I think the problem that Adobe faces is that the web is always changing, and it’s hard for them to predict what technology those of us in the industry are going to embrace, and what we’re going to reject. When Adobe Muse came out in 2012, Responsive design was the new buzzword. A year later, Responsive design was on fire, and designers were scrambling to get out in front and learn the techniques so they could offer it to their clients. Meanwhile there was still a fair amount of debate as to whether it was better to have separate sites for mobile and desktop, or if designing for mobile was even going to become that important. It was hard to predict just how much mobile was going to take over the landscape, but the signs were there… continuous growth each year.
It took THREE YEARS before Adobe finally brought media queries to Muse. February 2016 was when they released their responsive-capable update. Nine months later, mobile search queries exceeded desktop for the first time in history. Fifteen months later, Adobe announced they were discontinuing Muse.
Adobe is a leviathan. It takes them YEARS to develop and deploy a new piece of software. It takes them months to even decide on a direction when it comes to adding new features. Heck, there are still infuriating interface differences between their major programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, issues that have existed and been complained about for over TWENTY YEARS!
Put simply, they are just too big and slow to be competitive in the world of website software. The environment changes too fast, and is too unpredictable. The concept behind Muse was admirable - a website builder for people who didn’t want to touch code, and in particular, designers who understood good front end design, but lacked the coding skills to do the things they could envision. What Adobe needed was a program like InDesign that simply created pages for the web, instead of print. They couldn’t pull it off. Dreamweaver was never that program, and never will be. Muse started out in that direction, but couldn’t do the code properly. Not to mention that Adobe is notorious for releasing bug-filled, half-baked, beta versions and using their paying customers to report all the problems. Then they make the users suffer for months while they slowly fix some (but not all) things in dribs and drabs, and announce updates like they’ve just cured cancer.
I remember when they FINALLY added responsive design to Muse, and marketed it like it was the second coming of Christ. Meanwhile, users had been jumping ship for years to anything… Macaw, Webflow, Wix, Weebly, that allowed them to offer their clients mobile friendly layouts. It was too little, too late, and now that they’ve realized they can’t stay competitive, they’ve just told their loyal client base who stuck with them through all their lousy, slow updates that it’s over, “so sad… too bad… but thanks for all the money!”
I went from loving Adobe in the 90’s, to liking it in the 2000’s, to really hating it in the 10’s.
