Adobe Universal Support FAQ

[bankshot]

Have you been at the last few WWDCs? Apple has made it VERY clear for several years now that migrating to Xcode would be a critical for every developer, and that future technologies would be essentially impossible to take advantage of without Xcode. They begged developers to start the transition as early as possible.

Yes, that's true. I thought about working it into my post, but it was already getting too long anyway.

I haven't been to a WWDC, but I've followed the last several pretty closely via the internet. I do remember Apple doing a lot of Xcode cheerleading, but I always felt like it was just that - cheerleading. Like "Xcode is great! You should switch because it has all these cool features! We love it!" Much better would have been to come out and say, point blank, "Xcode will be the only viable compiler you'll be able to use for applications running on future versions of OS X (2-3 years down the road, whatever). You MUST switch now if you want to continue developing your software at that time." I never got that vibe from what they said, but in retrospect, it would have been 100% true.

Is my memory off?

If you thought that Adobe would pass on this opportunity to issue a "must buy" upgrade to the product you haven't been paying attention. That's likely the real center of the story, and I don't blame them. They have to fund the development of the product somehow and giving away a single "must have" feature would be a foolish move on their part.

Oh, no doubt. It's not like they just had to re-burn (press) media and mail out updates to existing customers for $5 a pop or whatever. Making these apps universal is taking lots and lots of money, and it's totally reasonable to recoup the costs. Especially when the move to universal binaries was not their own. Running natively on Intel is very much a new feature, and customers should expect to pay for it.

 

[O and A]

Enter Apple

Well IF apple was ever gonna release a comparable product to PHOTOSHOP they would probably do it soon.

Don't see them doing that though but then again they did do aperture...but that filled a void that adobe didn't see...

I suspect we'll TOWERMACS alongside photoshop annoucment. in october

 

[iMeowbot]

Although we don't know about the future, There exist several examples of applicatins running on Intel Mac that are not compiled with Apple's xcode. The first example was the benchmarks that Steve Jobs pointed at durring the anouncement. He said they were done using the Intel compiler. xcode uses GNU's gcc.

That's not the counterexample you want, as the Intel toolchain is also integrated with Xcode

 

[ahe]

Actually there would be a better solution until CS3 is out as a Universal application:

... if only we could easily install XP on the new Intel Macs, we could run CS2 apps at native speed.
... under Windows, that's it, but they'd run beautifully on those Core Duos.

ahe

 

[redeye]

decrease Adobe Dependency

Corel (formerly Fractal) Painter has a lot going for it. A lot more features than Photoshop. Excellent for digital artists and motion graphics designers. I'm not sure about print people.
For 2-d animation, there's Motion and Combustion. Zaxwerks is coming out with a 3d app that works within Motion, so you can get after effects style 2-d.
Studio Artist is one fine program.
There are a lot of underused products out there, and the developers will listen. Help make them better, and give Adobe a little well-needed competition.

 

[bugfaceuk]

Yep. Thats what I have been saying. A mac with an intel processor won't be usefull until 2008. Yeah, you heard me.

Define useful? I want to run Netbeans, create icons using my existing Mac Photoshop CS2 license, communicate with clients using iChat+iSight, run Dreamweaver, and an FTP application, encode some supplied videos for upload using Quicktime (normally low-res shorts of 3-5mins in length, web-cam++ quality).

I look down that list, and I think if I chose to buy one, an Intel iMac OR MacBook Pro would be extreemly useful. Why haven't I? I just want to see the start of the new iBook line up so that I can make an in context decision.

Utility is subjective.

Actually there would be a better solution until CS3 is out as a Universal application:

... if only we could easily install XP on the new Intel Macs, we could run CS2 apps at native speed.
... under Windows, that's it, but they'd run beautifully on those Core Duos.

ahe

LMAO you wouldn't let it lie would you?? Hehhe...

Has anyone tried the new WinTel build on an Intel iMac yet? Still curious to see if that can get from the .6 rosetta performance to something closer to .8 or so (of course there's an overhead).

 

[Burai]

well said Lethal. many people just thing, OMG .5GHZ faster, time for newer machine but why upgrade if your machine is doing what you want? Sure, if you got money to blow, go for it but if my machine is working fine, ill invest that money into something else.

