I stepped down.

Yeah, you read right. I'm stepping down from my post as CEO of Adobe effective December 1.

Shantanu will be taking over at that point. I'll be on the Board and serve as an adviser 'till the end of Fiscal Year 2008... so I'll be gone around the beginning of 2009.

I made a personal decision to step down, so do me and my family a favor and don't hunt us down just to ask me why I'm leaving.. I think the stock options transaction from a few days ago should have tipped more people off, but it obviously didn't.

I guess this ends my diary. Ahhhhhh dear. So much fun writing stuff that no one has read. No word on whether Shantanu will start his own. Knowing that he's gonna be like everything at once, I doubt it.

Well, I guess this is goodbye. Goodbye, Adobe.

-Bruce

iPhone out in England and Germany; Still no Flash

I've tried to keep calm about the whole no-Flash-on-iPhone-but-Apple-says-iPhone-uses-real-Internet thing. You know that.

It's beginning to get a tad ridiculous. iPhone in England and Germany as of a few hours ago, France in a few weeks, apparently Canada by Hannukah (yes, I'm Jewish)... yet still no Flash!

How do you suggest you offer the real Internet, Apple, without Flash? In case you, I don't know, forgot, Flash is on like 99.3% of computers (that's really everyone but Microsoft fanboys and people still using DOS, remember).

And if I'm not mistaken, as of a few hours, our estimates say that Flash Player 9 has been installed over 3 billion times!

I mean, I think our engineers can get Flash to work well (to some very limited extent) on Windows Mobile (emphasis on very limited), and now they can't wait to get Flash working and work on getting it officially packaged with Google's Android!

Well, anyway, have a good weekend.

Photoshop Express Beta by Year's End

Great news, folks.

We'll have a beta of Photoshop Express, our much-anticipated online version of Photoshop, out by the end of this year. So, that means within the next month and a half or so. Not far away!

It'll probably be a private beta, or somewhat limited in the partners we give access to. Initially.

We'll be launching the gold version sometime next year. If you haven't heard of Photoshop Express, it's our 'express' version of Photoshop that'll be available online for free, built only using Flash/Flex. And by express, I mean it's not really the Photoshop we all know and love. It only will have some of the more basic, yet useful features. At least when we first launch it.

This is a true test for Adobe, because I said a few weeks ago that Adobe will be transitioning its products to the web in the next 10 years. Or something like that, anyway. This has been, and will be, a great experience and a great learning time for our developers. We appreciate your patience.

Students: Start Making a Difference

...in RIAs. No, seriously. We launched our Education Developer Center today. This is where all you budding underage Flex and AIR developers can get your free copy of Flex Builder 2 (and the latest beta of Flex Builder 3).

Maybe some of the text in on the site isn't written in the best terms for our visitor demographics, but if that's a real issue, we'll fix it as necessary. And maybe it shouldn't link to the regular Developer Center's collaborative advanced cookbook, getting started guides and wiki...

Well, it's a step in the right direction, anyway.

It's also got a really nice motivational letter to educators by Yakov Fain on why Flex should be taught in the classrooms, alongside Java or C++, or on its own.

Check it out, and if you're a student, go ahead and download Flex! For free. Yes, it's legal.

Hey, look, we know Photoshop isn't perfect.

Of course, I could tell you this all day, and because I'm the CEO (who just exercised some stock options yesterday and ended up with ~$8 million)... but I think we should let John Nack, who's our Senior Photoshop Product Manager, tell us what's not as good as it should or could be.

He makes some pretty good points, and I know he's dying to incorporate these kinds of ideas into the next version of Photoshop (CS4). Unfortunately, that's still a long ways off.

But, here's the deal. Photoshop is basically our cornerstone desktop product, and has been for a really long time. It's used for so many different purposes that it's terribly difficult to expect the Photoshop guys to incorporate all of the features without overbloating the entire application (and if you ask almost anyone, they'll tell you the Team hasn't done too well at decreasing the bloat) with features that person won't use.

Does this mean we make it easier to add or remove features? Does it mean we spin off Photoshop into more Photoshop Family products than Photoshop and Photoshop Extended? We want to know from you what, well, you want. Comment on John's blog post with what you think.

If you use Photoshop or are at all interested, it's a really interseting read.

