“Over a year ago on June 6, 2005 Apple announced that it would move to replace Motorola chips as its core CPU and switch to using the industry standard Intel chip, which every other PC uses. On January 10 this year Apple launched the new Intel based computers onto the market,” The Business News Source writes.

“In order to facilitate the transition to the new Intel platform Apple released an update of its developer software that would allow companies like Adobe to ship updated versions supporting both the older Motorola chips and the newer Intel chip Macs, called a Universal Binary application,” The Business News Source writes.

“Photoshop is one of Adobe’s flagship programs, but allegedly sales on the Mac side have been stalling as users [continue to] wait for the Universal Binary version. Adobe has indicated that this may not be released until next year, a full year and a half after the announcement of the Intel switch,” The Business News Source writes.

The Business News Source writes, “Meanwhile, Apple has released a major update of Aperture, its professional photographic production workflow program, beating Adobe to its own game, in its core market. Adobe has a similar program Lightroom, but it’s still a beta release and isn’t likely to go commercial until next year, by which time Apple will have established itself firmly in that market.”

“So, some see the delay of Universal Binary versions of software in the Apple market as being a way of punishing Apple for entering its core market. And sending clear signals to Apple that it is not happy with the situation. Certainly the release of Contribute 4, a major update, and not providing support for Apple’s new platform indicates one of two things, either Adobe lacks the skills and engineers to carry out the transition, or perhaps that it will not move to Universal Binary apps for anything but its core applications,” The Business News Source writes.

“We think that this is a serious miscalculation by Adobe, although Apple only has less than 4 percent of the global PC market share, it is estimated that they represent between 40 and 50 percent of the shipments of Photoshop. Apple customers are remarkably loyal to Apple and if Mr. Jobs feels forced into going ‘head on’ with Adobe over Photoshop releasing an Apple equivalent then the market for Photoshop would likely collapse in a few months. Apple already demonstrated that the technology built into new Macs with Quartz Extreme and Core image would make developing a similar product to Photoshop trivial for Apple,” The Business News Source writes. “Any loss in the media market will be for Adobe, not Apple.”

Full article here.
Adobe needs an attitude adjustment. There’s no excuse for making a large portion of your users – the very users of the platform that made your company, by the way – wait for so long to run your products natively.

Related articles:
Analyst expects Adobe Creative Suite 3 release on May 1, 2007 – October 04, 2006
How long must we wait for Adobe to produce Universal applications for Apple’s Intel-powered Macs? – August 21, 2006
Adobe CS3 sneak peek shown on Apple MacBook Pro as Universal Binary application – May 25, 2006
Cringely: Apple must replace Microsoft Office, buy Adobe Systems for attack on Microsoft to succeed – April 28, 2006
Adobe CEO: Universal version of Photoshop due in spring 2007 – April 21, 2006
Adobe software engineer explains why Photoshop for Intel-based Macs is taking so long – March 24, 2006
Should Apple buy Adobe as leverage against Microsoft? – December 16, 2005
Adobe prefers (and promotes) PCs over Macs – March 24, 2003