Adobe: "Universal? What's That?"

[Swad]

Oh, Adobe. There was this memo floating around last June – you may or may not have seen it, it didn’t get much press – about how this tiny computer company called Apple was going to switch their processor architecture. Not a big deal, I can understand how you could have missed it…

 

…but then, wait, weren’t you at WWDC? Didn’t you give a press conference shortly thereafter? It would seem that since you had a good half-year’s head start, you could have at least given the Mac community something universal to whet our appetites. Well, there’s the Lightroom beta of course, but I know I can’t wait to use it with a beachball-ridden Photoshop.

 

Ok, well, maybe I’m being too hard on Adobe. I understand that they have a massive number of products that they would need to transition. But in light of their announcement yesterday that we may not see Universal apps like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, and the rest until 2007, it would seem that they have been nowhere to be found during the switch. Since Adobe knows that the millions of creatives who use Macs at work would at least need Photoshop, couldn’t they at least switch one or two apps over and then give us the suite next year?

 

In my opinion, there is no excuse for this. Their corporate line…

 

"As we've refined our software development process over the years, we've generally found that the most effective way for us to support these types of changes is to incorporate this testing into our regular development cycle. This enables us to advance our technology at the aggressive pace that our customers expect, while also adding support for significant new system configurations."

 

…doesn’t address the fact that as one of the world’s largest and most important software houses they had plenty of advance warning to at least prepare a universal Photoshop for MacWorld. I could even understand an interim universal release sometime in the next few months. But forcing Mac users to wait until the end of this year or the beginning of the next (at which point we’ll be using Leopard) essentially sends the message that we’re not all that important. And that’s a shame.

[bofors]

Actually, I think the situation is a little more embrassing for Adobe... their CEO, Bruce Chizen, stood up with Steve Jobs on stage at the WWDC and effectively stated: "Adobe will be first with a complete line of Universal applications": (Time Index: 47:10) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/

 

Here is a similiar statement from an Adobe VP:

Speaking to Macworld during Adobe Live in London recently, Adobe vice president Bryan Lamkin alluded to the Mac to Intel shift. Speaking just days after the Wall Street Journal first revealed the move, Lamkin avoided discussing Apple's move, but said: "Can you think of a company better-suited than Adobe to recompile its applications for this?"

 

He explained that Adobe's applications already offer feature-parity between Mac and Windows systems on different processors. Adobe is able to achieve this because of the way it builds its applications. It uses platform-independent code for much of the applications it builds, while exercising platform-specific code designed to make applications work on multiple platforms - and to exploit each platforms inherent advantages.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?n...age=1&pagepos=2

 

Hmm... apparently this is not exactly news, Chizen made the same publicly known in August (I guess nobody cared then):

Q: So, when do you think that Adobe will be ready to take Photoshop?

Chizen: I haven't given a date yet, I'd be surprised if we did a MacTel only release. I think you'll find us doing what we did with OS X, which is to enhance the product and support the new environment at the same time. If you look at our product cycles for products like Photoshop and Creative Suite, they tend to be in the 18- to 24-month cycle, which means that you're talking about either Q4 of '06 or Q1 of '07.

http://news.com.com/Chizen+on+Apple+MacTel..._3-5844899.html

[ozzie123]

Isn't it obvious? Adobe wanted to drive its product user to Windows (oh no! Another conspiracy theory!). Well, they have been pushed around by Apple on Macintosh in recent year so I guess this conspiracy theory does have some basis

[Takuro]

With Microsoft and now Adobe both unclear about the transition of their products to universal binaries, the early life of an Intel Mac looks very depressing. Adobe's Creative Suite and Microsoft's Office are probably some of the best-selling software for Macs, probably yeilding even more earnings than Apple's own iLife and iWork suites. It gives people who are reluctant to buy a Mac some confidence to know that the most popular software on Windows also has its Mac counterpart.

 

And now new customers loose that security. We, in a sense, temporarily retrogress back to the days when almost nothing you saw on the software shelf would run on a Mac. (I remember my 1995 Apple computer. That thing was a pain in the ***. 99% of the software in stores wouldn't run on a Mac, and that really limited my options.)

 

Of course there is always Rosetta, but these applications are most noted for their performance. And through Rosetta, they sort of loose their life essence. People who demand professional tools aren't going to settle for this at all.

 

I feel sorry for all the people who I once eagerly encouraged to buy an Intel Mac, saying "all of your favorite applications will soon be running at amazing speeds and compiled for Intel processors." Most of them were purposely avoiding the Intel Macs for one main reason: they were concerned if Photoshop would run smoothly or if a uni-bin Photoshop wasn't too far off in the distance.

