Adobe Revives Premiere for Mac

[Danksi]

First Adobe canceled Premiere due to "small Mac marketshare for the product"

Now they release a new version only for Intel Macs, what is presently a small percentage of the Mac installed base.

A piece of the puzzle is missing.

Intel Mac may be a smaller % of the Mac base, but they have greater growth potential than the PowerPC Macs.

My newbie understanding of Universal Binary, was it was basically another check box on a compiler?

 

[2ndPath]

I wouldn't have guessed that the PowerPC would be abandoned so fast by Adobe. I am not impressed...

There is not really a point in devoting lots of resources to develop for a platform, which is already out of production for over half a year. Most of the people on PowerPC hardware doing video editing already have video editing software and are unlikely to buy another one.

Selling upgrades for existing software is another story. Here Adobe continues catering to PPC users: The CS3 software for example still should run fine on PPC machines.

so Adobe always intended to return (premier) to the Mac? What a load of BS, they return when they think (wrongly or rightfully in their predictions of sales #'s) there is potential for increasing sales. The second they think sales are dropping, they will abandon the Mac again.

This is not surprising. It's just a business decision. Maybe they wanted to return earlier, but if the market share is too small Adobe will loose money on a product. The time when they dropped out, the Mac market share was still decreasing (if I remember correctly) and the competition from FCP made the situation even worse. With the growing Mac market share there is a business perspective again.

 

[72930]

First Adobe canceled Premiere due to "small Mac marketshare for the product"

Now they release a new version only for Intel Macs, what is presently a small percentage of the Mac installed base.

A piece of the puzzle is missing.

By mid-07, most pros will probably be on intel machines.

 

[Leemo]

Gone with the crappy Final Cut Pro that program sucks really hard

You're joking, right?

-Leemo

 

[2ndPath]

My newbie understanding of Universal Binary, was it was basically another check box on a compiler?

This is probably true if the software is developed entirely in Apple's Xcode. But Adobe is probably not getting along with this alone, because they develop the same product for Windows and probably exchange a lot of code between the two versions. This make the situation more complicated. And if it was just a box to check they would very likely release a Universal Binary.

 

[Roller]

I guess that next they'll announce the revival of Persuasion and LiveMotion, two other products for which they dropped Mac support.

Well, at least this counters the argument that developers will just tell Mac users to run the Windows version of their software instead of releasing a Mac version.

 

[Multimedia]

I Scooped The News For Once Tuesday Morning

I posted this news Tuesday morning as a result of a conversation I had with an Adobe insider at a wedding reception Monday. I live only 35 miles from both Apple & Adobe world HQ so easy to bump into insiders here. Nice to beat the news for once.

Here's the press release article from Digital Media Net's Premiere Section:

Adobe Production Studio To Be Available for Both Mac and Windows • Adobe's Complete Video Post-Production Suite Goes Cross-Platform

Will be first publicly demoed at Adobe's MacWorld Expo Booth 901 next Tuesday-Friday in San Francisco. Looks like it will be Leopard minimum Intel Macs only.

Unless this is priced significantly lower than Final Cut Pro, I predict that Premiere will still have little support on the Mac.

According to my inside source at Adobe, the price will be significatly lower.

 

[Sdashiki]

Premiere never had what I liked in an NLE.

After Effects was all I needed from Adobe on the video front. And even it has quirks that make no sense, but it does get the job done efficiently, when used right.

FCP vs Premiere is a moot point today as one is far more supported currently, the other not for years. This new version could be good, it could be just the same, I dont know as I havent used premiere in a decade because I hated its approach to editing so much.

Only time will tell.

 

[failsafe1]

Cool. My apologies to the poster who mentioned inside information. Congrats. This can only be good news for everyone. PC users who like Premiere can now switch easier.

 

[godrifle]

Hence the price reduction for Final Cut Express HD. $299 for full retail, and only $99 for Academic users!

 

[imikem]

It's all good/it's all business

Competition is good for us consumers, even if we prefer FCP or whatever. I also suspect that among Adobe's reasons for coming back was that once they'd updated their code base for the Creative Suite apps, they found that relatively little additional effort was needed to bring Premiere along as well.

Adobe is a business with shareholders to please. They're entirely likely to do what their management thinks is most likely to maximize profits/growth. Geek OS religious wars do not figure prominently in their decision making. Rather, marketing and bean counters determined that likely revenue from a new version, presumably at a relatively low price point (has to be cheaper than the now entrenched FCP to stand any chance of significant adoption)> incremental cost of development and support over the typical version lifecycle.

