-by-side comparisons of performance, image quality, the whole deal. Apple's flavor of PDF came out on top.
I think some of this was a shot over Adobe's bow: yes, PC has been your dominant platform for a decade, but leave Mac development behind at your peril. But how could he not have also been saying, we'd rather have you do this for us...but we can do it ourselves very, very easily.
Again, PDF has powerful features like built-in desktop sharing, video conferencing, etc. -- but I'm still waiting to see anything here that adds up to $36 billion.
Cringely says it will be announced this week. Do you?
Digg it
Can't see Apple making the purchase
He uses the Final Touch acquisition as an example of Apple's commitment to pro apps, and it is...but Final Touch wasn't a $36 billion purchase, as Adobe is likely to be.
That's a single app compared to a multi-billion dollar company. And Roland Wood was more than eager to sell the company. I agree with you Tim that there's no comparison of the Final Touch app and the Adobe company. There's really no reason for Apple to buy Adobe.
Another example he uses is just flat out wrong: "Of course content creation has been the heart of Apple's business ever since the original LaserWriter and the invention of desktop publishing...."
He really doesn't understand Apple does he? Apple is a hardware company. Always has been, always will be. Note the "dongle" that is the Apple computer that is required to run any of the pro apps. If "content creation" was the heart of Apple's business then all of the pro-apps would be cross-platform. In fact Apple removed Windows operability from the one Pro App that used to run on Windows, Shake. It's still works on Linux, but not Windows.
I agree that Macromedia would have been the smart purchase back when they got FCP. Imagine iWeb with Flash / Dreamweaver capabilities. Should be an interesting WWDC again.
Walter Biscardi, Jr. www.biscardicreative.com
Dongling
Cringely mentions the dongle, and goes on to explain it pretty well. But I think you're right that that's the wrong part of even the hardware story.
My brother-in-law worked for Apple for some crazy long time - 11 years? 13? Definitely no less than 11. For a while, his job was to evaluate product design centers. In practice, this meant killing nearly all of them. :-)
The first was Apple scanners. I think that was a play to get at the front of the desktop publishing workflow. Whatever. My boy killed it. He then moved to Apple monitors WAY back in the day. Remember the 17AV monitor? Awesome picture (you'd expect nothing less), but the grounding never worked.
That sucker sent an arc out whenever you got too close to the screen. Thank goodness it was only my hand got shocked, but a couple of times it actually knocked the breath out of me. This wasn't a static electricity thing. This was "little birdies circling my head."
Killed that too.
I think Apple has had a strong software dimension, though. Mac Paint, Mac Draw, even Clarisworks, were all important proof-of-concept apps that got other people to do the heavy lifting developing "real" applications (sez me, anyway), but I look at QuickTime, System 7 and OS X, iTunes and the rest of the iLife suite and others -- those are all home brewed. That's generally not true of the pro apps (Motion is a borderline case -- pretty much the whole team came over intact from Discreet.) But the software that Apple itself has developed is pretty dang cool.
Which cements my argument that they don't need Adobe.
Not that it needs to be repeated, but I will anyway: I'm an idiot. We'll see.
PS. Remember when Macromedia Final Cut was going to be the front end for the Windows-only Media 100 844/x? :-)
A *small* tweak on the story...
Loved your recital, Tim.
Very cool telling and a great review of the facts.
A small tweak, though: Key Grip was slated to be the exclusive front-end to what became the Windows-based iFinish, not the Media 100 844/x. Key Grip was slated to appear in early 1997 and there was a huge press event at the Macromedia Worldwide Developers Conference in September of 1996. It was probably the last major event that Bud Colligan did before he was ousted from the helm of Macromedia.
As I recall, 844/x didn't happen for a few years and used the Pegasus engine, whereas the iFinish used the same P6000 architecture that replaced the Vincent boards.
Are the former Discreet guys still at Apple? Last I heard, Dion was gone and I am not sure about the others.
Best always,
Ron Lindeboom