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Macromedia Shwag

By on March 9, 2006 in Off Topic

Macromedia Shwag: I haven’t been icluded on this because I have never attended a Macromedia event like Max or TodCon or any other but, since I’ve par­tic­i­pated in sev­eral betas in the last few years I have received a few Macromedia items:

  • 2 car visor CD holders
  • 1 small travel alarm clock with the Macromedia logo on it
  • 1 great look­ing notebook

It’s not much but I though I’d share any­way… ;-) I’m really jeal­ous of the peo­ple who got t-​shirts, caps and stuff to wear because I would wear them proudly myself. Maybe I’ll finally get one of those before the Macromedia name disapears…

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Adobe, Macromedia & Fireworks

By on December 8, 2005 in Adobe, Fireworks

There has been a lot of dis­cus­sion in blogs and news­groups fol­low­ing the recent clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion for the acqui­si­tion of Macromedia by Adobe. I have been read­ing a lot about it in the last few days, offi­cial words and com­men­tary alike and there’s one thing that’s really been bug­ging me in many of the coments I’ve seen.

There’s a lot of peo­ple who seem to be con­fused about what Fireworkis is or what it can do. They spec­u­late that Fireworks is doomed because it’s not as “strong” as Photoshop or worse, because it “com­petes” with ImageReady. Both state­ments are dead wrong.

First of all, Fireworks is fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent in nature than both Photoshop and ImageReady as it is a true vec­tor based appli­ca­tion (not a raster appli­ca­tion with awk­ward vec­tor fea­tures tacked on like Photoshop…). Fireworks’ bitmap tools indeed do not have the depth of Photoshop’s but it doesn’t have the same pur­pose either. Fireworks was designed for the cre­ation of Web graph­ics only. It does not have Photoshop’s print her­itage. There is really no direct com­par­i­son between the two apps other than they their shar­ing some func­tion­al­ity and both are used to cre­ate Web sites graph­ics (although I really can’t think why any­one would sub­ject them­selves to the tedium of lay­ing out a Web site in Photoshop…).

Secondly, com­par­ing Fireworks with ImageReady makes even less sense despite what many peo­ple seem to think. ImageReady is really noth­ing more than a glo­ri­fied slic­ing, opti­miz­ing and export­ing tool and while those tasks are cer­tainly part of what Fireworks does they’re only a frac­tion of its func­tion­al­ity. Fireworks is first and fore­most a cre­ative tool whith which you design site lay­outs and graph­ics, not a mere “slic­ing and dic­ing” tool used after the “real” work gets done in a more sophis­ti­cated appli­ca­tion like Photoshop or Illustrator.

With Fireworks there is no mid­dle man, you cre­ate then slice then opti­mize and pre­view graph­ics right within the same inte­grated and effi­cient inter­face with pre­cise and flex­i­ble vec­tor as well great bitmap tools. Regardless of the innacu­rate infor­ma­tion some are spread­ing about Fireworks and beyond all the spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing the acqui­si­tion and plans for spe­cific prod­ucts, I choose to hope that Adobe will be smart enough to rec­og­nize the unique nature of Fireworks and keep it around and develop it fur­ther. Fireworks really should have a future and deserves bet­ter recog­ni­tion than what it got under Macromedia’s inept mar­ket­ing efforts on its behalf…

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MXDJ on Adobe vs Macromedia

By on May 26, 2005 in Design & Development

The April 2005 ver­sion of the MX Developer’s Journal (www​.mxdj​.com) was released yes­ter­day and I just had a peek through it. About the entire first half of the issue was devoted to the recently announced acqui­si­tion of Macromedia by Adobe and I have two prob­lems with that.

First. Until the acqui­si­tion is offi­cial and approved by all con­cerned par­ties, no one will know what this entails for the direc­tion of the new aug­mented Adobe or the future of exist­ing prod­ucts from either com­pa­nies. Any dis­cus­sion on those issues is pure spec­u­la­tion at this point and as a MXDJ sub­scriber, I would expect the mag­a­zine to offer real con­tent to its read­ers and not 22 pages of pure con­jec­ture on a sit­u­a­tion that is still up in the air.

