What Adobe does, it does extremely well. They have a focused audience and steer their design toward that audience. Adobe has been, and likely for the foreseeable future will be, the gatekeepers of content generation. Given this current situation though, are there potentially turbulent times ahead for Adobe?
Where is the turbulence? Adobe's Air is mostly hot. Adobe's Flash is now seeing a three pronged attack against it that would make Erwin Rommel shudder in fear.
On one front, we have the unyielding Steve Jobs that has been clearly attacking ground on both Flash and content generation. Premier has been hacked down by both Final Cut Pro and Avid. Aperture has clearly specialized in on photography far enough that Photoshop's jack-of-all-trades may get caught slouching.
On the second front, the elephant known as Microsoft is peddling Silverlight.
On the final front, and perhaps the worst one, Google is attacking Flash with a driving push toward HTML5 and CSS. The move is even so bold as to having Google give up on proprietary elements such as Gears. Factor in the iPad and iPhone into the HTML5 / CSS attack, and Air deflates a little more.
Let's assume that the future continues to crumble for Adobe in those two capacities. No more Flash design needs. No new Air market design needs.
What now? Could the boat be sinking for a company that doesn't have as much diversity and flexibility as the other three? Can Adobe count on being allowed in a room that is getting more and more locked out in the iPad / iPhone? What if Microsoft or Apple start pushing their own content generation packages that start clipping further into Adobe's markets?
If we look into a future that more clearly focuses on content creation and the audience that needs it, is there a possible end-zone run here? "Tolerated" status on Microsoft turf, potential competitor on Apple turf, and no turf likely on Google OS, what is a company to do?
In the realm of pure speculation, what if Adobe adopted Linux with both arms?
Now before you bust out laughing, I ask you to consider the following few questions. Please note that some of them involve billions of dollars worth of potential revenue.
1) How desirable do you think a completely beautifully designed Adobe Creative Workstation would be to a design company? By designers and artists for designers and artists. The best possible interfaces and the best possible hardware.
2) How much would companies like to have a workstation that focuses strictly on their work without the additional overhead of licensing fees or yearly operating system upgrade fees?
3) How much do you think Hollywood with its extremely deep pockets would like to have Photoshop rendering and running on zero-license fee workstations instead of the alternatives? Remember, Hollywood needs computing workstations and render nodes like the Roman army needed soldiers.
4) How much value is there in a system that is custom designed, tweaked, and precision tuned the way that no do-it-all system could be? Fewer crashes as Adobe would have a fixed target platform. More refinements and performance tuning than ever possible on proprietary operating systems in addition to open ended render nodes for (3) above.
Finally, as wild as this might sound, I'd point all of the readers that know little about Autodesk's Flint, Flame, and Inferno stations over to their respective links.
Linux as Adobe's end run? Maybe, just maybe...
I'd also add that I find it completely unfortunate that more Linux vendors don't cater to audience specific high dividend production pipelines. They are everywhere, and yet not a single shop has been set up to deal with the specific needs of these sorts of industries.
11 comments:
You had me at "The boat is sinking."
I'll be first in line to cheer Flash's death as the industry standard for video delivery.
But Adobe has a serious competitor in its specific market for the Creative Suite than Microsoft does for Windows--alternatives exist and may one day overtake the big dogs, but realistically, they have such a dominant market share that everyone else has YEARS of catching up to do.
The idea of targeted, controlled workstations (running Linux) makes me want to stick a fork in my eye philosophically, but from a business perspective, it sounds like an easy sell.
If you can compete with Apple's "we're the only choice in design hardware" brand.
I'm happy to see Adobe being challenged. What I wonder is whether we'll see tools built into Flash and Dreamweaver that exploit building websites and content using HTML 5. I doubt it, as it'd shoot some of their own projects in the foot
Dead Flash = Yay!
Interesting positing.
Reminds me a bit of Blender/Nuke work for the HUD scene in Iron Man you linked to in IRC.
Sounds like you should look into a start-up company ;)
Oh come on, Aperture 3 is 2 years too late :)
@prokoudine:
You bring up a legitimate and interesting thought. Why did they make Aperture at all?
In that specialization we can see the future. If you are a photographer, are you more likely to select a photography specific application that elevates the features _you_ require or a jack-of-all-trades Photoshop?
It is by no small fluke that Adobe created Lightroom.
Wait and watch as more products peel apart into specialist domains.
This is about computing, and it is evolving. I'll gamble and say that it is evolving right back to the *nix ideal - do one thing and do it extremely well.
Um, you got me wrong. Aperture 3, that is third version of Aperture with its feature set is two years too late regarding Lightroom which already had most of this two years ago.
I think features are an aside. The point that either program exist is a testament to the evolution of specialty and diversity.
I think features are an aside. The point that either program exist is a testament to the evolution of specialty and diversity.
Oh come on, Aperture 3 is 2 years too late :)
Dead Flash = Yay!
Interesting positing.
Reminds me a bit of Blender/Nuke work for the HUD scene in Iron Man you linked to in IRC.
Sounds like you should look into a start-up company ;)
You had me at "The boat is sinking."
I'll be first in line to cheer Flash's death as the industry standard for video delivery.
But Adobe has a serious competitor in its specific market for the Creative Suite than Microsoft does for Windows--alternatives exist and may one day overtake the big dogs, but realistically, they have such a dominant market share that everyone else has YEARS of catching up to do.
The idea of targeted, controlled workstations (running Linux) makes me want to stick a fork in my eye philosophically, but from a business perspective, it sounds like an easy sell.
If you can compete with Apple's "we're the only choice in design hardware" brand.
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