It’s noteworthy that Adobe today announced the launch of its Creative Suite, which somehow combines it’s powerhouse Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, GoLive, and Acrobat together to make for a serious contender with Macromedia’s new integrated suite Studio MX 2004. Enough will be written about this to fill a small book, but what is interesting to me is that all of these applications are finally being integrated, following Microsoft’s lead with Office (and Sun’s StarOffice).
The pundits in 1995 said there would be day when all software would be blended and that an end user could just do whatever and come up with whatever+. The pundits in 2000 said that all of these apps would be served online and we wouldn’t have to fork over a hefty $549 here and $399 there to upgrade (which I suppose I’ll have to do with Adobe and Macromedia, respectively, soon) but pay a monthly online fee and be done with it. Perhaps these new near-integrated design applications are just two steps away from that server-based model?