Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Style from how
Speaker 1: stuff flix dot com. Hello there, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and I am
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan's trick. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and today we're continuing the conversation we began in our
Speaker 1: previous episode about Adobe, which if you're just tuning in,
Speaker 1: in our last episode, we ended in Adobe's well. So
Speaker 1: it was when Adobe merged with a company called Aldus
Speaker 1: and became Adobe Systems Incorporated. Now, now, when you mix
Speaker 1: the mud with the water, you wanted to kind of Adobe,
Speaker 1: that kind of Adobe. I'm gonna need some new notes. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Chris is gonna go bye bye for a little while.
Speaker 1: Uh No. So yeah, Adobe, of course, at this point
Speaker 1: in its existence, was really really focused on top publishing
Speaker 1: and desktop video editing software and getting into some other
Speaker 1: arenas as well. They're starting to look into three D rendering.
Speaker 1: They were looking into developing things for web pages, which
Speaker 1: you know, in the early nineties, the web is in
Speaker 1: its infancy, it's it's hasn't really taken off yet. Uh
Speaker 1: and and also into other venues as well. So Adobe
Speaker 1: starting to branch out beyond the traditional font management software
Speaker 1: that it had kind of cut its teeth on. Well,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a time when there was still a
Speaker 1: lot of fragmentation out there. Sure, you know, we we
Speaker 1: talk on on tech stuff a lot about older technologies,
Speaker 1: just because I think it kind of puts what we
Speaker 1: have now into a lot of context. UM. We've talked
Speaker 1: in the past about the main frames that they used
Speaker 1: to use before the Internet really hooked everything up, and
Speaker 1: all these different machines used different operating systems, they use
Speaker 1: different programming languages. UM and UH. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the things one of the reasons if you especially
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to UH to the first episode
Speaker 1: of the Adobe UH two parter um, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that the founders of Adobe decided to branch out
Speaker 1: from their work at Xerox Park was they wanted to
Speaker 1: create technologies that would enable people to standardize UM specifically
Speaker 1: in this case for publishing the purposes of print publishing.
Speaker 1: But UM, they you you will find that as we're talking,
Speaker 1: especially in this second part of the podcast, that the
Speaker 1: the technologies and formats that Adobe has created have really
Speaker 1: done that. UM. And this is a time in the
Speaker 1: in the mid es when we're moving from UH. You know,
Speaker 1: the Macintosh operating system is moving forward, UM the UH
Speaker 1: you know, some of the other different competitors have fallen out,
Speaker 1: a tar st has gone by this point for the
Speaker 1: most part, UM Amigas has long since UH foundered and
Speaker 1: been saved and founder again, etcetera. UM. So it's really
Speaker 1: sort of a a two part race for the most part.
Speaker 1: The people who are using uh PCs based on IBM
Speaker 1: S technologies and UM and people who are using the
Speaker 1: Mac and and as Jonathan alluded to in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: the Mac people right now are still sort of designers.
Speaker 1: You know. That's if you're going to be doing desktop publishing,
Speaker 1: you need to Mac. But Adobe was smart and hedging
Speaker 1: its bets. They started producing software for the Windows operating System.
Speaker 1: More people have used I mean OS two. The IBM
Speaker 1: UM operating system is kind of fallen off by this
Speaker 1: period too, so UM that that was the right horse
Speaker 1: to back was the Windows Operating System. And with Windows
Speaker 1: three point x and then Windows ninety five around the
Speaker 1: time we're starting to talk about it's really becoming a
Speaker 1: situation where that the technologies are are getting more similar
Speaker 1: than dissimilar. And of course, uh, you know, already we
Speaker 1: had the whole model of the enterprise leaning toward Windows
Speaker 1: based machines as opposed to Mac machines. So with entire
Speaker 1: companies uh investing in Windows PCs, it meant that, you know,
Speaker 1: you wanted to make sure you you catered to that
Speaker 1: particular market as well. There were going to be a
Speaker 1: lot of Windows PC machines out there, and a lot
Speaker 1: of businesses do some form of publishing, whether it's for
Speaker 1: internal documents or it's an actual company that produces stuff
Speaker 1: that will go to external clients or customers. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very important for Adobe to look into that,
Speaker 1: and in they went on something of a bit of
Speaker 1: an acquisition spree. They acquired a company called Visual where
Speaker 1: uh they acquired a Seneca Communications which made website creation
Speaker 1: tools like I said, you know, early days of the web,
Speaker 1: and Adobe saying we need to get into this. They
Speaker 1: acquired hyphen which was a printer software company. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they they acquired frame Technology, which created a software called
Speaker 1: FrameMaker UM which was all about producing and manipulating large
Speaker 1: structured documents. Now, if you aren't a technical writer. This
Speaker 1: might not sound terribly interesting, but if you are a
Speaker 1: technical writer and you have to create long, complicated technical documents,
Speaker 1: something like FrameMaker which would allow you to produce those
Speaker 1: and and uh switch things around, uh relatively painlessly, that's
Speaker 1: a big deal. You know, you're talking about very complex documents.
Speaker 1: I know people who have used FrameMaker. Yeah, they would.
Speaker 1: They would probably take exception to your your painless painlessly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realized that painless is again your mileage may very
Speaker 1: tight term, just like open was in our last episode.
Speaker 1: But the goal of FrameMaker at any rate was to
Speaker 1: make this easier for large complex documents, to manipulate those. Uh.
Speaker 1: Whether or not it succeeded was probably more of a
Speaker 1: case by case basis. Well, when you put it, when
Speaker 1: you put it in terms of what people had to
Speaker 1: do to create those same kinds of documents before computers
Speaker 1: were on everyone's desktop, Uh, it's considerably painlessly. Yeah, much
Speaker 1: much easier. At that same time, they began to license
Speaker 1: a programming language created by Sun Microsystems called Java, and
Speaker 1: they were licensing it with the intent on integrating it
Speaker 1: with their Adobe Acrobat product. So, uh, Java is not
Speaker 1: an Adobe product. It came from Sun Microsystems, but Adobe
Speaker 1: did license it for some of its own products. They
Speaker 1: also ended a licensing agreement that year they ended the
Speaker 1: agreement with Photoshop. They decided to cut that license because
Speaker 1: they decided to buy Photoshop outright for thirty five and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars. So that pet project of Thomas Knowles,
Speaker 1: who created his display software program a few years before,
Speaker 1: turned out to be quite a windfall for him. The
Speaker 1: thirty half thirty five and a half million dollar deal
Speaker 1: with Adobe after after a fairly lucrative licensing agreement. So uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was one of those right
Speaker 1: place to be during the right time kind of situations,
Speaker 1: you know. And then also that year, Acrobat becomes integrated
Speaker 1: with a browser called Netscape. New listeners, young listeners might
Speaker 1: not be familiar with the name Netscape, but Netscape at
Speaker 1: one time was a dominant web browser. Um you had
Speaker 1: essentially you had two web browsers battling it out for supremacy.