 

And now this is all added to the fact that, as in any new hardware line, obviously the first Intel Macs have the most physical kinks to work out as far as hardware performance. Now this is supplemented by the fact that Apple won't have a strong software line for at least another year.

 

So I strongly advise more than ever to people: don't get caught up in the rush and don't sell your G5s for Core Duos. Wait a year. The hardware itself will get better and, by then, you will be able to run Leopard and there will hopefully be a strong software lineup at that point.

[bofors]

Well, it is funny that I just completed my Universal binary. I actually started working on it less than 24 hours ago. I had some minor confusion with some documentation, but Apple actually did a really good job (or rather NeXT!). Anyways, things seem to be working pretty good on my x86 box now.

 

I could care less about PhotoShop speed, but I think that Adobe must be fat and lazy to be so slow. I also have to say that the interface on PhotoShop is seriously less than inituitive. I mean, if I can't not figure out how to do some fairly basic things even after looking at the online help, there is something wrong.

 

I am actually thinking about selling all of my PPC gear and buying more x86 stuff. I "need" a new laptop anyways, mine is an 867MHz G4 Titanium (in perfect shape) and without WiFi or USB 2.0 (but it will boot OS 9! ). I would dig a higher resolution display, too bad Apple has not announced the 17" MacBook Pro yet (I guess there is always Dell! ).

 

EDIT: A Dell price list leaked: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobile/0,...39250153,00.htm

They are planning to sell a Core Duo (T2300, 1.66GHz) laptop for $880 and I see that the Intel GMA950 is an option on the Core Duo Inspiron 9400!

How about an ATI x1600 option Michael?

[moid]

Maybe Apple stock shares should go down a(n) (Adobe) bit. hoho

[scousi]

Oh, Adobe. There was this memo floating around last June – you may or may not have seen it, it didn’t get much press – about how this tiny computer company called Apple was going to switch their processor architecture. Not a big deal, I can understand how you could have missed it…

 

…but then, wait, weren’t you at WWDC? Didn’t you give a press conference shortly thereafter? It would seem that since you had a good half-year’s head start, you could have at least given the Mac community something universal to whet our appetites. Well, there’s the Lightroom beta of course, but I know I can’t wait to use it with a beachball-ridden Photoshop.

 

Ok, well, maybe I’m being too hard on Adobe. I understand that they have a massive number of products that they would need to transition. But in light of their announcement yesterday that we may not see Universal apps like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, and the rest until 2007, it would seem that they have been nowhere to be found during the switch. Since Adobe knows that the millions of creatives who use Macs at work would at least need Photoshop, couldn’t they at least switch one or two apps over and then give us the suite next year?

 

In my opinion, there is no excuse for this. Their corporate line…

 

"As we've refined our software development process over the years, we've generally found that the most effective way for us to support these types of changes is to incorporate this testing into our regular development cycle. This enables us to advance our technology at the aggressive pace that our customers expect, while also adding support for significant new system configurations."

 

…doesn’t address the fact that as one of the world’s largest and most important software houses they had plenty of advance warning to at least prepare a universal Photoshop for MacWorld. I could even understand an interim universal release sometime in the next few months. But forcing Mac users to wait until the end of this year or the beginning of the next (at which point we’ll be using Leopard) essentially sends the message that we’re not all that important. And that’s a shame.

 

I'm sure Adobe's priority is Vista, then Mac Intel.

[neon_eddy]

As a graphics professional looking to move into the mac world, on one of these new fangled MacBookPros, I am disappointed. But then again Adobe has the market cornered, who else are we going to run to? Corel? Apple? Adobe IS the market standard, we'll just have to take it up the *** and hope they can push it out faster than expected.

 

Until then this makes it easier to take my wife's suggestion and wait a year or mroe to get such intel Mac. (My Sony Vaio is only 9 months old)

[Scothiam]

There simply is no market for highend UniBin appz on Macs at this time. 2007 is a likely goal.

 

Keep in mind that if you are in charge of filling your design house with new Macs you also have to factor in the cost of upgrading all your software to binary (like you thought it'd be free...)

 

Sure apple would like to start selling Intel based macs already exclusively, but It is more reasonable to assume that the PowerPCs are going to remain very much relevant for at least another year.

 

StudioUpgradesItsMacs= (NewMacsAvailableToSlaughterCurrentlyOwnedOnes) + (UniBinAppz + WorthTheFee?)

