In the light of the Adobe buyout of Macromedia, I’ve heard that part of the rationale of this endeavor may in fact have been to prevent Microsoft from buying out Macromedia and then doing something really scary like … I won’t go there.
Needless to say MS has had a few apps up their sleeves to really make you wonder what’s been going on over the past year. They’re encapsulated in the new “MS Expression” suite and offer integration with Visual Studio. It’s basically Microsoft’s answer to the Adobe/Macromedia slew of software applications.
- Acrylic Graphic Designer = Photoshop/Illustrator
- Sparkle Interactive Designer = Flash/Director
- Quartz Web Designer = Dreamweaver/GoLive/Flash/Flex
- (Forgive me if you disagree profusely, this is just what it’s looking like to me.)
It’s very interesting considering Macromedia’s recent release of Studio 8 focused on each of those areas plus the Video Geek and now Microsoft is looking to get into this area of media/print, as well.
So am I dogging the MS stuffs? No not at all. I say check ‘em out. As a matter of fact Acrylic is offering a free public trial so go try it out (it’s only available to the PC Windows XP club … hmm, I’m a Mac Developer). But I do think it’s very “interesting” that a new barber shop has showed up on the block.
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