Microsoft acquires iView

I'm going to get my camera and go outside. Must be a bad moon rising or something. The first thing I see on DPR is how Adobe picked up Raw Shooter Pro.

Now Microsoft and Iview (can't read the details, the link may have been slashdotted or sometihng but I can guess).

Next stop - Microsoft buys Adobe (or perhaps the other way around). Film at 11.

Mike Tedesco wrote:

'And, says Shayne Bowman, iView Chief User Experience Architect and
iVangelist, in the short term it will be business as usual:

Emphasis on short term. While I appreciate your input and feedback as well as your contributions on the forum, the company you work for has a less than stellar track record for assimilated products.

To be fair (this isn't slashdot, after all), MOST larger software companies that buyup small startup companies do a poor job. Symantec and Computer Associates come to mind as poster children for failing to support or even market their acquisitions in any sort of sensible fashion. A product that had a small but loyal following and a small but knowledgeable support / maintenence / upgrade staff gets swallowed into a larger company - the staff gets absorbed / fired / promoted, the customers wander away or just get annoyed or both. Presumeably there is some financial advantage to doing this, else it wouldn't be so prevalent, but as an end user for a number of such companies, I don't see much in the way of utility.

A question to you, Mike - what are the longer term advantages of this sort of thing? Incorporation of Iview's technology into Vista2 or whatever? Improvement in Iview's code?

If it's the former, then thanks but no thanks. Operating systems - especially Windows - are bloated insecure monsters because thier software designers have lost sight of the importance of differentiating the OS from and application. I shouldn't have to upgrade to an entirely new OS for a "feature" that's essentially application level code. Stuffing IPTC metadata awareness into the OS may allow another application to see it, but at the cost of overhead for the entire OS and lack of flexibility when the next best thing comes along. All modern operating systems allow for data to be transferred to an fro amongst application level programs - there is little need to drag the application itself into the OS.

If it's the latter, then what does MS bring to the table that is so unique?

If it appears that I'm on a bit of a rant, then you're right - I for one, don't see many "improved" products coming about from this Borg-like behavior. What is MS going to do differently this time?

I found this by accident, I don't think it was heavily advertised:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/prosummit.mspx

Suddenly we have lots of interest in "Pro Photo" arena - Apple's Aperture, now MS...

Thom Hogan wrote:

• Another lessor fear is that the Aperture/Lightroom initiatives

grow out of underlying photo databases that have
photographer-centric workflows applied on top; it could be that
Microsoft wants to play in that game, which means that iView would
become a very different application in the future (perhaps better
for it, but fear comes from the sense of unknown, not the
possibility for better).

That was exactly my first thought when I heard this news, I think Microsoft has come to think it cannot be without a flagship professional photographic application along the lines of Aperture, and iView could certainly be a part of that response...

Or of course it could be that Adobe irked Microsoft greatly with the recent PDF fiasco and Microsoft is going for payback my marginalizing Adobe with a broader range of photographic applications. Revenge is a powerful motive...

Michal Urban wrote:

I found this by accident, I don't think it was heavily advertised:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/prosummit.mspx

It's true I didn't see many online ads for this but it was advertised rather heavily in photographic magazines.

sdmeyers wrote:

Something else comes to mind. Perhaps this is really a paranoid
move on MS's part, not against Apple, but against Google and
Picassa (Which is really a super cool app, that I use on all my
PC's and IMO a much nicer experience then iPhoto)

I have not yet used Picassa but that is a really interesting speculation about reasons for the purchase. Would that mean iView would then be free at some point, following Googles lead in making many applications free? Something to ponder...

One other thought, I find it interesting that this come on the
heals of MS backtracking on the WinFS which would have in many ways
supplanted iViews usefulness... perhaps MS is planning on injecting
that sort of cataloguing system into iView (which could be a very
cool thing).

I was kind of wondering if future versions of iView would use an embedded SQLServer of some sort. But would they do that for the Mac version?

It's good to hear from the company than near term Mac support is still planned but without a clear and believable message from Microsoft on this purchase it sure throws a lot of questions up in the air.

Reinhard wrote:

The buyout continues...

[snip]

Now Microsoft have a major product that can read and write XMP metadata within DNG files.
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/xmp_dng.htm

I wonder what they will do with that capability?

Barry,

How come 99% of your posts have the acronym DNG in them at least once?

If you're not paid by Adobe as an evangelist yet, they should consider doing so. On the other hand, one person pushing DNG too hard can actually have the opposite effect - let's call it the Foveon effect.

Cheers,
Simon

Your thoughts mirror my own.

At least this sale makes some sense in my mind. iView fills a major gap in the Microsoft graphics tools line-up.

Its been a while since I've evaluated iView, could it be enhanced to the point that it could compete with Aperture or Lightroom? I think so. Plus think about the kind of end user automation that could be done if the MS Access database engine were integrated into it along with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and could integrate with MS Office.

you would have the foundation of an incredible set of Photo Studio management applications that could handle literally EVERY aspect of that business. This is the kind of Big thinking that MS likes to indulge in.

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a weird prediction. Not so much to predict the future, but to stimulate our thinking along these lines.

Corel has 2 excellent photo editors, but appears to be favoring PaintShop Pro at the moment. PhotoPaint has already integrated VBA as a scripting language. Would it not make sense for MS to buy PP and integrate it into a new MS PhotoStudio Suite?

You know, Microsoft supported Corel for a couple of years with life sustaining infusions of cash until they could find a well heeled buyer. Who knows what Corel had to promise for that cash?

JLK wrote:
[snip]

You want ugly---try running Foveon x3f files through Adobe's DNG
converter... yuk!

[snip]

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=17350698
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=17352681
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=18057600

Microcrap will incorporate the core of iView into Vista so that it becomes a 'feature' of the OS. This they are doing primarily to screw over Adobe.
--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler