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Adobe's war with Apple is on hold for imaging apps
A TRUCE in the company's fight with Apple has been called for by a senior Adobe manager as the beleaguered software house admits it wants to develop applications for tablets, including the Ipad.
Instead of criticising the fruit themed toy maker like his bosses' recent advertising campaign, Adobe Photoshop principal product manager John Nack has talked about writing imaging apps for the Ipad in a long posting on his blog.
Nack said, "After eight years product managing Photoshop, I've been asked to help lead the development of new Adobe applications, written from scratch for tablet computers."
While not announcing what apps Adobe might produce, Nack said he has had "many requests for a mobile version of Lightroom. I think that such an app could be brilliant... and many photographers tell me that its existence would motivate them to buy Ipads." Lightroom is and Adobe software product that's used for image processing.
He goes on to hint at Adobe's ideas for how to exploit the multi-touch user interface features of the Ipad, referring to two-finger inputs. Not two-fingered gestures, one assumes.
Despite Nack's call for a truce on Ipad image apps, he can't resist taking a final swipe at Apple at the end of his blog post, saying, "To borrow from the Think Different campaign, 'You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.' That's what I ask for Adobe technologies: let them succeed or fail based on their own merits, as determined by customers." µ
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I find it odd that a photographer would edit images on a lower quality screen like the iPads. Not to say the screen sucks, but it's not meant for photo editing.
Like the iPad...
"Two-fingered gesture" may require translation for non-British readers: it refers to one of our our parochial gestural insults. I don't know if it's in John Adobe's own physical vocabulary. Is he one of us?
With no USB isn't the photographer going to have to connect their camera to a PC (or MAC) and in order to transfer the image to the iPad? Why not just just edit the image on the (more powerful) machine prior to transferring it to the tablet? -Im confused.. How is this of any benefit to a mobile photographer who wants to edit images in the field?
I've been in desktop publishing and graphic design for over a decade. The only reason we have spent thousands of dollars on Apple workstations and Apple Os updates was to support the most suitable and professional platform for desktop publishing and graphic design.
Apple needs to open their eyes and realise that a very large number of workstations they sell are because of the desktop publishing and graphic design market, and if Adobe was to ever stop supporting the Apple platform, the desktop publishing and graphic design market would have no choice but to move to a Windows platform.
All Adobe needs to do is give Apple a choice: If Apple want Adobe to support their plactform with the Adobe desktop publishing and graphic design suites, then Apple have to support Flash on their iPhone/iPad/iPod platforms.
If Apple still say no, then Adobe should loudly announce they are withdrawing all future Adobe suite series from the Apple platform.
I guarantee that Apple will quickly add support for Flash then - if only Adobe grew some balls and did that.
Since (as we now know) there are no "guarantees" that the Apple app-store-door will not be suddenly slammed closed upon Steve Job's slightest whim, why risk sinking a bunch of money into developing anything for Apple?
Instead perhaps:
- Tell them up front that you are going to use Adobe CS5 to generate the app code.
- If they say "NO", then don't bother with their petty company, and advertise that Apple has rejected all Adobe product apps, and that Adobe tablet and phone graphics apps will be available exclusively on Android, Meego, and possibly WebOS devices.
- (in the unlikely event they say "yes", then Apple will not be able to discriminate against developers using CS5 -- either way, Adobe will win the "popularity contest").
IMHO, the very worst thing anyone can do is to knuckle under to Steve Jobs. He is doing a great job showing the world that he is an unreasonable tyrant who doesn't know how to play nice with anyone. People soon will not want to be associated with using products from a lawsuit-happy, autocratic company that apparently cares about no one else (including its customers). So investing in developing software for Apple will probably be money wasted in the long run.
Nack's sounds like a desperate plea. The more these Adobe guys talk, the more they reveal their untenable position. Just buckle down to work and stop thinking of super-profiteering from your bloated, pricey software for a while, boys, and you might end up being okay.