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Sunday, August 17, 2008

How Adobe can stop Microsoft

John C. Dvorak
JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION

By John C. Dvorak

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- If you've gone online to watch the Summer Olympics on your computer, you've found the elaborate NBC Web site done in conjunction with Microsoft Corp. featuring videos from almost all the events, using a new online-video presentation technology called Silverlight.

Silverlight is a direct attack on Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE:
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Last: 45.21-0.25-0.55%
6:09am 08/20/2008
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Sponsored by:
ADBE
45.21, -0.25, -0.5%)
and its ubiquitous Flash technology. The clips you watch on YouTube are in Flash.
Adobe gives the Flash viewer away free and sells development kits to make millions on the technology originally developed by San Francisco-based Macromedia, bought by Adobe in 2005.
Microsoft (MSFT:
Microsoft Corporation
Last: 27.81-0.10-0.36%
4:00pm 08/15/2008
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Sponsored by:
MSFT
27.81, -0.10, -0.4%)
thinks it can unseat Flash with Silverlight, which has characteristics that may allow it to beat Flash in the market -- maybe. Right now, Silverlight is immature, although you would never know it from the Olympics site.
Microsoft has attacked Adobe before by adopting TrueType font technology over PostScript around 1989, an announcement that sent Adobe founder John Warnock into shock. Fear of Microsoft may have resulted in the fast-paced and never-ending upgrade cycle of Adobe Photoshop -- out of real concern that Bill Gates and company might develop a real competitor.
Now we have this Silverlight situation, and Adobe has to do something other than run away from Microsoft. It should attack Microsoft with a Linux initiative.
Adobe could port its Creative Suite to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow.
Adobe has never developed its cash cows Photoshop and Illustrator for Linux. This stems from the fact that the aforementioned Warnock, now semiretired from the company, disliked open source, specifically a PostScript clone called Ghostscript.
Not wanting to help a movement, little was done for the platform that might damage Adobe. But part of the reason Linux has not moved to the desktop and impinged on Microsoft is its lack of a Photoshop-grade, high-end graphics- and image-editing program.
(I am aware that Adobe's been a member of various open-source groups and has experimented in the Linux community with both Flash and Air. Furthermore, there is a semiprofessional Photoshop-like product called GIMP for Linux.)
Adobe could port its Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design and other subsystems, to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow. Then the company should embrace Linux in-house and develop a complete, optimized Linux OS designed to run a high-performance version of its Creative Suite on Linux optimized for Adobe products, to be sold as a bootable bundle for multicore-workstation hardware.
The idea is to produce a near-dedicated Adobe computer designed to use all the power of the newest chips to run the Adobe software under Linux. Since Linux is under the hood, users could exit the Adobe programs and run their word processors and whatever else on the Linux boxes.
Having complete control of a high-powered OS would make all of the performance-demanding Adobe software run rings around any other implementation, if engineered correctly. It would become the viable desktop alternative to both the PC and the Mac.
To further tweak Microsoft, the company could embrace the Silverlight Linux clone, Moonlight software, and give it away as an alternative for people who insist on using Silverlight.
Adobe never has fully confronted Microsoft when the software giant steps on its turf. Its strategy has been to simply run faster, letting Microsoft kill the laggards -- like the famous Silicon Valley bear joke told incessantly by VCs and Valley lecturers:
"Two campers see an encroaching and hungry bear heading their way. One camper quickly grabs his tennis shoes and puts them on, while the other asks: "Why are you putting on those shoes? You can't outrun a bear!" To which his friend replies: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I have to outrun you!"
Maybe it's time to give up on this model and grab a gun and shoot the damned bear. Adobe has a gun and should use it.

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