🚀 go-pugleaf

      James, I never used the word "monopoly" in my post.




I know. It just had the same ring to it as many (especially in the FreeHand forum) others. Sorry if I painted you personally with that broad brush.

      Adobe simply doesn't seem to feel the need to do so with Illustrator,
      because it was never in danger of losing its market share to another product.




Well, that may be the case. I have no way of knowing what Adobe is collectively thinking. But again, the conditions you describe, if true, are exactly the conditions that give rise to innovation, if not from the current market leader, then from somewhere else.

      Pagemaker, however was increasingly being seen as a product for hobbyists,
      and QuarkXPress for professionals. Adobe knew they had to do something
      dramatic to change that situation, and just modernizing the Pagemaker
      code base wasn't enough.




That misconception predated Adobe's acquisition of PageMaker. Quark was eating Aldus's lunch because of lethargy on Aldus's part.

The difference with InD is, Adobe never had its own page layout program. Framemaker was acquired, just like PageMaker. I suspect (but again, have no way of knowing) that Adobe bought PageMaker because it was a good deal, and because it gained rights to its interface and programming.

      There is no such pressure from outside of Adobe when it comes to Illustrator.




That's where user demand comes in.

      Corel and Xara aren't even in the same ballpark, and even Freehand, as
      far as market share, was in no danger of toppling Illustrator at any time
      that I know of.




Again, "toppling" the top seller is not necessary for profitable success. Windows still controls over 90% of the personal computer market, but last time I checked Apple is still solvent. Every company that isn't the top seller in any given market is not doomed for failure. FreeHand users used it for decades before Adobe's acquisition, knowing full well it wasn't the top seller. FrameMaker still has a devoted following. There are alot more AutoCAD installations than CATIA; that certainly doesn't paint doom for CATIA.

      Illustrator has always had "competitors," but none that have had enough
      market share to get Adobe worried.




It is not necessary to "worry" Adobe to sell a great product.

      Heck, Adobe didn't even buy Macromedia to stifle competition for Illustrator,
      but to acquire Flash and Dreamweaver; the fact that it was killing its
      biggest Illustrator competitor was probably just seen as a bonus.




Again, I can't read Adobe's "mind". But one thing is certain: When Adobe acquired FreeHand, it gained rights to FreeHand's better interface designs. Adobe has tagged a few FH-esque elements onto AI, but so far, those attempts don't even match FH, let along improve upon it.

I personally suspect AI is just too creaky a platform to continue to build upon. But it's up to the user community to demand better.

      [Adobe's bundle] is the only one that...service bureaus won't have a hissy
      fit about...




That is a self-defeatist myth. I built the vast majority of my projects in FreeHand for well over 15 years and never had any difficulty getting them printed. On the very few occasions that I encountered resistance, I simply stood my ground, and the printer found out his fears were much ado about nothing.

But I haven't delivered a native output bundle for printing in years. I have Draw, Canvas, FreeHand, and Illustrator on my main machine. I can (and do) deliver a print-ready PDF from any of them, and get it printed at any shop I'm interested in working with. Now, more than ever before, PDF lets you use the program you prefer; not the one owned by Adobe.

      Until Xara or Corel (or whoever) starts taking some big bites out of Adobe's
      piece of the pie, then [Adobe] will only do what they have been doing
      all along with Illustrator...




So? If someone builds the next-generation vector drawing app, I'll use it, and Adobe can continue using tape, bailing wire, and string to hang more garbage onto Illustrator 'till the cows come home.

But Adobe won't build it as long as AI users are still satisfied with mediocrity.

I suspect Adobe is under alot of pressure these days. My reference to open source is not to suggest that Inkscape "has arrived." That's not what open source is all about; it's about a mental paradigm shift that is taking place.

Microsoft has to pay attention to OpenOffice because of the perception it creates. The threat of OpenOffice is that it does everything Microsoft Office does for free. The biggest problem with OpenOffice is that it is designed to do what Microsoft Office does.

That's the nature of open source right now. It proves its validity by doing the same old worn out things as the market leaders. And that's acutally a good thing, because by design or not, that's presently its effective message:

This stuff isn't rocket science anymore, guys! This basic stuff you keep re-delivering with new window dressing ought to be free by now. Time to get off your laurels, get back to offering something truly innovative and earning your keep.

The open source user community is still miniscule compared to mainstream. But its impact is real. People are beginning to get the message that something as basic to computing as the OS really shouldn't cost $300, and that programs as basic as word processing, spreadsheet, and database shouldn't either.

That message is beginning to be heard in basic graphics creation, too.

And that's just one aspect of the pressure. Look at Adobe's current offerings. Look at the dizzying array of products focused on mobile media and programming-ish backend development and "enterprise level" attempts and piecemeal "3D" that appear to me like a company knowing it needs to do something different from its historic foundings, but just doesn't yet know what.

So I very much doubt that Illustrator is really high on Adobe's priority. But vector drawing is still where I'm at, along with alot of others. If enough of us can envision something beyond the same old lines, boxes, and ovals, someone will build it. (And it will become even more painfully clear that Illustrator still doesn't even provide LBOs!)

JET