Speaker 1: There was Netscape and there was Internet Explorer, and then
Speaker 1: Internet Explorer kind of one for a while, and then
Speaker 1: other browsers rose up to a challenge Internet Explorer. But
Speaker 1: Netscape was a big name back in the day, there
Speaker 1: were there were there were other browsers, quite a few
Speaker 1: of the UM, most of which you really will never
Speaker 1: hear of. Right, the market share for those was tiny
Speaker 1: in comparison, and and that's really thanks in large part
Speaker 1: to Microsoft because um Netscape was a paid product back then.
Speaker 1: If you wanted the Netscape web browser, you forked over
Speaker 1: money because I know this because I did that. And
Speaker 1: then Microsoft released Internet Explorer for free. Yeah. Also, this
Speaker 1: was the same era when Internet Explorer and Windows were
Speaker 1: so tightly integrated that it caused problems for Microsoft in
Speaker 1: the court systems where they were talking about Microsoft kind
Speaker 1: of unfairly biasing everything toward Internet Explorer so that you
Speaker 1: would effectively not have a choice trying to become a
Speaker 1: monopoly in the browser world. That's a totally different story though,
Speaker 1: so we don't really need to go into that, but
Speaker 1: it's just interesting background with what's going on during the
Speaker 1: time that Adobe is making all these acquisitions and licensing agreements. Uh,
Speaker 1: they release more updates to their product line. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into all of them because frankly, it
Speaker 1: would take several episodes and I'm not sure that it
Speaker 1: would be that interesting. I will say that they did
Speaker 1: release the first edition of page Mill, which was, according
Speaker 1: to the box, the easiest way to create pages for
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web, because that's what we used to
Speaker 1: call it, and I and to that, I would just say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe back then it was the easiest. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you you remember having to create a web page by
Speaker 1: coding it in in HTML and then saving the htmail document,
Speaker 1: then opening up a browser, opening the h Gmail document,
Speaker 1: looking at it, say that's not the way I wanted
Speaker 1: to be. Close out the browser, reopened the HTML editor,
Speaker 1: go back into it and change another line of HTML.
Speaker 1: I say, code, but it's really a mark up language.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, they that was a pain. Yeah, well, well
Speaker 1: this this if you wanted to get into the Web,
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of people did. At this point.
Speaker 1: It was it was being likened to the Great land
Speaker 1: Rush type thing where the West, yeah, the wild West,
Speaker 1: or or space. You know, it's it's wide open and
Speaker 1: anybody can do this, and people wanted to learn how
Speaker 1: to do this, and you kind of had two choices,
Speaker 1: which you we still really do, but uh, it was
Speaker 1: less familiar to people at that time. So you either
Speaker 1: learned how you bought a book on how to code HTML,
Speaker 1: or you got software to help you with this, like
Speaker 1: for example, Page mill or um uh front page, I
Speaker 1: remember front Page. And you know, there were there were
Speaker 1: there were situations where you you'd go, Okay, well I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go ahead and uh, you know, bite the
Speaker 1: bullet and go ahead and buy a program to help
Speaker 1: me do this. And it worked some of the time.
Speaker 1: And at other times you look in the code and
Speaker 1: if you knew anything about the code, you go, what's that?
Speaker 1: You know, why is why is it injecting all this
Speaker 1: stuff that really doesn't it's not necessary for me to
Speaker 1: align my text to the left. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was the attempt of the early software the software
Speaker 1: engineers to um, you know, make an attempt to make
Speaker 1: coding easier for HTML users, and eventually this would develop
Speaker 1: into whizzywig editors, which of course is the what you
Speaker 1: see is what you get where you know, the all
Speaker 1: the coding part is hidden away from you, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to pay attention to it. You just see
Speaker 1: the representation of it on your screen and you move
Speaker 1: things around to where you want them. And saw a
Speaker 1: lot of web development tools are these days now grant
Speaker 1: most of them also allow you to go into the
Speaker 1: H T M L if you want to do it
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way or you want to tweak things
Speaker 1: very specifically, and you don't you know, you want to
Speaker 1: do it via code as opposed to clicking and dragging
Speaker 1: something on a screen. But yeah, this is this kind
Speaker 1: of predates the whole wizzy Wig stuff. Yeah, well and
Speaker 1: until Macromedia comes out with, um with dream Weaver, which
Speaker 1: is I believe you can we can make it through
Speaker 1: the night. Well, dream Weaver is a is a sort
Speaker 1: of best of both worlds sort of situation where you
Speaker 1: can do wizzy Wig editing, but you can also really
Speaker 1: get into the code. Actually, there was a company called
Speaker 1: go Live that also came out with a similar program.
Speaker 1: So go Live and uh and Macromedia we're coming out
Speaker 1: with these advanced HTML editors and will play a part
Speaker 1: in the story. And and dream Weaver and um, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and uh, page Mill, well, page Mill is now sitting
Speaker 1: in deep in the ground where it was stomped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's okay because Adobe, even though perhaps its own
Speaker 1: product did not win out in that war h Adobe
Speaker 1: still stood tall. And we'll get into why. But there
Speaker 1: their revenue that year because I was doing revenue in
Speaker 1: the previous ones, I'm not gonna do this every single year.
Speaker 1: It was seven hundred sixty two millions. So they're creeping
Speaker 1: up on a billion dollars in revenue. They had over
Speaker 1: two thousand employees at this point, two thousand two. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the next year in ninety, Adobe acquired a
Speaker 1: company called Swell Software. Yeah, so they developed web server software.
