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Adobe aims to make products web based
Author: Phil CogarPublished: 19th October 2007
Retail copies of Photoshop will go the way of the DoDo in the next ten years.
"The desktop is a powerful, powerful machine in which to run applications. Broadband, as quick as it gets, is still going to have some limitations in the short term," said Bruce Chizen, chief executive.
Currently, Adobe earns its revenue from the sale of packaged software like Photoshop and Premiere. Subscription and advertisement revenue models will be money makers when the company makes the move over to the web. While many casual users will be perfectly fine using the advertisement based models, Chizen expects that professional customers would rather opt for the subscription methods to avoid facing an advertisement every time they wanted to use a tool.
Adobe already offers a free versions of some of its software and web based versions of others. Premiere Express was made available earlier this year with an alternative version being labeled "YouTube Remixer." The much anticipated Photoshop Express is still under development with an unknown release date.
As broadband penetrates more corners of the world every day, consumers might not want to wait another ten years before being able to forgo retails copies of their favorite software packages. Microsoft is already making the move over to web based services with Google already leading the pack with its office suite Docs. The PS4 (should it arrive) has been citied as being sans-optical drive, relying on a distribution model akin to Steam. Adobe may be forced to make the switch long before the end of the decade long goal.
This is all hardly surprising considering Adobe's acquisition of internet software company Macromedia a few years back, which produced both the massively popular Dreamweaver and Flash that are the staple diet of most web developers out there.
So tell us, do you think that web based services and applications are the way to go or would you prefer to have an installed copy on your computer? Leave your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (11)Stats: 0.139 seconds
MAYBE, when net is more secure (not sure possible at all), and performance is up to par streaming....
Bruce is obviously unaware of how old and neglected the UK's internet infrastructure is compared to other developed countries. With more and more of these pipe demanding services becoming available, the further we are left behind.
I fear it's once again going to be left until crisis point before anyone (in power) wakes up.
One good thing about this though: it might force them to reduce some of the bloat (Why is their Acrobat reader so much slower than the other free alternatives?).
Because of all the indexing of your data on your 3+ HDDs that's running in the background to give Adobe some kind of overview over their customers (data)? (read: E-S-P-I-O-N-A-G-E)
Well, I just got a new 20 hours/week-still-able-to-study-while-earning-enough-money-to-survive job at some company and they use Outlook XP... and they give you the posibility to read your mails from home using WebOutlook which is pretty nice IMHO. It's not as comfortable as the real Outlook but it's just what you might need at home to organize incoming mails, contacts and appointments.
So I say as long as what you're doing is not of a critical level security-wise web-based applications are spot-on if you need something "to-go". IMO at least...
Good thinking Adobe.
I say leave it on the local drives.
Seriosuly though, I don't think that's how it will work. I suspect you will download Photoshop to your PC and run it locally. The subscription model should *in theory* offer a lower purchase price, plus an ongoing monthly fee.
You also have the problem of IP/rights if users have to upload potentially sensitive image files to Adobe's servers just in order to be able to edit them.
Most people use ADSL (or whatever virgin (ntl) use) in the UK, and in the US, the same sort of deal
Anyway, those connections usually have pitiful uploads, like in the region of 512kb at the most
For the few of us that have 4gbit/2gbit (down/up) connections, sure it might be great, but how many people have them .....
Let's say I was a design agency and used Photoshop/Illustrator/any other Adobe product. A customer wants me to design a print ad. Aside from having to upload massive amounts of data (over a slow connection), I would also be worried about Adobe storing my customer confidential data on their servers. Adboe will need terrabytes of highly encrytped storage to make it work. Even running something like Citrix, it will be a nightmare for them. You want to hide that layer, move that one, apply a mask? The data flowing in each direction will cripple most connections - particularly if you have several users sharing one net connection.
It's much more likely that you will run the software locally on your PC and the PC will phone home on a regular basis to ensure that you are a fully paid up Photoshop subscriber.