 

[failsafe1]

Hence the price reduction for Final Cut Express HD. $299 for full retail, and only $99 for Academic users!

EDU prices where I work have always been $99.

 

[westonharvey]

Why bother?

Adobe knows that if you're doing any graphics or video editing you're buying a computer every 2 years anyways. Why bother making a new app run on PowerPC. The people that actually buy the stuff won't mind shelling out some cash for at least a Mac Mini with a external hard drive array.

Why bother? Because if you wrote your application with any regard to cross platform development methodology (which you should be doing even if you intend to target only one platform, it goes hand in hand with encapsulation and OO design) - you should only have to click the little "PPC" box in XCode and build.

They built this from "scratch", and can't get it to compile on PowerPC? What did they do, write half of it in assembler?

And I know people that still edit videos on their G3 iMacs, so don't tell me that dual core and Quad G5s are suddenly useless. A 2.0ghz dual G5 is still a high performance video editing box, and if it came down to having to buy a Mac Pro just to use Adobe's product, I'd stick with Final Cut.

Seriously uninspiring.

 

[heisetax]

Abandoned When?

Another app that is intel only...

I wouldn't have guessed that the PowerPC would be abandoned so fast by Adobe. I am not impressed...

groovebuster

Adobe had already abandoned Premiere on the Mac 3 1/2 years ago. This is not quite the same thing.

But as you say, it is just an example of what we will see in the future from other software writers. Most of the time it sounds like MS with its Mac Office 2007, they seem to be talking sbout a separate PPC & Intel versions of Mac Office. That could be to keep those that have both platforms from using one copy on both platforms, rather than purchasing 2 copies. Or it can be another company that is not expanding its PPC coverage, but rather cutting down.

By MacWorld 2008 I fully expect to see & hear Steve Jobs declaring the PPC Mac Dead & time to bury it. This will just accelerate the loss of not only new software for the PPC Mac, but also the updating of current PPC software. I may have an Intel Mac Pro, but I have several PPC PowerMacs & PowerBooks. I may like the expanded Intel Mac software, but I'm also afraid of the future for the PPC Mac software future.

I still remember several Mac OS 9 utilities that I hated to lose when I started changing to Mac OS X. That was part of the reason that I waited to Mac OS 10.2 before I used Mac OS X on a daily basis.

Those new to the Mac, either new to computers or switchers, will not have things as bad as those that are not ready to make yet another change in software platform. I'm not really ready for another software switch. Even though software developers can change their software by making it Universal. This costs them time & money. So most of them have to charge for this change just to keep in the black.

Bill the TaxMan

 

[heisetax]

Opinions!

You're joking, right?

-Leemo

Just because you like something, doen't mean that everyone will like it. I've been a 22+ year Mac User & I use Firefox as my browser, not Safari. This is just a matter of choice. Also Apple has a bad track record when it comes to long time support of hardware or software. Remember Steve Jobs declaring that OS 9 was dead. Just wait until MacWorld 2008 or maybe even before when Steve Jobs declared the PPC Mac dead. He'll say just like with OS 9, stop wasting money developing PPC Mac software & put it all into Intel Mac software.


Bill the TaxMan

 

[Mac'Mo]

ooo exciting, are htey gonna take on FCP?

 

[puckhead193]

i just hope the next version of final cut extreme or w.e. they call it totally kick premiere's butt!

 

[shelterpaw]

Unless this is priced significantly lower than Final Cut Pro, I predict that Premiere will still have little support on the Mac.

I haven't had the chance to used FCP, but I've been using Premiere for years. I like it and it's easy enough. I am doing amateur video editing, so I don't have the need for FCP. I welcome back Premiere, one more reason to buy a new Mac. I hope they have an upgrade path for the old Premiere faithful.

 

[rhett121]

Are you smoking something?

i just hope the next version of final cut extreme or w.e. they call it totally kick premiere's butt!

Even Final Cut Pro 3 still kicks Premiere's butt! Heck, iMovie is better than that turd of an app! I actually have a couple of unopened Premiere CD's that came with the Digital Video Pro bundle's. It's that bad, they had to throw it in for free!

The only reason they are trying to back-peddle now is because they made a mistake and underestimated the market for Mac users and are running out of Windows users to con into buying their trash. Problem is... FCP is the greatest thing since sliced bread! (I just upgraded to the FCStudio 5 bundle) Even FCExpress is nice, just less features (that a non-pro might never need).

