Adobe Dragging Its Feet with Intel-Macs? Not Quite.

Popping up on blogs and mes­sage boards is the pos­tu­la­tion of the the­o­ry that Adobe and oth­er soft­ware ven­dors have already had plen­ty of time to recom­pile their appli­ca­tions to Intel-Macs and are choos­ing to drag their feet. Large com­pa­nies in the com­put­er busi­ness (both soft­ware and hard­wire sides) do not exist in a vac­u­um; by the time the pub­lic hears about new com­put­er hard­ware or oper­at­ing sys­tems that affect prod­ucts by oth­er large devel­op­ers, those devel­op­ers have already known about, and been work­ing with, the new tech­nol­o­gy for some time. The argu­ment there­fore goes that Adobe should have been ready to release Intel-Mac-compatible appli­ca­tions simul­ta­ne­ous to Apple ship­ping the first such sys­tems in January 2006.

While log­i­cal on the sur­face, this argu­ment sim­ply does­n’t hold water.

First and fore­most, the only Intel-based Macs cur­rent­ly avail­able are iMacs–student and home user models–and MacBook Pro lap­tops. Creative production-grade desk­top sys­tems are not yet avail­able, nor have they even been announced. (I pre­dict Apple, hav­ing learned from its tim­ing mis­takes with the first OS X‑based machines, will release such sys­tems before the end of 2Q2006, clos­er to the expect­ed release date of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3, Microsoft’s Office:mac 2006, and oth­er major appli­ca­tions.) Presently, though, there are no Intel-Macs on the mar­ket to address the high demands of cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als. Therefore, whether cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al soft­ware is avail­able for Intel-Macs is a moot question.

Timing is also the sec­ond rea­son why the accu­sa­tion that Adobe is drag­ging its feet is unfound­ed. Intel and Apple did not pro­duce final, production-ready machines until a few months before Macworld and the sub­se­quent ship­ping of Intel-based Macs. Developers of small­er appli­ca­tions with less intri­cate code­bas­es could adapt quick­ly, as could those who had direct devel­op­men­tal assis­tance from Apple’s own engi­neers. Migrating robust and workflow-critical soft­ware like the typ­i­cal Adobe cre­ative pro appli­ca­tion requires not only longer recom­pil­ing, but also sig­nif­i­cant test­ing time. If Adobe released Intel-Mac-compatible ver­sions of its soft­ware now, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of bugs or per­for­mance issues would be high–effectively, users would be turned into unwit­ting beta testers. Adobe cares about its prod­ucts and cus­tomers, and, although there have been times when users of released Adobe prod­ucts have felt like beta testers, Adobe has nev­er inten­tion­al­ly shipped prod­ucts that the com­pa­ny did not feel were ready for release.

Software devel­op­ment cycles are com­pli­cat­ed. Adobe’s is one of the most com­pli­cat­ed because all of the market-leading and workflow-critical appli­ca­tions in its Creative Pro Business Unit are part of the Creative Suite, which neces­si­tates a uni­fied devel­op­ment and release cycle. Thus, all core appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment would have to be port­ed to Intel-Mac-compatibles before any could be released. Some apps–InDesign and InCopy specifically–could be port­ed over today by virtue of the fact that their code bases are entire­ly platform-homogenous plug-in archi­tec­tures (in English: InDesign and InCopy are not sin­gle exe­cutable appli­ca­tions like Photoshop or Illustrator; they are built entire­ly out of plug-ins, with a sim­ple and tiny plug-in wrap­per glu­ing togeth­er all their func­tions). Other appli­ca­tions, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, GoLive, Bridge, Version Cue, Flash, Dreamweaver, and so on, how­ev­er, would take longer to recom­pile to, and be test­ed on, Intel-Macs. Although Adobe could hand out Intel-Mac-compatible appli­ca­tions like InDesign and InCopy piece­meal, it makes no sense, and ben­e­fits no one, to do so. The vast major­i­ty of cre­ative pros use two or more Adobe appli­ca­tions; thus, an Intel-Mac-ready ver­sion of InDesign is all but use­less to some­one who needs to touch up pho­tos, cre­ate vec­tor draw­ings, or pre­flight PDFs in addi­tion to page lay­out work.

