[MW Forums]

Adobe's Senior Product Manager for Photoshop has commented on the new application Soundbooth's lack of support for PowerPC-based Macs, decrying what he sees as slanted news coverage and criticizing "zealots and forum trolls." more

[slambert73]

Whoa. Dude, you're Adobe - chill.

[ante_em]

Well, the guy's got b---er, hutzpah, anyway. Yeah, I'm not particularly freaked---is it bread-and-butter software PowerPC users HAVE to have? No. Would I rather see them moving full-steam forward? YES.
But Adobe is certainly not what it was (nor should it be, exactly) but there seems to be very little true innovation going on there anymore. Ever come up to an Adobe product manager at a conference like SIGGRAPH or MACWORLD and politely suggest a particular feature or capability? They look like they're swallowing a bug the whole time... and the brush-off they give is offensive. (I have been requesting a full-color brush stamp for years, as was utilized in AliasWavefront's StudioPaint--it was a very useful tool.)

[JeffM]

This is cool. The merits of his actual comments aside, this semi-official blog thing is an interesting experiment in corporate/customer relations.
He's still identifiable as a fairly high level Adobe employee, but expressing himself in a decidedly non-diplomatic and pejorative fashion to Adobe customers. The legalese disclaimer about not "necessarily" reflecting the views of Adobe aren't going to go very far with a lot of people, I'd suspect; particularly when he starts implying that taking his opinions to heart could potentially effect future decisions regarding support of the Mac as a platform.
Again, I'm not speaking to the merits of his comments, just the advent of an approach that allows for considerably more use of the stick in the "carrot and stick" equation. I'll be interested to see how users as a whole take to this.

[ante_em]

Granted, but there's an additional carrot here as well... Presumably anyone making himself so individually and highly 'visible' will also be as unusually and highly accessible.
Yeah, I wonder if this blogging outlet is being deliberately encouragted within such large companies, or is it merely being tolerated as it naturally evolves?

[ddd1301]

Personally, I find this guy's comments deplorable.
I rarely say bad things about companies, even Adobe. ;-) I use my wallet to speak to manufacturers. It has been two years since I bought an Adobe product (CS) and other than Acrobat 8, it will probably be 18 months or longer before I buy another one.
I will continue to use Sound Apps that work on all of my machines. Not just the Intel systems. I run Audacity for this reason, as it runs on OS9, OSX, Win2k and WinXP. (Although, I really like CD Spin Doctor on my G3 and G4 systems. Too bad there is not a Windows version.)
Use your Wallet to speak to companies.

[wholder]

To a developer like me, the key thing I notice is how all the facts behind Adobe's development approach don't add up. That is, on one hand you have Mr. Nack's claim that "if Apple hadnt switched to Intel processors, Soundbooth might very likely be a Windows application only" would seem to imply that Adobe's engineers are so Windows centric and it's just beyond them to write code that's compiles and runs on multiple platforms. And, in fact, the abnormally long delay in shipping an OSX Intel version of the Photoshop product would seem to prove that Adobe's internal development process are sadly out of date. There is simply no excuse for a major house like Adobe to get caught in a situation where it's unable to keep its development on track but, sadly, this appears to be what has happened.

[jedi228]

Adobe has problems, yes. This guy may be speaking disingenuously. Even so, Adobe is making the right choice by choosing the forward choice.
Sure if Universal were free then why not. But Universal isn't free. It's better for them to spend resources on Intel development rather than spending half on Intel and half on PPC and ending up with a lower quality product that doesn't satisfy either crowd.
It's not a pleasant choice, but it is the better choice to move forward.

[leroybrown]

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That is, on one hand you have Mr. Nack's claim that "if Apple hadnt switched to Intel processors, Soundbooth might very likely be a Windows application only" would seem to imply that Adobe's engineers are so Windows centric and it's just beyond them to write code that's compiles and runs on multiple platforms...

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Well, that's more of what Nack would probably call zealotry...
You have to realize that it costs money to develop products. In fact, Soundbooth is planned for Windows & the Mac OS (so you have 2 platforms). I don't think it's a mere matter of compiling code that works, but of optimizing code for two different processors.
Like it or not, optimizations are usually pretty labor-intensive work, and often times aren't done by the compiler, but by hand. (Thus the labor.) If you only have to do these optimizations for one processor (Intel) vs. two (Intel+PPC), you have more or less halved your costs. Plus, how many copies of the software can they expect to sell for PPC Macs? If it doesn't justify the development costs, well, there you go.
Regarding Adobe's "abnormally long delay in shipping an OSX Intel version of the Photoshop product" -- they haven't shipped a new Wintel version of PS yet, have they? What exactly makes this an abnormal delay? From the start they've said that they're not going to make a special Mac release, instead they'll stick to their release schedule.

[tallscot]

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Adobe's Senior Product Manager for Photoshop has commented on the new application Soundbooth's lack of support for PowerPC-based Macs, decrying what he sees as slanted news coverage and criticizing "zealots and forum trolls." <a href="/news/2006/10/30/soundbooth/index.php">[more]</a>

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Adobe bought Macromedia. They feel Mac users have no choice, it seems.
Corel Painter IX.5:
http://apps.corel.co...home/index.html
There is a free trial of this application. They have a Spotlight plug-in too, which is great. If you purchase Painter, you get 11 hours of video training for free. It has Photoshop compatibility.

[Uncle_Deercamp]

Does Adobe really need a spewing [deleted] fanboy like Nack to defend them?

[RiversideGuy]

This is nonsense. We're still talking about 10 times more sales potential for a Universal app than an intel only one. No way the "extra cost" of development (as in I doubt it would actually be that much, it's not like there some dearth of engineers at Adobe who have to struggle to figure out how to use a G5 for all it's worth; hell multi-processor G4s and 5s have been around a lot longer than multi-processor intel systems) would equal or surpass that.
I still think that this is largely a political issue because it really plays to Apple's game, not Adobes... and therein may lie the politics. I guarantee you Apple is pleased as punch it's intel only.
Oh, I do NOT put the delay on a Universal PS solely at Adobe's feet. I am well aware of the mess of code that had to be totally tossed to go Universal. Adobe's schedule was exactly in line with Apple's announced transition plans (remember "the intel transition will be complete by mid 07??"). I suspect Apple never intended it to take that long; I suspect they wanted to beat their estimates by almost a year figuring Adobe would take the heat for being "late."

[jedi228]

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Does Adobe really need a spewing [deleted] fanboy like Nack to defend them?

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Do we really need adolescent name calling when we don't like the policy chosen?

[moose_n_squirrel]

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Does Adobe really need a spewing [deleted] fanboy like Nack to defend them?

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Does the Mac community need any more fundamentalist zealots?