Pete Freitag Pete Freitag

Identity Theft

Updated on December 06, 2023
By Pete Freitag
misc

I think I finally put my finger on why hard-core Macromedians are generally un-easy about the pending Macromedia acquisition. Its that everyone hates Adobe. And when I say Adobe, I mean Adobe Acrobat Reader, but the fact is the Adobe brand sucks because of how slow and buggy the Acrobat Reader plugin is. The acquisition is brand identity theft to many Macromedia developers.

When the average internet user clicks on a link from Google unknowingly to a pdf file - many times the users reaction is I hate Adobe (furiously clicking the back button, and wasting the next 10 seconds while the plugin loads, or while their browser crashes). I have actually seen this.

Sure many web sites waste time with Flash as well, but the end user is more likely to blame the idiot/company who made the site rather than the technology, since there are lots of great uses of flash as well.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Adobe, I do hate Acrobat Reader - but I'm tech savvy, and know the difference. Adobe Photoshop, is an awesome piece of software, PDF is a great format - Reader gives them a bad rap.

In my opinion Macromedia has a much stronger brand, Macromedia Photoshop anyone? Sounds cool, yet I have seen lots of people saying: Adobe ColdFusion? ehhk. I think Adobe would do well to keep Macromedia's brand.

So here's how I used to explain what I do:

What do you do?
I work with ColdFusion.
Oh, like in the movie The Saint?
No, it's a Programming Language for building dynamic web sites made by a company called Macromedia.
Macromedia, I've heard of them?
Yeah they are most famous for their Flash plugin - if you have seen any sort of animated web page chances are it was made with Flash
Oh, yeah, cool.

Now It will be more like:


What do you do?
I work with ColdFusion.
Oh, like in the movie The Saint?
No, it's a Programming Language for building dynamic web sites made by a company called Adobe.
Oh, you make the web pages that take forever to load?
No, that's the Acrobat plugin...


adobe macromedia merger acrobat branding identity

Identity Theft was first published on April 19, 2005.

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Comments

You hit the nail right on the head. But I think it goes beyond their less than perfect Acrobat Reader. Althought Photoshop is awesome, and if you are in print design InDesign and Illustrator are the industry leaders, the way Adobe handles them is less than adequate. I reformatted my computer last night and went about installing Macromedia Studio again, as well as the Adobe Creative Suite. Macromedia Studio MX took me less than 30 minutes to get all installed, up and running the same as ever. Adobe CS Suite took and hour and a half, and would not let me reactivate the software. I had to try once over the internet, once over the phone, and then finally talk to some punk at adobe who obviously had better things to do. Finally I got it all installed, and still my adobe acrobat (the editor not the reader) still doesn't work right. And guess what, since I bought it as a suite, my serial number is for the suite only, so to reinstall one of the programs, I have to reinstall all of them. Lets just hope adobe takes a lesson from macromedia on multiple fronts.
by Ryan Guill on 04/19/2005 at 2:28:36 PM UTC
"Sure many web sites waste time with Flash as well, but the end user is more likely to blame the idiot/company who made the site rather than the technology, since there are lots of great uses of flash as well."

Whatever... that's only because you know what Flash does. People blame Flash, go to any sales meeting with a customer not familiar with it, or "tech savvy" Slashdot.

Of course, you just did the oppostie here, hehe:

"Oh, you make the web pages that take forever to load?

No, that's the Acrobat plugin..."
by JesterXL on 04/19/2005 at 3:19:10 PM UTC
I think developers and site designers are slightly to blame here, they could help the end user out by displaying an icon or some other indication that they are about to open a pdf. I always go over links before reading them and if they are pdf's opt to download it instead of opening it (so ff doesn't crash on me!)
by Kola on 04/20/2005 at 4:32:34 AM UTC