Adobe ‘Flashrobat’

From the company’s FAQ regarding the now-completed acquisition:

How long will it take to integrate Flash Player and Adobe Reader?

It will be a multiyear effort. Ultimately, our goal is to combine both in a single client. Combining PDF and Adobe Reader with Flash and the Flash Player will allow us to deliver a truly ubiquitous platform that sits on virtually every device. We will build on that to create compelling customer solutions.

Boy, does that smell like a frankensteinian combination.

Recall this prophetic joke from my “Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia”, where I wrote, in the faux voice of Adobe:

Where by “complementary” we mean “the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.” Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ — in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.

★ Tuesday, 6 December 2005