Speaker 1: And they also acquired a company called Aries Software, which
Speaker 1: was another font scaling company. If you listen to part one,
Speaker 1: you probably heard us talk about Adobe buying every font
Speaker 1: scaling company that seemed to come come into existence, because
Speaker 1: again that was very uh much part of their their
Speaker 1: focus with desktop publishing and electronic publishing in general. Then
Speaker 1: you have two D scale the fonts if you want
Speaker 1: to eat them. So then after that, after that, Adobe
Speaker 1: all so decided to spin off one of its divisions.
Speaker 1: They had this whole prep press application software company spinoff
Speaker 1: that they called Luminous Corporation, and Adobe Systems Incorporated relocates.
Speaker 1: Yet again, Now, if you listen again to the previous episode,
Speaker 1: you heard about them getting a start in Mountain View
Speaker 1: and then moving to Palo Alto, and then moving back
Speaker 1: to Mountain View, and now they're making their move to
Speaker 1: where they where Adobe headquarters are today, which is well,
Speaker 1: you know the way, it's San Jose, do do do? Anyway,
Speaker 1: So they go to San Jose, California, and uh, moving
Speaker 1: on to nineties seven more acquisitions, which it's kind of
Speaker 1: amazing if you look at Adobe's history and you look
Speaker 1: at all the companies that's acquired. I never realized how
Speaker 1: many companies Adobe butt. I think of companies like Google,
Speaker 1: which I think of as being pretty you know, at
Speaker 1: least during certain eras of Google's history, they they've swept
Speaker 1: up quite a few companies. Uh. And then there are
Speaker 1: other companies that are in Microsoft has done the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It's brought up several smaller companies. But
Speaker 1: I never really thought of Adobe being one of those.
Speaker 1: I knew about them making some major acquisitions and matures,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize how many how many companies Adobe acquired,
Speaker 1: I mean it was a lot. So yeah, nine seven
Speaker 1: Sandcastle which was a two way internet communication company, Digi Docs,
Speaker 1: which was a personalized PDF creation software company. Uh, fine
Speaker 1: Point which was web graphics software company. I mean they
Speaker 1: every year, it seems like they're they're acquiring at least
Speaker 1: two or three companies kind of kind of uh interesting
Speaker 1: and scary. Well, um, this is around the time when
Speaker 1: Macromedia was really uh putting the hurt on Adobe because
Speaker 1: um in h is when they introduced Flash. So you know,
Speaker 1: Adobe really had no uh, no concrete answer for how
Speaker 1: um for software like flash, which is still today one
Speaker 1: of the most popular ways of providing rich Internet content,
Speaker 1: especially now that that broadband technology is uh is so common.
Speaker 1: And I would even argue that Flash in some ways
Speaker 1: probably had an effect on broadband becoming more popular because
Speaker 1: with more interactive and interesting content with the ability to
Speaker 1: to create that using Macromedia Flash, UM, that made having
Speaker 1: faster Internet speeds more compelling because there was something to
Speaker 1: get um and it was it was that next year
Speaker 1: in where where Macromedia came out with dream Weaver to
Speaker 1: to create web pages. So um, you know Adobe is
Speaker 1: is even though it's a you know, the number two
Speaker 1: software firm in the world, behind only Microsoft, in um,
Speaker 1: it's there's still places that can improve. And they also
Speaker 1: that year launched the NOIDA Research and Development Center, So
Speaker 1: this was a division specifically to you know, they would
Speaker 1: they would dedicate resources to the center to try and
Speaker 1: find new and innovative ways to improve either existing products
Speaker 1: or come up with brand new products. So in a way,
Speaker 1: this is kind of Adobe's version of Park, which of
Speaker 1: course is what the two founders of Adobe. What the
Speaker 1: world that they came out of. Uh So, now and
Speaker 1: they have a new employee, uh a fellow who originally
Speaker 1: came from India, And so I'm going to completely butcher
Speaker 1: the pronunciation of his name, and I apologize for that
Speaker 1: because I it's my cultural illiteracy, and that's the only reason.
Speaker 1: But Shantanu Narayan, who joins Adobe as the VP and
Speaker 1: General Manager of Engineering Technology Group. I he was a
Speaker 1: former executive at Apple and then after that he was
Speaker 1: the founder of a digital photo sharing company, Pictra Incorporated.
Speaker 1: It was actually one of the first companies to look
Speaker 1: into digital photo sharing. Anyway, this man will become very
Speaker 1: important to Adobe in the future. He was He also
Speaker 1: has a meteorc rise. He may have heard of us
Speaker 1: talking about chisen Um having a meteorc rise as well.
Speaker 1: Throughout these years, he is steadily climbing the executive ladder
Speaker 1: over at Adobe. Well that year Adobe Ship's image ready
Speaker 1: one an image Styler one, along with updates to pretty
Speaker 1: much everything else in its software suite. Um. And we
Speaker 1: move on to ninety nine and we talked about go
Speaker 1: Live again. That was the company you were talking about earlier, Chris. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was basically the competition to dream Leaver, right. So
Speaker 1: Adobe is like, hey, I know how we can compete.
Speaker 1: Let's buy go Live. So they did. So go Live
Speaker 1: created this macweb authoring tool, and uh, Adobe sweeps them up. Um.
Speaker 1: They also acquired Attitude Software, which was a three D
Speaker 1: technologies company. UH, photo Merge, which was a photo stitching
Speaker 1: software company. Photo stitching, for those who do not know,
Speaker 1: that is the software that allows you to take multiple
Speaker 1: photographs and then merge them together to make one image.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of companies that do this, but
Speaker 1: photo Merged was one of them. In Adobe jumped on
Speaker 1: that opportunity. UH. That year, they shipped a product called
Speaker 1: document Server one. This was a pretty important piece of software.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you would have purchased as just
Speaker 1: an average computer owner. But what document server one allowed
Speaker 1: UH people to do is if you if you installed
Speaker 1: this on a server, it would allow folks to view
Speaker 1: PDF files through a browser without first having to download
Speaker 1: Adobe Acrobat Reader or some other clients software. That's the
Speaker 1: way it had to be done. Previously, you would you know,
Speaker 1: the browser itself was not capable of displaying PDF without
Speaker 1: a plug in, essentially, so you had to get Adobe
Speaker 1: Acrobat Reader before this. Now, what this software did was
Speaker 1: on the server side, so it's not client side. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to have it on your personal machine. On
Speaker 1: the server side and installed the software that would convert
Speaker 1: PDF documents into JEFF or jpeg formats and then so on.
