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by kj12345
5541 days ago
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I think it's this phenomenon of bloatware vs minimal software:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html Summary: It's probably not that any given customer actually uses even a third of the features, but that for any customer there is a feature that is very important to them, and those "I need X" features span the whole set of creative suite functionality. |
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Adobe and Autodesk have both effectively monopolized their niches. When Adobe acquired Macromedia that was pretty much it for viable competitors. When Autodesk got both Maya and Softimage, likewise.
There is simply no credible replacement for Flash, if you need to author Flash. I hope that Apple has dented Flash enough to make it irrelevant moving forward.
Photoshop has so many deep features that it's hard to imagine anyone seriously shaking it in the next few years. (Photoshop Elements has more functionality than Photoshop's high profile "competitors" and is given away free with scanners).
As for the rest of Adobe's empire -- it's pretty brittle. Illustrator is actually pretty dated. Dreamweaver -- well some folks like it. Fireworks -- it's the rotting carcass of XRes, an unsuccessful Photoshop competitor. After Effects has tons of competition, and its killer feature is CS integration. Premiere ditto (not even sure it has good CS integration). Acrobat is a joke -- it should be Adobe's crown jewel but it seems like almost anyone can write a better Acrobat clone than Adobe.