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Topic: Adobe Encoder Problems

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-27-2015 02:46 PM

quote: Frank Cox
Yup. That's what I said. They've got you exactly where they want you.

True. As much as Adobe seems to have a monopoly on much of the graphics software market it's also a strong statement of just how badly Adobe's competitors have sucked competing with them.

Adobe has had rivals in every niche of creative software in which they've developed and marketed. Many of those niche markets have been dominated by other applications. In each niche now dominated by Adobe those developers made mistakes to cede the lead to Adobe. This is certainly true with the print-related graphics software field. It could end up happening with the audio/video editing field too.

Adobe has done a very good job of leveraging the industry leading applications it does have to elevate and improve the lesser applications in its collection. They've done it with file compatibilty between applications, even across Mac/Win platforms. Adobe has taken it farther with features like Smart Objects and Dynamic Link which can greatly reduce the need to hop various assets between multiple applications with each change.

Quark Xpress used to be the dominant professional page layout software program. In the 1990's you couldn't get a job in a newspaper or magazine publisher without Quark Xpress experience. At that time Adobe was selling PageMaker, the first DTP app, but one that only drew laughs when compared to Quark Xpress. The publishing world didn't take InDesign seriously when it was first released. But Quark's own mismanagement with customer service and development of Xpress gave InDesign the opening it needed. Today InDesign has an overwhelming lead over Quark Xpress.

Corel had much of the Windows-based graphics software market to itself in the 1990s. But as good as CorelDRAW is as a drawing application it doesn't integrate worth a damn with Photoshop and InDesign. Aldus/Macromedia Freehand grew into a credible rival until Macromedia fumbled the ball with Freehand 10. Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005 and killed Freehand soon after that. Corel tried selling a Mac version of CorelDRAW with version 11, but had very few takers. They haven't released a Mac version since then. So now Adobe Illustrator dominates on both Windows and Mac platforms.

Adobe Premiere (now called Premiere Pro) had been a laughing stock when compared to Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. But the Premiere Pro user base has been growing steadily due to the app's integration with other more industry-leading Adobe applications like Photoshop & After Effects. Apple's radical changes to Final Cut Pro with version X certainly contributed to customers looking for alternatives such as Premiere Pro.

A few weeks ago with New Year's Day looming I read a photography-oriented article making predictions for 2015 (IIRC it was on the Adorama web site). One of those predictions was Adobe would start selling boxed software with perpetual licenses again. I'm not very optimistic that is going to happen.

It's going to take more than customer anger to get Adobe to fix software bugs and incorporate improvements faster. Adobe needs pressure from serious competitors.

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