Well that's one way to use all that cash

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on April 28

So why would Apple want to shut down development on its Aperture professional photography software product? ThinkSecret picked up on the rumor, about which Apple hasn’t commented.

But the move comes about a week after Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen confirmed that the company will indeed develop its Photoshop application – one of the most important apps on the Mac – for Intel based Macs by the first half of next year.

Now Robert Cringely is stringing these two facts together into an interesting, if unlikely scenario: Apple, he argues, must buy Adobe. More after the jump.

Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole. So he needs the top ISVs who are currently writing for OS X to continue writing for OS X, and that especially means Adobe. … There's only one way to make that happen for sure, and that's for Apple to buy Adobe.

You gotta love Cringley. He makes the craziest theories seem to make sense, even when you know in your gut they don't. But he does it with such exuberance and conviction. Remember last year’s
"Apple and Intel are merging"?

Kidding aside, he does however raise an interesting issue that’s going to get ever more serious as the Mac in the age of Boot Camp becomes a more bi-platform machine, and I like his choice of phrase: Application vulnerability. Why, for instance, will Microsoft continue to build a Mac-only version of Microsoft Office, when Windows and Windows applications run just fine (if not better) on the Mac? The easy answers are 1) Building Mac software is very profitable for Microsoft (or so I’ve heard) and 2) Most Mac-users aren’t going to bother with Boot Camp in the first place because of its added complexity and expense (hey you have to buy a copy of Windows). Still on this he raises a valid point.

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