Adobe Chopping Heads
Current state of affairs at Adobe:
- Adobe Cuts 600 Jobs
- Adobe Abandons Mac Expo
- Adobe Reports Poor 4th Quarter Earnings
- Mike Downey No Longer with Adobe
The most relevant quote from Adobe’s financial report:
The Company cited weaker-than-expected demand for its new Creative Suite 4 family of products that began shipping in Q4 in North America and Europe as the main cause for the shortfall in fourth quarter revenue.
So why do you think CS4 isn’t selling? Is it the lack of a decent Undo Button? 😉 Is it the pricing structure? Is it because they’ve lost touch with their users? Leave a comment and tell me your thoughts.
Comments(11)
RSS Feeds
Anybody who believes that price has little to do with Adobe’s woes is like Adobe, snorting the wrong herb. Adobe has the Microsoft disease of paying more attention to the balance sheet/stock price than they do to their customer’s needs. You can only shove so much down our throats before we throw up. A much lower price means broader adoption, more money for training and experimenting and less of a need to use pirated software. And then maybe we won’t throw up as much. What a lower price does not mean is less money for Adobe.
I prefer CS3 flash, CS4 properties panel take to much screen space + what tap said.
I’m still Learning all the advantages and pros of CS3, Flash 9 was a mayor break thru and still is amazing… flash 10 has so little advantage for a capable coder that I don’t even consider it. I’m still fascinated with AS3 and the good work they did with the whole suite.
The only thing I NEED from CS4 is the multi-page for Illustrator… but I wouldn’t change it for the inline help documentation.
The thing with Flash is… or mobile phones addopt it or it’s over. Flash Lite sucks, low-level Javascript is way better and more ubiquous.
So, I’m having all the fun with Flash while I can.
I couldn’t agree more w/ the comments posted by “WilR”. The prices are astronomical enough w/out having to upgrade software every year.
I too would like to see Flash become more designer friendly; however, I think the entire CS3 suite was a ground breaking improvement on the workspace of the program, and would never go back to CS2.
For me is mostly the price, so i’m not even thinking about upgrading my home system. And for the new features in PS/AE/PR there’s really no reason to tell my boss to update either.
Also,I’m waiting to see if Flash cs5 gets a bit more designer-friendly or they’ll go back to the actionscript-only fest that was cs3.
And even though llustrator finally added multiple pages, it feels crippled, so if you have indesign then there’s no need to update.
THE reason why there is a huge lag in sales after a flash upgrade is this.
Digital advertising media firms (DoubleClick, EyeBlaster etc…) who own the systems by which internet ads made in Flash are sserved on websites wait for the new flash player to reach 95-98% before they accept ads published in that version.
Some still only accept flash 7 published SWF files. Banner ads drive a huge amount of Flash sales. This dynamic will likely continue until there becomes a way to seed the next version of the player ahead of the release of the Flash creation software.
Perhaps it’s because when money is a bit tighter companies are less willing to buy some superficial upgrade that simply adds a few things that really should have been in the previous release for an extortionate amount of money.
Though I use most of adobe’s products I have developed a hatred fr the company. I think they could have developed flash a lot more than they have – it is still tempromental and lacks versatility for it’s video player components without drilling down into them and resaving them for example.
Those are not the reasons for my hatred of adobe, it’s the sheer level of greed they show in the pricing of their software – especially the way they make you buy whole suites because individual software apps are crap value.
bloody adobe, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
Having only set my hands on Flash CS4 so far, I have to say I’m not particularly impressed. It’s nearly impossible to run on my admittedly older system, but it’s one that still runs Flash 8 just fine.
In addition to the amazing bloat that Flash has endured, Adobe added insult to injury by getting rid of the inline help documentation and force you to visit livedocs when you press f1. This truly renders the program nearly unusable on my home system, as the weight of flash causes Safari to just chug. Even worse, you lose the nifty ability to highlight a word in your code and have the help take you right to that entry in the documentation.
The projects panel would be nice if I didn’t have to expand it to the point that it takes up the entire coding window to do simple things like make a new class file. It doesn’t even have the nifty features of its open-source competition.
I really would like to give Flash CS4 more of a chance, but using it at home is just painful. Maybe when I upgrade my system I’ll give it another go. By then though, CS5 should be out and hopefully they’ll abandon this ill-concieved web-only documentation (and implement a decent undo).
Excellent points Shane. Here are some potential counterpoints.
1) Rapid Release and Comfort: To me, releasing a product when your users aren’t ready for it says you might be out of touch with your users. 😉
2) Bad Economy: When times get tough, people tend to spend their money where they can get the best value. If the changes in CS4 were “essential” (meaning they increased your demand or made you more productive) you’d need to buy it just to stay competitive.
3) Frozen Year End Budgets: I see this as being the same as “Bad Economy” or else Adobe should have seen this coming since corporate fiscal cycles aren’t exactly a new phenomenon.
4) Priced Too High: I agree! 😀 If the price was low enough, none of the previous points would be an issue.
Other Thoughts:
CS3 came out a year and a half ago, to be getting comfortable with CS3 only now indicates the sheer volume of changes which were made. The lack of users readily willing to undergo such changes again (by purchasing CS4) reflects the perceived value of enduring those changes.
In times of economic crisis the most bloated and incompetent are usually the first to fall (AIG, GM, etc.) so it’s a bit surprising to see Adobe taking such drastic action so early in the game. Hopefully firing 600 employees is more than enough of a corrective action to get them back on track.
I agree, Shane. The newspaper I work for is still stuck at CS2 and I’m sure we won’t be upgrading anytime soon.
I don’t think they lost touch with users. Adobe is really improving their community efforts. I think its a combination of:
1. Quick release of CS4. People are just getting comfortable with CS3.
2. Bad economy
3. A lot of company’s budgets are spent or frozen for the year.
4. Pricing could have been a bit lower.
I think the sales of CS4 will pick up after the new year.