All right, I'll admit it: I'm a software guy. I can see a lot more value in companies like Adobe and Autodesk than I can in Yahoo. The former pair turn healthy profits from selling software to industries that they dominate: publishing and graphic design in Adobe's case; 3D modelling, animation and engineering in Autodesk's. They're a pair of little giants compared to the market's valuation of internet firms like Yahoo. If I were in charge of the itchy leviathan of Redmond, I'd be more interested in them than a distant rival to Google, essentially well past its prime.
Of course: I'm overlooking the mess of antitrust consequences too, as I'm not really that committed a Microsoft watcher!
What interests me about Adobe is what they're up to. Everyone knows Flash and Photoshop, and they've taken what they won in eating up Macromedia to the next level with this AIR platform they're weilding, and the much praised Photoshop Express. I'm no fan of proprietary extensions to the web – Flash being the example par excellence. But I can see what they're up to, and recognise it as one way to try to own the future which we all know is coming: where the internet is the platform and whatever way you're getting to it is but a minor detail.
In a way, Adobe are trying very hard to be the new Microsoft. Their web strategy looks a lot better than Microsoft's own, or indeed Yahoo's for whatever precisely that may really be worth. I don't particularly wish them well for it, but I recognise that it's definitely in their interest.
Adobe have been in the news lately because of a nasty surprise coming in their flagship software suite: Create Suite 4. The Windows version will be 64 bit, but the Mac version will not. This comes down to an ancient rivalry regarding Mac OS X. Adobe have stuck with Carbon while Apple have been calling everyone over to Cocoa, and last year's fait accompli at their developer show left Adobe in this particular lurch. Or rather their many professional users on the Mac.
That the two biggest developers for Mac software outside of Apple: Adobe and Microsoft, just so happen to be two competing platform companies – albeit of very different sorts – remains a sore point.
One of the defining changes Steve Jobs brought with him when he returned to Apple a decade ago, was a push to develop platform-critical apps in-house. Open source code and technologies from outside were and are welcome of course – as few things are as destructive as the Not Invented Here syndrome – but when it comes to your platform, you really have to keep the wolves out. Apple's apps dominate the Mac experience now, and keep many a professional served too. There are however a handful of remaining exceptions. Those are owned by Microsoft, Adobe and indeed in the field of animation so well known to Pixar: Autodesk.
The iPhone's continuing snub of Flash and this CS4 / Cocoa affair indicate that not all is well between Apple and Adobe. Microsoft ought to be exacerbating that. Apple, meanwhile, may well just have a skunk works or two busy on competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator.
I'm not one to give stock advice to anyone – especially not now we're in some choppy water – but I've a feeling Adobe and Autodesk are out there to be bought by interests greater than themselves. Bear in mind though that I am but a humble blogger…
