Well now Microsoft’s new technologies are going to be competing with Macrobe so there will still be competition.  I’m not sure many people want that competition to come from Microsoft though.

Expression Studio
Sparkle - Flash
Quartz - Dreamweaver
Acrylic - Illustrator/Photoshop (mor the latter than the former though).
XPS - PDF

I also expect Adobe Photohsop Album to become significantly less popular once Vista ships with “Windows Photo Album” and a new version of Paint (hopefully they’ll just use a modified Paint.Net because it’s awesome).

And of course MS Office 12 will output PDF natively so I’m sure Acrobat will see far fewer purchases in the future.

“And of course MS Office 12 will output PDF natively so I’m sure Acrobat will see far fewer purchases in the future.”

I doubt Adobe would feel any pain from that - as M$ would be licensing it from Adobe to begin with, such as Apple has.

And, what? yet another web design application from Microsoft? *Gets F***Page flashbacks*
*screams in horror and pulls out hair*

The entire suite just makes me cringe - the thought of it makes me want to run away screaming.

I guess I’ll have to take a look at it eventually *pulls out 10 foot pole*.

Doesn’t Microsoft know the name “Quartz” is already taken?  Not that others aren’t guilty of the same thing, of course.

And I certainly hope this XPS format doesn’t become very widespread, because PDF already does (at least most) of what it seems it’s going to do, it’s cross-platform, and XPS has the potential to be a Windows-only technology that will leave Mac and Unix/Linux users out in the cold if it gains as much traction as .doc has.

“I doubt Adobe would feel any pain from that - as M$ would be licensing it from Adobe to begin with, such as Apple has.”

From what I understand, PDF is free in many implementations.  That why it ships with Open Office and several GPL products.

“And I certainly hope this XPS format doesn’t become very widespread, because PDF already does (at least most) of what it seems it’s going to do, it’s cross-platform, and XPS has the potential to be a Windows-only technology that will leave Mac and Unix/Linux users out in the cold if it gains as much traction as .doc has.
“

XPS is an open XML format so it would be hard to restrict it to Windows.  They have already gone in to detail on many blogs about their plans to make it cross-platform.  Apparently, it was designed that way from the begininng and Microsoft will be releasing code for other platforms.  Of course, anyone is free to make an XPS reader for any platform though.

AFAIK, the only part that might not be cross-platform is the default rights management included in the Windows version.  It’s designed so end-users can place certian restrictions of how their documents are treated by others.  Like the rights manaagement on Office files, I don’t think this will make it out of anything not conected to a Windows or Windows Server System (for authentication).

<bq>M$<bq>
S key stuck?

<bq>F***Page</bq>
It’s FrontPage.

You see, this is why Mac users get such a bad rep.
When they could state issues they have with companies or allpications, but they resort to petty insults.

M-Dollar is the 4 key.

I know. I guess I meant broke.

Liam, I’ve been calling it “F***Page” BEFORE I was a Mac User!

My hatred with Microsoft has NOTHING to do with the fact that I own Macs now. It’s BECAUSE of my hatred to Microsoft that I left it for Linux… And it’s BECAUSE OS X has Unix underneath that I became a Mac user.

Ask anyone that knows me, even here on DT - they will tell you how much I even hatted - APPLE! Before OS X came out.

Have you USED FrontPage? Or looked at the source of Front Page websites? It’s a freakin’ Nightmare!!!

M$ gets such a bad rap - because of the quality of their software.
That is what started my hatred for them.

And don’t you ever call me a Mac user! Mac users where always fans of Apple. I wasn’t! And even today my preferred OS is Linux. I just use a OS X because that’s the platform I rather run the commercial software I need, it still feels enough like “home” to stand using it.

Sogni is a Mac user.  I am a Mac lover.

Yep. Of course FreeHand is already dead. It’s only partially compatible with Tiger and doesn’t appear to be under development anymore.

I was never able to warm up to Illustrator (Illustrator vs. FreeHand throughout their history has always been a matter of personally preference, not one being, factually, dramatically, superior to the other). Been a user since FreeHand v2, stuck in the wilderness again. Sigh.

Nothing good has ever come from a merger (except maybe the one between Apple and NeXT).

I hear ‘ya about Freehand Scott.  I never really took to Illustrator either.  It’s always bad when you lose the ability to have a choice of your tools. I can only hope the tools under Adobe will all get better, but I doubt it.

Now I wonder how long it will be before Autodesk kills off Maya on the Mac now that they can?

HP and Compaq produced the HP iPaq and ditched the Jornada line.  They took the best things from each line and combined them into one device… sheer awesomeness.

Their business line of notebooks barrows heavily from the Compaq lines but they have HP quality.

Although they keep losing marketshare to Dell and e-Machines, it would be fair to say that the HP-Compaq merger improved all their computing products tremendously.  HP was always none for their quality and reliabilty while Compaq was always known for being on the cutting edge of technology adaption at low prices (while sacrificing quality-- FIC motherboards-- yuk!).  They’ve combined the two to make undeniably better computers.

Apple and NeXT wasn’t a merger IIRC.

Good riddance.

“How do I access my hard drive?”

“Well, um, it’s on the desktop.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s under your Word document.”

“OK, I switched to the Finder and I still can’t see my hard drive.”

“Well, it’s under that Finder window there.”

Thank you Apple for getting rid of the “Hide Others” user interface.

I don’t think Adobe has much to worry about from MS. Designes tend to stick with what they know. Especially when it works. I still know firms that haven’t switched to InDesign from quark, even though its a superior product. As long as Adobe doesn’t get to full of itself and starts treating its customers like crap (as quark did) then adobe apps will remain ontop for some time.

Truth be told most designers don’t trust MS at all and try to minimize Bill’s influence on their machines.