The Other Microsoft

CreativePro Staff

I wrote this column in 1995 when I was executive editor of MacUser magazine. Published at the time by Ziff-Davis, MacUser was incorporated into Macworld magazine in 1997. — Pamela Pfiffner, editor in chief

Everybody is so worried about Windows 95 that they fail to realize that the real Microsoft of the Mac market is not Microsoft at all — it’s Adobe Systems. Sure, the company doesn’t seem to have the same ruthless drive that fuels Bill Gates and Co., but Adobe dominates graphic arts and publishing, the multibillion-dollar industry that’s synonymous with the Mac. And it wants more.

Look at the hard disk of any graphic artist or publisher. What do you see? Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Illustrator. Adobe PostScript fonts and printer drivers. If cross-media production is in the picture, you’ll find Adobe Premiere as well. Adobe’s strength isn’t just in applications either. The PostScript programming language is the standard for the printers and imagesetters used in the publishing industry. Like an operating-system provider, Adobe has the livelihood of scores of companies riding on its back.

Just how firmly entrenched is Adobe? Every year, we hear about some new program that may be the next Photoshop killer, but Adobe’s image editor continues to reign supreme. Each revision of Macromedia’s FreeHand ups the ante for Adobe Illustrator, but the latter is still in the lead. Even mighty Microsoft fears to tread into the graphics market. Many people forget that Adobe stared down Microsoft and won: In 1990, Microsoft introduced its PostScript killer, TrueImage. After a long series of advance briefings designed to undermine the competition, Microsoft abandoned TrueImage.

Recently Adobe has been preoccupied with empire building and filling gaps in its product line. The Aldus and Frame Technology acquisitions give Adobe a foothold in the page-layout arena on three platforms — Macs, PCs, and UNIX machines — but neither PageMaker nor FrameMaker is poised to knock QuarkXPress from its current position atop the A-list. Adobe’s investment in Netscape Communications gives the company a stake in the Internet too.

The Netscape alliance also gives a good indication of where Adobe is headed. Adobe recognizes that publishing is moving from paper and toward other media, such as CD-ROMs and cyberspace. Much as the PostScript language became the standard for paper-based publishing in the latter part of this century, Acrobat is being pushed by Adobe as the PostScript of the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the concept of a device-independent and — more important — media-independent way to create and distribute documents has been difficult to get across. Even though some companies are starting to use Acrobat for archiving documents and distributing advertising, they aren’t doing it fast enough to make Acrobat the standard that Adobe would like it to be. Fortunately, Acrobat is taking off in an entirely different direction.

The Internet is finally giving Acrobat a place to hang its hat. Instead of having to post bland-looking documents in basic HTML on the World Wide Web, you can save documents with fully formatted text by using Acrobat. The first revision of PageMaker brought out under the Adobe umbrella lets you save files directly into Acrobat’s Portable Document Format for immediate posting on the Net. And Adobe recently announced a new version of Acrobat that includes dynamic media, indexing functions, and better interactivity — all good news for Internet users.

The logical progression for Adobe’s current customer base is toward Acrobat and the Internet — but because no one is really making a lot of money from the Internet, Acrobat licensing won’t turn into a steady revenue stream for a while. In the meantime, how does Adobe gain market share?

Follow the CPUs. The bulk of Macs are being sold into the SOHO (small office, home office) market, a customer base Adobe has traditionally ignored. There are recent indications, however, that Adobe recognizes the potential in these millions of users. Take, for example, its new PrintGear architecture (see this month’s New on the Menu for more). Tired of losing out on the low end to QuickDraw- and PCL-based printers, Adobe had to find a way to get to that market without cannibalizing PostScript. Is it too little, too late? PostScript-clone vendors have proven that you don’t need the Adobe logo to offer good performance at competitive prices. With powerful PowerPC-based Macs becoming available to SOHO customers, dumb QuickDraw printers — for which the CPU does the processing — aren’t shackling users with glacial print times anymore. We’ll have to see if printer vendors can deliver what PrintGear promises — great performance for pennies.

Can Adobe make the transition from purveyor of high-end publishing products to mainstream-software titan? Stay tuned.

Entire contents © copyright 1995 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, L.P. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. MacUser is a registered trademark of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, L.P.