Is Adobe serious about Digital Editions or is it going extinct?

[amw770]

ADE is lagging further and further behind as iBooks keeps getting better and better - the complete propagation across Apple devices, the ease of use of color coded highlighting and notes, the layout, the links, the ability to copy then paste with automatic citation is awesome. We provide DRM protected content and ADE has been our recommended eReader. Our customers are in technology fields and yet find the entire process of working with ADE clunky and confusing; the complaints I see in the ADE forum are issues we field routinely - the acsm files, the separate mobile readers, the Adobe ID and other download problems. We have to deal with students who've waited to the last minute to study for an exam and then contact us in a total panic when the eBook they purchased months before no longer opens because of some syncing issue or OS update or equipment change. There are a lot of amazing Adobe products and Adobe Cloud is fantastic, but I need to know if I need to start looking for an alternative to ADE, or if Adobe's going to be releasing an updated version of ADE with it's own mobile version that allows for all the things people want - color coded hightlighting, notes, complete propagation across all their devices - in the immediate future, i.e., within the next 3 months. Thanks.

[sjpt]

It's sad that Adobe have managed to make such a mess of their DRM,

with a second rate DRM infrastructure and third rate software (and that's even ignoring the lack of features you mention).

In an area where things ought to be easy even for very inexperienced users, they have made a monstrosity that is difficult for professionals.

I guess you are librarian in some technical education; it is the librarians in the public libraries I have most sympathy and admiration for in their attempts to help thier users.

Adobe don't seem to have any interest in improving it, bugs in ADE2.0 they have know about for over two years remain unfixed.

It looks as if their team consists of design (0), development (1 part time trainee), product test (0).

The relative openness of the Adobe DRM makes it attractive over alternatives such as Kindle.

For example, very few libraries in the UK offer Kindle loans.

That is why I try to help others in its use, but it becomes more and more difficult to justify Adobe's attitude.

I guess they aren't making any profit and are allowing it to go extinct as you suggest.