Apple, Adobe Headline Acts at Seybold


Apple VP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, is scheduled to deliver the keynote at Seybold on September 10. Schiller will outline Apple's "strategies for creative professionals."

Executive VP of worldwide products at Adobe, Shantanu Nayaren, will present Adobe's network publishing plans. Nayaren will deliver the second keynote.

"No gathering of the professional publishing, design and content industries would be complete without high-level addresses from Apple and Adobe," said Gene Gable, president of Seybold Seminars and Publications.

This year's Seybold Seminars cover graphic arts production tools, design and information architecture strategies, digital rights and asset management, marketing personalization and on-demand publishing opportunities.

Apple is not expected to make any special hardware or software announcements at Seybold, although it is possible Adobe may announce new or updated software. Phil Schiller is expected to strongly push Apple and Adobe's - and others' - OS X native products and Apple's OS X 10.2 (Jaguar).

Analysis: Adobe's recent earnings projection adjustment and Apple's recent spat with MS demonstrate the need to push the pro publishing industry to OS X as quickly as possible. Many are hold outs with OS 9 systems which they know work properly. Schiller's and Adobe's job will be to convince publishers to invest in OS X software and the hardware to run it. No mean feat when Quark has not yet come to the party. But at the same time, Adobe's weak results in recent quarter demonstrates that the world's second-largest software publisher needs Apple to drive its sales.