No 64bit for Photoshop CS4 on OS X

[sosumi1981]

ModNote™: Merged thread OP. --mkrishnan

CNet's reporting that the CS4 version of Photoshop for the Mac won't be 64bit, however the Windows version will be.

[snip vulgarity]

Read the original here: http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-990...?tag=nefd.blgs

[ipodtoucher]

Originally Posted by sosumi1981

CNet's reporting that the CS4 version of Photoshop for the Mac won't be 64bit, however the Windows version will be.

CS4 already??? wow what more could there be hahaha i love mah CS3 Extended haha

QuoteSnip™ --mkrishnan

[jaw04005]

"We're not going to ship 64-bit native for Mac with CS4," Nack said. "We respect Apple's need to balance their resources and make decisions right for that platform. But it does have an impact on developers."

...

"When they chose not to do Carbon 64, we had to reevaluate our road map for getting there," Nack said. The company immediately assigned new programmers to the Cocoa switch "so we could make this transition as fast as possible, but as the saying goes, nine women can't make a baby in a month. You can only proceed at a certain pace," he said.

Looks more like a resource problem for Adobe, as they've had since 2001 to move from Carbon to Cocoa.

...

"The Carbon-to-Cocoa switch was simply too massive to push back CS4 for a couple months, he added."

Meh. Adobe continues to become more arrogant with each release. I didn't purchase CS2 because it didn't offer anything extraordinary over CS1. The only reason I even purchased CS3 was because I needed Intel compatibility. I think I'll skip CS4 just like I'm skipping Office 2008.

[JFreak]

Apple did great! Adobe might have had the idea of Carbon being supported and developed forever, so by not developing it to 64 bits Apple forced Adobe to finally code their software more efficiently. Sure, it takes its time, but they must do it now if they want to stay on OSX platform in the future.

CS4 looks like a version that I'm going to skip over. Hopefully CS5 comes before 2011...

[OreoCookie]

Interestingly enough, Lightroom 2 apparently is 64 bit … so they can do it if they want to
I think Apple's move is smart, plus Adobe has had plenty of warning. Now let's see what Quark does

[change]

Don't turn the pros against you.

Now that Aperture has plugin support, it's just a matter of that line where a given person can shed Photoshop. For some, it may be right around the corner, for others, about the time a 32 bit CS4 comes out. It will take a TON to convince me to buy CS4. Don't get me wrong, i am happy to have CS3, but they are getting a little smug, aren't they?

[guet]

Originally Posted by jaw04005

Looks more like a resource problem for Adobe, as they've had since 2001 to move from Carbon to Cocoa.

While I too will probably skip CS4, this is not a trivial problem, this delay has been caused by Apple.

They sent out lots of mixed messages on Carbon/Cocoa up to last year, telling devs they were equal partners, putting lots of development time into Carbon with HIView etc, developing many of their own apps with it, and promising full parity (for cross platform apps, Carbon is far more useful than cocoa). They even promised Carbon 64 support and wrote some of their own programs in it (including xCode).

So Adobe is taking this with equanimity, as they have in fact been messed around by Apple, along with a lot of other developers.

[xgman]

I had been using PS CS4 beta build m.379 and just tried build m.465 and now when linking CS3 plugins dir, I get an error message saying sorry no mutiprocessor support with fastmmx runtimes extensions etc. I wonder how this will effect overall performance compared to cs3?

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by sosumi1981

CNet's reporting that the CS4 version of Photoshop for the Mac won't be 64bit, however the Windows version will be.

Why would you want it to be 64 bits? Image files larger than 4GB?

[-hh]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Why would you want it to be 64 bits? Image files larger than 4GB?

More so for the ability for Photoshop to use more than 4GB of RAM, which is the conventional 32-bit addressing limit.


In reading the various blogger's comments on this event, it seems that there's blame to pass around for both Apple and Adobe.

One of the things that seems to be an element of Adobe's reluctance in moving to Cocoa (they've had warnings since 2003, if not earlier) is a perception that Photoshop doesn't have any competition. While techically this is probably mostly true, I do have to say that they're wrong, because an existing Photoshop user doesn't have to upgrade every time.

For example, I'm running CS2 and I don't really plan on buying CS3...I'll wait for CS4 now. As such, I've cut my expense of maintaining my Adobe software by 50%, and this sort of buying strategy shouldn't be at all uncommon in the Mac's consumer market.


-hh

[MacRumors]

Adobe's John Nack writes about the future plans for Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS5, revealing that Adobe Photoshop CS4 will include 64-Bit support, but for Windows only. The Mac version of CS4 will remain at 32-Bit. The reason for the discrepancy, however, is not due to a lack of interest or support from Adobe, but for more practical reasons.

First off, Nack points out that the 64-bit version of Photoshop will only see modest speed increases (8-12%) unless you are using massive images (a 3.375 gigapixel image is given as an example). With these massive sizes and with enough RAM (32GB given as example), you can see substantial (10x) improvements.

Adobe expects that Mac users will have to wait until CS5 before getting full 64-bit support. The reason for this delay is due to Apple's abrupt dropping of Carbon 64-bit support:

At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa.

Nack reports that they started working on the transition immediately after the announcement but due to the scope of the transition are unable to deliver it by CS4. He also tries to dispel the notion that Cocoa alone will produce a higher quality product than Carbon:

Most Mac users don't know Cocoa from Ovaltine, and nor should they: it's just an implementation detail, not a measure of quality. I think Brent Simmons, creator of wonderful Cocoa apps like NetNewsWire, put it most elegantly: "Finder + Cocoa = Finder." That is, rewriting one's app in Cocoa doesn't somehow automatically improve its speed, usability, or feature set.

