Thoughts on Adobe Buying Macromedia

Here are some of my thoughts on the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia, which I first began distilling into a comment for Dan Gillmor's blog entry today.My spouse makes his living using Macromedia's Flash software. He and his fellow Flash designers/developers are more than a little dismayed by this news. Adobe tried to compete against Macromedia in the digital media design tool space and lost miserably and I think their purchase of Macromedia is evidence of that realization.But part of why Adobe failed, and part of why Macromedia succeeded, is the radically different approaches to software development. Adobe has always taken a "our way or the highway" approach and never missed an opportunity to ignore the thoughts and concerns of day-to-day enterprise users when developing their software. (E.g., Adobe's two flagship applications, Photoshop and Illustrator, which are frequently used in tandem by many designers, yet have confusingly different interfaces and icons for nearly identical functions.)Meanwhile, Macromedia has a hugely active developer community to which Macromedia listens closely (sometimes too closely!) and the growth and development of their products has reflected that community's input. Today, the single greatest fear among some of Macromedia's most important users -- the developers who make Flash content -- is that Adobe will apply its traditionally pig-headed approach and stop incorporating the input of the developer community which has helped shape the products in ways people actually desire.Adobe's purchase of Macromedia suggests that Adobe recognizes, and is even paying a premium, because Macromedia beat them soundly. Now we wait and see if Adobe's real goal was just to be the last company standing -- customers be damned.