[tonton]

I posted this on Bad Flamingo, but felt it needed more of an audience, so I'm cross-posting it here...

It amazes me how Adobe continues to piss off their base user � their cash cow � the Mac graphics and multimedia professional.
First of all, they are starting to release products as Windows-first, or even Windows-only.

Secondly, and more importantly, they are either not taking OS X seriously, or they are maliciously trying to slow the migration. They are dicking us around with carbonized Photoshop, and they finally get around to announcing a carbon Illustrator, only after they are clearly losing sales to FreeHand 10 (IMO FH has long been a better product anyway), which was released � not just "announced" � three months ago.

The thing that really gets to me is Photoshop. What the hell are they doing? They had a carbonized Alpha version running two f&cking years ago! They know this is what we are all waiting for. Why haven't they even told anyone when to expect it?

Remember the migration to PPC? Adobe had a finished version of Photoshop 3 for PPC even before the hardware was ever released! This shows what they can do, and this shows that their delaying of Photoshop for OS X is deliberate and unnecessary.

If they are trying to "punish" Apple for considering releasing competing products (the rumored "iPhoto" and "Studio in a Box"), then they are severely misguided, because after all of this sh%t, despite the perfection of programming and design that is Photoshop 6, we are not "Adobe faithful", we are "Apple faithful" (I wouldn't touch PhotoShop for Windows with a ten-foot mouse). Whoever gives us a competing product, with similar features, will get the business. To this I say, "Apple go!" It's time Apple or Omni Group release the Photoshop killer, and announce a "sideways upgrade" to lure Photoshop users.

I will be the first to give up Photoshop when I have another tool to use. And I won't be the last.

Adobe seems to have taken a page from Quark, and thought "We have a monopoly on image editing, why do we have to spend money on R+D when people are going to buy the product anyway?"
Well, screw you, Adobe. Mac users will eventually go to OS X, with or without your support. I hope you burn in the process.

[- - e r i k - -]

While Adobe have outgrown the cozy attitude to us mac-users, they are not in complete limbo when it comes to Mac OS X. I just tried the Illustrator 10 beta on OS X 10.1, and it's even more enjoyable than the OS 9 version. This gives me great hope for the Photoshop port. They will make it, but Adobe will want to do it right the first time. They know the graphics-crowd are notoriosly slow adopters, and this time, rightfully so. Mac OS X really hasn't been usable for serious work until 10.1, so expect to see all serious applications from Adobe and other major players rolling in soon.

And as for a Photoshop-killer? I'm hard-pressed to see it. Unless it has the exact same feature set (or better) AND supports Photoshop plug-ins, and costs less to boot. Nope. Just won't happen. We've seen this again and again. Quark have tried. Corel have tried. And several others. To no avail.

I even doubt Apple could do it. All their major applications (FCP, DVD Studio Pro and even iTunes) are products they have bought, repackaged and sometimes improved. An iPhoto-competitior to photoshop? No. And iPhoto-competitor to Elements? Most likely.

Apple Photo Studio Pro? Not from scratch...

[tonton]

Very good response, Erik. I do think that Adobe wants to do it right, but I do think that graphics pros are itching to upgrade to OS X, and they're just waiting for Adobe before they will jump.

Just like graphics pros jumped to PPC, they will jump here. I know PPC ran 68k apps better than OS X currently runs OS 9 apps (and drivers, etc.) but when the bread and butter apps and drivers are all carbonized, users will be willing to give up perfect compatibility with less important utilities. The promise of a stable OS with protected memory is too much for the industry too ignore. How much of us lose work regularly when Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word brings down our entire system? The idea that we will be free from this threat to our productivity is simply too attractive to overlook. Plus as creative pros, we generally appreciate the eye candy that OS X brings (Quark users being the exception).

Meanwhile, I'm glad to hear Illustrator 10 Beta is great. I have heard that 9.0 was buggy, rushed, and many users are still using 8. Meanwhile Macromedia screwed over their own FreeHand users by changing the functionality and usability of the most basic, and most important vector design element, the pen tool, by misguidedly trying to make it work more like Illustrator (and missing the mark). I'm still using FH 9, which is absolutely brilliant, and I won't give up my FH 9 pen tool. Everytime I try to use Illustrator, I get frustrated (for instance, is there a "fit on page" option in the Illustrator print settings?)

