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Smells Like An Exit Strategy (7/5/01)
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You all know that Adobe is skipping Macworld Expo this time around, allegedly for financial reasons (though the company seems to be doing pretty well on the money front, relatively speaking). For the most part, we ignored the first round of conspiracy theories regarding Adobe's no-show status, because most of it was simply too obvious for words: "News flash! Sources report that the real reason why Adobe is skipping the Expo is because none of its flagship products are ready for Mac OS X!" Well, duh. We can just imagine Adobe spending a couple hundred grand on a booth so that it could be present at Mac OS X's coming out party to exhibit-- Acrobat Reader. Oooooooo.
So yeah, the fact that Adobe doesn't have its stuff Carbonized yet is a pretty compelling reason to skip the show. But why doesn't it have its products ready? After all, the company showed off a preliminary Carbon version of Photoshop over three years ago, which had been cobbled together in one engineer's spare time. So what's the delay? That's where The Register comes in; as faithful viewer Tony in Japan pointed out, an "unconfirmed product release schedule" fell into that publication's hot little hands-- and if it's legit, then things don't look good for Mac OS X users jonesing for Adobe products.
While the schedule lists several Mac OS X ports "underway," none of them is slated to ship anytime remotely soon-- and that's not likely to change, assuming that The Reg's source is correct in stating that Adobe's Carbonization development has "ground to a near halt." Reportedly Adobe is "dismayed" by "bugs and performance issues" in Carbon, and that (coupled with "longer term doubts about the competitiveness" of the G4 and G5 processors) has been enough to prompt the company to stick its Mac OS X development efforts on the back burner. Meanwhile, we seem to recall hearing Adobe making noises about having Windows XP versions of its software ready as soon as that operating system hits the shelves in October, but maybe that's just the product of our overly-paranoid minds...
In any case, one thing is pretty clear to us: Adobe isn't playing ball. While we're not quite ready (yet) to suspect that the company is preparing to go Windows-only anytime in the foreseeable future, if Mac OS X is going to become a hit in the creative world, it may just have to do so without Adobe's help. Hmmm... how much effort do you suppose it would take to add CMYK support and decent color management to MacGIMP?
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SceneLink (3159)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/5/01 episode: July 5, 2001: Macworld Expo is bearing down on us like a freight train, scaring up rumors of the iMac's code name and new colors for the Power Mac. Meanwhile, faithful optimists whisper of the Cube's future rebirth, possibly as the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Macintosh, and reports that Adobe's Mac OS X development efforts are all but stalled out can't bode well for the future of that fledgling operating system...
Other scenes from that episode: 3157: Two Rumors, No Waiting (7/5/01) We love the fourteen days prior to any Macworld Expo for two reasons: one, we're less than a fortnight away from yet another scrumptious Stevenote; and two, it gives us a reason to use the word "fortnight" without people looking at us funny... 3158: The Cube Shall Riseth Again? (7/5/01) So was it a wuss-out intended only to save face and grant false hope to its grieving customers, or is Apple genuinely open to the possibility of someday popping the Cube out of its deep-freeze tray and sticking it back on store shelves?...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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