Say it ain't so, Tastykake!

If you grew up in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, it is likely that Tastykake was a treasured part of your childhood. In my pre-weight-loss era of life, Krimpets alone just about made up one of my Food Groups. I still enjoy their sugar-free options. So, it is with sorrow that I read that Tastykake is considering selling out in the face of growing challenges in their financial situation.

Tasty Baking Co. president and chief executive Charles Pizzi said in a statement that "unanticipated operational challenges" related to its new bakery in Philadelphia's Navy Yard had lowered projected savings for the fourth quarter of 2010 by $3 million to $10 million.

The company's shares plunged more than any other on the Nasdaq, giving up 37 percent of their value and hitting a 52–week low of $3.83 before closing at $4.05.
The company cited a bankruptcy filing by the owner of the A&P, Super Fresh and Pathmark grocery chains and rising commodity costs as contributing factors to the financial squeeze and said it was looking at all options.

I truly hope Tastykake can pull out of the death spiral and be restored to its former glory. Otherwise, I hope any would-be buyer would keep around the old brand in some form, instead of just adding any signature offerings to their own line-up.

Apple acquiring Adobe would be a bad thing

As I was perusing Slashdot today I came across this article that proposed that Apple should purchase Adobe. On first blush this sort of makes some sense and the author makes most of the sensible points pretty convincingly. I use Apple and Adobe products everyday - several thousand dollars worth of each every day - so I'm very familiar and biased towards the goodness of each. My problem with this idea of Apple buying Adobe isn't with the concept of two great companies working together as one, but rather that it eliminates some of the market. I am by no means an expert on market forces or economic competition and I don't play one on tv, but it seems that taking Adobe out of the mix would push Apple less and would push Adobe to innovate less.

As a case in point, a couple of years ago Adobe purchased Macromedia - the makers of fine software like Dreamweaver and Flash (both the best of their breed in their respective niches). Before the purchase Adobe was working on competing products GoLive vs. Dreamweaver and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) vs. Flash. All four were great products, but Dreamweaver and Flash were definitely the better products. So what did Adobe do, they bought the competition. So now GoLive is history and SVG has been left to the open source world to possibly enhance. Dreamweaver and Flash have gotten better, but not noticeably so - despite the fact that Flash is almost inescapable in our current web environment.

The question is then, would Adobe get better if Apple purchased them? Adobe's flagship programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and the previously mentioned Dreamweaver and Flash) are already without competition. Sure there are other products that try to do the same things, but hardly any of them are nearly as good or compete any more - with the possible exception of Quark even though they're pretty stagnate in terms of market share. At this point Adobe and Apple are pushing each other to be better - especially in the area of pro-photography with competing programs Lightroom (Adobe) and Aperture (Apple). If they were to become one company the market forces that make each of them have to innovate to retain the creative professional market would disintegrate and they would be worse for it. So, I think this would be a bad thing as much as it might sound great from an Apple/Adobe devotee perspective.