 

I apologize if I've repeated any and all points someone else may have brought forth, please carry on as you were

[ozzie123]

Well, it is funny that I just completed my Universal binary. I actually started working on it less than 24 hours ago. I had some minor confusion with some documentation, but Apple actually did a really good job (or rather NeXT!). Anyways, things seem to be working pretty good on my x86 box now.

 

I could care less about PhotoShop speed, but I think that Adobe must be fat and lazy to be so slow. I also have to say that the interface on PhotoShop is seriously less than inituitive. I mean, if I can't not figure out how to do some fairly basic things even after looking at the online help, there is something wrong.

 

I am actually thinking about selling all of my PPC gear and buying more x86 stuff. I "need" a new laptop anyways, mine is an 867MHz G4 Titanium (in perfect shape) and without WiFi or USB 2.0 (but it will boot OS 9! ). I would dig a higher resolution display, too bad Apple has not announced the 17" MacBook Pro yet (I guess there is always Dell! ).

 

EDIT: A Dell price list leaked: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobile/0,...39250153,00.htm

They are planning to sell a Core Duo (T2300, 1.66GHz) laptop for $880 and I see that the Intel GMA950 is an option on the Core Duo Inspiron 9400!

How about an ATI x1600 option Michael?

 

You could careless but not those people that relies on Photoshop to do their work and trust me, there's ALOT. And for an application as big as Photoshop, Illustrator, or any Adobe family software (not to mention a vast array of their software), Adobe is wise to plan the move carefully. Unlike most of smaller apps and open-source apps that have been ported to Unibin, Adobe task here is seriously big. They have to carefully runs alot of "beta" to make sure that their application under Unibin is just as good. Again, this is not a small deal for a company that big with softwares that complex.

 

And IMO, compared to other graphic-design application alternative out there, Photoshop is the most intuitive. Please show me design-app that is both has the power of a "pro" application and has a more intuitive interface than Adobe family?

[fotpunk]

There simply is no market for highend UniBin appz on Macs at this time. 2007 is a likely goal.

 

Keep in mind that if you are in charge of filling your design house with new Macs you also have to factor in the cost of upgrading all your software to binary (like you thought it'd be free...)

 

I totally agree with Scothiam. There might be many people who WANT UniBin Adobe apps, but the people who NEED it and use it on a daily basis (meaning Adobe's big-bucks corporate customers) won't even consider a switch until the Mac Pros come out AND all the software bugs get ironed out. To put this in perspective, I work for a major publisher who didn't even switch to G5s/OS X until Panther came out, and then bought 100+ licenses of CS1 (that's right, not CS2, because of compatibility concerns). That's the type of money Adobe cares about.

 

And from my personal experience as a graphic designer, I remember switching from 68000(?) to Power PC as well as from OS 9 to OS X - and the Adobe "experience" was buggy as hell both times. So it's not like I really want Adobe to rush out buggy products, either (which they will anyway, but at least the bugs won't be so bad? ) All the designers I know aren't switching to Intel until Adobe does, so if you already bought a new MacTel, er, good luck with that. It's not like Adobe promised UniBin apps in 2006, right?

[Haplo]

1:Aperature. Aperature pwns lightroom, especially for speed. No contest, Apple did it right and Adobe is going to spend the next quarter screwing around trying to kill their sales.

 

2:Adobe isn't doing this just to {censored} us off, they're doing it to {censored} us off and THEN make us pay like $400 for a 'new' version of CS in order to even run it on an intel-mac. They're truly abusing their monopoly here.

 

Seriously, what I hope happens is that Apple, after working out the bugs and porting their pro apps, decides they're done pissing around with Adobe and their ugly bloatware and makes a photoshop competetor. We'd see what apple said Adobe should have done last year, which is utilize Core Image in photoshop. Did they do it? no. Why? Becuase photoshop on mac is just a sad port from windows. If apple brings out a competetor for Photoshop, Adobe will most likely lose all their support from mac users. Permanently. Not to mention we'd have a true cocoa implementation which would be many many times faster than photoshop with Core Image.

[K Eamer]

People, please cut them some slack. Their entire set of SDKs currently require Code-Warrior -- so first they must transition all of that to XCode. Then they have to test massive amounts of code for consistency. Finally they need to give 3rd party developers a chance to update their plugins. What good would a fresh new version of Photoshop be if you couldn't use your favorite plugins?

Personally I'm exstatic that they are finally crossing over to XCode -- it was the one thing holding me back from developing plugins for their products. Call me lazy, but I just don't have time to convert my XCode stuff over to Code-Warrior, I have tonnes on my plate as it is.

So guys, take it easy on them. Adobe: thanks for taking the right path.

