PBS’s Robert X. Cringely is reporting that Apple was “quietly shopping around its entire professional application business to prospective buyers at the recently completed National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. These include Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Logic, and Shake — applications that are hardly also-rans in their segments and none of which are antiquated in the least. Final Cut, of course, absolutely dominates the video editing business.”
Cringely wonders, “Why would Apple want to give that up?”
“Apple’s recent hardware successes have come at the expense of Dell and HP,” Cringely writes. “If that’s the case, then the typical Wall Street drone would say, ‘Why not kill the professional apps, since they seem to no longer even be necessary for Apple’s success?’ In Wall Street’s quarter-to-quarter perspective, selling off Apple’s professional applications makes perfect sense. Except that Steve Jobs tends not to think quarter-to-quarter so much as decade-to-decade. 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.”
“Apple’s decision to not yet ship systems with Blu-ray drives or even support third-party or external Blu-ray drives in its professional applications has caused consternation in the $4 billion event video industry… This has hurt Mac sales and Final Cut sales, and since Steve Jobs isn’t stupid it is probably deliberate,” Cringley writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Come now, Mark, er… Robert, has it really hurt Mac sales and Final Cut sales? If so, please quantify the “hurt” and do so with something called “proof” (for once).
Cringley continues, “There is only one real reason why Apple would sell off its professional applications and that’s to avoid antitrust problems when/if Apple buys Adobe Systems… While in my opinion the Apple video software is clearly better, Jobs couldn’t be at NAB trying to sell Premiere — software he doesn’t yet own. Maybe there’s a planned bait-and-switch, seeing who is interested in Final Cut then trying to shift them to Premiere.”
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve long hoped that Apple would buy Adobe and — drumroll, please — begin phasing out Windows versions of applications a la Shake. You want Photoshop? Get a Mac. Illustrator? Get a Mac. Dreamweaver? You know what to do. It’s time to start driving the stake through Microsoft’s cold, shriveled, black, non-beating heart. Even if Steve doesn’t want to be that ruthless yet, at least Mac users would get much more timely updates from Apple than from Adobe. Unlike Adobe, Apple knows how to use Xcode.
Apple is currently worth $158.52 billion and has nearly $20 billion in cash on hand. Adobe’s current market value is just $21.41 billion. Pull the trigger, Steve!
[UPDATE: 5:31pm EDT: “This rumor is false. Competitors have been trying to spread it around for a few months now. Apple’s Pro business is thriving and it is not for sale. Period. Steve” – Comment posted below in Reader Feedback (stamped May 02, 08 – 05:13 pm) from “Steve Jobs” did indeed come from an Apple Inc. IP address in Cupertino, CA. We’re not saying it is from Mr. Jobs, but it did come from Apple.]
If Apple is really doing this, then FSCK YOU APPLE.
Let us pray!
While I agree that Adobe apps would be better off under the Apple umbrella, I don’t know if it’s worth the cost of knifing the babies that are currently in the family.
theres no way apple will sell off its pro apps…. thats bs…. but like I said above… lets pray they buy adobe
More rumor-mongering about Apple:
…they were, “quietly shopping around its entire professional application business to prospective buyers…”
Oh really?? Says who? What are your sources?
MaWo: ‘simply’. As in, ‘Cringley is simply stroking himself and fomenting baseless conjecture.’
come on ppl –
what Cringely is suggesting is a dumb move,
and Cringely may be dumb, but Steve Jobs isn’t.
So let’s just call this report – ‘reaching for hits’ instead of
‘insider knowledge’. No need to get bent outta shape.
If Apple would buy Adobe, I simply can’t see them selling off Final Cut Pro and then trying to market the newly-renamed Apple Premiere. It would make more sense if faced with antitrust issues to stop making Adobe’s current pro products. I don’t know too much about the video industry, but I do get the impression that it’s pretty much just Avid and Apple.
Hey PC users have Publisher and Corel… And Word…What else do they need for top quality output for print. After all print is a dead and dying process. Web 72 rules!
It’s a pretty weak analysis IMO. Cringley’s main reason for the purported sell-off is anti-trust issues, yet this would only be the case with Final Cut Pro, not the other pro apps. Also, he bases a lot on the mysterious intractability of Apple when it comes to including blue ray support yet there is another much more widely held and plausible explanation for that. Blu-Ray requires Apple to implement highly invasive, hardware supported DRM in every Mac that has a Blu-Ray drive. This kind of support is the very reason it takes Vista 20 minutes to transfer a 100 Megabyte file from one disc to another. Blu-Ray is not supported by Apple because it’s an “anti-consumer” technology and no one is buying blue ray discs right now anyway. You don’t have to look any further than that for explanations.
If so, Apple wants give up the Pro market and go total “Sony” retail consumer.
I am sure their Pro apps business is very, very small.
And if they wanted to buy Adobe, they would and just kill off or integrate its products with adobe products.
