Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella take the #AdobeMAX stage to talk about bringing creativity and productivity closer together.
For much of this morning's Adobe Max keynote, it looked like all the company's innovations had been created exclusively for Apple users.
But starting with the introduction of Adobe Illustrator's Touch Workspace running on the Surface Pro 3, the presentation took a decided turn.
Out trotted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss how the two companies have been collaborating on enriching the touch capabilities in Adobe's desktop applications.
In quick succession, the two demoed a mix of new features, beta products and a conceptual video (see below) that illustrated the story that we Surface Pro and Windows tablet users have known all along: creating is simply more natural and fluid when it is accompanied by pen and touch.
After sparking the crowd's imagination with the possibilities of touch on a full-powered pc, Nadella brought the 5,000-plus attendees to their feet with the announcement that each was going home with his or her own Surface Pro 3, including touch keyboard and a one-year membership to Office 365.
Surface's Panos Panay wrote a lengthy post about the event over at the Surface Blog.
It will be fascinating to see the effect that exposing so many creative users at once to the strengths of the Surface Pro and Windows 8. Many of these are the hardest core of Apple's devotees and will no doubt struggle with the peculiarities of the Microsoft platform.
But it's safe to say that a significant percentage of these new users will have the vision to take these creative tools to a whole new level, creating work that will doubtless inspire even more new adopters.
That's the hope at least.
As these new users Google around for help on the Surface Pro, some will end up here. Please identify yourselves and let us help welcome you to the Windows creative community. We're here to help make you feel at home.
