Adobe as King, designer's view.
Hi, I'm new to this thread, but you folks have me convinced.
I'm a graphic designer, BA UCLA summa cum laude. I thought I'd share my graphic apps knowledge.
Adobe's video products (Premiere and After Effects) face a strong challenge from Apple's Final Cut. Final Cut works better for large projects (professionals). Since Apple sells the computers that run Final Cut they can optimize the Hardware/Software combination. Apple will do very well in this market. Apple also includes a consumer video editing app with their iMac video machines. This app is quite adequate form most peoples needs.
In the desk top area Adobe has one product that won't be challenged, Photoshop. Photoshop is such a large and deep product that, in my opinion, it can't be challenged. I've been working with it for years and I still don't know all of it. Photoshop is integrated with ImageReady (compression). Adobe's Acrobat product is rapidly becoming the format of choice for printing because of it's color matching capabilities and cross platform ease of use, so I'd say that Acrobat is here to stay. Acrobat is a fabulous product with many other uses and is becoming ubiquitous on the internet. Adobe also sells a powerful product called PressReady used for color correction in printing an is probably the leader in the color correction field.
Adobe is currently challenging Quark in the publishing area with InDesign. Quark is universally hated in the publishing area for price gouging, poor support, and application bloat (Quark 4), however it remains to be seen if Adobe will be successful here as Quark has a 10 year lead. (Interestingly Quark 4 was the first upgrade to Quark 3.3 in 8 or so years)
Adobe's other desk top app, Illustrator faces a significant challenge from Macromedia's Freehand. Not because it is better but because Macromedia has executed a flanking maneuver.
Macromedia's Director had and has no competitor. Macromedia used it's expertise to buy and develop Flash which has become ubiquitous on the internet. Currently Flash has no competitor. Some 90% of internet users have the flash plug-in according to Macromedia and I believe it comes standard with Netscape and Explorer or will be imbedded soon. Flash, Freehand and Illustrator are vector based. Flash is rapidly becoming integrated with Freehand as is Macromedia's Fireworks (image compression) this strengthens Freehand as a competitor in its war with Illustrator. Macromedia also has an integrated Database/Server app 'Generator' that is integrated with Flash. I'm not as familiar with this app but it seems to be coming on gangbusters.
Adobe's ImageReady and Macromedia's Fireworks (image compression) apps are roughly neck in neck as they are both integrated with strong apps.
Adobe has a product to compete with Flash in development (LiveView I think they call it). However Macromedia already has it's 4th iteration of flash available so it is doubtful that LiveView will unseat Flash. In addition Adobe's product uses the flash codec so it is unlikely that it will succeed except among Adobe diehards and it will probably have to pay royalties to Macromedia. Macromedia's SoundEdit is also the most widly used sound editor by net designers.
All in all I'd say that Photoshop will probably retain it's lead in the desktop publishing area which is pretty saturated.
Macromedia, however, is the clear leader now in the internet graphics area. It seems to have had a clearer and more powerful strategy for grabbing the lead in this rapidly expanding market. It also seems to have executed this strategy effectively. In addition it seems to be extending this lead by tying in other graphics apps and it's newer 'Generator' product to it's Flash App.
Doren |
