Adobe announced Tuesday that a new component to its Creative Suite 5 software — used widely in the publishing industry.
The development puts Adobe squarely back in the high-stakes tablet game with a “legal” way for publishers who already use their popular layout and production suite to create dead-tree output to efficiently create derivative digital versions for the iPad.
The approach — which Adobe does not describe in any detail — apparently does exactly what what was intended with a compiler that Wired magazine was initially employing to create its June issue for the iPad, or more accurately, the reader or “wrapper” for the content which combined are the app. (Both Wired.com and Wired magazine are owned by Condé Nast.)
Weeks earlier, Adobe and Wired magazine had to abandon the compiler method when a change in Apple’s developer agreement stipulated that iPhone OS apps must be originally programmed using Apple-approved languages (such as Objective-C).
Adobe, in a statement, makes clear that the Apple-approved modification of its Creative Suite 5 came about because of its partnership with Wired magazine, against a tight deadline to release issue 18.06 on time. Wired magazine’s June issue was released in the iTunes store last Tuesday shortly after midnight. (Corrected: Adobe says they did not modify CS5 but that “the content you can view through this technology was created with CS5.”)
“This new publishing software was developed with input from Condé Nast’s Wired magazine, a publication that recently debuted a digital edition for Apple iPad, utilizing the new digital viewer technology,” Adobe said in a statement. “Wired’s June issue Reader application, now available through the Apple iTunes App Store, is built using Adobe’s digital viewer software.”
So, at the last minute, Adobe has managed somehow to abide by Apple’s content-creation dictum and in so doing restore its leverage among a large installed base of commercial users of their development suite as a viable on-ramp into the iPad.
Beyond the good news for CS5 customers, the development also shows a bit of rapprochement between Adobe and Apple, whose very public spat over web and mobile internet technologies has included name-calling and in recent weeks a public letter from Steve Jobs in which he charged that Flash and mobile couldn’t mix, followed by a point-for-point response from Adobe.
So, what is the secret sauce? Well “additional Adobe publishing technologies,” of course. Adobe leaves it like that. One web technology source speculated to me that Adobe had created what amounted to a browser/viewer to animate and display the flat files generated by InDesign.
We’ve reached out to Adobe for further explanation.
In a response to our inquiry Adobe said it would reveal more details about the process “in the coming months.”
“We thought it important to signal that our work with WIRED will benefit the entire publishing community and that over the next few months we’ll reveal more about the workflows involved as we bring the software to market,” Adobe PR director Russell Brady said in an e-mail.
Article by wired
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