Rumor: Apple to sell Final Cut Studio Suite to purchase Adobe Suite?

LuckyStudio 13

LuckyStudio 13

The Tapeless One
Cringely: Buying Adobe -- The Payoff for Apple
by John Martellaro, 12:45 PM EDT, May 5th, 2008

Apple would have a lot to gain by buying Adobe, according to Robert X. Cringely on Friday. However, first Apple must get its monopoly-factor ducks in a row by unloading its pro apps: Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Logic and Shake.

The argument goes like this: Apple's professional apps has done well, made money and established Apple and Macs in Hollywood production, but there are bigger fish to fry. "...Steve Jobs tends not to think quarter-to-quarter so much as decade-to-decade," Mr. Cringely wrote. "This is a guy with a LONG horizon, which is why he appears, frankly, to be the only one of his peers with either a plan or a clue. As Jobs did with the iPod and iTunes and now with the iPhone, he is setting the standard and most Apple competitors are mainly waiting and reacting, which is hardly a way to lead anything."

Mr. Cringely claimed that clues have been accumulating for months. Apple's resistance to Blu-ray is an effort to slow the technology and pave the way for Internet downloads. Meanwhile, according to the author, Apple was quietly, very quietly, shopping its pro apps an NAB in order to avoid anti-trust issues prior to a potential acquisition. What Apple would be gaining is much more important.

"Apple's goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe's emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn't a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?" Mr. Cringely asked.

More to the point would be giving up some professional apps, acquiring Adobe's, and geting control of key Internet technologies. "They'd be giving up a sports car in Final Cut Pro, but end up effectively owning the road instead," Mr. Cringely concluded.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/05/05.7.shtml

Which I think is not gonna happen, although i wish that they will and open up FCS to the windows platform where the hardware is cheap.

:violin:
 
Steve Jobs has done tremendous effort and focus towards consumer gadgetry. I can see how Adobe apps can help them in terms of putting media into the ipod, iphone, itoaster, itv ...etc.

I dont use Apple Logic but I heard a lot of pros are extremely disappointed on how Apple treated the new Logic 7.

If they sold FCS suite, and the buyer opens up FCS to the windows platform, this means no more mortgaging your house to buy Apple Hardware to run FCS. Which is a very good thing, plus the wide range of GPU not available to the Mac machines.
 
I would be rather disturbed by the idea of Photoshop and After Effects suddenly disappearing from the Windows platform.
 
would this mean that adobe software would only be usable with a mac, like final cut pro is now?
 
Dxmetal said:
If they sold FCS suite, and the buyer opens up FCS to the windows platform, this means no more mortgaging your house to buy Apple Hardware to run FCS. Which is a very good thing, plus the wide range of GPU not available to the Mac machines.
Click to expand...

No longer true with Leapord.
 
Why would Apple want to buy Adobe?

I can see why they might want to dump the ProApps, but why buy even more? Apple's massive success is in being an online music reseller and a maker of hip consumer gadgets. There's practically no technical support issues, as opposed to intensive support necessary with something like FCP. ProApps got 'em to a place they wanted to go, sure, but it isn't the future -- Apple's future is in iPhones and iPods and iMacs and (if they ever sort it out) AppleTV.

Mac sales now account for less than half of Apple's revenue already, and as the consumer side grows the Mac side will become less and less. ProApps is a relatively small segment of the Mac side of the business anyway.

Surprisingly, the Mac sales are up signficantly recently due to a "halo" effect from the ipod; people with ipods are switching to macs because of Apple's integration. Probably moving a lot of iMacs that way.

All of Apple's software business combined only accounts for maybe 5% of their sales. According to Apple's 4Q 10Q, as of 3/2008, Apple's sales breaks down like this:
Laptops: 29%
iPod: 24%
Desktops: 18%
iTunes: 12%
Software and service: 7%
iPhone: 5%

Software is lumped in with service and other such, meaning that the actual software sales is probably the smallest niche of the market for Apple, and that includes ALL of Apple's software! ProApps has to be the smallest piece of the smallest niche of their entire business. On the Apple home page right now, you can't even find a mention of Final Cut on the main page; the only words that even say "final cut" are in the upper right on Final Cut Server, and that's in the "New To The Store" section.

When you go to the Mac Software section, and view by Top Sellers, FCS2 almost doesn't even show up. It's #20 on the list of top 20. iWork, iLife, Aperture, Quicktime, all that stuff shows up higher.

Doesn't mean that FCP is "bad" or anything, it just points out that it's really a very, very, very tiny segment of their business. Yet I'd bet that it causes more support issues than most, because of the demanding nature of the customers (I bet FCP users are harder to pacify than, say, iLife customers, and are likely to have more involved technical support issues).

I could certainly see why they'd consider selling it. Doesn't mean they will, but to those who say it will "never" happen... never say never.
 
Interesting angle. Mainly from Apple's web presence, which is obviously where they want to head.

But then there's Microsoft, flush with $30 billion that they tried to use to buy Yahoo and were rebuffed. They're twice as big as Apple, with a lot more cash in the bank. Somehow I doubt that if Fitzgerald's predictions of what could happen were accurate, I doubt Microsoft'd let Apple get Adobe under those circumstances.
 
So wait if this happened Apple would be dumping pro apps? I would cry, fortunately this looks like it's just a rumor.
 
If Apple sold their ProApps, then someone else would market them. That doesn't mean they'd be "dumped". I mean, come on, FCP itself was an app that Apple bought from MacroMedia. Apple has bought apps from other companies, and it may someday come to the point where they sell their apps to some other company. That's what the rumor's about.
 
I would boycott all adobe products, with the exception of Photoshop and Encore, if they sold out to apple. That would be the stupidest thing ever.
 
the guys over at REDuser seems of the consensus that Cringely's a joke and is known for big hype stories that never pan out.

I wouldn't take this one story too seriously
 
It's possible I guess, but I think Steve Jobs probably takes way too much pride in Apple inventing (or quickly buying before it's well known and making it Apple) things to give up on something like the Pro apps and admit that someone might make a better product. Take the Macintosh, for so many years it wasn't making the company hardly any money but Jobs didn't want to give up on it cause it was his baby (which is debatable) and finally with the reinvention called the iMac his stubbornness paid off. It's been a while since I've read the Jobs book, but I do remember a long track record of Apple producing several products that make the company little money and selling a few select items that paid for everything else.
 
Hey, Apple said they added 850,000 FCP users a year ago. Thats 1.2billion which is nothing to sneeze at. I work in FCP2 every day and I own three copies of Premiere but use FCP by choice. I like the suite and with Motion and AE it makes a great suite to work with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top