[aphid]

It's Apple's own fault to some degree. Had they been more open to developers and told them about their Intel plans earlier and more detailed, the developers would have been able to incorporate that in their project plans.

 

But announcing the Intel switch only six months before shipping? You can't expect every company to put all their other development efforts to a halt and put all their staff behind switch binary formats, compilers, IDEs and target CPUs and then releasing a product that has had barely any testing on the computers actual customers will use (how could any software company guarantee that their app runs on a MacBook Pro without having one?).

 

Every developer was expecting Intel Macs for summer 2006. The developers are not late, Apple is early (dare I say premature?).

[Haplo]

Converting from CodeWarrior to XCode isn't that hard... and they've had 6 months to do it now... it simply doesn't take that freaking long. With as many people they have working for them, and the resources apple has given them for the transition, not to mention their gloating about being the first, they should have had it done at least two months ago. Projects with a lot less people and a similar amount of code have already gotten it done. Adobe's only possible excuse is that they care more about getting lightroom out to compete with apple than porting photoshop.

 

As I said, I truly hope apple decides to make their own photoshop, just so they can kill adobe's market share. If Adobe wants to play stupid, they deserve to lose.

 

edit: What developers are 'late'? Quark isn't late. Adium isn't late. Look at macupdate.com. At least half if not more of the programs there have already been ported. Plus, apple gave people the opportunity to get the intel dev boxes, and Adobe certainly had them. It's not like people didn't have the resources, because a lot of people already have it done.

[aphid]

Smaller companies are better off because they often don't have rigid project schedules. A three-man shed writing Mac-only software can easily adopt UBs, but a large company that has a lot, lot more to do than following Apple's lead all day long isn't nearly as flexible.

 

Projects the size of Photoshop usually have their feature set and development schedule chiseled in stone at least 12 months before the projected release date, and they won't change these just because some company decides to introduce a new CPU in their computers. So, for a CS3 release in late 06, they made their plans in the middle of 05. So they incorporated UBs in their project schedule for a release in 06, and they're sticking to it.

 

An interim update for CS2? They would have to either delay another product for that or hire new people, and that for hardly any revenue to be made from it anyway.

[myzar]

As I said, I truly hope apple decides to make their own photoshop, just so they can kill adobe's market share. If Adobe wants to play stupid, they deserve to lose.

 

 

Apple making their own stuff ? a photoshop competitor ? you must be joking, apple can't code stuff from scratch they are only good at stealing open source projects and to add their stupid gui, cough the whole os, cough safari.

They can steal the gimp if they want to compete with photoshop but it wouldn't make anysense tho

[Scothiam]

I totally agree with Scothiam. There might be many people who WANT UniBin Adobe apps, but the people who NEED it and use it on a daily basis (meaning Adobe's big-bucks corporate customers) won't even consider a switch until the Mac Pros come out AND all the software bugs get ironed out. To put this in perspective, I work for a major publisher who didn't even switch to G5s/OS X until Panther came out, and then bought 100+ licenses of CS1 (that's right, not CS2, because of compatibility concerns). That's the type of money Adobe cares about.

 

And from my personal experience as a graphic designer, I remember switching from 68000(?) to Power PC as well as from OS 9 to OS X - and the Adobe "experience" was buggy as hell both times. So it's not like I really want Adobe to rush out buggy products, either (which they will anyway, but at least the bugs won't be so bad? ) All the designers I know aren't switching to Intel until Adobe does, so if you already bought a new MacTel, er, good luck with that. It's not like Adobe promised UniBin apps in 2006, right?

 

Thanks for baking me up with your stories/experience. I don't think anyone interested in serious design work is buying an Intel Mac(at this time). And with the swarm of bugs yet to be discovered, you'd be crazy to.

 

I've been going over my own budget and wondering when I can, and when I should move to a Mac. I thought I'd wait till the new macs get over thier growing pains and get one of them, but I find myself considering a G5, maybe one of the last ones they'll offer, late this year...

[Haplo]

Apple making their own stuff ? a photoshop competitor ? you must be joking, apple can't code stuff from scratch they are only good at stealing open source projects and to add their stupid gui, cough the whole os, cough safari.

They can steal the gimp if they want to compete with photoshop but it wouldn't make anysense tho

 

pfft. You say they steal their software? Ok, where did Final Cut Pro Come from? Who made Aperature before apple did? And who owned NeXT before it failed and then became OSX? *COUGH* Steve Jobs perhaps? I presume you'll start accusing them of stealing Core Image, Core Audio, Core Video and Core Data from someone else next... I don't think so. They don't steal a god damn thing. Safari is a web browser. You could say microsoft stole IE from netscape, or FireFox is just another copy too. You obviously know nothing about how WebKit works, but safari work almost nothing like IE or FireFox since it uses an external framework for rendering; a framework which can be used for countless other things (like the appearance of messages in Adium). Yeah, you could say that Apple would be 'stealing' photoshop, but you could say that GIMP stole it too. It's called competition.

