Adobe President: Internet Apps will change the world's pattern

ado| Internet If you need evidence of how the Web will change your software business, listen to what Adobe boss Bruce Chizen says.

Adobe has succeeded in using the early technology wave-personal computers for digital publishing and image processing. Bruce says Adobe is considering adding web-implemented services to its product line.

Adobe has developed an online video editing tool, and the web version of the image editing Tool Photoshop is also under development. In addition, Adobe plans to release Apollo client development tools later this year.

Bruce said that with the development of new products, Adobe will be through Photoshop, premiere and other applications acquired multimedia authoring skills and Macromedia Web design and development skills integration.

In fact, as web-based applications become more powerful, Adobe's acquisitions of Macromedia are "worth it", especially as Microsoft tries to encroach on adobe sites.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bruce discussed Adobe's internet strategy, disclosed plans for Photoshop, and discussed how to "Dance" with Microsoft.

Adobe head Bruce (Bruce Chizen)

Q: You have said in the past that you don't care about low-end markets, because there is no core customer, and professional creators are your core customers. Is this still the case now?

A: One of the things that has changed is that expectations are rising in the low-end market. Everyone in YouTube wants to be a video distributor and everyone wants to be a creative person. So we have introduced products such as Photobucket and remix.

We are aware that the low-end market also has our customers, they do not have to pay directly to us, we can use advertising mode. Google's success has shown that this model works well for some types of applications. We have adopted this model for remix products, or we may adopt this model for image editing tools. We will consider the business model that consumers do not pay for.

Q: This is a new problem for Adobe, right?

A: This is a new issue facing Adobe. We are very sensitive to this issue because we have noticed that other vendors, represented by Google, are doing this and we want to make sure that we can get ahead of them in the graphics and image processing areas.

We can draw on the video editing techniques of the premiere and premiere Elements teams, and integrate with the Flex/flash programming framework, which means that we can complete the development of Macromedia products at a much faster rate than when we did not acquire remix.

Q: At the moment, many people use Google's Picasa to edit images, and these people may never be users of Photoshop or Photoshop elements.

A: If we launch a managed version of Photoshop, and it's better than Picasa, users may use Photoshop because people trust Photoshop's brand and the quality of the products that are linked to the brand.

The reason we first launched the managed version of the video tool is that there are no similar products in the market other than Jumpcut.

Q: But why is adobe not self-reliant? But to cooperate with Photobucket and other companies?

A: We can be self-reliant, but it would be better to have a distribution channel. Our partners are not limited to photobucket, and we don't have any reason to work with other social networking sites or content providers. We can get on our own, but that means we have to deal with all the business-related issues, and the technical issues of soliciting advertising and dealing with deals, which requires a lot of effort, and we're going to have to photobucket these jobs by sacrificing some of our revenue, which is something we don't want to do, At least for the time being. Once we find out that this is a huge revenue stream, we might be able to do it ourselves.

Q: How do you position the managed version of Photoshop?

A: Obviously we will develop such a product. There are already many online image editing tools, and we think the Photoshop brand should be ranked among them. We hope it is an excellent application software. I would be shocked if I didn't develop a product for the next 3-6 months.

Surprisingly, the $99 worth of Photoshop elements became a cash cow for Adobe. Despite being able to get Picasa for free, people still want to use fully functional products-between the free Picasa and Photoshop products, so people buy Photoshop Elements. The question is, what is the demand for managed products? How many editing tasks can a managed product accomplish? Picasa is still a desktop software.

We're talking about managed software, and we don't want to delay being a problem for users, and in some ways it's harder than remix. The following problem arises, for a pure managed software, the function is affected by the bandwidth of how much. Despite the growing bandwidth, I suspect that the user experience will not change much over the next 3-5 years because of the internet's full of video. So is there a need for managed version of the image editing software? The answer to this question is yes, but it is limited to a certain extent.

Q: What about the future Photoshop product line?

A: We will have an ad-supported, free hosting version of Photoshop Elements, an agency-oriented Lightroom, and Photoshop for professional image editors.

Q: What do you think Adobe's most exciting technology has been in this period of time?

A: I think the most exciting thing is Apollo. I think that we or others will change the pattern of the web world. At present, the way the Web displays information is already somewhat outdated, and we cannot properly represent branding and integrate graphics. Although there are already many types of multimedia, it is not as good as a newspaper or magazine in terms of appearance and style. Through the use of Apollo, we will be able to provide this capability through "rich Internet applications".

It will be exciting for the web, Adobe, and it is important for our business and Internet application developers. The challenge of communication between people is growing, and it needs to be further improved in terms of interactivity, reliability and security. We can provide all of these in Apollo.

Q: What is the Apollo application software for ordinary users?

A: It runs like a desktop. Like other applications, users can click the icon to start it. We have shown an ebay application developed using Apollo, which looks and styles similar to ebay. The user will not be subject to the browser, making the application look exactly the same on multiple platforms, making the application appear to be more consistent with the platform. Users can do some tasks offline that they need to do on the network.

I don't think Adobe is aware that this new platform can "trigger" many things. Apollo is a cross-platform tool that can be run on Macs, Windows, Linux platforms, and eventually on a non-PC platform.

Q: Is it still a mobile technology?

A: Eventually it will become a mobile phone technology. But this is subject to the capabilities of the device, and we want to transplant the Flash lite onto the phone and display a subset of Apollo or Apollo on the phone. Apollo will run on the Mac and Windows platform first, and then run on Linux.