But if Illustrator 10 is as good as people say, I would go there when I'm ready to go to X if Macromedia haven't fixed their pen tool blunder. Like I said, we are Apple faithful, and even though I am a Freehand zealot and have used FH exclusively since version 3.1, when Macromedia makes such a huge mistake as screwing with basic, proven functionality, I'm ready to jump ship any time. Something tells me FH 10.1 will bring back the classic FreeHand pen tool as an option.

[tonton]

Double post damnit...

[ 09-25-2001: Message edited by: tonton ]

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by tonton:
<STRONG>Very good response, Erik. I do think that Adobe wants to do it right, but I do think that graphics pros are itching to upgrade to OS X, and they're just waiting for Adobe before they will jump.</STRONG>

Wow. This was not exactly the sort of response I had expected

Since I'm most of the time on Adobe-products, I find them quite good to use everyday. Well, Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady anyways. For web use, macromedia is still in the lead.

The jump from 68K to PPC was relativly painless because it was still the same Mac OS we were used to. Optimizing for PPC was a different ballgame than carbonizing huge complex applications like Photoshop. They might have had an early alpha of PS for X a long time ago, but it probably was too buggy for use. Adobe is renowed for their stability (except for the Illustrator 9.0 blunder), and they would want X users to get the real 6.5 upgrade with all the extra bells and whistles while they were at it. And until it's 100% solid, it just won't happen.

Would you rather see an unfinished product come out faster? Then we'd have all the people complaining about OS X 1.0 doing the same all over again with Photoshop.

Adobe is probably working as fast as they can, but putting more resources into the project might not be the answer either. Apple vs. Microsoft has proved that fewer programmers create better code faster than a huge team of them.

I know you are impatient for Photoshop 6.5. So am I. OS X is great, and I've just now started using it with 10.1 as you can read in my OS X 10.1 adventure thread. And yes, when photoshop 6.5 comes out for X, it will be the best platform for running it on. Just don't go all mental (as your thread-title would imply) about it

Keep cool!

[tonton]

Interesting...

This from the MacFixIt site today:

With one exception, virtually every application we need to use for producing MacFixIt is either already available in an OS X version or soon will be (we use Entourage for email, so we are anxiously awaiting the November release of Office X). Thus, we don't even expect to have to use Classic all that much.

The one exception is Adobe GoLive, which we use to create the html pages for MacFixIt. This will definitely require using Classic for some time to come. Adobe has not even announced an expected release date for an OS X version of this program (realistically, we don't expect to see it until the second half of 2002 at the earliest). In fact, despite significant problems with GoLive 5.0 and despite GoLive 5.0 being out for over a year (see previous coverage), Adobe has not yet released an update to the initial OS 9 version. If this trend continues, it may force us to look elsewhere for a web page editor.

I doubt Adobe simply "wants to get it right" with every application they have (except Illustrator and InDesign... read into that).

So not only is Photoshop a stumbling block, but GoLive as well. Note that Adobe seems to be the ONLY major developer that has not shown serious movement to OS X with their main apps. This, to me, is a sign that they are deliberately not taking X seriously.

[opallaser]

Adobe demoed a native version of GoLive at Seybold. GoLive in particular has been a problem area for Adobe. Version 5.0 was/is a total dog for many people and Adobe have continued to ignore the problem. I hope that any native version for OS X is a major improvement.

[jim_stone]

I put at least some of the blame on Apple, simply because OS X specifications have been kind of a moving target over the past year. No doubt Adobe'd love to have our upgrade dollars pouring in, but that just can't happen when the OS isn't final enough to finish your software product. Optimizing Photoshop, which uses huge amounts of RAM and disk space, has to be --considerably-- harder than rewriting FreeHand. Don't get me wrong, I love FreeHand, but in terms of resource use (and user expectations), it just ain't in the same league as an app like Photoshop. Of course, I could be totally full of it, too.