Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq:MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
Curious; regarding the Yahoo deal where Macromedia partnered with Yahoo, does Yahoo want to purchase Adobe, or does Adobe want to purchase Yahoo? Adobe already does the Yahoo Toolbar installer bundling with their Acrobat Reader, the PDF viewer.
Adobe helped spawn the print revolution, and did the same for video; empowering the masses to create great content. This teaming up with Flashcom & Flash Video in general seems promising.
That’s incredible news! How do you think this will impact on the future of Central?
Adobe Flash Pro MX CS 8.0 is out soon!
It’ll be awesome; that’s one realm Adobe always sucked in; Multimedia. I remember when Adobe came to my school in 1999, showing us the then emerging ImageReady. The 8 bit palette controls, etc. When my professor and I asked the guys about 32bit PNG’s, they had no earthly idea why we would even care for such an odd format… ‘odd’ format. OMG, do you guys even KNOW what Flash is? How about Director? How in the hell do you think people are getting your phat Photoshop created interfaces into Director and Flash anyway?
….
That ignorant mentality has professed… granted, LiveMotion was an awesome attempt, as was Atmosphere; Adobe IS interested in getting into the media realm, and this is a great way. Now that we have the design tools and the media deployment tools, Desktop media will get a huge boost.
One of my hopes was that Microsoft would release some tools for designers to make the most of Avalon. The biggest gripe I had with it is that although Flashers are hip to multimedia, the barrier of entry is still that it requires a good sense of design, not just usability. Expecting designers to learn Visual Studio is ridicolous.
I think the same thing here; now a lot of these AfterEffects people can deploy video easier and stop dealing with those ridicolously expensive server solutions that don’t really do anything; they just deploy their video to the web, plain and simple.
I’m hoping that same ‘designer accessibility’ will play out here as well and empower them to help us Flashers deploy some really great rich desktop content.
Currently, I use Photoshop + Fireworks + Flash to get a design…removing the middleman would be GREAT!
THAT smoothing of the process, not just bridging the gaps, but solidifying and smoothing those crossing of developer chasms will be great for Central’s future.
You and I both know that Central’s 1up on all 3rd party projectors was it’s art direction; Adobe knows art direction.
I’m not sure how happy abou this I am, when two large companies merge, lots of people often get laid off. Think about the Macromedia employee’s. I really hope they don’t screw up the good mojo macromedia has going on. They are industry leaders.
I like photoshop, but I love fireworks! They better not mess with my fireworks!!
To avoid duplication, my concerns are continued on Ted’s blog: http://powersdk.com/ted