alas, poor macromedia, I knew thee well…

Last monday, I saw an article on news.com that I never thought I would ever see…
Adobe buys Macromedia
Dvorak has a good theory on why this has happened. To me, being an ex-macromedian, it still sounds like something out of the twilight zone.
His theory is that Adobe was worried Micro$oft was going to snatch up Macromedia in a bid to get into the online publishing business. Better to buy them out and chuck them into the garbage than compete against Micro$oft.
What do they really gain? Well, they will get Flash, which will give them two of the most popular (and annoying) technologies on the web. Acrobat was cool up until version 6.0, when Adobe slapped that annoying updater onto it.
What about the other products? That’s the big question.
Since the internet boom, Macromedia’s big sellers have shifted from Director, FreeHand (yes that’s a capital ‘H’), and Authorware to Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks.
Adobe may hang on to Director and Authorware because they don’t have products in that space.
FreeHand, though, has been stagnant since version 8, so it’s on the way to oblivion.
Dreamweaver? Adobe has GoLive. I haven’t touched that product since the early days (before Adobe snagged it), so I can’t comment on it as a product. If it has a better rendering engine than DW, I would welcome it ( I still can’t get DW to display a halfway complex design correctly ). These products may get thrown into a blender to create GoDreamweaverLive.
Fireworks is the product I’m the most worried about. Fireworks, even though it has a few hiccups, is my favorite Macromedia product, and I would hate to see it go away. But, Photoshop/ImageReady (from Adobe) are already huge bloated products, and I’m afraid that Fireworks will get assimilated into one/both of those products. That would truly suck.
The rest may get to stick around for awhile, simply because they don’t really compete with Adobe’s existing product line.
Well, ok. Kill Cold Fusion. Make the pain stop. That shite should have been put out to pasture years ago. JRun is still a decent app server, though.
There are a lot of good people at Macromedia, and I hate to see the company being devoured by Adobe simply because they’re worried about a much much bigger beast getting to the company first.
Hang onto your Macromedia products if you’re using them because they may be the last versions you’ll see.
UPDATE: Well, maybe Adobe isn’t so paranoid after all. Micro$oft is going to enter the online publishing market when Longhorn comes out. But, they are coming up with their own standard, code-named ‘metro’ ( oy ). Where does Micro$oft come up with their code names? ‘Metro’ makes me think of that stupid new term ‘metrosexual’ — Does that mean the Queer Eye guys are leading the development team?
At least Apple comes up with cool code names. : )
For those of you who haven’t seen this, ‘metrosexual’ is supposed to be a label for ‘straight’ men who are not afraid to embrace their feminine side. Don’t ask me why we needed a term for it. If you’re worried you might be infected, you can take the Metrosexual Quiz.
And, no, I only scored an 8 on the quiz, so I am safely assured I’m nothing of the sort. So, there, beat that score! Or, well, maybe not.