No 64bit for Photoshop CS4 on OS X

[Eraserhead]

Agreed. Is there some kind of hidden rule I'm not aware of where Apple can do no wrong and it's everyone else's fault when something goes wrong? No person or company is perfect, everyone and thing is entitled to make bad decisions and judgments.

True, its Apples fault, except there is a huge cost in developing two API's (and making sure you get everything right), so they could get rid of Carbon they had to get rid of something big, in this case 64 bit support.

But Adobe already knew they would have to rewrite it for Windows and started on it appropriately. And even then going from Carbon to Cocoa requires learning a whole new API and changing your style of programming compared to going from a 32 bit to 64 bit Windows API. The fact is that Apple told them late and Adobe are trying as hard as they can.

I think that is probably fair. They should have dropped Carbon at WWDC 2006.

Having programmed in both Mac OS and Windows I definitely see SOME similarities between Carbon / Cocoa and Win32 / .NET. For example with the latest features: in Windows, WPF is designed to be used with .NET and in Mac OS, Core Animation is designed to be used with Cocoa.

I haven't used Win32, but honestly .NET is much worse than Cocoa. Microsoft's API's do suffer from the weakness that they never make a hard decision like this, which really makes them much worse than they should be. Apple is right to kill Carbon, and Adobe was right to stick with Carbon as long as possible, its just difficult for both of them now.

 

[sleepingworker]

Aperture is Apple's in-house Photoshop app.

No. Aperture is primarily a photo-managing program (that I don't own but look forward to using once I buy an MBP). It is not a PS replacement at all. PS goes so far beyond just photo adjustments - at least as I have always used it. It's really a great app for artists/designers as well as photographers.

 

[bigmc6000]

Well that's just daft. Every single person that I know who has the misfortune of using Vista uses the 32 bit version. The largest amount of RAM that anyone I know uses with a Vista machine is 2GB. The 64 bit market for Windows is barely existent while the 64 bit market for Macs has been thriving for many years now. The people who would/could actually use this 64 bit version of Photoshop are Mac users, not Windows users!!

My Vista box (I code VBA so I had to get one...) came standard w/ 3GB and I bought another 1GB chip so I'm running 3.5GB (as we all know 32-bit windows won't recognize anything more than that). Oh, and I got a fairly cheap PC so it wasn't some awesome suped up version - just a regular ol' headless HP.

Now I've heard XP 64 is pretty decent but Vista 64 is just a huge helping of junk but as so many people have pointed out most companies don't buy Vista unless they have to...

 

[Nano-tube]

Thank you Apple!

This is Apple's fault - period.
You can't expect Adobe to convert Photoshop - one of the biggest and most complex apps out there - over night or even in a year.
One million lines of code is a massive amount of code to update, even if only some of it needs to be reworked, all of it must be repeatedly checked. This is a 2 year ordeal in the minimum. Apple has a long history of dropping things unexpectedly. It may be exciting in the consumer department but in the R&D world this is a bad habit.

I am sure Adobe's engineers stomaches turned when they first heard about this change.

The problem is that the users (we) gets screwed!

 

[Aeolius]

That would be like me acquiring Nike, then only selling the trainers to people with no feet.

Wait, it would be nothing like that. But it's a crazy idea, like yours.

Thus the reason I included the obligatory " " . It was meant in jest.

Besides, I haven't purchased a single Nike product since they once ran an ad in a hiking magazine that belittled those with disabilities.

 

[Full of Win]

Aperture is Apple's in-house Photoshop app.

No - its their in house Bridge App (or Lightroom app). Aperture does not have the tools that Photoshop has...not even close.

 

[Eraserhead]

One million lines of code is a massive amount of code to update, even if only some of it needs to be reworked, all of it must be repeatedly checked.