[dkelley]

Smaller companies are better off because they often don't have rigid project schedules. A three-man shed writing Mac-only software can easily adopt UBs, but a large company that has a lot, lot more to do than following Apple's lead all day long isn't nearly as flexible.

 

Projects the size of Photoshop usually have their feature set and development schedule chiseled in stone at least 12 months before the projected release date, and they won't change these just because some company decides to introduce a new CPU in their computers. So, for a CS3 release in late 06, they made their plans in the middle of 05. So they incorporated UBs in their project schedule for a release in 06, and they're sticking to it.

 

An interim update for CS2? They would have to either delay another product for that or hire new people, and that for hardly any revenue to be made from it anyway.

 

 

thank you. Finally someone is showing an understanding of how large corporations like Adobe do business. There is no comparison between Adobe and Adium in the size of the companies (no offence to Adium, you guys ROCK!). Hell, nothing released natively for the mac so far was created by a dev team nearly the size of adobe's staff. That includes maxon's cinema 4d (now native), and quark (supposedly now native but I'm in their beta program and only got the ppc version from them :-( )

 

The problem is that is just sucks for us and sucks for Apple to not have native adobe products. While aperture could be added to by Apple to create a photoshop competitor, it will never be a photoshop killer due to the problems with core graphics (at least as of 10.4.3, I don't know if 10.4.4 fixes the quality issues or not). I don't have links available here, search for yourself, but aperture's reviews by people who know how to get into the guts of image processing quality have shown it to be somewhat inferior to photoshop, and it appears to be core's handling of raw files that are partly at stake. So while I admire Apple for writing their own application for a change (aperture), it's too bad that it isn't turning out as high quality images as photoshop. Personally I'd LIKE to see the gimp get cocoa-ized, it would be a very cool application if it didn't have such a crazy antique linux interface. Dear God that is just such as symbol of X-windows' past... it will only be missed by serious geeks if Apple were to create a mac version.

 

For the time being - there IS a native intel version of the gimp, for all of you wanting to do photoshop work on your intel macs, and it's free (of course, being open source). Find it yourself please (I'm at work :-), I use it on my imac core duo and it's great. Just has that stupid menu and windowing interface...

 

Don

[Haplo]

Heh, ew. But oh well. You're right there, but wrong in saying that Aperature could compete with Photoshop in any direct way. Aperature is designed to do something completely different (which is why Adobe has a whole new program for it) than Photoshop, and if they added Photoshop onto that, it would be much more difficult to use and more bloatware than anything.

 

Now, I wasn't aware of the quality issues with Core Image, and I'm sure not many other people know either. Maybe it's a valid issue, maybe it's just biased idiots trying to spread rumors. It's entirely possible that the 'quality issue' may seem bad on paper but actually makes no difference in previewing and going to print. I suggest someone look into it and see just how much it matters, and if it is important, it should be made more public. If enough people go to Apple about it, they'll fix it.

[Caslon]

A little off topic. Does anyone have an answer as to why Apple will not let the Apple store sell the iMac 20'' core duo with 256 video? They have them in the back but were instructed not to sell them. This is in San Diego.

 

The nix on the sales came from Apple corporate. Just wandering if there is an issue with the Mac or something simple. Don't want to buy until I know for sure.

[Haplo]

No clue.

[Metrogirl]

I agree with the comments about graphics shops not being about to dump all their G5s and buy Intels - why would they? So the pro market for Intel Photoshop will develop with time, just as Adobe develops its products over time. Having worked in both development and graphics environments I can say the observations by those posters in the know are spot-on - Adobe has a carefully planned development cycle which is geared to quality and procedure; graphics users are very slow to change.

 

I was just wondering how many of the posters who seem indignant at Adobe's apparent slow response actually have real licensed copies of Photoshop? I know some of you will be registered users, but I'm not sure Adobe will be very interested in the views of a load of pirates...:pirate2:

[Haplo]

:pirate2:

That's not the point though. Adobe has announced early 2007, which is over 6 months after their june/july 2006 promise. That's when Apple originally announced that the intel-macs would be released. If Adobe was going to wait until june/july, well that would be understandable. However, pushing it back till way after intel-PowerMacs start appearing is a whole different story.