As any commercial software developer will tell you, releases revolve around features, bug fixes, and need for income. The company needs to balance new features (which will make the product sell better to a larger audience), fixing bugs (which helps keep the existing user base happy) and the need for income (the company/developers need to make a living). This balance gets even more precarious when the company in question produces many software products, some which are bundled together in suites. And if we want to add more headache into the mix, let’s say this software company supports two major computer operating systems, and at least the last 2 releases of these differing operating systems. Then to make this whole scenario positively nightmarish, these operating systems run on fairly diverse hardware setups and may be run simultaneously with other software.
Where am I going with this? Let’s talk about Adobe.
Adobe makes some pretty powerful and complex applications that help users communicate. At the end of the day, Photoshop helps people communicate their message to someone else. Same thing with InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and even Acrobat (which has more to do with creating a wrapper to maintain the fidelity of the message when rendered). Adobe has a great history of making applications that help people create and communicate.
But somehow, Adobe is starting to move away from this history. They seem to have a disturbing (at least to me) fascination with “Enterprise” and “Development Platforms” (Live Cycle, Acrobat, and Flash). And then there’s the additional “services” they are trying to sell on top of these “platforms”. This isn’t the Adobe I’m used to and I’m sensing that a lot of creatives are like me, wondering where the old Adobe went. With all these different business focuses and the tight 18 month release schedule, the software is becoming, unfortunately, less stable, more buggy, and filled with tie-ins to services I see little value in. I think the biggest issue that Adobe faces is that it’s failing to connect to the creative individual like me. I’m sure they connect with the giant ad agencies though – I mean just look at the interactivity that InDesign CS5 can do!*
I just want an Adobe which is more focused on making my creative apps run better, faster, more efficiently, and that gets out of my way and let’s me communicate. There’s room for improvement.
*Have you ever seen the work done by somebody trying to translate their print design to web? That’s the same vibe I get from this CS5 feature.