As you may have heard, Apple’s new version of its video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, has received considerable backlash from users. And as Jim Dalrymple reports, video editing rival Adobe has been welcoming these disheartened Final Cut Pro users with open arms. Now Adobe is taking it one step further, announcing a formal ‘switching program’ for any Final Cut Pro or Avid Media users.
Adobe says that anyone who has purchased any version of Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer and want to switch to Adobe’s video tools (Production Premium or Premiere Pro) will be eligible for a 50 percent savings on Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. → Read More
Adobe reported strong second quarter earnings at market close today, posting revenue of $1.023 billion, up 9 percent year over year. The Company says revenue came in at the higher range of its targeted revenue range of $970 million to $1.020 billion.
GAAP diluted earnings per share grew 61 percent year-over-year to $0.45. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share grew 25 percent year-over-year to $0.55, beating analyst expectations of $0.51 per share. → Read More
Adobe is today pushing updates to its application development software product Flash Builder and the open source Flex framework to enable developers to build apps for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, following support for the Android platform (added last April).
Developers can now opt to use Adobe’s platform to build apps that work across the Web, the desktop and a range of tablets and smartphones, with the ability to reuse most or all of their existing code and use common logic across all platforms. → Read More
Adobe Flash is to the smartphone as an unwanted cousin is to your wedding: necessary, yet painstaking. Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems to hate the software, neglecting to support it on all four models of the iPhone. Google’s done a better job of incorporating Flash support into the Android operating system, but still, most of the time Flash ends up being a battery killer, a security risk, not to mention a total bandwidth hog. That could change very soon though, as Qualcomm and Adobe have announced the development of optimizations for better Flash Player support in mid-level to high-end Android smartphones powered by the Snapdragon family of processors. → Read More
I still don’t particularly like the fact that Google decided to bundle Adobe Flash with their Chrome web browser about a year ago. Apple preference aside, the last thing I want is the buggy, often insecure, and performance killing plug-in shoved in my face. More importantly, I think it’s a maneuver that will only serve to slow the transition to HTML5. But Google has their reasons. And today, we see one of the good ones.
Google has maintained since they started bundling Flash that it was mainly to ensure they could make it more secure for their Chrome users. They do this by both sandboxing it and auto-updating it when the security patches regularly appear. But a new feature has just hit the Chrome dev builds which also now allows users to easily clear Flash cookies from within the browser. → Read More
Adobe’s taking a pretty big step here, but a smart one. In order to fit in better with other cloud- and subscription-based services, they’re giving their Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Flash, etc.) an alternative pricing model: subscribe for a month or a year, but never buy. They also apparently lengthened their release schedule to 24 months, though I can’t find a source for that — which makes constant rental a slightly worse deal (over two years) than just buying the software.
Having a flexible pay structure is a good thing all around. The thousand dollar cost for After Effects is prohibitive even for some professionals, when budgets are tight. → Read More
Adobe and Zend Technologies, the PHP distribution company, are announcing Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP software, a new integrated product aimed at helping PHP developers create rich Internet applications for mobile, Web and desktop leveraging the Flash Platform.
Zend, which has been working with Adobe since 2008, offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications, and sells software and support services around the language. → Read More
Adobe is reporting another record quarter today. The company announced the results for the first quarter of fiscal 2011, reporting record revenue of $1.03 billion, which an increase of 20 percent from the same quarter in 2010. Adobe just beat analyst estimates of $0.57 per share; posting non-GAAP diluted earnings per share at $0.58.
Adobe’s non-GAAP operating income was $400.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2011, compared to $289.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2010 and $384.0 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Non-GAAP net income was $298.1 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2011, compared to $211.7 million from same quarter in the previous year and $285.7 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. → Read More
For all the angst about the lack of Flash on Apple’s iPads and iPhones, most of the discussion seems to center around video. But a bigger impact by far is on display advertising, which tends to be done mostly in Flash. Adobe needs non-Flash alternatives for tablets and smartphones, particularly for people who design display ads.
Today, Adobe announced that it is integrating Medialets’ mobile ad platform into its own creative suite. Designers will be able to insert Medialets ads into InDesign layouts and then serve them on mobile apps. The reason this is notable is that Medialets essentially will become the de facto plug-in mobile ad server for Adobe. Medialets’ technology works with iOS devices and will also work with Flash in Adobe AIR apps. It powers the ads in The Daily iPad app, for example, a position it won over Apple’s own iAds. → Read More
Earlier today, Adobe Labs released Wallaby, a way to convert simple Flash games and animations into HTML so that it is readable on “devices that do not support the Flash runtimes.” Those would be iPhones and iPads. In other words, Wallaby is Adobe’s way of bowing down to HTML5 and, by extension, to Steve Jobs who has always insisted that there is no need for Flash because HTML5 will take over.
Adobe’s capitulation to Apple has been going on for a long time—first with Flash converters for iPhone and iPad apps, and now with Flash in the browser. Remember that Apple at first tried to block Adobe’s moves, but eventually relented.