Speaker 1: You know, those are file formats that any browser could display.
Speaker 1: So your browser would be able to show the JEFF
Speaker 1: or jpeg version of a PDF document, so you're not
Speaker 1: looking at the true PDF version, you're looking at an
Speaker 1: image of it. Um But that meant that you didn't
Speaker 1: have to install something additional into your browser of choice.
Speaker 1: They also shipped a product called active Share, which was
Speaker 1: software that had sort of a simplified photo editing suite
Speaker 1: of tools, and it was men for the average user,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the Adobe products previous to this
Speaker 1: point were meant for people who were specialists. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about photography specialists or are people who you know,
Speaker 1: it's they're living to retouch photos, that kind of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: they needed tools that had a lot of sophistication, and
Speaker 1: sometimes with sophistication comes complexity, which is a barrier for
Speaker 1: an average user, someone who doesn't do this for a living,
Speaker 1: someone who's who's interested in it, but they don't have
Speaker 1: the expertise to you know, if you if you hand
Speaker 1: them a tool chest that has a thousand tools in it,
Speaker 1: it's just overwhelming. So this was Adobe's attempt to kind
Speaker 1: of address a different market. We're talking about the average
Speaker 1: consumer and say, look, this software will let you share
Speaker 1: your photos and you can even do some simple touch ups.
Speaker 1: Most of it automated, so that way it wasn't too
Speaker 1: intimidating for the average user. UM and they shipped a
Speaker 1: product called press Ready, which was a publishing tool for
Speaker 1: in jet printers. And nine was the first year that
Speaker 1: Adobe hit the one billion dollar revenue mark. M so
Speaker 1: big year for Adobe. Yeah, and I remember in in
Speaker 1: Design came out. UM that was you know then the
Speaker 1: basically sort of the the update, if you will, although
Speaker 1: it wasn't an update to PageMaker, which it bought from
Speaker 1: all this or when it acquired all of this. UM
Speaker 1: and uh, you know there it was still uh, it
Speaker 1: was still a little different from from PageMaker at that
Speaker 1: At that point, Adobe's PageMaker was going up against Cork
Speaker 1: with its Cork Express software and those two were the
Speaker 1: big publishing uh platforms of choice. And then in design
Speaker 1: was you know, Adobe says, you know, this is brand new,
Speaker 1: written from the ground up. It's going to take over
Speaker 1: the world. It's it's much better than than our old stuff.
Speaker 1: It's much better than their stuff. And you know, right
Speaker 1: out of the gate, maybe not, but that would go
Speaker 1: on to uh to do very very well, and they
Speaker 1: eventually would phase out the PageMaker right yep. In two
Speaker 1: thousand they are ranked as number forty two Unfortune's Best
Speaker 1: Companies list, which was a point of pride for them.
Speaker 1: They acquired a company called glass Book, which was they
Speaker 1: created software for reading, creating and deploying e books. So
Speaker 1: another big move we're talking about now. Again, e publishing
Speaker 1: was always something Adobe was interested in, but now we're
Speaker 1: talking about e books in particular. This is definitely the
Speaker 1: early days of the books two thousand. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: CD screens really a niche market, not not doing a
Speaker 1: lot of business in this but Adobe kind of could
Speaker 1: see the writing on the tablet and uh, sorry to
Speaker 1: get into it. This was also another another monumental year
Speaker 1: for Adobe in the sense that there was a big
Speaker 1: change at the top. Warnock and Gesh became co chairman
Speaker 1: of the Board of Directors and Bruce Chisen became the
Speaker 1: CEO of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Yeah, he retired from his
Speaker 1: his typical post and went on to U you know,
Speaker 1: to join the board and sort of step down from
Speaker 1: the day to day stuff. So. Um. Adobe also shipped
Speaker 1: a product called live Motion one, which was product that
Speaker 1: was all about web graphics and animation software, and uh,
Speaker 1: a publication management and collaboration tool called in Scope one,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, so they're again they're diversifying a bit.
Speaker 1: So it's not just digital publishing for static documents, but
Speaker 1: also yet more web page publication tools. Yeah. And a
Speaker 1: focus on cross platform to which uh you know has
Speaker 1: has been for and from where we are now the
Speaker 1: focus for many years, you know, building formats and and
Speaker 1: and uh making tools to create those those formats that
Speaker 1: will work on Windows and Macintosh computers both. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that way, no matter who argues ATOBEE still wins. UM
Speaker 1: two thousand one, another huge year, a artificially intelligent computer
Speaker 1: by the name of how started to off space explorers
Speaker 1: one by one because of the problem. Okay, now my
Speaker 1: notes are wrong. No, In two thousand one, they made
Speaker 1: a big deal with a a major retail establishment, Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble. So the deal was that they would start
Speaker 1: to sell electronic books in PDF format through Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1: So again a little early for that, but it was,
Speaker 1: you know, that sort of seeing what the future was
Speaker 1: going to be in the publication industry, so that was
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting They also, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't go a year without them acquiring somebody, so
Speaker 1: they acquired the company called Fativa, which was a digital
Speaker 1: photography saw were company, and they also began to license
Speaker 1: software from Sonic Solutions Technology. Sonic Solutions Technology was a
Speaker 1: company that created DVD authoring software. So now we're getting
Speaker 1: into not just publication for the web or for the desktop,
Speaker 1: or even hard copy paper documentation with you know, the
Speaker 1: PostScript printer stuff. We're talking about creating DVDs. So they
Speaker 1: also they also shipped special versions of Acrobat Reader for
Speaker 1: a couple of different formats, and this is I'm mentioning
Speaker 1: this just to see Chris's reaction. Uh, this was the
Speaker 1: year two tho one when they shipped Acrobat Reader for
Speaker 1: palm Os. I have a little moment of silence for
Speaker 1: palm Os. Alright, that's enough, Um, you know you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've done an episode on Palm and we've done an
Speaker 1: episode on HP. So if you really want to know
Speaker 1: the whole grizzly story about Palm, well it was. It's
Speaker 1: sort of again, it's sort of a foreshadowing of how
Speaker 1: important the mobile market would end up being. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is again a very early entry into the mobile market.
