Adobe undercuts Apple with Adobe Media Player
Steve Jobs must be shaking his head, softly chuckling to himself as he reads that Adobe is releasing their very own media player, appropriately called the Adobe Media Player. Today at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show, Adobe revealed the product which seems suspiciously similar to iTunes, excluding the fact that it isn’t iTunes.
Everyone is wondering exactly what Adobe aims to accomplish with their media player, and how it is aiming to do it with its bigger, badder, older brother Apple looming ominously over its shoulder.
Bruce Chizen, chief executive office at Adobe stated, “Adobe Flash has revolutionized the distribution of video content across the Internet and Adobe Media Player builds on this leadership position.”
Just a brief thought, Bruce: Just because internet sites’ interactivity is based on Flash doesn’t mean that consumers are hungrily surfing the net for any Flash videos they can find…
Though many collective eyebrows were raised to these allegations, Adobe moved on with its somewhat uncomfortable presentation without a hiccup:
“Adobe Media Player enables higher quality Flash format playback, the ability to download and view videos offline, ways to discover interesting new shows, full screen playback, one-click viewer ratings, and a powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts.”
Adobe also intends to offer distributors of all of that Flash video content (cue Tim Allen, “euuuuueeaaahh?”) impressive security and distribution functionality, helping distributors, “deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content.”
Adobe’s Media Player will essentially be a program that will allow distributors to distribute Flash video content with Adobe protection to users, who can download the content (for some price, undoubtably competitive to Apple’s rates) and view the content on or offline at their leisure.
Listen, Adobe…this is really awkward, but, ah, Apple’s sort of done this already. They have this little application called iTunes that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
All jokes aside, what Adobe is trying to do here seems a bit foolish; I can’t remember the last time I searched for some quality downloadable Flash content, and although the format is excellent for internet interactivity, it will take substantial work to get normal users to switch from the comfortable .avi and .wmv formats for their video viewing pleasure.
By the way, last time I checked, Apple and Adobe were playing together very nicely. In fact, it seemed there was almost an unspoken agreement between the two software giants that involved Apple keeping hold of the fun audio and video content market and Adobe mostly holding the image and video production market.
Perhaps Apple’s recent announcement of Final Cut Studio 2 put all bets off. Though Apple’s video production suite does present serious competition for Adobe’s similar software, I don’t really see Flash taking off as the next big consumer video format.
I can picture Apple smiling at Adobe and patting its head, like Adobe is a young child playing with a toy tool set just like daddy Apple’s. Daddy Apple responds with, “Good job son, I’m very proud of you. Now go wash up and get ready for your bed time story.”
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September 21st, 2007
You are an idiot! Flash is already the number one video format on the web and last time my sister or brother watched a video on the internet I don’t remember them asking if it was in AVI or WMV or any other format for that matter. Come on, is Apple paying you for this garbage. You are obviously an Apple fan boy. ITunes is a great application and it is the 500 lb. Gorilla in the room, but Apple does not allow branded content in ITunes and they control the prices. I think you will see a lot of media companies switching to AMP just for those reasons alone. For music nobody can compete with ITunes, video is a different story.