Adobe Recants: Flash and Interactive Apps Cancelled

InDesignSecrets

25

[Editor’s note: This was our 2009 April Fool’s Post]

Apparently someone high up at Adobe had the Ghosts of Publishing Past, Present, and Future appear to them last night, because we just received this surprising press release:

ADOBE CANCELS INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

SAN JOSE — Adobe Systems, Inc., today announces that effective immediately development and distribution of all interactive technologies have been cancelled, including Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe Thermo, Adobe AIR, and Adobe Cold Fusion. Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Executive Officer, first announced the news in a company Tweet, stating in the usual 140 characters or less: “R U using RIA? No one else is either. We were wrong, RIA just a fad, sorry: https://tr.im/byebyeria #dumbidea #restructure”

RIAs, or Rich Internet Applications, were thought to be the future of the Web. However, the resurgence in popularity of basic HTML apps, such as PageMill and Visual Studio, made it clear that the public didn’t really care for fancy graphics or interactive features. Similarly, repeated delays in releasing Flash for the iPhone brought the world-wide realization that a technology that doesn’t work on an iPhone is an abomination against all that is holy and good.

Video products such as Premiere and After Effects were not affected by the decision. As Narayen pointed out, “Come on, everyone is still going to watch TV. We have to keep up those products. Besides, After Effects is just too cool to kill. You can paste a movie into a TV screen that’s part of the background of another TV show! My kid showed me, they used it on Two and Half Men last night.”

Similarly, PDF products such as Acrobat will continue, though without their interactive features. Jack Smyth, senior analyst for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, said, “We rely heavily on PDF technology, so we would have squashed Adobe like a bug if they dropped it entirely. But in a recent audit of Adobe’s business expenses we discovered that Acrobat software engineers and product managers were making PDFs more ‘fun’ and ‘cool’ which are obviously not business-related pursuits. The transition effects were the last straw?’Glitter?’ Seriously??thus we had no choice but to classify all interactive PDF expenses as additional employee compensation, just like any other benefit.”

Adobe has held firm on last year’s decision to drop support for Print Publishing technologies. Adobe’s new focus will be on building 21st century tools that enable total engagement in customer-enhanced experience for knowledge workers. “Adobe’s action plan is to iteratively expose our user-centric feature set via an agile development cycle which synergistically generates top-down functionality out of the box,” clarified chief technology officer and senior vice president Kevin Lynch.

Of course, if you’re still reading this, and haven’t yet noticed the publication date of this press release, we encourage you to buy Adobe Gullible with patented Fu Ling technology.

In other InDesign related news, Adobe announced:

• Due to recent economic developments, Adobe will be shipping CS5 next month, and future versions will shift to a 4-month release cycle rather than forcing people to wait 18 months before handing over “whatever is in your wallet or purse.”
• InDesign CS5 will remove the ability to enter arbitrary leading amounts for text, reverting back to the simpler “Single space,” “150% Space” and “Double Space.” As senior product manager Michael Ninness pointed out, “Leading is confusing to users. I mean, even the name is confusing. Is it ‘leeding’ or ‘ledding’? We couldn’t figure it out, so we’re cutting it.”
• The next version of InDesign will incorporate more technology from other Creative Suite apps. For example, the InDesign team particularly liked Photoshop’s “throw” and “rotate the canvas arbitrary degrees” features. So you will soon be able to spin your InDesign spreads in real time by “flicking” them with a mouse or stylus gesture. The spread can continue spinning while you work, allowing you to unleash your creative potential, such as in this leaked InDesign CS5 document: