🚀 go-pugleaf

Clint, I just don't buy the "evil monopoly" argument.

      Since Adobe has a stranglehold on the market due to it's bundling of products
      in a suite,




Who doesn't offer multiple product bundles these days? Macromedia had Studio before Creative Suite happened. Corel also sells its products as bundles.

      there is very little room for competition in the market.




Nonsense. There are competing products. In the vector drawing category, they are just as capable as Illustrator. Adobe is not a "monopoly."

But I didn't say anything about the "something new" having to come from Adobe's competition. When I say it's time for starting with a clean slate in this forum, I'm talking about the archaic trappings, increasing instability, and poor performance of Illustrator. Adobe bought PageMaker, then improved upon it. It kept PageMaker around (even releasing a new version) while the new product came up to speed.

But Adobe bought Freehand, practically immediately discontinued it, and is now merely paying piecemeal lip service to its superiorities. Unlike the InDesign scenario, Adobe has actually removed a better tool (regarding fundamentals) from the market, without providing a satisfying alternative.

      Even if someone comes out with an amazing drawing product, it would most
      likely sell for anywhere from $300 to $700 per seat. Multiply this cost
      over multiple seats at any design agency, and now you're talking thousands
      of dollars...




??
How many thousands of dollars has each AI user paid over its lifetime--and is still paying at a clip of several hundred per version--just to watch it still playing catch-up to basic features all its direct competitors have had for 15 years?

      I don't know of a manager anywhere that will choose "better" over "cheaper,"...




??
If that rationale were true, then managers everywhere would be standardized on the much more affordable Corel suite than Adobe's.

      so any product trying to compete with Illustrator would be DOA.




Again, that's nonsense. Take a look at Xara. Take a look at what's happening in the open source community.

      And that makes me sad. Yet another product that is "good enough" has taken
      over its market, and now will only be marginally improved as time goes
      by because there is no competitor to force it to improve and innovate...




I want it to be very clear that my arguments are NOT defeatist woe-is-me moaning and whining about the "evil Adobe empire."

Look: Except for a few of its more flamboyant features, among drawing programs, Illustrator is mediocre--in many of its basic features it is downright outdated, childish, and even sloppy. As you point out, it's nothing unusual for a mediocre product to outsell an excellent one.

Compare Harley sales to BMW. Does that make Harley Davidson an "evil monopoly?" Does that mean no one has a chance to "compete" with an innovative product?

Do you think BMW's motorcyle division is not profitable, just because it isn't the top seller? Do you think FreeHand was not profitable?

Adobe dominates the graphics creation market due to two things:

* Marketing. FreeHand improved dramatically for several versions while owned by Macromedia, widening its functional superiority over Illustrator even more. Later, though, Macromedia's focus changed to the runaway success of Flash and its other web-centric products.

The failure was to market FreeHand's advantages effectively, and to advance them. Instead, Macromedia began to emulate Illustrator, as if the way to beat your competition is to merely play "me, too." That's the time (around FH10) that I began to sense its degradation.

Meanwhile, Adobe's marketing continued to dominate, because of the second aspect of all this:

* Adobe's dominance of print. Remember, Adobe once was one of those innovative startups you think are somehow "ruled out" now. It was completely foo-fooed at first, but PostScript defeated an extraordinarily entrenched and wealthy prepress industry.

Okay, so maybe the fire-in-the-belly innovator has become the lethargic monolith. Illustrator doesn't dominate because it is a better drawing program; it dominates because of its market position relative to Adobe, PostScript, PDF--but mostly due to what appears to me a very unimaginative and change-resistant user base that continues to be satisfied with such mediocrity and sloppiness as its abysmal performance, increasing bugginess, convoluted interface, infantile tools like the stupid eraser, and so on.

But that doesn't make Adobe a monopoly. Who is in a better postion than Adobe (given its ownership of FreeHand) to create that much-needed next-generation vector drawing program?

But if Adobe doesn't belly up to the challenge, there is nothing preventing its happening elsewhere. If Adobe has become as lethargic and ineffectual, or just disinterested a company as one side of your arguement suggests, there is nothing preventing its happening elsewhere. Those conditions are exactly what does give rise to true innovators.

So again: I don't care what software title or whose corporate logo is on the box. I just think it's way past time for 2D vector drawing to be taken to truly robust, full-featured, modern, and professional standards. Today, Adobe is in the best position to do that.

But one thing's for sure: It won't if its customers don't demand better than--for just one tiny example--Illustrator's continued inability to join more than one path at a time.

JET