MS Four Points of Interoperability and Adobe 274
Andy Updegrove writes "Recently, spokespersons for Microsoft's standards group have been promoting 'design, collaboration and licensing' as alternatives, rather than supplements to, open standards. There's an important difference between an open standard and any of these ad hoc arrangements among companies, however, and that is the fact that with a standard, everybody knows that they can get what everybody else can get, and on substantially the same terms. With a de facto standard, that's not the case - as Microsoft itself found out last week when Adobe refused to offer the same deal on saving files in PDF form that Apple and OpenOffice enjoy."
Managing the Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cute PDF (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:2, Insightful)
Acrobat Falling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real Player: Naging upgrade notices whenver you didn't have the most recent version. Hard to find "free" version. Addware in the install.
AIM has come with it's own supply of programs, ranging from advertising AOL Explorer to some programs it installed to play AIM mini games (I've forgoten which one since I uninstalled it a while ago, but it set off alerts in Ad-Aware)
Yahoo!: Cluttered their home page with a whole bunch of adverts.
Adobe: Acrobat Reader now tries to install Yahoo! Toolbar by default.
Just seems like whenever a company starts bundling adds and addware programs with their software they start to fall from grace. Anyone have any other examples of software companies tanking like that?
Re:save as file using ps printer, ps2pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
I could see MS pulling something where MS/PDF digital signatures aren't compatible with Adobe digital signatures when a contract needs an addenum and you'll have to use Office 2007 to complete the form.
Microsoft Sandbox Full of Pinworm(TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
There's two very good reasons for Adobe denying easy PDF functionality to Microsoft Office users. One is obvious and good only for Adobe, but the other is subtle and better for everybody in the long run.
The obvious reason? Adobe wants to be able to sell Acrobat Pro to its users, and if Microsoft starts bundling the functionality in Office, Office users will have less reason to buy Acrobat or the Creative Suite.
Note: I said less reason, not no reason. See, Acrobat is more than Distiller. The full Acrobat program will let you take those PDFs you've created by whatever means, resequence the pages, add footnotes... organize the whole document. You could do that in Word, but you could end up with a single huge document, and Word isn't happy working that way. The full kit lets you shuffle pages, up to and including replacing single pages in a PDF if you must.
The other reason has to do with Microsoft's hamfisted, even predatory way of "supporting" other peoples' standards. How does that sequence go, again? Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Extort? Picture the Microsoft PDF format, in the same ridiculing manner that you'd consider Microsoft RTF, Microsoft HTML, and Microsoft XML: misshapen parodies of their former, more open, more rational selves. By denying Microsoft the opportunity to implement the standard, Adobe protects it for themselves and anyone else who adheres to it.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:5, Insightful)
Play out the scenarios. Ask yourself what Adobe could usefully say in that situation. Microsoft can't openly vandalize .pdf just yet, for reasons we all know too well, so this move just lets them make Adobe look bad. It's a set up for later. It's a damn shame all Adobe's other options are worse.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Serves them right
The decision to support PDF was long delayed and we all knew it was because MS doesn't want to give PDF an edge in their own products, thus contributing further to the spread use of the format.
This is why the decision to support PDF in 2007 was a surprise. But now that Adobe is acting like a spoiled brat, Microsoft will remove the PDF support.
It's really amusing Adobe doesn't want Microsoft to support PDF, given Microsoft has prepared a quite capable PDF competitor itself called XML Paper Specification (XPS), with superior features to those found in PDF (since it's newer, I'm not saying PDF can't catch up of course)...
Why the heck is this so familiar to me? Ah yea, I remember. Sun sued Microsoft for their Java support in Windows/IE. Microsoft removed (again) the support and we know where Java is today in terms of client-side browser applets.
At the same time Microsoft has managed to spread wide their version of Java:
Expect the same to happen with XPS.
This is mp3 vs. wma all over again... (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect they planned to include crippled pdf support in Office 2007 with bloated output, arbitrary resolution limits, and nag screens suggesting that using xps would make the document look better. Adobe (unlike Fraunhofer) saw what MS was doing, and told them to bug off.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it's far fetched. Microsoft just added an exporter, not a reader. The only popular and common way to see and print a PDF yet is the Adobe Reader (and some other Adobe products).