The stuff I did for MTV, they also had macs with OS9

Also, I find it hilarious that people are blaming Adobe. I thought the Mac crowd was a little more edumacated then this. Adobe and other companies are here for business. Their not gonna be like great Apple the recently 5% market share is gonna switch chips, HAULT ALL PROGRAMS, hire 10,000 new programers, WE WILL BE READY ON LAUNCH DATE!!!

no. their going to divert their resources as they see fit. their not going to sacrifice their other projects for just us. their other engeniers have other projects their working on with their own deadlines.

Plus as many others have said, somebody who just bought a G4 laptop or iMacG5 isnt going to be like, TIME for a new unit. they just got theirs and the people coming from much older units will see a faster machine, even with Rosetta.

ALSO, G5 units are still readily availible so for those who worry, there is plenty of G5 units to go around to hold them over for 3 more years and im sure by then, Apple will have jumped on the Cell Processor anyways so time to recode...Apple lives a TRIPPLE LIFE! !!...

And for those who demand alot out of their units, there are lovely Quad Core G5's....*drools*

This is so true.

The problem here is that a lot of people here have an over-inflated view of what they actually use their computers for.

Most of these so-called "professionals" aren't actually professionals. They are hobbyists who think that because they maxed out their credit card on a PowerMac and a cinema display, suddenly they have the same needs as someone running a high turn-over design studio.

These "faux-pros" are so easy to spot. They are the ones who will bitch and moan about how a new PowerMac just isn't enough of a step up for their high-end needs and not worth the money, forgetting that any pro who really, truly has a genuine need for the absolute bleeding edge for their clients will be earning enough to shell out for a G5 Quad without a seconds thought. If a true professional was that put out by this announcement, they'd switch to a Windows PC in an instant. If time is money, and Apple can't give you what you want and your clients need and this will adversely affect your business, you switch. Period.

But similarly, any pro worth their salt who doesn't need the very cutting edge wouldn't upgrade to the latest Photoshop and Macs immediately anyway. If you rely on your computer and certain software to make a living, you don't buy the latest and greatest Mac the second the keynote is finished and the Apple Store comes back up without doing any research and you certainly don't upgrade to the latest .0 release of software as soon as it hits the shelves because .0 releases ALWAYS have bugs. The problems you'll inevitably hit in migrating from your current machines and software are numerous. You do research and a feasibility studies to see whether it's best for your business. This is why most PS pro's (and that's real professionals who make money from their work, not people who come home from their real job and add filters to pictures of their last holiday in Spain) I know of are still running Photoshop 7 on Dual G4 PowerMacs. It's a fast enough set-up that allows them to get on with work to the standard that their clients demand.

To a true pro, this wait isn't a big deal. If you rely on Creative Suite for a living, you'd rather they spent time getting it right so when it does hit and if you need to buy it, you can do so and just get on with doing your job instead of worrying about incompatibility or bugs.

To a bunch of hobbyists with an over-inflated sense of importance, this is a big deal, because however will they show off on MacRumors forums that they have the latest and greatest £2,000 Mac on which to design that custom-made birthday card for their wife?

Adobe don't make software for whining faux-pro's.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Excellent stuff...

Couldn't agree more as I made a similar point earlier in the thread... Pros usually have too much invested in a workflow that works for them and a backlog of scheduled work so swapping machines and leaping on the latest releases just isn't realistic neither is it in their and their client's best interests.

We didn't move to Quark 6 until they released 6.1 — too many heartaches otherwise.

Same reason why we didn't go for CS2, too many poor reviews and reported problems. Does this mean my work is inferior? Not at all.

And besides, most print designers I know care more about the quality of their work — not how bitchin' their rig is.

 

[bousozoku]

Exactly. Photoshop has a 92% market share, and for the most part the other 8% are apps that people use to supplement Photoshop, not replace it. I have been hearing about Photoshop killers for 15 years now, nothing has come close. It would take a very good app AND a very good reason to switch to another photo editing app. All this talk about the lack of Universal Binaries is little reason for Photoshop to lose market share. The design field will not come to a halt because of it.

Macromedia xRes neé Aldus PhotoStyler was quite good, but of course, it's owned by the same people...again...and it's not a current product. This would be the point where it would be useful. LivePicture is floating around somewhere and could be brought back but the cobwebs and dust covering it are nearly as bad as Photoshop's.

I don't think it's going to matter a lot anyway. Most professionals aren't going to spend money at this point unless they're buying quad PowerMacs.

 

[atomwork]

MacBook "Pro"...well maybe not.

Seriously this is making a g4 powerbook seem more tempting now.

