Cringely Posits Adobe's Purchase by Apple

An anonymous reader writes to mention another Robert Cringely piece discussing Apple's future. In his latest article, he lays out some goals for Apple on its quest to desktop dominance. An important link in this chain is Apple's purchase of Adobe Systems. From the article: "Adobe has already made one feint away from Mac development that required personal pressure from Steve Jobs on John Warnock to reverse. If Apple kinda-sorta embraces Windows enough for Adobe to question whether continued development for the native OS X platform is still warranted, well, then Apple WILL just become another Dell, which isn't what Steve Jobs wants. Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole. So he needs the top ISVs who are currently writing for OS X to continue writing for OS X, and that especially means Adobe."

Mod article '-1, Troll'

[McDutchie (151611)]

Every article by Cringely, Dvorak, and the like needs to be instantly moderated '-1, Troll' with extreme prejudice. Too bad /. does not have article moderation.

Re:Mod article '-1, Troll'

[nine-times (778537)]

Well, the only problem is when people try to turn this sort of editorial of "I think Apple could/should buy Adobe" into a rumor of "Apple is planning to buy Adobe!"

I mean, if you're a journalist, paid to analyze technology trends and make wild shot-in-the-dark predictions of what might possibly happen one day, or you're writing an article of what business moves might benefit one group or another, that's perfectly fine. Cringly thinks Apple should buy Adobe, and I'm sure lots of people could write articles on why they think Apple shouldn't.

Let's just not let this get out of hand and become an actual rumor.

Oh please!

[winkydink (650484)]

Hey, could that [an Adobe acquisition] be why Apple is rumored to have this week just laid-off its entire Aperture development group?

Could be.

Yeah, and it could be that the product never lived up to expectations and saw little market adoption so Apple decided it was time to cut their losses and focus their resources on something else.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Or it could be a fabrication

[SuperKendall (25149)]

Or if you believe in going with the simplest possible theory, Apple is not in fact abandoning a product not even six months old that has had a major well-received update just recently and in fact has just restructured the team.

Since Aperture is still being sold in the Apple store and the pages for the product are all still up, I know which theory I'd buy into!

If you must believe something a little more juicy, how about an attempt by Think Secret (or someone behind it) to discredit Apple?

It's NOT a rumor

[Tau Neutrino (76206)]

Cringley never said he heard it anywhere else. He made it up.

It's a prediction, not a rumor, and his record with predictions is not bad.

The Cringe of Embracing Windows

[digitaldc (879047)]

Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap.

I have seen it and, well at least it does run like crazy... [microsoft.com]

So the logic here is

[noewun (591275)]

That Adobe will just walk away from ~$400 million/yr in software sales. From a quick persual of Adobe's most recent annual report and 10-K filings, I figure that's about how much Adobe makes a year from Mac software. This leads me to a question:

What do call a CEO who makes the decision to chop $400 million off his company's profits?

Unemployed.

Revenue vs. Profit

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

What do call a CEO who makes the decision to chop $400 million off his company's profits?

Although I agree with your sentiment, it's worth pointing out that $400M in revenue -- which would be sales figures -- does not translate into $400M in profit.

Unless of course you're engaging in a little Enron-style math, that is. Software companies may have high margins, but they're not 100%.

Re:So the logic here is

[vertinox (846076)]

What do call a CEO who makes the decision to chop $400 million off his company's profits?

Carly Fiorina [wikipedia.org]

Well... And unemployed.

Hope not

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

I really hope that Apple doesn't do what Cringley suggests and even if they do that it is squashed by the state department responsible for mergers and acquisitions, since:
    - Apple needs some healthy competition in this domain
    - Even though I am a Mac user, having a competitor in the PC domain also helps Apple keep on their toes
    - Adobe bought Macromedia, so in this field Apple would near a potential monopoly.

Gates Obliges Jobs

[Illbay (700081)]

Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap.

Well, it's up to Jobs to make sure of the former, but MS has already done what it can to accomplish that latter.

Dvorak/Cringely + Apple/Google

[interiot (50685)]

It's starting to become a cliche for Dvorak or Cringely to postulate on possible future moves by Apple or Google, and the crazier their suggestions, the more internet posters get riled up, and the more traffic gets driven to their site. Do they really have to pander to the lowest among internet posters?

Cringely: The thinking man's Dvorak

[PCM2 (4486)]

From the article:

There's only one way to make that happen for sure, and that's for Apple to buy Adobe. Apple has the stock, they have the cash -- such a purchase would effectively cost Apple nothing, the market would like it so well.

Uhhhhh... "cost Apple nothing," eh? Last I checked, Adobe's market cap [yahoo.com] was $23.65 billion. Apple's [yahoo.com] is not quite $60 billion. Just how much cash and stock does Cringely figure Apple wants to throw around?

Re:Cringely: The thinking man's Dvorak NO COST

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

cost Apple nothing," eh? Last I checked, Adobe's market cap was $23.65 billion. Apple's is not quite $60 billion.

If Adobe stock were converted to new Apple shares that properly reflect the increased value of Apple + Adobe, it would cost them the amount of printing the new certificates and mailing them, which is essentially nothing. That assumes a friendly takeover/merger.

Wow.

[neoshroom (324937)]

I think this is the first time Cringley is on to something. What he is onto isn't this Apple buying Adobe thing though. Its the following quote from the article stub:

Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole.

OS X running Windows apps in ugly gray, thats what he is onto. Its coming.

