I was GAF on the whole buyout when i heard about it. but i've had time to percolate on it and now i'm thinking it sucks.
the allaire/macromedia saga was a fairly good fit for cf developers - allaire needed more exposure and macromedia was the perfect company for it. mm even took it a few large steps further and made some nice advances in cf and the server tier - by introducing flex and flash remoting they showed the they were commited to the product. macromedia has always been a 'primary point' for web developers - dreamweaver ain't that bad and for making 'webpages' it is definately better than the competition. adobe on the other hand, is nothing like macromedia. adobe started out with one really successful mac product. form there they've centered around visual media - images, illustrations and movies. their best 'web-capable' product is the PDF, and everybody knows how much pdfs suck. it's like using paper. it's easy to work out that adobe has a lot of capital, and a large client base. it's also easy to see that the company is turning stale - being out-competed with existing products and no 'oooh' products for years. the last time i oooh-ed at an adobe product was when i found imageready bundled with ps5. but then i found fireworks and never looked back. it's also obvious to see that mm is a rising star - the flash player installs alone makes it worth +3bil, imho. so what's adobe doing? it appears that they want us, the mm market, and that's where my problem lies. have a look at the adobe website and then the mm website. the adobe site is generic, staid and aimed at the broadest audience possible. the mm website is stylish and caters more to the developers than the managers. i took pride in the macromedia community. i like being part of a niche industry that knows where it stands. i like the uniqueness of macromedia and they way it says, 'we are designers, we developers, we are on the edge'. adobe just says, 'we are corporate'. so is this it? am i to be assimilated into the adobe machine. will the racyness of mm disappear into blandsville? will adobe even continue with the mm product line - couldn't they be approaching this in a MS way and killing the competition - 'flashpaper? never heard of it? dreamweaver? don't you mean goLive?' whatever the result, i'm going to be watching these companies closely over the next year or so. i'll also be dusting off my java textbooks, as insurance. what does everybody think - is this a market grab, a competition squash, or strategic maneuver, and where will it lead us? G --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aussie Macromedia Developers: http://lists.daemon.com.au/