Article Link

[DMann]

This is a poor excuse, especially when considering carbon actually took more code for conversion than does
Cocoa.

[bigmc6000]

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

[7on]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

But then as soon as he opens Illustrator he gets out of memory warnings :/ And I speak from repeated experience.

[bigmc6000]

Originally Posted by 7on

But then as soon as he opens Illustrator he gets out of memory warnings :/ And I speak from repeated experience.

Oh, well, that's good news for Apple then I suppose. Feeding off the fact that CS still doesn't play as well on windows as it does on X. Still strange they would do something like that to one of their biggest 3rd party developers. I'm sure they had their reasons tho.

[Digitalclips]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

Time for Apple to come up with the Photoshop alternative as they did with video editing when Premiere was the only game in town outside of the very expensive stuff from Avid and Media 100. I am sure with core technologies and Aperture 2.0 they are pretty much half way along the road anyway. Plus Apple in their usual way could perhaps come up with a paradigm shift in the approach to picture editing, the Photoshop model (based on the original Mac Plus applications) is getting long in the tooth.

[registered user]

Originally Posted by Digitalclips

Time for Apple to come up with the Photoshop alternative as they did with video editing when Premiere was the only game in town outside of the very expensive stuff from Avid and Media 100.

As far as coming up with a new product. I don't think Adobe/Macromedia will let Apple buy abandoned products any more. They learned their lesson with Key Grip .....

[hayesk]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

Adobe themselves claim going 64-bit is only around a 12% boost, not 1000. This is a non-issue. I don't know why after being told repeatedly, people believe that going 64-bit does not magically give them double the speed.

[BongoBanger]

Originally Posted by hayesk

Adobe themselves claim going 64-bit is only around a 12% boost, not 1000. This is a non-issue. I don't know why after being told repeatedly, people believe that going 64-bit does not magically give them double the speed.

Unless, as the article says, you are shifting really big images.

[milo]

Originally Posted by hayesk

Adobe themselves claim going 64-bit is only around a 12% boost, not 1000. This is a non-issue. I don't know why after being told repeatedly, people believe that going 64-bit does not magically give them double the speed.

You get the 12% from the 64 bit code itself. But isn't there a potentially bigger boost when using huge files since they can be completely loaded into ram instead of lots of swapping from disk? Isn't the big appeal of 64 bit the ability for an app to take advantage of more than 4 gigs of ram?

[skellener]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

Which is why we'll see Apple finally release the long awaited Cocoa Photoshop killer!!!! Adobe should have made the switch years ago, but they were lazy. Carbon was NEVER a long term solution,, but Adobe milked it for all it's worth. How many paid upgrades did they receive, yet they never REALLY re-wrote the code. Not to Cocoa anyway. I shed no tears for them.

With no reason to upgrade Photoshop for 3 years now, Apple has some time to build up a user base on a native, fast, clean new image editing app. Photoshop's days are numbered! (number CS4 and number CS5) Goodbye creaky old Carbon OS 9 code, hello APK (Apple Photoshop Killer)!!! Can't wait!!

[ibwb]

Originally Posted by skellener

Which is why we'll see Apple finally release the long awaited Cocoa Photoshop killer!!!! Adobe should have made the switch years ago, but they were lazy. Carbon was NEVER a long term solution,, but Adobe milked it for all it's worth. How many paid upgrades did they receive, yet they never REALLY re-wrote the code. Not to Cocoa anyway. I shed no tears for them.

With no reason to upgrade Photoshop for 3 years now, Apple has some time to build up a user base on a native, fast, clean new image editing app. Photoshop's days are numbered! (number CS4 and number CS5) Goodbye creaky old Carbon OS 9 code, hello APK (Apple Photoshop Killer)!!! Can't wait!!

If Apple wanted to take over the Photoshop market, wouldn't it be a better strategy to just buy Adobe? Really, Apple's developers have so much on their plate right now -- witness the delay of Leopard to get the iPhone released in time, the delay in getting the iPhone SDK out, etc. Why saddle the Apple developers with such a huge task that may or may not succeed?

[whatever]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

No, not really since most Graphics people are Mac people and we all know what happens when you drink the Apple Kool-Aid!

Also wouldn't a 64bit application require a 64bit OS and in the windows world that would be the 64 bit version of Vista. Not exactly a popular OS.

[BongoBanger]

Originally Posted by whatever

No, not really since most Graphics people are Mac people and we all know what happens when you drink the Apple Kool-Aid!

Also wouldn't a 64bit application require a 64bit OS and in the windows world that would be the 64 bit version of Vista. Not exactly a popular OS.

Or XP64. Or perhaps Windows Server?

[milo]

Originally Posted by whatever

Also wouldn't a 64bit application require a 64bit OS and in the windows world that would be the 64 bit version of Vista. Not exactly a popular OS.

Actually, there has been a 64 bit version of XP for a while. From what I've heard it's stable and there are a number of apps for it, certainly way more than the number of 64 bit apps for OSX (only about 2 or 3 major ones so far?).

Sadly, it looks like OSX has been lagging windows in terms of 64 bit apps, and with the cocoa/carbon fiasco it looks like OSX probably won't be catching up for a while.

Originally Posted by skellener

Exactly! Apple wrote Carbon specifically for Adobe (MS and a few others) as a stop gap to help their transition. It was never meant to be permanent. Adobe got fat and lazy. Adobe invested nothing in Cocoa even though millions have been earned for upgrades over the years. I see the end of Adobe's reign of image editing on the horizon.

So since apple hasn't switched any of their pro apps over from the "stop gap" I guess Apple is just as fat and lazy? It's hard to take apple's carbon/cocoa recommendations seriously when they haven't yet followed them themselves.