Thus, either is Microsoft producing PDF-s that open and print in Reader, or their PDF support will just be useless.
Bend it and twist it, but there's no sign that Microsoft wanted to bastardize the PDF format.
What I actually believe they wanted, is to put PDF support in, and then become really agressive with their "own" PDF: the XPS.
In that case, their support for PDF will be a really strong point when Adobe eventually files an Antithrust case against Microsoft for trying to push PDF out of the market by implementing XPS in their Windows OS. Microsoft will say "but we also support PDF in Office".
Of course now that it's not part of Office, Microsoft can still claim all of best of intentions, so they still hold that card, and Adobe just lost what could've been a good thing for the PDF adoption and acceptance as a standard.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I suppose it's possible that MS will create PDFs that open slowly, or cause Reader to crash sometimes or something foul of that nature. But it's more likely that Adobe is just freaking out because of the potential lost revenue.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
For text-based formats, there's certain reasons not to use XML, but if the goal is any form of interoperatbility, ya might as well use it.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Au contraire.
Adobe is facing the same thing that Sun was facing with Java. Microsoft's strategy is to take a standard, be it an open standard or a commercial de-facto standard and change it in some way to make it ever so slightly incompatible. The people who use Microsoft's "new standard" find out that interoperating with real standards-following software is unreliable and that the only way to get "interoperability" is to buy more Microsoft licenses.
I believe it's called "embrace, extend, and extinguish"
Since Microsoft has a track record of doing this, Adobe's paranoia is entirely justified.
"Sun sued Microsoft for their Java support in Windows/IE."
Because Microsoft was throwing dead goats in the Java compatibility well. DuH.
"Java is today in terms of client-side browser applets"
Yeah, everywhere. It's called AJAX.
Bad troll, no cookie.
--
BMO
What's the real story, I wonder? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft seems to be playing the wounded duck at the moment, trying to convince the public that Adobe won't allow them to implement PDF creation as a standard feature in their Office 2007 and Vista environments.
However, Adobe has published the Portable Document Format specifications since 1993, encouraging developers to create applications that both read and *write* PDF files. From page seven of the PDF Reference, Fifth Edition (v1.6, PDF format) [adobe.com] we see the following:
My guess would be that in typical Microsoft style, they are probably wanting to create their own incompatable extensions to PDF and Adobe has stepped-in and said no to them.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'd be afraid of if I were Adobe (and it's been echoed a few comments back up the page) is what would happen if MS started tugging on the chain a bit too hard and started bending and shaping PDF to it's own end- creating some kind of Office-PDF format and basically fucking the whole standard up. It wouldn't be the first time they took a standard *cough*HTML*cough* and made the world see things through MS's eyes.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:4, Insightful)
MS may have a competitor to PDF, but they have nothing that competes with Photoshop or Illustrator. Even if they did, I think the tight integration of PDF into the CS2 workflow would keep most designers exactly where they are, and, consequently, keep printers right where they are as well. XPS is only as pretty as it is widely used, which is to say, not very. Adobe can catch up, and most likely will.
The question that arises, though, is when is MS going to buy Quark? They're already working on some code to compete with Adobe on the creative end, but I've always wondered why they don't just go after InDesign's biggest competitor.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm...you do realize that the J in AJAX stands for *Javascript* right? And that Javascript has *nothing* to do with Java (other than the name and a few similarities of syntax), right?
I agreed with the rest of your post, but calling AJAX Java is clearly wrong.
Btw, I suspect that the main reason why Microsoft was going to support PDF was to ease the transition from XPS. Microsoft would be able to talk to printers that understood *either* XPS or PDF. That would allow people to do their work in XPS, show it to others in small quantities in XPS, and then mass produce in PDF. If the mass produced PDF was inferior to the XPS samples, then that gives Microsoft leverage with the printers to switch to something XPS compatible.
