What is Digg?6 Comments
- Livefromwales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It seems to me that Adobe are on the defensive about the way they've been treating the Mac world recently. Worse still John Nack's own blog indicates that they only develop on Macs as a charity case. Shame on you - these are your loyal customers.
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In the case of SoundBooth, he clearly states that it's based on some other pro audio app that's built for Windows x86. They're reusing a bunch of pre-existing code and apparently don't feel the return on the effort to port it to PPC would be worth it. For Lightroom, that was being worked on earlier in the Intel transition, possibly even since before the transition was announced. Also, since that WAS built from the ground up, it was likely much less difficult to make it cross-platform from the start.
The fact is that the situation is going to be different for every app out there. You can't say that because they made app X universal, that they're being stupid or mean by not making app Y universal. Maybe Nack didn't do enough brown nosing for the PPC users out there in his blog, but that doesn't change the fact that it didn't make financial sense for them to port SoundBooth to PPC. Businesses make decisions based on money, not for humanitarian reasons... - Livefromwales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2WiseWeasel you miss the point as usual. But first, let's look at your logic.
For one you say NEW CODE BASES shouldn't be ported to PPC. Well according to Adobes Photoshop engineer Scott Byer, the CS3 code base is a completely new ground level codebase rewrite, that is why Adobe tell us it's so late out of the gate. The CS3 suite is a large number of apps so it's no simple task. BUT they will SUPPORT PPC.
You say that Soundbooth is only MacIntel because Apple already bundle Garageband, yet Adobe states that the competition for Soundbooth is Soundtrack Pro - at least according to Hart Shafer, senior product manager for Adobe Audio products. It is a new codebase rewrite so could have been Universal. Also note that it's not out until same period as CS3 (its another public beta).
You say that Lightroom is an exception without stating why. Yet of course Apple have a competitor, it's called Aperture and it's been out for a year already. Yet Lightroom is not due out until CS3 timeframe and it will support PPC.
Finally, if you go over to Nack's blog you'll see that he has successfully managed to divide and alienate a large number of LOYAL Mac supporters (read the comments on his own site). This is a PR disaster! I'm sure that we can all get involved in pro/con arguments but the article this DIGG refers to is mainly about the Public Relations mess Adobe has got itself into by letting Managers like Nack go on the attack of its customer base.
Just one more thing.... without the "Mac Zealots" there would be no Mac. It was the work and support of those guys during the 'dark period' of Apples history that helped keep the platform alive. If Nack is currently able to use a Mac he should be showering praise on them not abusing them by directly insinuating that they are insane. I'm a proud Mac Zealot and when companies "do evil" to our platform I'll march with the others. - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The difference is that all the CS apps are already coded for PPC. I said for NEW CODEBASES, it doesn't make sense to port to PPC. I should have emphasized that this is especially true for codebases migrating from Windows x86 apps. It could be that Lightroom was designed from the start to be cross-platform. In particular, Apple's bundling of Garageband with Macs further shrinks the potential market for Soundbooth. The numbers work out quite differently for something like CS. It's not just as simple as saying Adobe still codes for PPC on some products, so they're just being mean or stupid by not coding this one for PPC. For every effort you make as a business (every investment), there has to be a return on it, or you're wasting your time. Please spare me your obvious wealth of business acumen in the future...
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1PPC Mac users should not be surprised to see support for their Macs dropping. PPCs are now obsolete, and it makes no sense whatsoever to port new codebases over to that architecture. It's just a reality of business that the PPC market is shrinking, especially the 3rd party software market, as the vast majority of sales are to recent computer buyers (which are all MacIntel now). Adobe is doing what's right from a business perspective. We can't expect Adobe to borrow profits from other product lines, just to cover the costs of porting SoundBooth to PPC if they don't expect sales to be high enough.
Let's face it, with Apple bundling GarageBand with Macs, the market for SoundBooth on the Mac is already much smaller. We should be happy they decided to make a Mac port at all; I expect them to barely break even on that expense, if they make any money at all. Chastizing them for not investing in PPC development at this point is just counter-productive.
Just to emphasize: PPC is dead! It's too bad if you bought a PPC Mac within the last year, but you should have known better. There will still be support for a couple years for most major pre-existing codebases, but for all new products, expect Intel only support to become commonplace. This is particularly true for indie software released by small developers who, more and more, won't have the PPC hardware to do any testing with. For people who say that making a Universal Binary is as simple as checking a box in XCode, all I have to say is that you couldn't be more wrong. - openallhours, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The flaw in WiseWeasels logic is that Adobe are already producing a Universal Binary called Photoshop Lightroom and have announced support for both PPC and Intel in CS3. It would be unwise of any company to ignore an installed base of 15 million machines. Just because Apple change to Intel it doesn't mean that everyone can afford to flip each time. So WiseWeasel, whilst I agree that PPC is dead - I salute you on your lack of commercial acumen.
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