Macromedia isn’t a name you hear often these days and even if you did, you’d self-correct it to “Adobe” in your head. But we all remember Macromedia Director, a dedicated program for “interactive multimedia” that was all the rage in the 1990s. The decades however have not been kind to Director’s popularity, so much so Adobe is putting the brand to bed as early as next month.
Director’s strength was that you could use it to build (almost) anything. From interactive presentations to simple applications and even complex video games, if you had the patience and time, it was a versatile piece of kit.
However, with the rise of focused competitors, such as Unity for games development and the move to web apps, Director doesn’t really have a place. Hence Adobe’s decision to stop “selling and supporting” Director makes total sense:
As customers embrace the new features and efficiencies offered by Creative Cloud, we will no longer be selling and supporting Adobe Director and Contribute, which was last released in 2012. Sale of Adobe Director and Contribute will stop on February 1, 2017. We will also stop ongoing updates and support for Adobe Shockwave on Mac devices on March 14th after the last release of the product.
A bit sad, yes, but that’s the software business for you.
[Adobe, via VentureBeat]