Speaker 1: We're talking about back in the days of the personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant days, So we have personal digital assistance for
Speaker 1: those of you who don't remember, are smartphones without the phone,
Speaker 1: who would do that? But in general, that's kind of
Speaker 1: what it was. So yeah, this was an idea of well,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's create a version of Acrobat Reader. They
Speaker 1: will work on a mobile device, so that way you
Speaker 1: can load a document on a mobile device and take
Speaker 1: it with you and you don't have to have a
Speaker 1: computer to set up so that you can read whatever
Speaker 1: the document is. Uh. And in two thousand two they
Speaker 1: celebrated their twentieth anniversary. Oh yes, and they also acquired
Speaker 1: a company, um, a Chilio or a Celio, depending on
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but they was
Speaker 1: a company that made web enabled electronic forms, and specifically
Speaker 1: these forms were designed to improve business processes. So that's
Speaker 1: his exciting as it sounds, yes, but it's very important.
Speaker 1: It's very lucrative, right, um. Yeah, and and uh and
Speaker 1: also in two thousand one, by the way, I have
Speaker 1: listed that John Warnock retired officially from day to day
Speaker 1: operations of the company, so the founders are no longer
Speaker 1: doing the every day Actually they probably were, but but
Speaker 1: just for frenzies. Uh So, moving onto two thousand three.
Speaker 1: At two thousand three, they hit their peak as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell anyway, on the Fortune's Best One lists,
Speaker 1: they rose all the way to number five. So they
Speaker 1: had been appearing on the list year after year, but
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, I believe two thousand three was
Speaker 1: when they got as high up on the list as
Speaker 1: they've ever been. They also, of course, guess what they did,
Speaker 1: acquired a company, yes, Centrillium, which was a digital audio
Speaker 1: tool company, and they also acquired a company called Yellow
Speaker 1: Dragon Technology, which was again all be getting into a business.
Speaker 1: Very early on, Yellow Dragon Technology created x m L
Speaker 1: messaging and metadata management software, so x m L Extensible
Speaker 1: Markup Language was something developed to make web pages a
Speaker 1: more rich medium because HTML had certain limitations that it
Speaker 1: was not really able to go beyond without additional stuff
Speaker 1: supporting it, and XML in a way is one of
Speaker 1: the many things that kind of bolstered HTML. Also made
Speaker 1: it easier to do things like the metadata menada is
Speaker 1: very important. Mentadata kind of tells a computer program what
Speaker 1: the content of a particular document, whether it's web page
Speaker 1: or uh you know, a document like a like you know,
Speaker 1: just something that you're creating on a computer. It gives
Speaker 1: the computer information about what that documents about or how
Speaker 1: to uh sw that document and this this becomes really
Speaker 1: important in lots of different applications. The one that a
Speaker 1: lot of people refer to because it's a very easy
Speaker 1: illustration is search. So if you are searching for stuff
Speaker 1: and the search program looks through meta data to try
Speaker 1: and find documents that relate to whatever your search terms are,
Speaker 1: you need to have a really good meta data management
Speaker 1: system in order to make sure people are finding your
Speaker 1: stuff when they're searching for it. Um. Because this this
Speaker 1: can make or break a business. Yeah. It was especially
Speaker 1: important in the earlier days of the web when the
Speaker 1: search engine uh spiders, which is basically a piece of
Speaker 1: software that goes from page to page on the Internet.
Speaker 1: They were less sophisticated than they are now um at
Speaker 1: at reading the content on the page and determining context
Speaker 1: from from the way the content is marked up in
Speaker 1: HTML or or you know, some form of XML so
Speaker 1: um or PHP um so h yeah, there are others
Speaker 1: um but um. But yeah, I mean it's sort of
Speaker 1: relied on people marking up a page under and in
Speaker 1: the code that you wouldn't necessarily see with tags that
Speaker 1: they wanted to be associated with meta information and uh
Speaker 1: so this this was a very important uh you know,
Speaker 1: business to being involved in at that point. Granted, people
Speaker 1: started to figure out ways to gain the system by
Speaker 1: putting in irrelevant information and sta data so that they
Speaker 1: would get lots of traffic. Uh it wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: productive traffic because people would go to the page and say,
Speaker 1: this is not what I was looking for at all. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's just that someone happened to include stuff in meta data.
Speaker 1: That's the reason why the Google algorithm is so sophisticated.
Speaker 1: It needed to do things like just completely disregard meta
Speaker 1: data for the most part and concentrate on the content
Speaker 1: of the web page itself in order to try and
Speaker 1: get you the best results for whatever search query you
Speaker 1: put in, and other other search engines do similar things
Speaker 1: using you know, a very uh complex approach to curating data. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we're still in two thousand three. They also decided
Speaker 1: to ship some products. You know, they weren't happy just
Speaker 1: acquiring companies, so beyond updating their suite of software, Adobe
Speaker 1: also shipped new stuff like Encore DVD, also a piece
Speaker 1: of software called Audition one, which was a digital audio
Speaker 1: editing environment that this was mainly meant for professionals, people
Speaker 1: who are you that's their living is editing audio, So
Speaker 1: this wasn't something that the average user would go out
Speaker 1: and buy necessarily. Um. They also had a product called
Speaker 1: Version Q, which was a file management system. Uh and
Speaker 1: again this doesn't sound particularly sexy or anything, but Version
Speaker 1: Q what it would allow you to do is track
Speaker 1: different versions of files so that you could zero in
Speaker 1: on the specific version you needed to whenever you were
Speaker 1: doing publication. This is incredibly important in the publishing world,
Speaker 1: particularly before there were a lot of collaborative environments available,
Speaker 1: because you know, typically what would happen is someone would
Speaker 1: create a file on their machine and then they might
Speaker 1: copy that file onto a disk or later on a
Speaker 1: USB drive, or perhaps email it to someone else who
Speaker 1: would then open it perhaps make some changes. Well, now
Speaker 1: you've got two versions of that file out there in
Speaker 1: the wild. There's the original version that's on the person
Speaker 1: who created its machine, there's the edited version that's on
Speaker 1: the other machine that the edited version might get sent
Speaker 1: to someone else and makes further changes. So you very
Speaker 1: quickly get into the situation where someone coming from outside
Speaker 1: may not know which version is the one they need
Speaker 1: to work with. Yeah, so version Q was kind of
Speaker 1: a way to help try and keep tabs on what's
Speaker 1: going on so that confusion would not ruin a project.
