Posted on 09/13/2007 10:35:53 AM PDT by qam1
Imagine a world without Photoshop or PDF. Heck, without digital fonts and desktop publishing and the ability to print graphics on a desktop printer. Imagine a world without Adobe.
As Adobe Systems celebrates it 25th anniversary, it's important to recognize how much Adobe is responsible for the way we communicate today. Back in 1982, two enterprising and talented computer scientists left Xerox PARC to form their own company. John Warnock and Chuck Geschke had been working on a computer language that would enable the printing of smooth detailed graphics, liberating graphic designers from X-Acto knives and Rubylith. (It's a testament to Adobe's impact to think how few designers today even know what Rubylith is!) They called the company Adobe Systems, named after a creek running through Warnock's backyard, and set up shop first in a spare bedroom and then in a small building in Mountain View, Calif.
Three years later, in 1985, desktop publishing was unleashed when Warnock and Geschke teamed up with Steve Jobs to create a printer based on that computer language -- the Apple LaserWriter with Adobe PostScript -- and that took advantage of the Mac's graphic interface. Paul Brainerd of Aldus then contributed PageMaker page-layout software that demonstrated the LaserWriter's smarts. The rest, as they say, is history.
These days, publishing with a personal computer is a given. It's so entrenched in our professional culture that the term "desktop publishing" is quaint and outdated. Certainly the designers and production artists at CondeNast or The New York Times do not refer to what they do as "desktop publishing." After Adobe acquired Aldus in 1994, PageMaker quietly slipped away and InDesign stepped in, supplanting QuarkXPress in the hearts and minds of designers.
But even as the novelty of desktop publishing faded, Adobe has continued to push the boundaries.......
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
..step off soapbox
NO adobe. No hovels for the slaves of the pyramids and Indians of the Puebla!
Hey, another thread I can read while waiting for Adobe Reader 7.0 to load!
No Adobe...... hmmmm... John Kerry would have had to actually hand typed the ANG memos. Dan Blather would still be blathering.
With the 1,500 or so Adobe processes that run on startup you would think it would load a just a bit faster. Not to mention that it takes a small eternity to install.
I for one would have gone into another profession. Screw press type and rubylith!
And the auto update through a firewall has taken a few of us to our knees until we found a way to defeat it.
What would replace them?
ping
Glad to see that you’re still using Adobe Reader 7. Newer version 8 is full of bloatware such as Adobe Acrobat Connect and other programs that very few of us will use, and the size went from 20 to 30 meg.
Use "Foxit Reader". It's small...no install needed and it works just like Acrobat. And it's free.
I would also point out that Adobe Reader 8.0 wreaks all manner of havoc on systems that have network printers mapped. Adobe 8 is a big no-no in our enterprise.
Adobe sucks. No copy/paste. And why is the percentage size never big enough to read?
This is my work laptop with a mandated loadout, I have linux on all of my other machines. :-)
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