I usu­ally look for­ward to every new issue of the MXDJ because its con­tent is usu­ally infor­ma­tive, use­ful and prac­ti­cal. The first half of the April issue is none of that. The acqui­si­tion is very big news in our indus­try so I didn’t expect the MXDJ to com­pletely ignore it but, until the trans­ac­tion becomes offi­cial and actual announce­ments are made about the larger company’s direc­tion or spe­cific prod­ucts’ future, a sim­ple edi­to­r­ial would have been enough IMO. I didn’t appre­ci­ate hav­ing half the issue “wasted” on this topic but then again, this is some­what a minor issue.

Secondly, and what is even more prob­lem­atic for me is the tone and con­tent of the actual arti­cles. I had the dis­tinct impres­sion while I was read­ing them that I was being sub­jected to an exer­cise in spin because of all the com­ments beingso one sided and pos­i­tive. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very opti­mistic per­son by nature and this acqui­si­tion might be the great­est news ever for exist­ing Macromedia cus­tomers in the end, but we just don’t know enough yet to have an informed opin­ion and pass judg­ment on the transaction.

But that’s not the main thing. My point is that there are real issues of con­cern sur­round­ing this trans­ac­tion and MXDJ chose to gloss over any poten­tial neg­a­tive effects on exist­ing cus­tomers of both com­pa­nies but espe­cially Macromedia cus­tomers. Without falling into wild spec­u­la­tions about the future of spe­cific prod­ucts myself, the main con­cern I have at this point is about the dif­fer­ence in cor­po­rate cul­tures between the two com­pa­nies. Why should that be cause for worry? One of the most level headed and com­pelling com­ments I’ve read on the acqui­si­tion is this blog entry by John Gruber at Daring Fireball. Go read it, I’ll wait.

That blog entry really hit home for me. After the acqui­si­tion, Macromedia’s com­pany cul­ture is at best bound to be heav­ily diluted and at worst it might com­pletely dis­ap­pear. Adobe is the larger com­pany here and the one doing the buy­ing so its deci­sion mak­ers will cer­tainly have more say in the direc­tion of the post acqui­si­tion cor­po­ra­tion and that wor­ries me, no mat­ter what pos­i­tive spin the Macromedia com­mu­nity pun­dits try to put on the news.

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More On Adobe vs Macromedia…

By on April 21, 2005 in Design & Development

I’ve been read­ing quite a bit about the recently announced Adobe acqu­si­tion of Macromedia and, beyond all the spec­u­la­tion about the future of spe­cific prod­ucts, the one thing that’s start­ing to hit me hard is the dis­a­pear­ance of the Macromedia brand.

Many peo­ple speak of this as a merger but it is not a merger, it’s an acqui­si­tion of a smaller com­pany by a big­ger com­pany and it has very dif­fer­ent impli­ca­tions than a merger. When and if the deal goes through, the Macromedia brand will dis­ap­pear for good and only Adobe will remain. One of the things I’m afraid of is that the com­pany cul­ture of Macromedia might dis­ap­pear with the name and brand and to me this is very bad news. Few soft­ware ven­dors have instilled in me the kind of loy­alty that Macromedia has and cer­tainly no other com­pa­nies of such a large size. I not only love their prod­ucts but they have an open­ness towards their cus­tomers that is unri­valed in the indus­try IMO. Almost all of their key employ­ees have blogs and keep open chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the user com­mu­nity. There is no such open­ness at Adobe that I can see. What I hope is that some of a lot of Macromedia’s cor­po­rate cul­ture seeps into the new Adobe…

The sec­ond thing that both­ers me about this acqui­si­tion is that Adobe is a com­pany that so obvi­ously does NOT “get” the Web. That’s prob­a­bly why they are buy­ing Macromedia who’s the undis­puted leader in Web design and devel­op­ment tools as well as RIAs and online user expe­ri­ence with prod­ucts such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Flex and ColdFusion. I know that Adobe is not stu­pid and we can only hope that they come to rely on the human resources exper­tise of the com­pany they just bought to make deci­sions about future prod­uct devel­op­ment. What I really hate is hav­ing to wait to see how things evolve with­out know­ing if my main soft­ware tools will sur­vive the process.

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The Day After

By on April 19, 2005 in Design & Development

I’m post­ing this both as a test as I’m try­ing to resolve some prob­lems with my blog­ging soft­ware but also to post a link to a good sum­mary of reac­tions and offi­cial state­ments about the pend­ing Adobe-​Macromedia merger announced yes­ter­day. Jason Kottke has posted this sum­mary and I wanted to link it here so that I can come back to it later.

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