One could use InDesign and/or InCopy on a new Intel-Mac, but would have to go back and forth between it and the IBM chip-based Power Mac for any oth­er cre­ative task. Files would then also have to be fer­ried back and forth via the net­work, direct cable con­nec­tion, or remov­able media. Bragging rights aside, being among the first to own and use an Intel-Mac in actu­al pro­duc­tion would be more has­sle than benefit.

But, QuarkXPress 7 already runs on Intel-Macs, say some. That is not entire­ly true…

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14 thoughts on “Adobe Dragging Its Feet with Intel-Macs? Not Quite.”

  1. Brian

    Many of these argu­ments are valid, but miss the broad­er point. Apple and Adobe have done a poor job of allow­ing pro­fes­sion­al users to antic­i­pate a roadmap for the future. If I’m forced to pur­chase a new Mac based sys­tem today, what do I buy? A PPC based G5 that will be obse­lete in the near future and offer sub par per­for­mance once the uni­ver­sal apps hit the shelves. An Intel based Mac and live with Rosetta enu­la­tion slow­ing every­thing down, then face a unclear upgrade future that prob­a­bly involves pur­chas­ing soft­ware a sec­ond time? Or do I just dump Apple and go to Windows where the roadmap is clear and appli­ca­tion per­for­mance is bet­ter? I find it fun­ny that Apple named their emu­la­tion lay­er for a arti­fact that final­ly gave us insight to the past, while their approach to pro­fes­sion­al users con­tin­ues to show thay have learned noth­ing from their history.

  2. Jim Oblak

    Windows has a clear roadmap??!!!!

    Shirley, you jest.

    The past has shown us that there is no way to pre­dict a clear roadmap for the future.

  3. Pariah S. Burke Post author

    All sorts of puns about roads come to mind, but I will (with dif­fu­cul­ty) restrain myself.

    Brian, Jim gets straight to the point: There are no roadmaps to be had. Apple and espe­cial­ly Adobe are respon­si­ble for most of the lit­tle pre­dictabil­i­ty we have in pro­fes­sion­al cre­ative and pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies. Apple brought the graph­i­cal user inter­face to mar­ket, priced laser print­ers with­in reach of indi­vid­u­als, and cre­at­ed the con­cept of Plug N’ Play, among many oth­er inno­va­tions. Adobe cre­at­ed the print­er lan­guage on which Apple’s laser print­er ran, pio­neered non-device res­i­dent soft fonts, devel­oped PDF, and is the inno­va­tor behind an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the appli­ca­tions, sys­tems, and method­olo­gies we use to do our jobs. Because of them we know today’s PDFs will work in tomor­row’s work­flows, our fonts will serve us for many years to come, and that today’s Macs can exchange files with tomor­row’s PCs (and vice versa).

    With the break­neck pace of tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, there isn’t very much more one can plan on. I think both companies–as well as their contemporaries–are doing the best they can to keep up with, and main­tain a slight lead on, the changes intro­duced by every­one else.

  4. Brian

    All of the admit­ted­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary devel­opem­nts hap­pened over a decade ago. Since that time Apple has increas­ing­ly turned to secre­cy as a mar­ket­ing tool. Microsoft how­ev­er relies on a much more open hard­ware & soft­ware devel­op­ment & sup­ply chain. There are pub­lic beta ver­sions of all their upcom­ing ver­sions of soft­ware so busi­ness­es can test func­tion­al­i­ty with their exist­ing process­es and test upcom­ing tech­nolo­gies. Instead Apple releas­es new hard­ware, says the soft­ware is on the way, and announces that the hard­ware will be dis­con­tin­ued in a year. Very dif­fer­ent from a fore­cast­ing and sys­tem plan­ning standpoint.

  5. Jim Oblak

    I smell bias.

    Public betas are not defin­i­tive signs that a com­pa­ny is open with devel­op­ment. Public betas sim­ply show that a com­pa­ny has a mas­sive mar­ket for a prod­uct and they want to ensure that their prod­uct works well. It is also a spec­tac­u­lar mar­ket­ing tool and a way to get ear­ly adopters. Quark, Adobe and Apple also offer beta programs. 

