“By now you have probably figured out that we aren’t releasing Universal Binaries of our current application versions,” Adobe software engineer Scott Byer blogs over at Adobe.com. “If you haven’t, all you need to know is pretty explicitly spelled out here. ‘But, c’mon,’ I hear people saying, ‘Steve said it was just a recompile!’ Or, ‘Back during the PowerPC transition, you guys released a patch!’ Well, this time is different. And I really wish it weren’t. But let me tell you how…”
Byer explains, “When that original PowerPC transition was done, Apple did something clever. Very clever.”
Find out why it going to be a lot of hard work for Adobe to make a native (Universal) version of Photoshop for Intel-based Macs here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Paul L.” for the heads up.]
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Makes perfect sense to me
I knew it would be tough, nice to see any respose from anyone at Adobe shedding some light on the task.
This does not bode well for folks with high power G5 machines. As I predicted before, if you’ve got one of these machines, you better stock up on software that runs on them because the end of the road is just ahead.
It’s more than I’ve read from Adobe anywhere else, so I for one am grateful for the info.
I just hope that the cost of upgrading to CS3 is going to be reasonable ie Adobe doesn’t yank up the price because of the captive nature of the upgrade we’ll need…
Yeah it’s nice to at least get some reply on this matter. As for those poor people with their high end G5s, I would not worry one little bit there, Macs Kingy. They are going to be releasing the next version as UNIVERSAL. Understand? And secondly, do you really think CS3 is gonna have any “must have” improvements over CS2? C’mon, I could be using photoshop 7 and be just fine…
In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Apple did Adobe a HUGE favor, in that it gives many people a reason to buy CS3, that otherwise wouldn’t. I know I’ve run out of reasons to upgrade my Adobe suite (that I work on 6 hours a day, 5 days a week).
In hindsight, Adobe has now realized that hiring ex-Vista programmers was a mistake.
Hey, Adobe, “Command-H” means “Hide.” At least try to fsckin’ get that right with your overdue rewrite.
The fact of the matter is this
Adobe CEO’s almost wrote off Apple a few years back. They even had Photoshop manuals and materials that suggested people buy Windows PC’s as the preferred platform to use from now on.
I KID YOU NOT!
Apple shareholders responded by firing that incompetant CEO and buying NeXT, which Steve jobs came back to “save Apple”.
So since Adobe was going to write off Apple, there was a lack of investment in programing time in the Mac platform. Also Apple didn’t have a plan either, X-code was made recently when Steve jobs and NeXT crew came to work at Apple.
Metroworks is also used quite a bit by Microsoft applications on the Mac, notably OfficeMac.
Adobe has cut corners for way too long, the original programmers were a brillant patch of folks, but now programmers are dumbed down, some don’t even know how to use math well.
We might not see a well working Photoshop for IntelMac’s for several years.
And of course witht that investment Adobe will want to lock down every copy, so Apple will have to improve on the Trusted Computing, since it was hacked by getting Mac OS X on generic PC’s.
I knew Apple should have placed a essential processor in their computers that would do something needed by the OS as a way to lock Mac OS X to hardware. So that way Mac OS X could be run in it’s full state on generic PC’s.
Oh well, I guess i was right.
That’s alright Adobe, no hurry, Apple will introduce a “CS3-Killer” before you are complete with the transition.
That would explain why they’re changing the name to “A Doobie.”
G-Spank:
Photoshop 7 to CS2 *maybe* but what about Illustrator? Two words, brother: LIVE TRACE.
So, what Adobe’s saying is that they got off cheap last time and that Apple isn’t going to do their work for them?
BWAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Hey, MacDude, aka Vista, when you talk all I hear is “Blordy blordy bloop blordy blorp.”
The bottom line is there is no competition for PhotoShop so they can use their resources for programs like Lightroom and their other programs that do have competition. Besides, there is no money in it for updating CS2 when they can make you buy CS3.
BWT – Despite being their flagship program, PhotoShop was the last Adobe program to go OS X. Why? Again, lack of competition.
At work, we’re under a lot of pressure to jump back to Quark since we are moving.
Sure, we’re not Adobe’s biggest customer…we probably buy about 150-200 upgrade licenses for the suite and maybe about 10-15 full licenses a year.
But there is a hard push to move to Intel by year’s end. (We put off hardware upgrades after the Intel announcement)
Quark has been throwing offers of dirt cheap cross grades at our CTO to get us back to a Quark shop. Rumors have been spreading that we can expect CS3 in Q2, and probably later with slips.
I hate Quark. The product and the company. I love the CS suite. But this cutover will be done by the end of the year, and I hope Adobe has a fantastic upgrade for us.
Translation-
The next versions of Adobe apps will be ALL NEW and optimized for the new hardware- no kludges. Your wallet will protest, but your app will sing.
I’ve been waiting for someone to point this out.
While considerably smaller, the company I work for has a similar issue. We talk to devices, colorimeters and spectrophotometers, and we get our drivers from the device manufacturer. Needless to say, when I talk to device manufacturers and say, “Hey, do you have Intel drivers?” they say they haven’t even started on them.
It’s not a huge deal now–most of our customers are pro graphics types who have PowerPC machines. I’ve only heard one request for an Intel version. I’m actually debating writing a little PowerPC background process to talk to PowerPC drivers and send the info back to the main app via a socket.
Rosetta’s advantage is that it’s faster than the old 68K emulator. It’s disadvantage is that you can’t mix-and-match PowerPC and Intel code. As an entertaining aside, it’s interesting because Carbon has the data structures ready for this sort of transition (Universal ProcPtrs, or UPPs) but Cocoa does not…
I believe Aperture was a wake up call to Adobe. Apple basically said “we can make products that atract photographers and digital retouchers, and if you want we can make a product to replace PhotoShop.” And if you still aren’t convinced, the system now contains some core editing features.
Now that the Adobe/Macromedia merger is in the can, they can concentrate on their products again. But Adobe stands to lose a lot of customers if Macintosh users opt for an Apple program at a future point in time.
The bottome line: Adobe needs to double their coding team, drink lots of coffe and get the job done sooner rather than later. I have been using PhotoShop since its inception, and even used an app created by the Knolls that shipped with Barney scanners back in the day. It was the precursor to what PhotoShop became. Now it is bloated and slow, unless you have what I have for a desktop. I feel bad for users that don’t have 3GB of RAM and a dual G5 tower.
After reading thru the comments, especially the last one, the following thought ocurred to me.
Has anybody considered that Adobe may have bought Macromedia to keep Apple from doing so? Outside of Flash, what did MM have that Adobe really had to have?
Think about where iTunes came from. Just imagine what Apple might have done with XRes.
Maybe Apple should buy Graphic Converter. Just imagine what Apple can do with GC.
That’s about 70% (or more) of what PS can do, plus a few things PS can’t. More than a few times, it saved my bacon when PS couldn’t open a file.
Dennis, Photoshop has always used Cmd-H for “hide,” not the app but selections, which is essential for seeing what you’re doing. Apple is the late-comer for that shortcut. No problem to click on the desktop to hide it, and if an image still there bothers you, click the yellow button to send it to the dock before clicking on the desktop.
Lightroom is/was a Macromedia project. It’s not Adobe’s response to Aperture.
I’ve been using Graphics Converter for years. Outside of the lack of transparency and layors, GC has been a great alternative to Photoshop. I like it even better than MacGIMP.
Photoshop had always been the ultimate test comparison for Apple. Remember the Megahertz myth? Photoshop always gave Apple the edge because it took advantage of the Mac’s Velocity engine. With the new Intel chips, both Adobe and Apple won’t have that any longer.
This should be interesting. –Rudge