Speaker 1: And trust me, I've worked on projects that where where
Speaker 1: we had major setbacks because someone was using an out
Speaker 1: of date file for part of the project. Um, not
Speaker 1: a how stuff works. I was gonna say, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about that. No, No, it wasn't at how stuff works.
Speaker 1: It was in my previous life working in other venues
Speaker 1: that I will not name, but anyway, it is a
Speaker 1: very frustrating experience. So again, not not something that you know,
Speaker 1: those of us who are gamers would necessarily think as exciting,
Speaker 1: but it's very very important. And you know, Uh, Macromedia
Speaker 1: around this time has bundled uh it's some of its
Speaker 1: software together. You know, the freehand um drawing program that's
Speaker 1: sort of a competitor for Adobe Illustrator and Flash and fireworks,
Speaker 1: um Dreamweaver. That's uh, every time you say that, the
Speaker 1: song goes through my head, I'm I'm just imagining Wayne's world. Okay. Anyhow, Um,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, around this time, back in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Adobe fights back. It bundles together first version of its
Speaker 1: Creative Suite, Version one point Oh yeah. So this was
Speaker 1: you know, definitely a way of making a stand and
Speaker 1: putting together these products that Adobe was known for and
Speaker 1: pricing them in a way where someone who is really
Speaker 1: really determined to go into desktop publishing could get all
Speaker 1: the tools they need in one suite as opposed to
Speaker 1: buying it piecemeal. Well yeah, because um, you might prefer
Speaker 1: one company's tool over another, You might prefer Illustrator over freehand.
Speaker 1: But then you'd want dream weaver to Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: did that on purpose to do your web design and
Speaker 1: maybe flash and but you needed Photoshop. So and of
Speaker 1: course Macromedia and Adobe both knew this. Okay, well, we'll
Speaker 1: put together a bundle of software that's maybe a little
Speaker 1: cheaper than if you bought them all together, you know,
Speaker 1: one by one, and maybe we can lock people into
Speaker 1: our environment. Gee that that's not anything like the way
Speaker 1: software companies do that today, not at all. So two
Speaker 1: thousand four, let's get the acquisitions out of the way.
Speaker 1: Q Link Business Process Management suffer a company and okay,
Speaker 1: y z or o kis so the three D technology company.
Speaker 1: H we're both acquired by Adobe. Uh. And in two
Speaker 1: thousand five A Shantanu Narai, and you know I mentioned
Speaker 1: him earlier, he becomes the president and CEO O of
Speaker 1: Adobe Systems. And this is also two thou five was
Speaker 1: a big, big year because that whole macro media company
Speaker 1: that has been a thorn in adobe side for so long.
Speaker 1: They announced Adobe announces a plan to acquire Macromedia and
Speaker 1: uh and the acquisition is done in an all stock transaction,
Speaker 1: so instead of cash changing hands, we're talking about stocks,
Speaker 1: and it was valued at three point four billion with
Speaker 1: a B dollars. Yes, to to put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: the revenue for that year was one point nine six
Speaker 1: billion in for Adobe. So you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: a deal that's uh, it's more than a well nearly
Speaker 1: twice the amount of what the revenue was for that year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as you might expect this, Uh, this caused a
Speaker 1: lot of consternation over whether or not this would be
Speaker 1: permitted because, um, you know, Adobe and Macromedia had been
Speaker 1: the two big creative packages that that fought against one another. Again,
Speaker 1: like I said, they had bundled their software. You were
Speaker 1: you were an Adobe person or you're a Macromedia person,
Speaker 1: and uh, well you know that sort of made it
Speaker 1: a monopoly in some people's eyes. Uh not so as
Speaker 1: far as regulators, they decided to go ahead and permit
Speaker 1: that to happen. Yeah. And uh and this is when
Speaker 1: Adobe takes stewardship of Flash. Uh, savior of the universe.
Speaker 1: Now we're now we're we we transferred to queen. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is we haven't really touched on it here all
Speaker 1: the we did talk about a bit with XML. Flash
Speaker 1: was one of those things developed to give more functionality
Speaker 1: through the web browsing experience than HTML could provide on
Speaker 1: its own. Uh. When we did our episode about HTML five,
Speaker 1: we talked about flash quite a bit. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: are you are you smiling because you're thinking of the
Speaker 1: song every time? Okay? So so dreamweaver for me and
Speaker 1: flash for you? That makes sense? Okay, So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that. So Flash was a way to have
Speaker 1: these rich media experiences within a web environment that would
Speaker 1: not natively be supported by HTML and meant that you
Speaker 1: had to install this plug in on your browser so
Speaker 1: that you could be able to access this content. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you would just get a little error message saying you
Speaker 1: could not see whatever it was that was on there.
Speaker 1: And so um Untobe took ownership of that at this point.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of why if you've ever if you've
Speaker 1: always heard of Flash associated with Adobe, that's why it
Speaker 1: was in two thousand five when they acquired Macromedia. Two
Speaker 1: thousand six, they continued acquiring companies. They acquired file Line
Speaker 1: Digital Rights Management, which was actually a division from uh
Speaker 1: novice Ware. Digital rights management is one of those terms
Speaker 1: that is almost like a four letter word in the
Speaker 1: minds of many people who follow technology. Digital rights management,
Speaker 1: of course, is all about protecting intellectual property by putting
Speaker 1: limitations on what people can do with software in an
Speaker 1: attempt to prevent piracy. UH. A lot of the complaints
Speaker 1: around DRM from the consumer side stem from the fact
Speaker 1: that sometimes these restrictions are they go too far. For instance,
Speaker 1: having a DRM that requires that you have a persistent
Speaker 1: connection to the Internet to work on software that is
Speaker 1: not itself dependent upon Internet connectivity. That would seem prohibitive.