I like to know is the new mac book pro with full ram isn't as fast as the fastes G4 PB right now with PS emu. If so, might not be that harmful after all. Just gotta wait until the slowmo adobe is getting their stuff together.

I would hate to see CS leave because of it. I remember when Adobe products were Mac only.

When Apple came out with Final Cut, Motion, got Shake plus had indirect control of Renderman, I was surprised they didn't buy Maya. Why they didn't round out that suite was beyond me.

At the end of the day design has to be done good and fast. If Apple can offer me their own creative suite I gladly take it. All their apps are so much more faster on the g5. Remember how long Premire took to render vs. FCP.

Regarding that 3d app, MAXON is still out with a very nice MAC plattform. Apple could do a lot good with this and drop PC suppport.

 

[newwavedave]

All the finger pointing in here is getting ridiculous. Truth is both Adobe and Apple are making the right moves. First, Apple beats expectations by announcing and releasing the Intel processors before most people thought they would be able too. Second, Adobe lays out a clear roadmap for support of the Intel processors. I think people just need something to whine about. Would those of you like some cheese with that?

 

[weg]

Really!

While I understand that they won't port the current versions to have universal binaries, I would think that their updates would be coming sooner.

Meanwhile you can install Windows (somebody will manage to do this long before CS3 becomes universal) on your Intel Powerbook and run the Windows version of Photoshop ;-)
What a great idea of Steve Jobs to release an Intel Mac before the most important applications (Photoshop, Office..) were ported ;-)

 

[ATD]

LivePicture is floating around somewhere and could be brought back but the cobwebs and dust covering it are nearly as bad as Photoshop's.

Live Picture, it's been a while since I heard that name. Live Picture had only one advantage over PS many years ago when our computers were really slow and RAM was very expensive because it worked in proxy (faster) instead the actual image pixels. I worked at a studio which had a very early version that costed $17,000.00, this was before the manuals were in English. It's advantage of working in proxy is a moot point these days because our computers are so much faster than the 950s we were working on then. Also the problem with Live Picture files very often had to be pulled into PS at the end to touch up details because they were done in proxy and not the actual pixels. A lot of details were missed because of it. Even if you work in Live Picture you can not get around having to work in PS. I believe it's a dead program these days.

Regarding that 3d app, MAXON is still out with a very nice MAC plattform. Apple could do a lot good with this and drop PC suppport.

MAXON is nice but I would not take it over Maya.

 

[OSXconvert]

Finally some tests with 2gb RAM in an intel imac

This pro photographer site has just published a review on how the intel imac 20" fared in a bunch of pro photo apps:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7891-8185

This is the first time I've seen it done with two machines with equal amounts of RAM--2gb. Still the test should have been run against the latest imac PPC with 2gb RAM for comparison purposes.

 

[ATD]

illegalprelude, Lethal, Burai, BV, excellent points.

The design industry is about workflow. Not just the workflow on one's computer but the workflow of the industry as a whole. Designers share work/files/file formats with clients, vendors and other designers. The backbone of the graphics industry is Apple + Adobe + Quark. Suggesting that Adobe should cut out of that equation over an update and we should start working in programs that are outside of the loop that could not hold a candle next to programs like Photoshop shows a PROFOUND LACK OF UNDERSTANDING of how the design industry works. Even if a program came out that was as good as Photoshop, it would not take over the industry unless it presented a REASON to change the workflow of the entire industry. Microsoft just came up with their own CS, anybody here willing to trade Adobe for Microsoft?



Didn't think so

This is why most PS pro's (and that's real professionals who make money from their work, not people who come home from their real job and add filters to pictures of their last holiday in Spain) I know of are still running Photoshop 7 on Dual G4 PowerMacs. It's a fast enough set-up that allows them to get on with work to the standard that their clients demand.

I have been a Photoshop user since V1 (I been working in it every day for 15 years) and I have gotten every update since. Even after buying CS2 I was still using PS7 because I liked it and it was more compatible with other users I was working with. I just switched to CS1 because 7 runs like a dog on the Quad. I only use CS2 when I need to. I keep all my software up to the latest versions but actually work in the versions that are best suited for myself and everyone I deal with.

