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Adobe takes heat from printing-industry execs over "Send to FedEx Kinko's" menu item in Acrobat and Reader
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July 27, 2007 — Adobe held a meeting in San Francisco last week to address fallout
from the recently announced and controversial collaboration between
Adobe and FedEx Kinko's. At the meeting,
printing-industry executives put strong pressure on Adobe to remove
the "Send to FedEx Kinko's" menu item from the "File"
menu in the Adobe Acrobat and
Adobe Reader applications.
(Click here for related story.)
A report from GraphicArts Monthly says that the meeting was attended
by more than two dozen top printing-industry executives.
High-level people from every major print franchise were in attendance,
as were executives from US-based printing
associations representing commercial printers (PIA/GATF, NAPL/ NAQP, IPA)
and in-plant printers (IPMA, ACUP).
According to a recent In-Plant Graphics report, Bruce Chizen,
Adobe's CEO, "sincerely apologized for what he acknowledged was
a major goof," and printing-industry executives stated in no
uncertain terms that the only remedy acceptable to them would be the
removal of the "Send to FedEx Kinko's" menu item from
Acrobat & Reader.
Johnny Loiacono, an Adobe vice president, has admitted in his blog that the
printing-industry representatives at the meeting were very tough
on Adobe. Loiacono has also been straightforward about flaws in the process
that led to the
decision to incorporate the "Send to FedEx Kinko's" menu item into
recent releases of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, stating that
Adobe should have had discussions with print-industry leaders
before moving forward with that plan.
According to several reports, Adobe representatives
said that Adobe would re-evaluate the implementation of the FedEx Kinko's service in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader,
would explore options for
making print-service providers more discoverable in Adobe?s creative products,
and would investigate a plan that would
allow printers to distribute a branded plug-in to their customers.
However, the Adobe officials stopped short of saying that Adobe would remove the
"Send to FedEx Kinko's" menu item from Acrobat & Reader.
The In-Plant Graphics report states that
"The company?s chief concern seemed to be that removing the
link would breach its contract with FedEx Kinko?s."
The In-Plant Graphics report also says that several meeting attendees
were concerned that Adobe might have missed their point, and the report
goes on to say that
NAPL and NAQP reiterated their position in a letter to Adobe
a few days after the meeting. Their letter states that
"Adobe should extricate itself from the agreement and remove
the FedEx Kinko?s logo and embedded link from Adobe software in a timely manner."
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