Speaker 1: If I'm running a program and all it needs to
Speaker 1: do is run natively on my machine, I should have
Speaker 1: an expectation that that machine does not need to be
Speaker 1: hooked up to the Internet for me to successfully run
Speaker 1: this software. At least that's that's the general argument. I
Speaker 1: happen to agree with that argument, but I should say
Speaker 1: that's just one perspective, and I'm not. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say that's the end all be all. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also acquired Traded Technologies France TTF, which created software to
Speaker 1: allow interoperability between CAD systems and multi CAD mock up
Speaker 1: CAD being computer aided design. Yeah so uh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is getting a little more specialized. Uh. They also acquired
Speaker 1: Pixman Tech Technology, which was the digital imaging software company. Also,
Speaker 1: they acquired Interact, which was a web content management company.
Speaker 1: They acquired Serious Magic, which was a video software and
Speaker 1: communications tool company, and they acquired act Imagine Technology, which
Speaker 1: was a video and interactive vector graphics company. So lots
Speaker 1: and lots of acquisitions. In two thousand and six, they
Speaker 1: also it a huge revenue two point five seven five
Speaker 1: billion dollars. The previous year was one point nine six,
Speaker 1: so that's a pretty impressive growth um. And in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Bruce Chisen resigns as CEO and Shantanu Narayan
Speaker 1: becomes the new CEO, so he steps up from presidency
Speaker 1: O t CEO UH. That same year, they shipped the
Speaker 1: Photoshop light Room software suite, which lets you manage digital
Speaker 1: images and post production work. And they also produced sound Booth,
Speaker 1: which was an audio editing software suite for people who
Speaker 1: were not audio professionals, So it was a more accessible
Speaker 1: audio tool suite for people who wanted to produce audio
Speaker 1: work but didn't have that level of expertise to fiddle
Speaker 1: with all the knobs on that board that's just outside
Speaker 1: this room. That intimidates me every time I see it,
Speaker 1: because y'all those things move on their own. Well, um yeah,
Speaker 1: they they Adobe had started really getting into the the
Speaker 1: casual hobbyist market. I think they realized, Um, well they've
Speaker 1: their their software has been pirated quite a bit. UM
Speaker 1: and they Photoshop in particular, that's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most pirated pieces of software that I'm aware of, and
Speaker 1: I think in in some way, uh, they have decided
Speaker 1: to reach out to the plain old, everyday consumer as
Speaker 1: a result of this, and as a really good business
Speaker 1: opportunity anyway, UM, I think it was sort of for
Speaker 1: for many reasons. But yeah, that that was one of
Speaker 1: a larger series of of UM efforts in that regard,
Speaker 1: like the Element series. UM. Photoshop Elements, for example, is
Speaker 1: a lower cost version that has, um, you know, a
Speaker 1: lesser set of tools that the full version of Photoshop has,
Speaker 1: but it's it's much less expensive too, and it's it's
Speaker 1: basically aimed at, Hey, I photos of stuff, and I
Speaker 1: like my kids and my hobbies, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I like to to shoot photos of of my dog
Speaker 1: and double rainbow UM and stuff like that, and I
Speaker 1: just want to I just want to resize that photo.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to put it in the
Speaker 1: school newsletter for my kids, or I want to put
Speaker 1: up online. And I don't need this crazy resolution to
Speaker 1: make this this one web page way larger than it
Speaker 1: needs to be. You know, I don't need to use
Speaker 1: it and see m y K because it's never gonna
Speaker 1: see print or if I if it does it, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be perfect. Well, you know, they'll be said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what we can We can offer you tools
Speaker 1: for this, and they, um, they sort of split a
Speaker 1: second line off of their their main line of software
Speaker 1: tools and and started offering those around around this time
Speaker 1: to too people who um, you know, may just not
Speaker 1: need the same to the same kinds of professional level tools,
Speaker 1: and and they were very successful. And this is also
Speaker 1: the time where I alluded to it in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a battle between Apple and Adobe
Speaker 1: with the whole fonts issue where Apple wanted to try
Speaker 1: and develop its own fonts, and it actually eventually did
Speaker 1: because it was licensing fonts from Adobe and felt that
Speaker 1: those licensing fees were becoming prohibitively expensive, so Apple began
Speaker 1: to design their own and well, there was another fight
Speaker 1: that was gearing up around this time. And it's because
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, that's also when we had the
Speaker 1: introduction of a piece of technology that has revolutionized consumer
Speaker 1: electronics in the latter half of the first decade of
Speaker 1: two thousand that was that was a complicated sentence thank you,
Speaker 1: That would be the iPhone. So the iPhone comes out.
Speaker 1: It is the first truly successful consumer smartphone in the
Speaker 1: United States. There were other smartphones that were popular in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. There were some smartphones that
Speaker 1: had fans in the US, but they just it just was,
Speaker 1: you know, they were in minority. Most people were using
Speaker 1: what we call feature phones now cell phones that had
Speaker 1: some limited web connectivity. I guess they didn't link dumb phones.
Speaker 1: I was really working on that. Yeah, Well, the iPhone
Speaker 1: ended up being the first true runaway success smartphone in
Speaker 1: the United States. And Steve jobs Uh famously said that
Speaker 1: he didn't believe that the iPhone or the iOS operating system,
Speaker 1: which at the time was not called iOS but that's
Speaker 1: what we call now, um that it would not support
Speaker 1: flash because they decided that it they wouldn't make it happen. Well,
Speaker 1: the essentially what the arguments against it at the time,
Speaker 1: and you could you know, you could maybe uh dispute
Speaker 1: the truth behind it. But the arguments were that flash
Speaker 1: would require so much processing power that it would drain
Speaker 1: the battery life of an iPhone and create an unsatisfactory
Speaker 1: experience for the consumer. So you go out, you buy
Speaker 1: an iPhone, You're like, this is awesome. I'm going to
Speaker 1: serve the web and oh, this is great. I'm looking
Speaker 1: all these pages and two hours later like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I have to charge this thing again. Um and Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs said that's not a good experience. I don't want
Speaker 1: that to happen on our product. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: allow it to happen because I'm not gonna have Flash
Speaker 1: work on this this device. It created a lot of
Speaker 1: challenges for developers for all sorts of things, what web
Speaker 1: apps as well as iPhone apps, things like that. Um
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a glove in the face
Speaker 1: of Adobe saying, look, we're creating a juggernaut here. This
Speaker 1: is going to be the future of computing, whether you
Speaker 1: like it or not. And we are not supporting this
Speaker 1: product that you have taken ownership of. And um and
Speaker 1: it just got uglier from there. I mean, every people
Speaker 1: started taking sides designers. A lot of designers love Flash
Speaker 1: because I mean they can really show what they can
Speaker 1: do with the with the animation and and you know graphics.
