Filed under: Software
Adobe-Macromedia deal inches to a close
Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia is expected to close tomorrow (Saturday) -- finally. The stockholder and regulatory approval process seems to have taken forever. If you remember, the deal was announced back in April of this year. Stockholders voted to approve the deal in August, and regulatory approval came through in October. Once the deal is officially closed the real fun will start. We can't wait to see how Adobe will pull together all the goodies now under its control. Will we get DreamLive, PhotoFlash, FreeIllustrate, or something entirely new?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
szeky said 10:00PM on 12-02-2005
Rest in peace good old Freehand! You were always a good friend ...
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Michael La Framboise said 9:58PM on 12-02-2005
Quote; 'DreamLive, PhotoFlash, FreeIllustrate'
Haha! Nice names, hopefully their products will be as good as they always are, cant wait to try them out. But it would be really nice to have Photoshop have some Flash related things, or for DreamWeaver to be as powerful as GoLive. :) Fun times are comming up.
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Mike said 9:59PM on 12-02-2005
One nice litte trivia about this merger, if it happens, is that Adobe will have finally won the battle with Aldus. Back in the very-early 90s, two giants in the graphic arts world were Aldus Pagemaker and Aldus Freehand. Adobe had Photoshop and kept trying to make in-roads to page design and with vector design, but with out much success.
The rest is history. Illustrator became the de-facto standard in vector graphics creation. Aldus sold off Pagemaker and Freehand. I don't remember if PageMaker went to Macromedia, but it wound up at Adobe where it was put out for quite awhile. Macromedia picked up Freehand where it languished badly. Streamline went away, too, as I recall.
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Radu Dutzan said 11:11PM on 12-02-2005
I just hope Freehand gets a major interface redesign, because by far it's the most frustrating app that I regularly use and not because of its performance, but because of its stupid commands and UI that are all over the place. Photoshop just looks like the ease-of-use heaven compared to Freehand. Oh, and it also would be nice if Illustrator supported Freehand files, became the new standard, and Freehand died.
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Chris said 11:12PM on 12-02-2005
For the love of all things holy, don't take Dreamweaver from me and make me use the garbage that is GoLive. Love Photoshop. Love Illustrator. Love InDesign. I tried with GoLive. I really did. But this is freaking me out...
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drmr said 11:42PM on 12-02-2005
"Macrobe", anyone?
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Nathan Adams said 3:12AM on 12-03-2005
I'd personally prefer Illustrator to go lie in a drive, and Freehand rock on. I find Freehand's interface FAR FAR FAR easier to use than Illustrator's. Using Illustrator makes me cry even more than using Quark. That says a lot.
On a completely different note. Why is it whenever mergers are talked of, everyone drags out lame ways of combing names? Macrobe and AdobeMedia and the ilk are neither imaginative, clever, or have the slightest chance of being used. The company will remain "Adobe". Dreamweaver will remain "Dreamweaver" - not "DreamLive". So on and so on.
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drmr said 3:41AM on 12-03-2005
Ad #7: Of course, it's because us smart, clever, and imaginative CI consultants are just waiting for TUAW to make a post so we can comment with smart, clever, and imaginative brand name suggestions. Of course they will be picked from blog comments, duh! Where did you think brand names come from?
Seriously, ain't no bubble for you to bust. Sowwy.
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Thomas said 9:54AM on 12-03-2005
At least if they do away with any Macromedia apps, the current ones should work great for at least a few years.
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Amy said 11:30AM on 12-03-2005
I recently picked up a copy of Macromedia Studio 8, Freehand is already missing. The package is exclusively web tools. My hunch is that Adobe will maintain two distince design suites: one optimized for print and one optimized for web. I wouldn't be surprised if GoLive is left out of the next iteration of CS (just as Freehand is gone from Studio) to make the split a clean one. Naturally many of us will want both, but there are many circumstances where one or the other will suffice.
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Mark Studdock said 1:38PM on 12-03-2005
Better SWF in Image Ready will probably be almost immediate. (they already support it now...)
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iwan said 3:31PM on 12-03-2005
freehand + illustrator = frustrator
;-)
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landrew said 5:23PM on 12-03-2005
it wouldn't be PhotoFlash...
it would be FlashEffects.
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Jeff Alldridge said 11:41AM on 12-05-2005
Because Aldus had its roots here in Seattle, for some reason Seattle has tried to hang on to the old Freehand and PageMaker strategy for design. All I can say is that's SO 1996. Not that Quark is that much better. But the standards used in Illustrator are SO much more compatible then Freehand. Freehand's proprietary "raster effects" never export properly, their gradients are atrocious, and I have never had a proof of a Freehand file come back with spot-on matching PMS colors like most of my Illustrator files. I just hope Adobe drops Freehand completely, though add full-fledged support for Freehand docs in Illustrator CS3.
Since Dreamweaver has such a strong hold on the internet market, I think they'll take the best elements of Dreamweaver and GoLive and combine them into a new built from the ground up program keeping the Dreamweaver name. I just hope they have smart-objects in the new Dreamweaver.
And I would LOVE to see what Adobe does with Flash. Flash is a great program but it's interface is SO tedious. And how many people like Flash MX 2004? Everyone I know still uses Flash MX.
Anyway, I am very hopeful this merger will be a great one for the creative professional.
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Jeff Alldridge said 11:45AM on 12-05-2005
Oh man, Landrew you are so right, it would be FlashEffects! The thought of that gets me all excited at seeing how productive those tools for web to HD would be.
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