Apple Survived ’80s Thanks To Aldus PageMaker

michaelpinto · on April 13, 2011

That's true, but a bit of simplification. The golden triangle were Apple LaswerWriter, Postscript from Adobe and PageMaker from Aldus. All of those three key technologies needed to be in place for the other technology to work.

Aldus was later acquired by Adobe, but it was an amazing software company. Not only did it produce PageMaker, but it also created Freehand, Persuasion (pre-PowerPoint!) and later After Effects which is still alive and well today.

jws · on April 13, 2011

The Apple LaserWriter is an interesting product. The existence of affordable, full graphic laser printers created the market that Apple would dominate, but it wasn't important to Apple to own the laser printer market itself. Corporate inertia took some time to realize that and let the printer companies fight to the bottom.

Nine years later Apple repeated with digital cameras. Digital cameras were expensive and not widely marketed in 1994[1], three years later after the QuickTake 100 had put a stake in the ground for price and brought digital cameras in front of people's eyes Apple was irrelevant in the then huge market and exited (under the newly returned Steve Jobs' axe). This was a win for Apple's Macintosh platform which at the time was perceived as superior for "graphic things".

In an alternate universe, where Apple decided to make their money on iTunes sales, the iPod could have gone the same way, the problem being that "reselling other people's music" doesn't provide enough to differentiate your experience to your users.

EOM

[1] I was looking at disrupting the MLS at the time. We ultimately decided that their business practices were too formidable, but a $700 640x480 camera would have kicked the snot out of the messy little black and white photos MLS used at the time.

phlux · on April 13, 2011

Pagemaker 5 is still one of my all time favorite apps.

In fact, I think that it is STILL better than word and most other apps.

The reason is that the app acts more like a visio than a word processor.

In word, your editing text on a sheet. In pagemaker you organized elements and objects which were test-block objects or images.

I actually had just commented on this program recently, there are still very few apps that work as well.

I wish it hadn't died in the form that it was.

noblethrasher · on April 13, 2011

To be fair, MS Word is for word processing whereas PageMaker is for page layout. You invite pain and suffering when you try to use either as a replacement for the other.

gte910h · on April 13, 2011

Have you seen in-design?

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html