Mozilla's Prism

I'm not sure if you've heard or read about Mozilla's 'Prism,' which a lot of people are comparing to AIR.

I'm here to tell you two things about it: it's not anything interesting--from what I can gather, it's merely a browser without an address bar that goes to a specific place (like Gmail or Adobe.com). Is this so revolutionary? I really don't think so.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.

And also, they released Prism for Mac and Linux a bit earlier today. Again, there was much fanfare, but it's not really exciting nor does it do anything revolutionary for those operating systems. Firefox has been available for OS X and Linux for years now...

So, in conclusion, Prism is...

Firefox minus the address bar that now works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Don't worry, eager Linux users -- AIR for Linux is in the works and we're trying to get it out ASAP.

Oh, and while I can't confirm this, we're hoping we can have Flash running on Google's Android mobile operating system. I'll tell you if I have any more news concerning this great operating system (in case you can't tell, I love the idea of Android).

Sorry, Brandon; Apple's not buying Adobe

Brandon Watts of OSWeekly.com has posted an editorial piece on why it would make sense for Apple to acquire Adobe. My response: not happening.

See, you make good points for why Apple would buy Adobe, but couldn't you make similar points for Microsoft or even Google?

And there's another problem with your argument for Apple (or Microsoft) buying us. Adobe is committed to offering equal products across platforms. It's very important that the products we ship for Windows are just as good on OS X or even Linux and vice-versa. Sure sure, we'd still obviously release products for Windows and Linux... but don't you think the (indirect) pressure would be on for the products for those two platforms to not be of the same quality of those for the Mac? How about those anti-trust issues in Microsoft and Apple's operating systems division sharing development information with the software division in the '80s? Apple spun off their applications business into Claris (now FileMaker), and there was a lot of pressure on Microsoft to do a similar thing -- something they obviously didn't do.

Wouldn't an Apple acquisition of Adobe just refuel the fire for these issues?

Interestingly, an acquisition by Google avoids all of these cross platform related issues. Hmm. But don't worry -- we're not being acquired by Microsoft or Apple. Okay, Brandon?

Redmond Developer News: AIR Gaining Ground

The title sounds a bit nicer than the article actually is. Though I must admit, you know you've got something good when the journal 'powering the Windows software revolution' actually mentions you.

Of course, Adobe is 'trying to catch up to Silverlight.' How many times do I have to remind these people that Silverlight is trying to catch up with Flash!

And Mr. Desmond, AIR is not just an extension of Flash Player for desktop applications. It's a full runtime that also allows you to use JavaScript/HTML (and of course AJAX), as well as Flash and PDF content. Plus, you can mix these together. Want to put a Flash filter on some text via JavaScript? Easily done!

However, my favorite part is the idea that people have to "buy into Flash" to use AIR. Again, not so. But what can be expected from an analyst from Directions on Microsoft?

I mean, come on! Try doing some research before you go and blast Adobe. I don't care how much you like Silverlight. I just can't see it passing Flash in terms of market penetration, which is over 99.1%. Yeah, 99.1% of Internet connected computers on Windows, Mac, Linux and others have Flash. And the only holdouts are people like you and Microsoft fanboys. Oh, and people who still have DOS or Windows 3.11 (but they shouldn't count).

And don't even think about preinstalling Silverlight with Vista SP1, Steve. I'll have the EU and US Government at your door instantaneously. Oh, wait... they're already there.

Adobe Office: Something I'd want to try.

Remember a few months ago when everyone was going bananas about how we were going to rival MicrosoftWord or something, and we flatly denied it? And then we bought Virtual Ubiquity, creators of Buzzword, a Flash-based -- you guessed it -- Microsoft Word alternative?

Now some guy with crappy Photoshop skills thinks he's found out our master plan. "Adobe Office" will be built with Flash and Flex, will run on AIR, and will have an online version to boot.

I must admit, it's a pretty good plan. I bet it would be great for AIR 1.0 adoption. Hmm. Maybe we'll start working on it... maybe we won't.

Oh and by the way, Leopard people; a compatibility update for Lightroom CS3 will be pushed mid-November. We're working on it.

Here's the deal with Leopard

Since, you know, 2 million people have already bought the operating system in like 5 days, we thought it to be a great idea to give you an update on Adobe software's Leopard compatibility.