 

[53buick]

Newsflash: Most graphics people are so cheap, they are still running blue and white G3's under system 9 and photoshop 5. This is true, I see it all the time. Very few people stay on the cutting edge in graphics, they are just too cheap. Plus most people I know that are not way behind, are sticking with CS1 anyway because CS2 is so dog slow at everything. I suspect that CS1 via rosetta will be just as fast as CS3 native on an x86 ANYWAY. Now is a prime time for another company to swoop in with a 'photoshop killer' and really hurt adobe. I hope this happens but somehow, I doubt it will. Maybe I should make a donation to GIMP.

i beg to differ.

printshops yes.
if by "graphics people" you mean graphic designers, i disagree. I have found that designers, myself included, are fairly up to date at their home.

printshops may indeed be behind for various reasons. it maybe a money issue or it maybe an upgrade issue. meaning that some printshops keep around various machines running various os and software versions. this is so they can keep some of their existing customers that create or already have files in older software like pagemaker 6.5 in os 9. which in turn it's usually the customer that is cheap and doesn't to spend the cash on the latest greatest versions. on the other hand you do have a few clients that don't know what the hell they're doing, but want to have the latest just because they can afford it and show it off. tricyclers trying to drive a porsche.

i did work for a printshop that ran power pc 8500s (with G3 accelerator cards) running MacOS 8.6 and Quark 4. that was in late 2003. i think that's pretty bad and i can say that was definitely a "didn't want to spend the money" issue. however they did upgrade to G5s, Quark 6.5, Adobe CS, etc. in January 2004.

i for one am extremely happy in CS 1. I am in a predicament though as I ordered a macbook pro and this news from Adobe is troublesome. yet another problem with major updates/upgrades. latest/greatest isn't always the best option.

now what would be more efficient at this moment in time? running CS 2 under Rosetta on a MacIntel or running CS 1 on a PPC?

 

[sjk]

I found the first year of OS X 10.0 very, very painful. Slow for new apps. Problems with getting drivers and software,etc. etc. On top of that I bought a gen. 1 TI PB 500 Mhz. Talk about a glutton for punishment. I see the same scenario playing out again this time as well.

And wisely watching from the sidelines this time around, as you mentioned in a comment I've omitted. I'm sidestepping the initial the Intel Mac transition turbulence, too, unless someone happens to buy me a new system.

It is possible to call into Carbon from Cocoa but to say that Cocoa is built on Carbon is wrong.

Is that what Safari does? Running "otool -L ..." on the Safari binary shows it's using both Cocoa and Carbon frameworks but I've never been quite sure how it uses Carbon.

Other apps that are typically categorized as Cocoa apps also use both frameworks. Is there a naming convention for differentiating apps just using Cocoa from those Cocoa/Carbon "hybrids"? When people say "Carbon app" it's usually assumed it doesn't use Cocoa but the inverse often isn't true.

The problem is that it's a lot of work and, until now, there has always been a way to work around the need for Xcode. All the foreshadowing in the world hasn't been enough for developers with large code bases - they just chose to wait until the last possible minute to take a necessary but painful step. Even so, they had 6 months between announcement and tool availability and the new hardware.

Who knows what Adobe was doing with Xcode before the Apple's Intel transition announcement? For example, what was their reaction to delays in Apple producing a significant PowerBook update, especially in light of the vast amount of PB G5 anticipation and rumors circulating at the time? Might that have triggered the possibility (however slim) of Apple considering an architecture switch? And realizing the implications of that maybe they dedicated resources to researching the possibility of migrating to Xcode (however slim)? And how might Macromedia and Lightroom play into this speculation?

In other words, maybe they weren't completely blindsided by this like the common assumption in these discussions seems to believe they were. Or were they really so comfortably myopic (dazed by Steve's RDF?) not to be considering "what if" scenarios like this for future development of their current Apple products?

The simplistic redundancy in much of this thread bored and inspired me enough to think of a perspective I hadn't already read a dozen times before.

With exceptions, of course...

illegalprelude, Lethal, Burai, BV, excellent points.

Definitely. Burai's is certainly one of the best newbie posts I can remember reading here in a long time.

 

[robbieduncan]

Is that what Safari does? Running "otool -L ..." on the Safari binary shows it's using both Cocoa and Carbon frameworks but I've never been quite sure how it uses Carbon.

Other apps that are typically categorized as Cocoa apps also use both frameworks. Is there a naming convention for differentiating apps just using Cocoa from those Cocoa/Carbon "hybrids"? When people say "Carbon app" it's usually assumed it doesn't use Cocoa but the inverse often isn't true.

I'd say if you are using Carbon events and Carbon based windows/controls then it's a Carbon app. If you are using NSApplication (or a subclass of that) and NSView/NSControl based controls then it's a Cocoa app.