As the design for the application is already done re-doing a million lines of code, shouldn't be too big a deal, for the Xcode conversion each Microsoft Office employee had over 100k lines of code to check through. Given 2 years it shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

For my D&D application I've written 35k lines of (Cocoa) code in 18 months, and I don't work full time on it, as I have lots of University work to do too.

 

[Drake Mandrake]

In typical fashion, the only people I expect to complain are people who have never and will never even use even the 32-bit Mac version to the fullest extent.

 

[KindredMAC]

Anybody who is ANYBODY in the Graphics field knows that a REAL designer/artist doesn't use a Windows version of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Companies that use PC's in their art departments are jokes. They like to use the "Cost & Support" excuse for not using the machines that were really meant to do these jobs. If you buy a cheap PC to run PS on, good luck getting it to do anything more than create a couple layers and some cloning.

 

[milo]

Anybody who is ANYBODY in the Graphics field knows that a REAL designer/artist doesn't use a Windows version of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Assuming that's true (I don't know if it is), that situation might change when a PC can use more ram in PS and has much better performance on huge files.

 

[BongoBanger]

Anybody who is ANYBODY in the Graphics field knows that a REAL designer/artist doesn't use a Windows version of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Companies that use PC's in their art departments are jokes. They like to use the "Cost & Support" excuse for not using the machines that were really meant to do these jobs. If you buy a cheap PC to run PS on, good luck getting it to do anything more than create a couple layers and some cloning.

People don't buy 'cheap pcs' to do heavy image processing. They use expensive workstations.

 

[stagi]

Weak

 

[ipodG8TR]

Adobe will pay

Adobe is really dropping the ball. Better watch out Adobe, or Apple will “Final Cut” you... again! (remember Adobe Premier?)

 

[tk421]

So what?

How many people have 3.375 gigapixel images and 32GB RAM?

I'm willing to bet that even the vast majority of graphics professionals are not working with such sizes.

 

[Rot'nApple]

They are working their arses off. This is millions of lines of code which is why they say it'll be ready for CS5.

While that may be true, if Adobe runs on a 18 - 24 month product cycle, Photoshop CS5, and therefore 64 Bit for the Mac, won't be coming out until, let's see CS3 announced March 27, 2007 add 18 - 24 months and CS4 will be around late September 2008 - late March 2009 timeframe and then CS5 around late September 2009 - late March 2010.

So, in the year 2010, just a three year wait for 64 Bit for the Mac, but it will be here before you know it. If all goes well.

 

[Neutral Gamer]

That said, I'm glad PS is finally making the switch to Cocoa. For those who say that there's no difference between Cocoa and Carbon apps, you are wrong... Compare how iTunes and Safari feel. There's most definitely a difference, yes? That's because iTunes is carbon to the core while Safari is a Cocoa app.

No, it's to do with the programmers and designers. A lot of Carbon based programs were written longer ago than their Cocoa based equivalents. By the time it comes to rewriting for Cocoa, the developers would've learnt from their mistakes, gained more experience, created more efficient code and a better designed interface.

If you asked anyone to rewrite one of their programs from scratch after a few years, they would produce a far more superior version whether they were using Carbon or Cocoa. It's the internal code design and external user interface design of the program that would have improved. It's easy to attribute newer programs' advantages purely to Cocoa when in fact it's the modern ideas picked up from competing products and improved programming techniques that are the true cause.

I haven't used Win32, but honestly .NET is much worse than Cocoa.

I actually pefer .NET and Visual Studio but then I have been programming in them for years so I may be biased. There is one thing I can't stand though and that is Objective-C's syntax - I just hate those square brackets; they're just so hard to write and read when scanning your code:

Objective-C
[ [car dashboard] display:[ [ [car engine] getLitres ] toString ] ];

C#
Car.Dashboard.Display ( Car.Engine.Litres.ToString() );

Argh! Again though my reliance on C++, C#, PHP, Perl, Javascript and Java may have clouded my judgment ...

 

[milo]

Adobe is really dropping the ball. Better watch out Adobe, or Apple will “Final Cut” you... again! (remember Adobe Premier?)