So Wallaby is a converter for Flash content on the Web that makes it Apple-friendly (it really works with any Webkit browser). That’s all well and good, and the way it should be, except this Wallaby cannot jump very high. → Read More
I read an interesting article this morning that suggested Apple would change its mind and put Adobe’s Flash technology on its iOS devices within a year. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
In an open letter to users, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave several reasons why he didn’t want Flash on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. They are: Flash isn’t open; the full web; reliability, security and performance; battery life; and touch.
Adobe began shipping Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile last June, but even Laptop magazine admitted that “Steve Jobs was right,” and that “Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.” Granted, that report was from six months ago, but it still doesn’t bode well for the technology. There is no doubt that Adobe is making advances with Flash on mobile devices, but I don’t believe future changes will be enough to get Apple to adopt the technology. → Read More
Earlier today there was quite a bit of commotion in the tech press over a Verizon ad that stated that Flash wouldn’t be making its way to Android tablets until Spring 2011. Which has the potential to be pretty far off (as late as June), especially given that the Motorola Xoom — the first tablet to run Android Honeycomb — will be coming out in a few days.
Now Adobe has issued a blog post clarifying just how long we’ll have to wait: they say it will be available “within a few weeks of Android 3 (Honeycomb) devices becoming available, the first of which is expected to be the Motorola Xoom”. Which sounds like it should be around mid-March, though Adobe has still left itself some wiggle room. At least it’s a lot better than June. → Read More
Adobe released version 10.2 of its Flash Player yesterday, but this bit of news may have flown under the radar. It seems that Adobe worked with AMD in order to bring hardware acceleration to Flash video—provided you’re using recent AMD hardware, of course. What could be better than hardware accelerated YouTube videos? → Read More
Adobe just announced a big acquisition today; buying behavioral data bank DemDex. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.
Demdex, which launched in 2009, captures behavioral data on behalf of Websites and advertisers and stores it in a “behavioral data bank.” The company then score each user across more than 40 behavioral and demographic variables to come up with a “traitweight,” which helps websites segment their audiences better and advertisers target their messages more exactly. → Read More
Do you smell that? Just wait a second. You will.
Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
The bolding is mine, but that’s Google’s actual statement as to why they’re dropping support for the H.264 video codec from the Chromium open source browser (from which Chrome is built).
Erick wrote up the main story earlier today, but in my opinion, he didn’t go far enough in calling bullshit on this maneuver. Namely, how on Earth can Google get away with dropping support for one popular codec under the guise of “open” when baked into their browser is Flash, the decidedly un-open plug-in? → Read More
In the world of online video, there is a battle brewing over the next dominant standard for online video, especially on HTML5 Web pages. Today, Google took the gloves off and declared that it will soon stop supporting the H.264 video codec in its Chrome browser. Instead, it will only support open-source technologies such as its own WebM initiative (with its VP8 codec) and the open-source Theora video codec, which is used by Firefox.
You could see this a mile away. Google announced the WebM project last May, along with other partners Mozilla and Opera (Apple, which relies on H.264 in its mission to squash Flash, was conspicuously absent). The H.264 codec is owned by the MPEG-LA consortium, and may in the future require a license. Although the consortium was pressured into promising that H.264 streaming would be free forever that is only for non-commercial Internet video. → Read More
Software maker Adobe has once again posted record revenue results this quarter, surpassing the $1 billion milestone for the first time. Adobe revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 was $1.008 billion versus $757.3 million reported for the fourth quarter of 2009 and $990.3 million reported in the third quarter of 2010. This signifies a 33% growth from last year. → Read More
Today during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen sat down with John Battelle to talk a bit about his company. The first thing they talked about was Apple. And despite Battelle saying he wouldn’t focus on it, it kept coming back up. But it led to Narayen revealing on interesting stat.
“The amount of Flash video, despite what you might read in the press, is going through the roof,” Narayen said. He then said that Flash 10.1, the latest version, has exceeded every other Flash player in history in terms of adoption. → Read More
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen sat down for talk with host John Battelle. With his first question, Battelle didn’t beat around the bush: Apple.
Narayen noted that it’s appropriate that the theme of his conference is “points of control” because that’s what this standoff between Apple and Adobe is all about. “There’s a war happening for developers,” Narayen said. → Read More
I used to think that Android fanboys worked themselves into the biggest tizzy when you suggest their favorite device of the week may not be the absolute bee’s knees. I was wrong. Flash fanboys are much worse. They’re worse not only because they go absolutely ape-shit if you disrespect their platform, but also because at the end of the day at least Android fans have a leg to stand on. At least their object of love is ultimately pretty good and has a bright future. Flash? Yeah…
Adobe’s CTO paints a rosy picture of the platform. But that’s his job. The reality is what many of us see with our own eyes: Flash is a massive pain point in our day to day computing. If it’s not crashing our browsers left and right, it’s causing our computers to cook our thighs (or worse). If it’s not draining our batteries 33 percent faster, it’s opening gaping security holes. → Read More
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