That would be the dumbest thing they ever did!
APPLE, DO NOT DO THIS.
I don’t trust any other software company in the least.
For a few billiion less, couldn’t Apple write its own suite of Adobe-like apps to compete and outrun Photoshop, Illustrator et al?
Cringely is wrong – yet again.
The Pro Apps sell Pro Macs. Simple. Apple will not walk away from that. Adobe products whilst good in some cases is not sufficient cause to sell off the Pro App line.
‘Hey PC users have Publisher and Corel… And Word…What else do they need for top quality output for print’
I double dog dare you to take a file in any of these formats to a printer! Printing flyers aren’t the only things these industries do . . . think every t-shirt you have with something on it, everything that comes in a package, etc., etc. These are files that are all postscript dependent; it doesn’t matter how many brochures etc. die a pitiful death for web based material, the software is still necessary. Not to mention professional photographers, printmakers, art galleries, the list goes on and and on. I’d love to see someone try to create a fine giclee print in Word. If Apple bought Adobe, I’d do a little dance, but If they are shopping around the pro apps they have, why would they bother?
Or maybe you were being sarcastic.
drz,
Then Apple would still have to sell it to all the dumbasses who would cling to Adobe.
It’s way cheaper to buy Adobe than for Apple to “write its own suite of Adobe-like apps to compete and outrun Photoshop, Illustrator et al.”
Look, using your logic (Logic, get it?) Apple wrote it’s own OS that totally kills the competition and, even then, they still can’t get most of the great unwashed to buy it.
The great unwashed want Microsoft to keep selling them a 7-year-old piece of shit OS!!!
It’s much more valuable to own the name “Photoshop.” You buy Adobe and make it Apple Photoshop and all of the Photoshop users will just continue buying it – no effort to code a competing app, try to sell it to stubborn morons, etc.
Apple should buy Adobe.
Interesting has it has not been that many years ago that Apple acquired eMagic to get Logic. I do think that Apple might create a spin-off subsidiary aka Claris now File Maker for the Pro Apps. This would make more over all clarity as a Pro Apps company could then expand without stressing Apple’s R&D;and advance the products in a more user focused direction.
With iLife, iWork, iPods, iPhones, iTunes, .MAC, XSAN, Macs, MacOSX, MacOSX Server, and the Pro Apps there is a lot more Software and products under the Apple Inc. banner then normally Apple likes as they normally like to keep it to the core Apps.The Pro Apps are a natural breakpoint for a split. They are popular enough and mature enough that a wholly owned subsidiary company could be a profitable endeavor for Apple, just as File Maker as been over the years.
Rule of thumb: Don’t spend 20 billion dollars on sucky companies.
Cringley has been living off a reputation he got years ago for something i can’t even remember. the guy’s self-important fool.
This is silly. So Steve Jobs was going into companies booths or conference rooms and sitting down with the CEO? Or pulling them off for a side conversation?
Like, hey Larry, come over to this room and sign this Non-Disclosure Agreement real quick, I wanna ask you something dude…
Wouldn’t they fly these people in, meet in some sound-proof Apple super room or something?
There is no person called Robert X. Cringely. The name’s a pen name used by several writers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
No, no, no… what happen was that we… opps, Apple was seeing who is interested in, ‘hem, Apple pro apps, so when APPLE buys Adobe, they can sell off the lesser ADOBE apps that compete with Apples and keep those wonderful and great APPLE pro apps.
Gosh… do you think we, opps, sorry again, that those guys over at Apple are that stupid, we don’t have a Sales Person in charge, like some other poor, dying company that we are not going to mention!
Peace and Love…
Not buying it. Adobe has nothing Apple needs that they can’t get for a hell of a lot less than Adobe’s market valuation.
-jcr
“. . . Microsoft’s cold, shriveled, black, non-beating heart.”
I disagree. Microsoft’s heart is beating. It’s just not in Sync.
Apple’s not going to sell off it’s pro apps just to buy another set of pro apps, many of which are inferior.
The only reason Apple would be shopping the pro apps is if Apple has decided that it is spread too thin to support and continue to develop OS X, iWork, iLife, Pro Apps, and iPhone and iPod apps. Aperature certainly took a PR beating with its myriad of problems (which Apple seems to have corrected, but which shouldn’t have made it out the door in the first place).
Think of how much work Apple has had to do to create the iPhone, and now the iPhone SDK, and I’m sure iPhone versions of iWork/iLife apps. Without expanding and growing your pool of programmers, Apple will start having issues. The iPhone SDK was delayed 6 months – Apple said it would be out in Feb., then only released a beta.
It may simply be that SJ doesn’t consider Pro Apps to be in Apple’s long-term future, particularly since Apple has moved out of the graphic designer/musician niche (perceived or real) and is now viewed (publicly and in the media) as a mainstream competitor to Microsoft.