__
Elephant Essays [elephantessays.com] - Cover Letters, Research Papers, Editing

Re:Wow.

[Bogtha (906264)]

No, he's still missing the point.

In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole.

No, "in his heart of hearts", he doesn't really care about Microsoft, because Apple compete against Dell and all the other hardware vendors. OS X is a differentiator in the hardware market, not a core product that they are competing against Microsoft with. Intel & Bootcamp fits nicely into that strategy, and I suspect he wouldn't care if 90% of the people who bought Macs ran Windows, because that 90% will have chosen Apple over Dell.

Re:Wow.

[drgroove (631550)]

I agree completely. If Apple has access to the API as Cringley has stated in his past two articles, Apple in theory could enable OSX to launch WinXP apps inside a process similar to how it ran "Classic Mode" for OS9 apps. Imagine that, though - WinXP apps running inside OSX without XP itself running.

Given that Vista isn't due until '07, and most orgs are still running apps from the Win2k days, being able to run Win2k/XP apps w/in a more secure OS would certainly be an attractive offering.

Hey Cringely

[everphilski (877346)]

When you and Dvorak are snuggled up in bed at night thinking up these crazy ideas how do you decide who gets which idea to write about the next day?

-Curious on Slashdot

"There's no demand for a Windows version..."

[network23 (802733)]

Apple co-founded Adobe and owned part of Adobe.

This would be the perfect deal. And then the sweet "sorry, we're cancelling Photoshop for Windows since there is no demand for a PC version".

They have done that before too.

We live in interesting times. And I love it.

Crap

[Moby Cock (771358)]

This is crap. Apple is not trying to dominate the desktop market. They are trying, and succeeding at producing very desirable products. Apple has carved out their boutique image carefully and they do NOT want to be another Dell. Apple is making alot of profit right now. They do not want to be the new Microsoft+Dell. Jobs would like his vision of the way OSs and computers "should be" to dominate, but he is not trying to position Apple to do this.

The merged company name will be . . .

[by Anonymous Coward]

Taking the "A" from Adobe and the "pple" from Apple.

Why Do What MS Has Done?

[dakirw (831754)]

If Apple bought Adobe, then they'd effectively be pursuing a strategy similar to Microsoft's - trying to control all major app vendors for the respective OS. It'd be costly for one thing, and might discourage other vendors from building on the platform. Not a great idea, in my opinion. Apple probably wants all the developer mindshare that they can get, but doing this is more Borg-like than anything else.

John C. Dvorak acquired by Robert X. Cringley

[drix (4602)]

"News of a potential merger between these two rumor-mongering blowhards has been bouncing around San Jose for some time," said a source close to the deal. "After exhausting the n(n-1) array of potential merger rumors between companies as diverse as Google, Microsoft, General Motors, and ElectroPeru, the state-owned energy monopoly of Peru, both realized the only remaining avenue for generating baseless headlines and crucial name recognition was to themselves merge." Industry analysts speculated the new entity would assume the name Jobert K. Cringvorak, and continue publishing factually-inaccurate, worthless gossip headlines twice weekly in IT trade magazines.

Morons. Why does this shit get posted here every week, clogging up my screen real estate. I want to read about motherboards.

From Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen own mouth...

[joeblarnystone (681831)]

He also said the recently announced Boot Camp software, which allows Intel-based Mac computers to run the Windows operating system, won't have a big impact on Adobe's Mac software lineup.

"For the majority of our products, writing directly to the Macintosh operating system is an advantage to the customers, and you will see us continue to do so and not work through Boot Camp or the Windows emulator because we think that will not be good for the majority of our customers," he said.

Soure: Computer World Article [computerworld.com]

I dunno...

[suzerain (245705)]

Look, Cringeley's talking out of his ass. That's his job.

But I don't see why people here are pooh-poohing the idea of Apple buying Adobe so much. I mean, forgetting about what you want, and focusing on what is good for Apple.

There are two things that will really harm (if not kill) Apple: (1) no Office; (2) no Photoshop.

However, of the two, I say #2 is even more important for Apple...Apple's core market is still graphics, despite all the mainstream press they've been getting. Without Photoshop there effectively is no OS X.

Secondly, Apple bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia, they acquired DVD Studio Pro from (who was it? some company that started with 'A'), they bought Logic. Are any of these pieces of software Apple's 'core' business? No, they aren't. I remember I was more than a little surprised to see Apple even acquire these pieces of software. Not only have they acquired them, they have redeveloped them into really nice apps. So clearly, part of their strategy is to provide extremely nice pro apps for their own OS.

One segment of pro apps they have avoided -- I am sure partially to not piss off Adobe -- is graphics. They lack a pro 3D app, and they lack a pro 2D app (though by working CoreImage into the OS, they have provided tools that programmers can use to recreate 75% of what Photoshop does easily). Further, Adobe controls the PDF format (which Apple uses fir display in their OS).

I dunno...I think Adobe would be a pretty much perfect fit for Apple. Other than Premiere (which sucks anyway), very little of their work seems to overlap, and then Apple would have a complete suite of pro apps guaranteed to run on OS X (and if they really wanted to be shitty, they could discontinue the Windows versions, and leave Microsoft high and dry).

I mean, if this became too much of a distraction for Apple, they could spin off a separate software company (a la FileMaker), but other than potential distractions, I fail to see how acquiring Adobe would be all that bad for Apple, and I can certainly see a lot of potential upside in the thought.