I say, too late for excuses Adobe, you've shown us your loyalty already.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Adobe knows that if you're doing any graphics or video editing you're buying a computer every 2 years anyways. Why bother making a new app run on PowerPC.

To the best of my knowledge I don't know a post house that upgrades their machines that frequently. Maybe some individuals might, but just two years isn't a very long life cycle especially if you take into account the big changes Apple has made in the last few years (pci-e/pci-x, PPC/Intel, etc.,) that can make 3rd party cards incompatible w/newer machines (thus significantly increasing the upgrade costs).

The people that actually buy the stuff won't mind shelling out some cash for at least a Mac Mini with a external hard drive array.

The people mentioned in first part of your post aren't gonna buy a freakin' Mac Mini.


Lethal

 

[SpaceJello]

I am a FCP user, tried premiere years ago and find it annoying and confusing. Does anyone here use Avid? How's that on the mac? I keep hearing different opinions whether Avid is still the "standard".

 

[Leemo]

Just because you like something, doen't mean that everyone will like it. I've been a 22+ year Mac User & I use Firefox as my browser, not Safari. This is just a matter of choice.

Of course, I'm not refuting that. But saying:

Gone with the crappy Final Cut Pro that program sucks really hard

Is an extremely strong opinion, and from a personal perspective when I've never had any problems with Final Cut but had *many* problems with both Adobe Premiere 1.5 + 2.0 (for Windows) I find it rather odd that someone should say that FCP 'sucks really hard'.

I'm not refuting that Adobe Premiere on Mac is a great idea, I'm forced to use Adobe Premiere for the majority of my coursework so it means I can sit in OSX rather than dual-booting - I'm just saying that a statement such as:

Gone with the crappy Final Cut Pro that program sucks really hard

Sounds rather like it's coming from someone who probably doesn't understand what they're taking about.

-Leemo

P.S: This post was posted using Firefox

 

[aftk2]

Intel Only

If I recall correctly, when Soundbooth appeared (along with the accompanying uproar about it being Intel-only) it was revealed that Adobe had either licensed or purchased outright audio technology written, from the ground up, for x86 processors. I imagine they realized this, w/regard to Soundbooth (note: the numbers are purely for an example, they aren't meant to be real-world):

* It would cost us 0 dollars to not develop a Mac version of Soundbooth, and we would make 0 dollars by not doing so (heh, this is obvious - I just thought this sentence was funny.)
* It would cost us 10 million dollars (and lots of time) to make a completely, from-the-ground-up Universal version of Sound Booth, porting the library (if this is even possible) and we'd make 5 million dollars on sales.
* It would cost us 250 thousand dollars (2 programmers for nearly a year, or something) of time to create an Intel-only version of the software, and we'd make 2 million dollars on sales.

Seems to make sense to me. I'd imagine Premiere is similar (although even greater scale, since it's more popular.) Also, consider that they wouldn't have keep both PPC and x86 versions in parity, as they release upgrades, etc...

Although I doubt I'll ever use Premiere on an Intel Mac, I'm excited because Premiere is an application that frequently comes up in lists of software that don't exist on the Mac (in spite of the superiority of Final Cut Express/Pro).

 

[ChrisA]

Another app that is intel only...

I wouldn't have guessed that the PowerPC would be abandoned so fast by Adobe. I am not impressed...

groovebuster

Going Intel-only is not just being cheap or lazy. By raising the minimum system requirements they are making the software a better product. Had they designed the software so it would run on the majority of G4/G5 systems out there they would have had to compromise features.

Footage worth editing typically costs much then the price of an Intel Mac and any PPC mac will be at least 2 years old by the time this is out of Beta. People will need to buy a computer anyway

Sell you G5 now while it still has some value left

 

[Leemo]

Going Intel-only is not just being cheap or lazy. By raising the minimum system requirements they are making the software a better product. Had they designed the software so it would run on the majority of G4/G5 systems out there they would have had to compromise features.

Footage worth editing typically costs much then the price of an Intel Mac and any PPC mac will be at least 2 years old by the time this is out of Beta. People will need to buy a computer anyway

Sell you G5 now while it still has some value left

I completely agree - plus people seem to be forgetting, if people are happy with their G5s, they're probably happy with the software they also use on them for video editing - and if people are unwilling to upgrade to Intel they'll probably be unwilling to pay the price for new editing software as well.

Technology moves on, has Apple begun to neglect PPC? No, Adobe has, and I wouldn't exactly call it neglect, it's moving with the times - get over it.

-Leemo