    It was only under EU rul­ings that Microsoft is open­ing more code.

    Time always march­es on. How can I get sup­port for Windows 98? The only rea­son why Microsoft seems to be mov­ing at a bet­ter (slow­er) upgrade pace is because it is a lum­ber­ing giant. That is both its asset and its weak­ness. No one is hap­py about whiplash devel­op­ment but we would be equal­ly unhap­py if we were still using Windows 3.1 and Mac OS 6.

  6. Brian

    Not bias, just frus­tra­tion. I’m not look­ing for sup­port of a lega­cy sys­tem. Just answers about how appli­ca­tions will run and per­form on their cur­rent hard­ware and OS so I can make strate­gic deci­sions regard­ing IT invest­ments. I’d like to go with the Intel Macs, espi­cal­ly after see­ing some of the revised bench­marks that indi­cate the per­for­mance claims Apple made for uni­ver­sal appli­ca­tions seem to be accu­rate. But I have no way to know when that will be some­thing I can buy. I’m frus­trat­ed that Apple has announced a fair­ly agres­sive (time­wise) phase out of a plat­form before the soft­ware many users of that plat­form rely on has even been announced, released, or test­ed. I blame Adobe on this issue just as much if not more than Apple, it cer­tain­ly appears that Apple made the devel­opem­nt tools avail­able. But there real­ly is not good alter­na­tive to run­ning the CS regard­less of platform.

  7. Steve Rea

    Why does it sur­prise you that Apple is phas­ing out old machines before new soft­ware is ready? This is the 4th time they’ve done it, we should be used to it by now.

    (6502 to 68000, 68000 to PPC, OS 9 to OS 10, and now PPC to Intel)

    I agree that it is annoy­ing, but it will always hap­pen (and hap­pens in the Windows world too. Try buy­ing a new pro­gram for Windows 95 or even 98).

    The big irony is that Intel is very forth­com­ing on their roadmap, and have out­lined their plans for for the next 10 years. Apple won’t tell you what they’re doing tomorrow.

  8. Matthew Treder

    True enough, Steve, although Intel’s prod­ucts and Apple’s are as dif­fer­ent as…er…apples and oranges. Or at least apples and com­put­er chips.
    Intel can draw a roadmap of the United States with­out harm to its mar­ket­place posi­tion, while Apple’s got a pack of me-too’s from Microsoft to Malaysia wait­ing to iCopy, iInfringe, and iReverse-engineer its eyeCatching iGadgets and giz­mos. (And iApologize InAdvance for the iNsufferable i’s…)

  9. Paul Richardson

    First of all I would like to say, great arti­cle. Though there is one point that sticks out in my mind that was not cov­ered. When i think about Quark Xpress, Microsoft Office, and the Adobe Creative Suite, I remem­ber that these prod­ucts were almost all built pre OSX. Most, if not all of them con­tain lega­cy car­bon code that does not work prop­er­ly with­in roset­ta. Not only that, but if mem­o­ry serves me cor­rect­ly, they were all built with code war­rior, not Apple’s Xcode. Thus anoth­er road­block in get­ting these apps out. I sus­pect that there is a great deal of code that is hav­ing to be redone in there prod­ucts, and thus the long wait for an firm announcement.

    Just my $0.02, take it for what you will.

  10. Pariah S. Burke Post author

    Thanks, Paul.

    I’m not sure about which of those apps were devel­oped with code war­rior or Xcode, so I don’t know whether to agree or dis­agree with you. I do believe that QuarkXPress 7 was rewrit­ten and com­piled to be a uni­ver­sal app, giv­ing it native func­tion­al­i­ty on Intel-Macs.

  11. Paul Richardson

    Just read (warn­ing: pdf link) from Adobe’s web­site. they do men­tion switch­ing the entire code­base over to Xcode. I think that you are cor­rect with QXP 7. From what I have read it looks as though they have been using Xcode and do have a fat bina­ry of it.

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