Now, Microsoft will have to spend a lot more money up front to get XPS support into hardware. In the beginning, Microsoft will offer brilliant tools and technical assistance to printer manufacturers who wanted to offer XPS support. In five to ten years, they will charge money to not display warnings that the device is not XPS certified.
The real question is what's stopping them from doing that? It's only money. They have plenty. This is probably the correct decision for Adobe. However, Microsoft is still fully capable of moving into the market. It's just going to be a bit harder now.
Market Share (Score:3, Insightful)
This might be redundant, but here goes...
Now, I'm a die-hard Mac user, and a big OOo supporter, but let's face it-- they don't have a whole lot of market share. Very little, in fact, compared to Microsoft's products. Not only that, but the market share they do have is much more technology-oriented.
Picture this scenario. Boss Billy walks down to Jim in Accounting, and tells Jim that he wants the company's annual financial report in his inbox by 2:00 that afternoon. Oh, and make it a PDF. I'd be willing to bet you the first thought through Jim's mind isn't "Ooh, I'd better download OpenOffice" or "Let me download a copy of CutePDF." The average computer user isn't very enlightened concerning those kinds of things. What Jim will think is "Hmm, PDF... that's Adobe, isn't it? Let me run down to OfficeMax and buy it."
Adobe doesn't care if the relatively small percentage of Mac and OOo users has access to PDF support (as everyone is supposed to, if it truly is an open format), but if Office implements the technology, Microsoft has just started cutting into their Average Joe User market share-- which is where they make the most of their money I'm sure.
The other major portion of their market share probably comes from professional designers who need more power than what's provided by free Postscript printers and OpenOffice.org. If Office implements parts of the PDF standard that aren't found in the free products, that starts chipping away at another part of their market share. If Microsoft jumps on board with PDF (like everyone else did years ago), Adobe faces a very steep, very fast drop in their Acrobat market share.
So what do they do? They try to pull a Microsoft-style monopoly move and say "Oh, yeah, that whole thing about open standard? That doesn't apply to you. We really own it." As they say, money talks, and if MS puts PDF support in office... to Adobe, money walks.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
From that link:
Standard PDF isFact is, they earned their reputation. A careful reading of what's in that post says volumes: nowhere in that do they promise not to. They don't consume it? Why is standard PDF "an option" then? What's going to read the non-standard PDF they can produce?
Here's what Microsoft needs to say:
And that, would be the end, of that.Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which of the two assertions do you support? You're contradicting yourself.
No, he isn't -- a platform-neutral format would support any platform (Macs, Windows, Linux, mainframes, whatever) equally well. That was his point. He was just using the popularity of Macs as an example of why a Windows-only solution is insufficient.
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Adobe just got smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you extend them with your own software (in this case - maybe extensions that Acrobat doesn't work with) so that everyone who wants to use office pdf's in their full capacity has to have ms's pdf viewer. (this is how IE shut out netscape...)
Then you push XPS using your large installations of office and windows software and make pdf more and more irrelevant.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who has done several mass quantity print jobs, I would much prefer a stable format which is uniform across platforms, than a couple extra design tweaks. I don't want to go through hell to get my work printed. I just want to take a cd to the printshop, and get 50,000 copies. I really like the idea of an open XML format to replace PDF, but it has to be a big improvement to gain traction, and I dont expect MS to be able to handle an open format without crippling it somehow, or suing the people who make a linux version, etc.
Flexible Tools: Huh? Where? What tools?
Rapid prototyping with an XPS printer: I'll believe that only afer I see it. Even major printshops have problems making exactly precise prototypes of the final product. Your PDF or XPS document doesn't change, the hardware does. Far as I can tell, different printing hardware means different results, every single time. I don't see how a different format could possibly offer any change over prototyping a PDF.
Re:.doc vs .pdf (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes they do, and yes there is. The reader is called "Microsoft Office". Microsoft wants you to have to buy an expensive piece of Microsoft software in order to read what is otherwise a freely available document format (PDF). That is the reason Microsoft will gladly EEE Adobe's PDF.
Adobe may be evil for what they did to Dmitry Skylarov, but they don't hold a candle to Microsoft.