Quark very nearly purchased Adobe. Adobe rebuffed the offer and instead focused on developing InDesign, which would be the first mac osx native DTP title, effectively dealing a massive blow to the sedentary Quark. I don't believe Adobe are in a position where they are safe from competition however.
Some of the software (such as flash) are handed down many times, ensuring the loss of those who knew the code best, which were often the company owners who cashed out after the initial sale.
Adobe's software titles and portfolio are so massive now that it's no surprise that they're laden with bugs, overly focused on new features and notorious for their CPU requirements, memory footprint and ancient code.
The best Adobe software titles have always been their home grown, more recent titles, such as Lightbox and InDesign. It's clear they know the code here and how to revise it.
Adobe's risk is that, like Quark, their main business is in relatively few titles. They could be competed effectively by anyone who is willing to take on the big 3 design requirements. (Raster Editing/Vector Editing/DTP for PDF/postscript output.)
The reason gimp fails to make a sizeable dent in photoshop is because it has next to no support for CMYK images(or spots), which are essential to print.
As for Adobe's shitty software, it doesn't help that Adobe have acquired most of their titles via acquisitions, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...
Some of the software (such as flash) are handed down many times, ensuring the loss of those who knew the code best, which were often the company owners who cashed out after the initial sale.
Adobe's software titles and portfolio are so massive now that it's no surprise that they're laden with bugs, overly focused on new features and notorious for their CPU requirements, memory footprint and ancient code.
The best Adobe software titles have always been their home grown, more recent titles, such as Lightbox and InDesign. It's clear they know the code here and how to revise it.
Adobe's risk is that, like Quark, their main business is in relatively few titles. They could be competed effectively by anyone who is willing to take on the big 3 design requirements. (Raster Editing/Vector Editing/DTP for PDF/postscript output.)
The reason gimp fails to make a sizeable dent in photoshop is because it has next to no support for CMYK images(or spots), which are essential to print.