To dignify or not to dignify, that is the question…
Normally I prefer to let random piles o’ nonsense pass by unremarked, but this one has been Dugg, and the resulting traffic makes me feel like saying something.
So, an anonymous article says that an unnamed Adobe exec “vented ire and shock* ” at an unspecified company meeting. Very racy!
For what it’s worth, I don’t recall anything like this happening, and other folks don’t, either. That said, it’s hard to prove a negative, especially without names, quotes, etc. In any case, it would have been nice if someone–anyone–had approached Adobe for confirmation or comment, instead of taking the story at face value.
Here are a couple of tips for any self-styled business news source:
- Include bylines (y’know, so we know who’s saying what).
- Feature actual quotes and sources (ditto).
- Don’t suggest that big, publicly owned, successful companies would do manifestly stupid, self-defeating things like “dropping or delaying support for Apple’s new Intel platform products with the upcoming version of Adobe Photoshop CS3.” Mactel nativeness is expected to motivate a lot of folks to upgrade, and if Adobe could flip a switch and make it happen tomorrow, we would–Aperture and anything else notwithstanding.**
Now, does the Lightroom team want to kick Aperture’s butt? You bet! And can we safely guess that the Aperture team wants to wipe the floor with Lightroom? Hell yeah! And is this all good for customers? Absolutely. I know both companies to be full of bright, passionate, ethical people, and some healthy competition benefits everyone.
So listen, my Mac brethren: We’re working like mad on this Mactel thing (with Apple’s excellent ongoing help) because it’s the right thing to do for customers. Everyone knows that, and assertions that Adobe would do something petty and stupid just to irk Apple–well, they’re not worth the pixels they’re printed on. (It was a pitch in the dirt, but I felt I had to set the record straight.)
Oh, and one more thing: news we share over the next weeks and months is going to confound a lot of critics. Stay tuned.
And now, back to work.
J.
——-
* Incidentally, Aperture wasn’t a surprise to Adobe. As I said at the beginning, it’s something we’d expected for a long time. Apple had likewise anticipated Lightroom.
** Not convinced? Here’s a little history: When the PowerPC first came to the Mac, Adobe released a free plug-in for Photoshop 2.5. And when the G5 was released, Adobe released a free update for Photoshop 7, despite the fact that CS1 was roughly six weeks away. We spent time this year trying to do the same for CS2, but it wasn’t in the cards.
Probably one of those creeps who spam me with stock quote crap.
[Heh–no doubt. What’s interesting isn’t that some mouth-breathing teenager (or the journalistic equivalent thereof) made up stories and posted them online. What’s interesting is the numbef of people appear to have taken those stories at face value. We’re a credulous species. –J.]
damn.. better give me a redpill beta with all that nondestructive goodness or i’ll sell my soul for apple’s nextgen shake 😮
“Here are a couple of tips for any self-styled business news source…”
But wouldn’t this get in the way of the world domaination plan?
1. Make up a story in your blog.
2. Add it to Digg.
3. ????
4. Profit.
Thanks for clearing this up. 🙂
Mike
How about you stop blogging and get your fscking act together and ship software that runs natively on Intel-based Macs?
How much time do you losers need?
There are other options. We Mac users are starting to look elsewhere.
[Classy! I’m sure that A) we’re dragging our feet, and B) your wise words will change our wicked ways! Thank God the Internet is full of such well-informed sages. –J.]
Get with it dude, we’ve had the universal binary available for months. We just want to piss off Apple for stealing our Premier/Keygrip/FCP team and then our Lightroom team !!
We could have flipped photoshop in weeks – we did it with Carbon (three days remember).
We’re a credulous species
Yeah, GWB got *elected*, right? 🙂
Sorry John, simply could not resist that one. As to the story, this is what makes corporate support of blogging great. Most folks in the know understood, but it is something else entirely to hear it direct from the product managers (horses) mouth.
We could say the same thing about the PC with Lightroom, we did not see a beta for Windows until 3 and with all due respect for the Adobe team, which seems to be working hard on this one, it was not that good at all, some of us could not even use it until beta 4 because of instability. I am sure Apple wonders about Lightroom, as it is now, it is not a competitor for Aperture. Although the LR team has done an amazing job, and beta 4 has really good stuff in it (it runs wicked on Vista), it is not as comprehensive in use as Aperture, it lacks elegance, especially in managing files, good start but it is still at beta 1 on that for my taste. It feels far from a solution still. Also it seems to have not taken the best of Bridge (colour labels, etc)one hopes and prays it will become a more logical programme, for now, many of us don’t know what it is: a RAW workflow software? (weak at that because of inherent sparseness of file management) a RAW processing unit? (does very good at that) a complete solution? (what do I do with Photoshop then?). I hope the team keeps the good work, it is promising, but it still far from an RC, a couple of betas far, although corporate arrogance may answer; we like it, WE (who cares what the user thinks) think it is great. We’ll see
It really does read like a stock manipulation attempt — as does the entire site where the article was published. Perhaps someone should give the FTC a call…
Interesting to note (As a T3 Certified Apple Trainer) that Apple drums it into instructors that Aperture is NOT a Photoshop competitor. So all the Aperture vs Photoshop talk also is a load of bull.
Thanks for clearing it up John – (a few comments ago) Michael doesn’t speak for all Apple users, actually he doesn’t even speak very well for himself!
For people who use Apple and Adobe software every day for many hours of that day, it’s a really great thing that there are two companies producing solid and revolutionary software year in, year out. Anyone who has ever done any programming will know what an extra-ordinary job the developers at Adobe and Apple do in the time frames they do it in. Only a brat can’t wait till Christmas.
[Thanks for the kind words, Patrick. –J.]
It seems to me that half the contributors here on this site are either other Adobe folks (promoting their own blogs) or Adobe affiliates of some sort So of course the kind of self- congratulatory rhetoric I’m reading here is to be expected.
Please Stop putting down loyal Mac customers, who feel they may have a right to be aggrieved.
[Taking the time to give some insight into how Adobe and Apple work together = putting down loyal Mac customers… Gotcha. You’ve got a serious persecution complex, dude. –J.]
Most commenters clearly haven’t read the article discussed and yet, are at the same time stupid enough to shoot from the hip in their comments and – believe everything either Apple or Adobe reps say. Of course Apple isn’t going to say it has a photoshop killer – doah ! – Steve Jobs would hang them outside the gates of the Infinite Loop in a gibbet.
I’m using CS2 on a Mac Pro. And sure, it’s not as fast as it is on a Quad G5 I used for a few months (and then handed off to my co-worker) but it’s plenty fast for what I do for now.
Still, I’m anxiously awaiting all sorts of news about CS3. Like, do I have to give up on GoLive and go Dreamweaver to get the latest coolness?
Why buy Acrobat Pro 8 now when I’m getting it again in CS3?
[Let me see what info I can scare up. I’m sure some answers are available, but working in a big company means they’re not always at your fingertips. –J.]
Where’s the Easter eggs? ;D
[Ah, see, if we told you, wouldn’t that ruin the fun? 😉 –J.]
The truth in most discussions lies somewhere in the middle….it’s not Mac persecution…but they are our major competitor…And if you are naive enough to believe that “omigosh….Adobe would NEVER do anything to hinder Apple…Thats how business is built in the capitalist world…gimme a break….all the rest is blah,blah