Briefly: Adobe, Best Buy, Mac OS X 10.4.7
Adobe reps offer a new round of comments on the fate of Go Live and Freehand. Meanwhile a wide variety of Macs are turning up at some Best Buy retail stores. Also, development of Mac OS X 10.4.7 presses on.
Adobe wants to set the record straight (or straighter); In a statement on Thursday, the San Jose, Calif.-based software developer said reports that GoLive and Freehand lay on the chopping block are incorrect.
Yesterday, several European online publications quoted the company's Director of European Marketing as saying GoLive will be discontinued prior to the release of Adobe Creative Suite 3.0 in 2007. The exec's comments came at the Adobe Live Conference in London. There were also conflicting reports on the fate of Freehand.
"Adobe plans to continue to support GoLive and Freehand and develop these products based on our customerâs needs," reads a statement Adobe sent to Macworld.
"Clearly Dreamweaver and Illustrator are market leading when it comes to web design/development and vector graphics/illustration," the statement continued. "Customers should expect Adobe to concentrate our development efforts around these two products with regards to future innovation and Creative Suite integration."
While Adobe said that it plans on supporting both programs, it stopped short of a committing to release major new versions of the products.
Macs arrive (at some) Best Buy retail stores
An analyst for Current Analysis has noted that some Best Buy consumer electronics stores are now featuring an expanded line of Apple's Macintosh products, including the MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and iMac.
However, as noted by MacRumors, most Best Buy locations outside of California do not yet appear to be stocking Macs. Checks at several east coast locations also turned up not a single Mac.
It's unclear if Best Buy and Apple are running a new pilot program or have formed some other kind of arrangement. Representatives for the retailer were unavailable for comment.
For those interested, CNet News.com has posted three photos from one of the Best Buy stores flogging the entire Mac product line in an Apple-branded planogram.
Mac OS X 10.4.7 builds
Apple has followed up on its pre-Memorial Day seeding of Mac OS X 10.4.7 builds with yet another pair. Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8J119 (PowerPC) and Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8J2119 (Intel) appear to be the two latest external releases of the Tiger operating system update.
Again, Apple is reported to have listed no significant issues with the latest build.
18 Comments
I was in a Best Buy in Edmonton, Canada last week, and noted that they were stocking Mac Books, Mac Book Pros, and Intel Imacs.
Go Oilers!
The problem with Macs at Best Buy is that the salespeople know absolutely nothing about Macs! They CAN'T sell them. When the Mac Mini was at my local Best Buy, they couldn't tell you anything about it, what's Expose, what's Dashboard, what's SPOTLIGHT!?!?!? come on people! Ok, well let me show you what spotlight is, oh wait, I can't because you SOLD THE KEYBOARD! They had the mini there with no keyboard! Just looking at the desktop, with only a mouse to move around with. It was horribly pathetic.
EDIT: So it's fairly obvious why Apple went into retail. They're the only ones knowledgable enough to sell the machines.
I was in a Best Buy in Edmonton, Canada last week, and noted that they were stocking Mac Books, Mac Book Pros, and Intel Imacs.
Macs are in all the Best Buys in Canada and have been for over a year.
I went to my Los Angeles Best Buy two weeks ago and spotted this. There was an Apple rep in the store, and he said the employees are receiving training with Apples. I was trying to convince him to have one Mac running WinXP.
Funny that Canada and California get the same merchandise. About the only thing similar is that their names both begin with the letter "C". Oh, and we have the right to bare arms in Canada, but it's usually too cold so we wear sleeves.