Speaking of Adobe, I do really like this promotional video they did for the production of Martha Stewart Living digital magazine.
Although this video was intended to promote Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite, it’s every bit (and possibly more) a video about how cool the iPad is. In fact, the very first words you hear are Martha Stewart saying, “When I saw that iPad, I wanted a digital issue of the magazine… immediately!”
YouTube Link
Ever since Adobe acquired Macromedia, just about every page at adobe.com has been thick with Flash content. Their home page, especially, always had lots of motion and giant interactive flash banners. Recently, they’ve been doing some redesign work on the site, and I was extremely surprised today when I noticed that the entire site is almost completely void of any Flash content. Flash is used very sparingly (and tastefully). And, the home page currently has no Flash at all.
Given Adobe’s past use of Flash, and their very public feud with Apple regarding the quality, stability, and usefulness of Flash, I found this new, subtle use to be very uncharacteristic of them.
Now, I’m not complaining at all. I personally think the site is better without all that overuse of Flash. But, it does make me wonder if Adobe is rethinking exactly how and when Flash should be used.
I was actually kind of surprised when Adobe starting adding all that Flash to their site in the first place. Many years ago Macromedia tried to convert their entire site to Flash, and it was a dismal failure. One which they spent months undoing. I would have thought that Adobe would learn from Macromedia’s mistake.
So, is Adobe rethinking it’s position on how Flash should be used, or have the Flash designers simply not caught up with the web designers, and all that Flash will be back eventually? Only time will tell.
I recently discovered that After Effects (CS3) wasn’t deleting it’s Media Cache files when I quit the application. The folder had swelled to 6.19 GB.
I’m not sure if this is a bug in CS3, or if all versions of AE suffered from this problem. But, if you’re an After Effects user you may want to make sure you haven’t (unnecessarily) lost some drive space. On a Mac, the folder is located at ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/After Effects CS3/Media Cache Files. You can either manually toss the content of the folder, or you can open AE on go to the Memory & Cache preferences and click, Clean Database & Cache.
Adobe has released a new version of the Flash plugin for Mac, Windows, and Linux, that addresses a serious security vulnerability. The update fixes a critical flaw which could cause your computer to be hacked merely by viewing a malicious SWF (Shockwave Flash) file, according to Adobe’s advisory
Adobe has a Web page that will automatically display what Flash version you’re using, and allow you to download the update, if needed.
Meanwhile, there’s no fix yet for a serious security flaw in Adobe Acrobat and Reader that was reported a few weeks ago. (More Info at Macworld)
via Macworld
Adobe pulled out the other day. Now Belkin, Seagate, and Creative Labs have done the same. Google, Marware, and others have stayed in, but reduced the size of their booths. It’s just not going to be the same this year. [ LINK ]
I don’t like this one bit. I was actually looking forward to stopping at the Adobe booth and talking to those guys. [ LINK ]
Yay! Adobe released Lightroom 2 this morning. I’m a big fan of Lightroom and this version offers some welcome enhancements. An upgrade will cost you $99. Regular price is still $299.
If you want a guided tour, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) has produced a whole series of videos outlining the new features. You can see them here.
Adobe has released control of their PDF format to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Read more about it at AppleInsider or Macworld.
Adobe has started shipping Acrobat 9. If you own the Design Premium CS3 bundle, you can upgrade to a new version of the bundle that now includes Acrobat 9 Pro and Fireworks CS3 for $159.
Like many others, I’ve been patiently waiting for Macromedia Adobe to update Director for quite some time now. The product hasn’t seen an update since 2004, and even that one wasn’t that hot. After years of no news whatsoever, Adobe finally announced Director 11 in February, and it began shipping this past Tuesday.
My first reaction to Director 11… Adobe, you should be ashamed of yourself for charging money for this piece of crap!
If you’re a Director user, the $299 upgrade basically buys you official support for Windows Vista and Intel Macs. That’s it! Any other (minor) features boasted by Adobe are over-hyped and under-delivered. For all practical purposes, this release should have been called Director 10.2, and given to us as a free update. As evidence to how little has actually changed in Director, the first thing the app does when you launch it is phone home to Macromedia.com.
In terms of Mac support, the new Director is extremely limited. Although Director 11 shipped 6 months after Leopard, Leopard is not officially supported for authoring or playback. For authoring, Director 11 only supports 10.4 on an Intel Mac. Director 11 does support playback on PPC based Macs, but also only on 10.4… nothing older, and nothing newer. I have done some preliminary testing running Director 11 under Leopard, and so far everything seems to work OK. There is no word from Adobe on when Director will officially gain Leopard support.
One other item that should be mentioned about Director now being able to run natively on Intel Macs is, none of your existing Xtras will work. All previous (Mac) Director Xtras are PPC only. You’ll need to get updates for all of those before they’ll work with Director 11.
Adobe also now boasts, “support for more than 40 video, audio, and image file formats”. Of course, they won’t tell us what formats those are exactly. I can’t find a list anywhere. I guess it’s up to us to guess. I can tell you 2 that are NOT supported… PDF, and Flash video (flv). I was shocked by this! Considering the fact that those two formats are core components of Adobe’s distribution system, how could they not build in support? Adobe Illustrator is also not one of those mysterious 40 formats, which is surprising since Adobe announced full Creative Suite compatibility when they first announced Director 11. They’ve since removed that statement from their site.
There’s just one last complaint I want to voice. This one is extremely minor, and pretty nit-picky, but I think it illustrates Adobe’s commitment to Director… They couldn’t even be bothered to make a custom folder icon like they do for all of their other applications. How freakin lazy is that?
My best advise… if you don’t really need Vista or Intel Mac support right now, then don’t bother buying Director 11. Unfortunately, I had to. :(