Seriously, is that really a threat?

For Adobe to get hurt by this, someone else has to ship a 64 bit Photoshop killer. Does such an app exist, and if not, how long would it take apple to create it?

Let's get some perspective here. How many apps are 64 bit on OSX right now? ANY major ones?

And a better question - how many APPLE apps are 64 bit right now? Xcode and Chess?

It seems a bit ridiculous to speculate about Apple beating Adobe to a 64 bit PS type app when Lightroom IS 64 bit already but Aperture is still at 32.

Forget about Adobe for a minute. Where is 64 bit FCS? 64 bit Logic Studio?? Where's the 64 bit version of ANY apple app?

If anyone should be ashamed of their 64 bit support, it should be apple - how can people fault ANY third party dev for not being 64 bit yet when Apple can't even do it themselves?

 

[jettredmont]

While it's a bummer, it's not "laziness" by any stretch of the imagination.

Apple originally said Carbon would support 64 bit apps. They didn't announce that they were dumping this until the dev conference mid 2007.

Adobe isn't the only company hosed by this, there has been a big backlash from many developers. A big side effect of this is that with carbon it's pretty easy to base mac and PC versions from the same code. But since cocoa requires the use of objective C instead of C++, it's much harder to keep a common codebase.

Ummm, actually, Cocoa works perfectly well with C++ using what's called "Objective C++". I have worked for more than five years on an application written (cross-platform) in C++ with a Cocoa "front end" for OS X. No problems at all integrating our C++ code into the Cocoa APIs.

The shift from Carbon to Cocoa is an API and widget shift, not a language shift. The APIs are object-oriented instead of MFC-esque. For what it's worth, I found them significantly easier to code against (to the point that when we transitioned from OS 9 to OS X support we outright dumped the Classic/Carbon route and went whole hog into Cocoa ... there have been a few pain points since then, but generally speaking no regrets from the API perspective. I should also point out that one factor in this decision was the advice of an Apple consultant early on who stated Carbon development was essentially dead (in 2002!). I doubt that Adobe missed that message. They just chose to ignore it.

Finder + Cocoa = Finder, yes. However, Finder + Cocoa + 100 engineer-months of work >> Finder + 100 engineer-month of work. Cocoa enhances productivity in most cases.

 

[dr_lha]

I thought Obj-C 2.0 allows the dot syntax now, so you can use either the square brackets or the .Net form you showed above.

 

[Eraserhead]

I actually pefer .NET and Visual Studio but then I have been programming in them for years so I may be biased.

My objection with .NET is that Cocoa is totally about communication and sending messages. So you send an object a message and then it acts on it, and then there are delegates, which .NET doesn't really have. And also there are issues like .NET only being able to have two related DropDownLists on a webpage (in ASP.NET), whereas Cocoa can have essentially unlimited ones as they send each other messages to update when they update.

There is one thing I can't stand though and that is Objective-C's syntax - I just hate those square brackets; they're just so hard to write and read when scanning your code:

I think this is Tomarto Tomayto and what you're used to .

Let's get some perspective here. How many apps are 64 bit on OSX right now? ANY major ones?

Mathematica and MATLAB are. SPSS probably also is 64 bit on the Mac, but I'm not sure.

 

[twoodcc]

i'm disappointed, though i do see where they are coming from

 

[guzhogi]

As far as I know, Carbon and the Win32 API are much more compatible than Cocoa and Win32. Correct me if I'm wrong but Cocoa still requires the GUI code to be written in Objective C while carbon allow more "traditional" C++ programming. While it's true that C++ basically sucks compared to programming in Objective C or C#, C++ is cross-platform and it allow big developer to write their own APIs or compatibility layers that will compile for Carbon or Win32(Win64?). Cocoa's APIs using Objective C look like gobbly gook to a person used to the C++ or Java (or even Perl, PHP, Ruby or Python) for that matter. I pity anyone that tries to maintain a unified codebase for an app as big as Photoshop with C++ on one platform and Objective C on another.

