[IxDA Discuss] Illustrator vs Fireworks

[jackbellis.com]

I know that Fireworks has come up occasionally in the discussion of prototyping tools, so hopefully this isn't too off-topic, but can someone who's used both FW and Illustrator help me out on something...

Am I suffering from familiarity delusion, or is Illustrator just horribly antiquated? I recently started using Illustrator 9.0 for a traditional publishing project. Admittedly, the splash screen copyright says 1998-2000, so maybe I'm comparing oranges to rotten apples. I hope that's the whole explanation. I really don't think I'm skewed by having learned one product first, but I do recall my first touch on MS Word and wanting to strangle those Wysiwiggers. 

Is it really that bad and Adobe realized they had to buy or die, thus their purchase of Macromedia?
-Jack