 

[sjk]

That differentiation sounds good enough to me. Thanks.

 

[Counter]

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

You never told me so.

It's a trap waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhnnnn.

About....a month or so before you finally went G5 I finally went G5. But the machine I got had a fault and I had to send it back. After all was said and done and I had my money back the Intel news landed....

....I don't know if the G5 fault was a curse or a blessing.

 

[edenwaith]

Why large companies suck it up (and down)

I've noticed in the past few years, that Adobe has hardly released anything very astounding or groundbreaking with each of their iterations of their flagship products, yet they expect people to keep upgrading to the latest and supposedly greatest, and for what? A couple of minor features which should have probably only appeared in a free minor release? About the most important advancement I've seen in Photoshop since version 6 is that it was ported to Mac OS X. And to Adobe's credit, my copies of Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10 still work great under Tiger, and haven't broken in any way that I've seen yet.

However, I think Photoshop 7 had only one patch release (7.01), before it was bumped up to Photoshop CS (8). Especially since the products are being bundled, this puts more pressure on Adobe to try and cram some new features into each bundled product, rather than release the new product when it is actually ready. At least when Adobe was releasing the OS X upgrades, they could do them a product at a time, but with them bundled, they will likely release them all at once. I'm even more curious if they will hold off even longer to make sure that things work well with Windows Vista, in addition to the Intel-based Macs...and maybe even Mac OS 10.5! Plus there is the whole Studio + CS integration which is probably in a transition at this time.

Perhaps my main irk, is that I do not feel that Adobe is totally delivering what they expect people to pay for. Considering that they have only been releasing a couple of patches, and not new features or actual improvements (that I've seen, at least!), this seems pretty low and cheap on their part. But if CS and Macromedia Studio merge together successfully, then CS 3 might be a great release to upgrade to.

But are professional houses suddenly go out and buy a bunch of Intel-based Macs right now? I personally wouldn't bet on it, since I feel it would be best to wait 6 months to a year to see how things get ironed out before throwing a company into something dangerously new like this. And if it is any sign, the iMac G5s quickly going out of stock might indicate those places who decided to get the last G5s before they did disappear. But seriously, if you need the power, a G5 tower should be great. Hey, I wouldn't grinch even if I had the first generation G5 tower! It beats chugging along on a 5 or 6 year old machine, doesn't it?

But if Adobe does continue this path of small improvements, but costly upgrades, then I'll have no problem watching some other company like Quark or Apple come by and kick Adobe out of the way.

 

[bousozoku]

...
Who knows what Adobe was doing with Xcode before the Apple's Intel transition announcement? For example, what was their reaction to delays in Apple producing a significant PowerBook update, especially in light of the vast amount of PB G5 anticipation and rumors circulating at the time? Might that have triggered the possibility (however slim) of Apple considering an architecture switch? And realizing the implications of that maybe they dedicated resources to researching the possibility of migrating to Xcode (however slim)? And how might Macromedia and Lightroom play into this speculation?
...

What was Adobe doing with Xcode previously? Nothing, most likely. I'm pretty sure they only recently made the switch to Metrowerks CodeWarrior from MPW.

They were using MacApp quite a bit in the old days and that was an Object Pascal framework that was modified for C++ during the PPC years.

At least, Macromedia was looking ahead a bit.

 

[sjk]

What was Adobe doing with Xcode previously? Nothing, most likely.

With Apple encouraging developers to use Xcode it's hard to imagine Adobe completely ignoring the possibility of eventually migrating Mac products to it. How could no one there be at least tinkering with Xcode? Regardless, they could justifiably procrastinate doing any substantial work with it before Apple's Intel announcement gave them a legitimate reason.

I'm pretty sure they only recently made the switch to Metrowerks CodeWarrior from MPW.

How recently? Were they developing products for OS X using MPW? I didn't think that was possible.

They were using MacApp quite a bit in the old days and that was an Object Pascal framework that was modified for C++ during the PPC years.

You've wandering into unfamiliar territory with MacApp given my limited Mac developer history before OS X.

At least, Macromedia was looking ahead a bit.

Hopefully now to Adobe's advantage (somehow) for the transition.

Anyway, I'm speculated-out about this.

 

[the Helix]

Fellas, just don't hold your breath for Adobe's Universal Binaries...

 

[Fireburst]

I won't move over until Adobe releases universal binaries. 70% of the tools I use are Adobe/Macromedia.