Frame's future

[Dov Isaacs]

Yes, you should put your sarcasm aside.

(1)	Even if we assumed that every licensed copy of
FrameMaker Macintosh were to immediately upgrade to a
new MacOS X version of FrameMaker and even if you
grew that number by 50%, the numbers just are not there
to justify the investment.

(2)	Your "business plan" to turn FrameMaker into a
word processor and bundle it with some spreadsheet and
presentation program as well as a stripped-down copy
of Illustrator sounds similar to such successful plans
such as those associated with WordPerfect and IBM's
Lotus group. Don't think so!

	- Dov

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Findon
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 1:30 PM
> To: Free Framers List; framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Subject: Re: Frame's future
> 
> On 21 Feb 2007, at 16:28, Dov Isaacs wrote:
> 
> > Comparing the Macintosh version of FrameMaker to a Ford
> > Taurus is not a valid analogy. FrameMaker on Macintosh was
> > NEVER a best-seller. It was a very small fraction of the
> > FrameMaker user base, smaller than even Unix, that did not
> > justify the continued expense of development, QA, support,
> > and marketing -- especially given the cost of major changes
> > to make it MacOS X-compatible.
> 
> For a company with 2006 sales of $2.5 billion, net profit of $505  
> million (would have been higher without Macromedia merger), and  
> assets of $5.9 billion, one could almost feel sorry for Adobe.
> 
> Apparently, Adobe's CEO earned $930,000, with a $1 million bonus.  
> That's the kind of cash I regularly loose down the back of the sofa,  
> so I can really sympathize.
> 
> Sarcasm aside, Adobe cannot deny that it is partly to blame for poor  
> sales of FrameMaker - on all platforms. Those of us that have been  
> FrameMaker users for near on 20 years are fully aware of Adobe's  
> failure to develop, promote, and deliver on its potential since  
> buying Frame Technology in 1995.
> 
> Mac OS X was announced in 1998. At that time, my company was still  
> using version 5.5.6. Having used FrameMaker on NeXTSTEP for several  
> years, I knew that Mac OS X would be a great OS and I wanted it for  
> my company. We've never been that quick to upgrade, and knowing full  
> well that Mac OS X was just around the corner was a good reason to  
> wait, for in just a few years, or so we thought, we'd have 
> the power,  
> reliability, and style of NeXTSTEP on the Mac and FrameMaker to go  
> with it. Several versions of Mac OS X came and went but still we  
> waited. Then, out of the blue, in March 2004 Adobe announced that it  
> was discontinuing Mac FrameMaker and there were no plans for 
> a Mac OS  
> X version.
> 
> Given those circumstances, it's hardly surprising that Mac 
> FrameMaker  
> sales were slow. Fast forward to 2006 and we see exactly the same  
> thing happening all over again, although this time Adobe 
> acknowledges  
> that sales of Creative Suite are slow because users are waiting for  
> an Intel version. See Adobe's latest F10K filing for details.
> 
> Funny how Adobe accepts poor sales of Creative Suite are due to  
> customers waiting for an Intel version, but won't acknowledge that  
> Mac FrameMaker sales were slow because users were waiting for a Mac  
> OS X version. The demand was there, but Adobe never made the 
> product.  
> How can you blame customers for not buying a product that never even  
> existed? You don't need a business degree to understand that this is  
> simple chicken and egg stuff. It would be like Apple saying, "oh, we  
> never made an MP3 player because there was no demand." Sometimes, a  
> company has to create the demand, build a market, things that Adobe  
> did not do with FrameMaker.
> 
> Adobe could have pushed FrameMaker as a 1st class word processor and  
> cut the price. Throw in a spreadsheet, a cut-down version of  
> Illustrator, and a Powerpoint alternative and you have a whole new  
> office platform. With Microsoft encroaching more and more into  
> Adobe's markets (i.e., Expression Studio), Adobe may soon be wishing  
> it had done something like this.
> 
> Paul
> <http://www.fm4osx.org/>