This would have a made a great April Fools joke, if only it weren’t true, but check out what’s available for sale, brand new in a box from Adobe on their online store; That’s right—PageMaker 7.0. I’m not joking—here’s the link, go and see for yourself (it’s $499 for the full version, but you can get the upgrade starting at $79, depending, of course, on which version of PageMaker you’re currently using).
Now, seeing this brings up a number of questions, the first being, “Why is it there?” There can only be one logical explanation—people still buy it. Think about it—if nobody bought it, Adobe certainly wouldn’t be stocking it, they’d remove the product from the store, and that would be the end of it. But it’s there, and I even added it to my shopping cart just to see if it’s for real, and……son-of-a-gun it’s for real.
OK, now that we know it’s real; what computer made today could possibly run it? Believe it or not—it says it runs on Windows XP (I kid you not!). It says it will also run on a Mac with OS X, but you have to have a version that will let you run it in Classic Mode (in other words, a really old version of Mac OS X). There are third and fourth questions that immediately spring to mind (like what are the “New” features that appear under the “New Feature” link), but instead lets just take a moment and everybody, come on, say it out loud—“Who in the world is buying PageMaker?” Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? :)