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Blog Post

Apple Should Buy Adobe

Philip Kahn answer is real easy "kill the Windows products"
By Yeshim Deniz
Article Rating:
January 25, 2010 05:00 PM EST
Reads:
 5,704

(April 14, 2009) - I just reported Apples' 3rd quarter results here. I don't know how many of you remember this. I was a freshman in college and my favorite PC database package was Paradox. Paradox was created by a small company called Ansa Software.

Do you guys also remember the Frenchman Philip Kahn, the charismatic founder and CEO of Borland? There were always weird stories about Kahn, that he would hire people like the young man who pumped gas into his car at a gas station, or that he had board meetings on his sailboat, or that he forgot to file his permanent residence application and almost got deported, remember he was a Frenchman living in Silicon Valley.

Wikipedia's entry about Paradox says, "Paradox for DOS was a relational database management system originally written by Richard Schwartz and Robert Shostak, and released by their company Ansa Software in 1985. In September 1987, Borland purchased Ansa Software, including their Paradox/DOS 2.0 software. Notable classic versions were 3.5 and 4.5. Versions up to 3.5 were evolutions from 1.0. Version 4.0 and 4.5 were retooled in the Borland C++ windowing toolkit and used a different extended memory access scheme."

Well anyway, Borland's biggest competitor for its Paradox database was of course the market leader dBase IV. Kahn acquired dBase in 1991 and killed it. No more competition for Paradox :- )

So when Apple-acquisition-of-Adobe rumors surface now and then, people tend to sit back and say, "What would Apple do with all that Windows software Adobe has in its portfolio?"

The Philip Kahn answer is real easy, "Kill the Windows products!"

This can also solve the problem of what Apple should do with the hooligans in Adobe's user community. The ones Adobe inherited through its Macromedia and Allaire acquisitions. :- )

Problem solved!

Yeshim.

From: help4mac
Subject: Adobe Apple <<-- you missed the main points
Sent: Jul 23, 2009 6:54 PM

Apple/Jobs was a seed investor in Adobe, but Apple wasn't happy about Adobe's proprietary Type 1 fonts so partnered with Microsoft to release TrueType and Adobe responded by opening the spec for the Type 1 fonts (Fall 1989). Apple also sold all of its Adobe stock.

Adobe's software is too bloated and expensive right now.

What you are suggesting is what Apple already did with music software, but this time they might get into trouble with anti-trust regulations.

Published January 25, 2010 – Reads 5,704
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Yeshim Deniz is a Ulitzer blogger who writes about cloud computing, breaking news from Cloud Expo, and emerging technologies. She first started blogging in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She broke the news on her blog about Condoleeza Rice's visit to Spamalot on Broadway as Katrina hit New Orleans. Yeshim was the first journalist to call for the resignation of the FEMA director, the day before Katrina hit New Orleans. She later helped to organize a "Change the Administration" march in Washington DC. Email Yeshim at editorial (at) sys-con.com.

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Most Recent Comments
bsperling 06/15/09 07:05:33 PM EDT

Paradox was the bomb. It was a fast, robust, easy to use, powerful database that rocked as a DOS app.
Funny story...
I was doing some work with Microsoft about six years ago, and we're meeting with their project team in Redmond. Someone asks something about the number of zip codes, so I open Paradox 4.5 in a DOS window to get the answer.
Suddenly one of their guys yells, "Hey, he's using DOS!", and all the developers crowd around to see the last of the dinosaurs.
R.I.P. Paradox, you are missed.