Adobe Buys Macromedia FAQ in Plain English

[DarkEL]

Check out this plain english translation of the FAQ from Adobe concerning the buyout of Macromedia (their main competitor)

http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation

Some classic stuff in there (too bad it's all true)

[Destructor]

I love the wording on some of these things:


Do you anticipate a reduction in force as a result of this transaction?

When two successful growing companies join together, the result is a combined organization that creates new and exciting opportunities. The combination will lead to powerful new areas of innovation, new products and solutions, and an acceleration of our respective growth agendas. At the same time, there will be some duplication of employee functions between the two companies, and upon the close of the transaction, we anticipate some level of reduction in force. While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings, the primary motivation for this acquisition is to continue to expand and grow our businesses into new markets.


Translation: Yes.

 :lol:

[Knightshade Dragon]

Ditto regarding use of present tense. Please also note that PDF is an excellent format for sending out résumés.

OW!

[th'FOOL]

Yeah, this could potentially turn my workflow on it's head in the future.

good thing I started getting into video editing....

[Laner]

I'm a web designer, so I use both Adobe and Macromedia tools on a regular basis... but I don't think it'll be as big of a deal as some seem to.  They don't have *that* much overlap... there's Dreamweaver/GoLive and Freehand/Illustrator, but that's about it (I don't consider Fireworks to be a competitor with Photoshop).  They still complement each other, and other than the almost complete total lack of competition, I don't think it'll affect the industry that greatly.  Even Microsoft has to keep improving their products and keep the prices somewhat reasonable, otherwise there would be no reason to upgrade.

[th'FOOL]

Yeah, but fireworks is likely to get dumped for imageready, which is a steaming pile

[unbreakable]

I wasnt aware that Adobe and Macromedia were actually in competition on anything.

[Raven]

PDF sucks balls.

I had to d/l adobe just to look at a Crumpler catalog today, and I hate clogging up my system with programs that I'll use twice a year, at best.

[ATB]

I hate adobe products more than anything.

This is bad news...

[Fireball1244]

PDF is transglorious. I use and create PDFs all the time. It's by far the best printing-standardization format out there. I literally couldn't do my job without it.

Of course, on a Mac, you don't have to suffer with Adobe's craptacular Reader software, which is slow, hungry and ugly.

[Sepiche]

Man, all the guys I work with are worried about this one.  We've got millions of lines of Cold Fusion code... I don't even want to think about the possibility of them dropping CF support. :|

I don't imagine they will, but dumber things have happened as the result of mergers.

s

[ChaoZ]

A while back, I would've agreed with the sentiments regarding the PDF format.  However, with Acrobat (the full version, not just the reader), it's really been nice to use any program to print to PDF.  Adobe has made much improvement to the reader as well I hear.

Adobe Premiere was really buggy the last time I used it though, but it has been a while.

[stiffler]

I like the PDF format for what it does, I just don't like to encounter them when I am looking for something and the reader must open.

At my previous job I made PDF forms and invoices which have a few editable areas that can be tabbed through and then printed.  That works extremely well and they still use them.

I still use PDF's for some things but not enough to need the full package.  I have found PDFCreator works wonders.  It installs itself as a printer, so basically anything you print will look the same, but as a PDF.  Best of all, it's absolutely free!

I just don't like the idea of embedded Flash and other multimedia, but I think with the latest version it is already there.

[unbreakable]

I really hated Acroread, but their current version (v7) seems to have corrected whatever the hell was making it load so damn slowly.

Wow, thanks for the pointer to PDF Creator.  I was using a program called GSView to make PDFs, but it required me to save them as a post script file and then convert it to PDF.  So your recommendation should save me a bit of work.

[edit] Ahh... I see.  They both use Ghostscript, but are different frontends for it.

[tiny ogre]

I have one machine on which Acrobat Reader won't even work, just hangs at startup.  I've never figured out why and I'm not reformatting it for that.   It's a pretty clean box.  The only thing on it that might be interfering is Adobe's own SVG browser plugin, which is more important to me than Reader.   Finally one day I got fed up and turned up this on Google: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

It's a tiny free and working PDF reader for windows.   I don't dread opening PDFs nearly as much any more.  They make other PDF tools too (not free), I have no idea how good they are.  All I've ever needed was to read them.

Good riddance to Acrobat Reader.

As for this:

    Do you expect to integrate the FlashPlayer and the Adobe Reader?

    The complementary functionality of FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader will enable the deployment of a more robust cross-media, rich-client technology platform. The combined company will continue to be committed to the needs of both the FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader users.

I can't believe this question even came up.  What a horrible scary idea that is.