Adobe is not the only culprit here MS Office is still in Carbon, OpenOffice for Mac is on just starting to arrive, the GNU community can't make GTK work on Mac, Steinberg uses Carbon for Cubase and they have made and almost identical announcement to there users [1]. Finally try to see if you can find out even if Apple's own Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio are 64 bit. There is no mention on the Apple's website and it doesn't that user forums are pour with enthusiasm over 64 bit memory addressing. Apparently, writting a 64 bit Cocoa app is a monumental undertaking. So give Adobe a break . . . on this issue.

Very true. I was a computer science major in college (but I kinda sucked at it). I learned quite a few languages: C, C++, Perl, Java, Scheme, Lisp, among others. Even though Objective-C is an extension or whatever of C, it's still quite different. "Quite" being an understatement. But the hardest languages I've learned (or at least tried to learn) were Scheme & Lisp (one is just a dialect of the other, can't remember which). The hard part of them is everything's done in parentheses and it's hard to remember how many closing parentheses to put and where.

But having one codebase in one language and another in another language is hard. I wish there was one single programming language that can do everything well. But there isn't. A language either does only one kind of thing well or tries to do everything but can't do any one thing well. Shame there can't be a language that can do everything well. I'd really like a language that's inherently multi-processor/multi-thread aware & 64-bit aware. Even better, one that can easily scale to any number of cores/procs & any amount of bits (32, 64, even 1024 when/if we get there), preferably one that can be low level enough to do OS level stuff, but high enough to do application stuff.

 

[trimtab]

It's been 10 years already!

When Apple announced its Rhapsody strategy in 1998, Adobe, Macromedia and Microsoft all balked. They threatened Apple to can all their Apple products if Apple forced them to adopt the new Cocoa APIs. Nice.

Had Adobe et al. started retooling and rewriting then, I think they'd have finished 5 years ago. Certainly at quite an expense, but whether it was then or now, the cost is the same. The writing has been on the proverbial wall since day 1, TEN (10) YEARS AGO!

I.e., Carbon = Transitional API, while Cocoa = The Future(tm).

I.e., Adobe have merely been delaying the inevitable.

 

[offwidafairies]

Well..Adobe sucks anyway. The CS3 Suite is still full of bugs for Leopard. And Leopard is not brand new. Pfffft...

better than digidesign which still has most apps incompatible with leopard.

mmm i like me some ovaltine

 

[jragosta]

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.

IOW, only professionals will benefit. Isn't that the point of CS?

This is absurd. Apple introduced Cocoa when- 1998? Even back then, they were encouraging people to write exclusively in Cocoa. Adobe has had 7 years to convert their code - which would probably have taken less effort than their continued efforts to revise a 1990 era code base.

Adobe was slow with the PPC transition. They were slow with the OSX-Intel transition. And now they're slow supporting 64 bit.

Perhaps they're incompetent. Perhaps they're out to get Apple because of iPhoto, Aperture, and so on. Or perhaps they have a company mentality where you have to do everything from existing code rather than starting any project with a clean slate. Whatever the reason, they should be the last software vendor considered for graphics professionals using Macs (which is still the majority, AFAIK).

I'm only an amateur, but I just decided to stop using Photoshop Elements. Heck, iPhoto and the free HP suite that came with my AIO printer do almost everything Elements does, anyway, and they're much faster.

Now, Apple is at fault here, too. They announced 64 bit Carbon at WWDC last year and shouldn't have done so unless they were darned sure they could do it. But Apple is pretty gun shy about developers refusing to adopt their technologies (which is why Carbon exists in the first place), so they were probably too optimistic about their ability to do it. But that doesn't excuse Adobe's ignoring Cocoa for 10 years of being told that Carbon will end some day and Cocoa will take its place.