Speaker 1: It's it can make beautiful web applications and hey, you
Speaker 1: know we've touched on it in the past. To h
Speaker 1: the web wasn't designed to do what we do with
Speaker 1: it these days. And Johns's argument was that it would
Speaker 1: be better to support the development of HTML five, which
Speaker 1: the next generation of the hypertext markup language that would
Speaker 1: uh natively support things like video and audio uh in
Speaker 1: ways that HTML the previous versions of HTML did not.
Speaker 1: So that was his argument was like, instead of just
Speaker 1: continuously adding on additional elements to our web browsing experience,
Speaker 1: let's redefined, redefined the markup language itself so that we
Speaker 1: don't need all these added elements that are just making
Speaker 1: this clunkier and it's requiring more processing power. Now, this
Speaker 1: is Steve Jobs argument, I should I should point out
Speaker 1: not my own, because I'm an Android phone owner and
Speaker 1: my Android phone runs a version of Flash. Um, but
Speaker 1: that was that was the gauntlet there, and uh as
Speaker 1: the years go on, it got pretty I mean it
Speaker 1: got pretty nasty, to the point where I'm going to
Speaker 1: jump ahead a little bit, but in two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: Adobe announced they would stop developing flash for mobile after
Speaker 1: version eleven point one and instead they would focus on
Speaker 1: HTML five. They essentially acquiesced and said, you know, we're
Speaker 1: getting enough pressure here, We're going to stop pushing flash
Speaker 1: for mobile devices. Um and that was you know, that
Speaker 1: was kind of big news. Well, you know, there were
Speaker 1: there was a group of people that was sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle, and I admit I sort of belonged
Speaker 1: to that group where I could see why Adobe would
Speaker 1: defend Flash. I mean, you know, it's a flash cow,
Speaker 1: I mean cash cow sort of in a way. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a good technology and in
Speaker 1: some respects and it there really wasn't There's not anything
Speaker 1: i mean, other than than Microsoft silver Light. There's nothing
Speaker 1: that I can think of right off the top of
Speaker 1: my head that's um as as mature as a competitor
Speaker 1: for flash and and like a software that you can
Speaker 1: go build something in and make a website that has
Speaker 1: interactive content like that. UM So you know, they would,
Speaker 1: of course they would defend it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I thought, this is Adobe, they should be able to
Speaker 1: come up with some killer HTML five editor and then
Speaker 1: that's really what they did. They introduced their edge UM software,
Speaker 1: which is is uh still you know, sort of brand
Speaker 1: new ish. Uh still very newish, let's say that UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, they're these tools are designed to work
Speaker 1: with HTML five and and other related technologies using UH
Speaker 1: standards like CSS UM and UH web fonts. You're starting
Speaker 1: to become more popular too now that you can have
Speaker 1: fonts load in the cloud rather than having to have
Speaker 1: them on the host's computer to show up UM, which
Speaker 1: is the way it was strictly or you know that's uh.
Speaker 1: These are innovations that they can take advantage of. And
Speaker 1: you know, I can't think of anybody who does that
Speaker 1: that kind of thing quite as well as Adobe. And
Speaker 1: that's my personal opinion. Should probably kind of wrapped this
Speaker 1: up before I finished. I should say. They also acquired
Speaker 1: Business Catalyst, Omnature and Efficient Frontier. Yeah, well they have.
Speaker 1: They've been moving into marketing as well web marketing. UM.
Speaker 1: So it uh, you know, unlike some of the other
Speaker 1: companies that that we've talked about, UM, Adobe has has
Speaker 1: faced stiff competition from from a couple of its uh
Speaker 1: serious serious competitors. I mean, they're still face facing h
Speaker 1: Apple and and Avid and some of the others, but
Speaker 1: they've they've weathered that competition, and uh, you know, there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a lot of uh confusion and drama at
Speaker 1: the top. And there haven't been too many huge like
Speaker 1: departures from Adobe's core business. Like you don't see examples
Speaker 1: of something really really unusual wool that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with any form of publication or editing, which is
Speaker 1: really what Adobe is known for. You haven't really seen
Speaker 1: anything that goes so far outside of that as to
Speaker 1: make you say, huh. So yeah, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the story of Adobe so far. And I
Speaker 1: mean the company is still going strong, and it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how Adobe, uh you know, how how
Speaker 1: it adjusts to the HTML five era, which of course,
Speaker 1: you know, still has not really launched. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's some early development in HTML five, but it's still
Speaker 1: not a thing with a capital T yet. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think I think that was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why so many developers still cited on the side of
Speaker 1: Adobe with flash was because flash is mature in HTML
Speaker 1: five has yet to mature. In fact, there's not a
Speaker 1: firm um standard yet. And I've got friends who are
Speaker 1: flash animators, you know. They that's the tool they used
Speaker 1: to create anime s and uh they have very strong
Speaker 1: opinions on this subject, understandably so because their livelihood depends
Speaker 1: upon this tool. And uh so their opinions are very
Speaker 1: different from apples. So, I mean it's there. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of sides to this story. We don't mean
Speaker 1: to try and oversimplify it and say that one company
Speaker 1: has the right perspective over another one. Uh. In many ways,
Speaker 1: you could argue that both perspectives are valid, just for
Speaker 1: different reasons. So anyway, that's the that's the story of
Speaker 1: Adobe in two parts. And uh, we're gonna wrap it
Speaker 1: up here. If you guys have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: that we should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I invite you to send us a little note letting
Speaker 1: us know of your your brilliant idea. UM, you can
Speaker 1: learn that note to our email address it's tech stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, or you can drop us a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter or handle of both of
Speaker 1: those is tech Stuff, hs W and Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. For more on this,
Speaker 1: and of thons of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.