All Adobe software should work perfectly fine out of the box with the exception of Premiere Pro CS3, Encore CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, and Soundbooth CS3. We're working on updates that we'll be sending as fast as we can.

Also, it's worth noting that older versions of Adobe and Macromedia software in CS3 won't be updated for Leopard. They may work, but we unfortunately can't actively support them.

Oh, and CNNMoney published a nice article on how our AIR platform "changes the game in applications." We know :-)

Adobe: Empowering the Future Generation

You know, I get a lot of email and regular mail complaining about Adobe's "high" prices for software. And I understand. Basically. So, every once in a while I'll have someone complain about how we're not helping the next generation learn this stuff due to our prices.

You know, over the past few days, I've taken a look at that area. And you know what? You people who have told me this are 100% correct. So Adobe took a major step about a week ago (sorry for the late entry) in announcing that it is preparing to give Flex Builder (the SDK of which, Flex, is open source) away to students and faculty. All they have to do is prove who they are with the general yada yada.

If you're wondering why we didn't pick Photoshop or Dreamweaver, here's why. Adobe is betting its future on rich Internet applications and AIR, which we encourage are built in Flex rather than in Flash (though Flex is just merely a branch of the Flash overall platform). If we're going after the future generation, why not give them the future tools?

Oh, and also, this gives us an edge over Microsoft. Like they'd ever give anything away. You know kids -- "Oooh! Adobe gave us expensive software for free! We love you Adobe! We don't want Adobe to go away, so we don't like Microsoft." Maybe a bit too deep, but the idea is there at least.

According to this InfoWorld story, it'll be on our website next month (which is, like, two days away).

Silverlight Slower than Flash Running WinForms?

So, Silverlight is Microsoft's whole competitor to Flash... and it's all .NET and everything... so how come WinForms works slower on Silverlight than on Flash?

I think it even looks a little bit better in Flash, though that may just be because of the size difference between the two examples.

Adobe's policy is to keep Windows off of Flash, because that would give Flash a bad reputation -- not like Windows Vista is a memory hog or everything. It seems like Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect) and I will have to sit down about this policy. Windows technology is making the move to Flash and is running more smoothly and with a smaller footprint than on similar (yet admittedly obsolete) Microsoft technology.

Just another example of how great the Flash platform is. Flash can make Windows run better than it's supposed to.

Google uses Flex for version of SearchMash

Adobe has always liked Google. I've always used Google. I think we used to package some Google Toolbar thing inside Reader because Google offered us too much money to deny. Adobe Reader is in the Google Pack of software.

And Google is now showing more love to Adobe. They've always used Flash for Google Finance's charts, but have you seen the Flash version of SearchMash, Google's experimental search engine?

Actually, they created it in Flex, which is really exciting for us to see. It runs smoothly, it runs well, and it's not too resource intensive.

The search results are really accurate as well. I bet it didn't take Google long to make it.

Good morning.

I'm Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe Systems, Inc., creator of standards in the world.

PDF? Ours. Flash? Ours. Photoshop? Ours. Dreamweaver? Ours. The term 'rich Internet application' or RIA? We created it.

And I haven't even gotten started.

At Adobe, we're building up our warchest to take on Microsoft because, honestly, we hate them. They tried to squash us like 20 years ago. Our stock collapsed. Then the whole anti-trust stuff started. We bounced back up. They failed. We want revenge. Silverlight? I've made it clear that we at Adobe think Silverlight is just an imitator of what Flash used to be.

And it's obvious that Microsoft doesn't even like Silverlight. You know, the website for Halo 3 runs Flash? Didn't they make a big deal about how it runs Silverlight? Well, there is a Halo 3 website running on Silverlight. It's so hidden, I could barely find it! You have to go to the Silverlight.net Showcase, find the little Halo 3 icon towards the bottom, click on it, and then click on the View Now button. (by the way, the box that pops up and blurs the screen behind it? totally a copy of our Flex/Flash alert box)

Now, I must get back to Buzzword. Shantanu and I are collaboratively working with some of our engineers on our OS X Leopard FAQ. Apparently some people are upset because our products don't work on Leopard. It's not our fault that Apple doesn't like us because we compete with Final Cut with Premiere!