Adobe Says PCs Are Preferred 853
Father Of Free Choice writes "Abobe has picked Windows as the preferred platform for running Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator. I don't know how many Mac people this will upset, but given the large hold Apple has on design pros and film, this seems like a bad move on Adobe's part."
Well, there's news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, there's news (Score:4, Funny)
A lot faster than getting an OS X version of Quark XPress.
I don't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as I can see (Score:2, Interesting)
a more up to date speed comparison (Score:3, Informative)
For those that are interested, a more up to date speed comparison from the same person who did the benchmarking on the Adobe page can be found here:
digitalvideoediting.com [digitalvideoediting.com]
The new benchmarks use a P4 3GHZ and a Dual 1.25Ghz PowerMac.
--
Website Templates [dynamicexpression.com]
Re:a more up to date speed comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
I just checked my calendar... (Score:5, Funny)
Kick Apple into shape (Score:4, Insightful)
To be honest, I'm surprised that it has taken this long. I guess it says something for the lead that Apple had built up.
Looking forward to hearing about the G5 at the WWDC. : )
Re:Kick Apple into shape (Score:3, Funny)
Old news? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Old news? (Score:5, Informative)
Compare these [versiontracker.com]
To these [versiontracker.com]
From the looks of it, Adobe is keeping both platforms almost completely in synch with each other. Not a light feat, indeed.
Oh, yeah, let's not forget that the last FOUR versions of Photoshop (4, 5, 5.5, 6, and 7), at least, were simultaneous releases.
Ditto Illustrator 8, 9, and 10.
What an asshat.
-/-
Mikey-San
(I reserve the right to be inaccurate, since it's morning, and I hate mornings.)
it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:5, Informative)
"Adobe software got its start on the Macintosh computer. Today, the Macintosh platform remains important for Adobe and our customers. Since the introduction of Mac OS X, Adobe has delivered more than 13 Mac OS X native applications. This strong support of the Mac OS X platform is a demonstration of Adobe's commitment to customers on the Macintosh platform."
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:4, Funny)
Translation: Apple will always be our adorable little fuzzy niche market. We wuuuuuvvvv you!
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:5, Funny)
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:3, Insightful)
Quit apologizing and making up excuses. Adobe is using the term PC on the page to refer to non-Apple computers running Windows.
Re:it doesn't say anything about prefered (Score:5, Funny)
Konqueror - Safari -- is GIMP next? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Konqueror - Safari -- is GIMP next? (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe have put millions into photoshop, and similar programs - Image manipulation programs are really costy to develop, and the people using them like learning the interface once and for all (that is, photoshop). Calling a designer to go with GIMP is not impossible, but really impractical as we(i.e. the developers) have not enough expertise(disclaimer: GIMP team do have graphic expert, but wait, they are not full-time paid workers) nor time to develop something as sophi
Re:Konqueror - Safari -- is GIMP next? (Score:2)
I wasn't aware apple was using KHTML in their browser (then again, I don't keep up with apple).
Even so, I tend to doubt they'll back The Gimp. My suspicion is that they'd want to shore up what little support they get from adobe instead. Just my two cents.
Re:Konqueror - Safari -- is GIMP next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing against GIMP, but it would be a bad move on Apple's part if they did. Apple should be doing their damnedest to get application vendors to provide ported software to the Apple platform, not trying to reinvent every piece of software as an Apple product.
When Adobe has the same application that will run on both PC and Mac with 100% file compatibility, it creates an environment where you can choose the best platform for a given user, without having to sacrifice application interoperability with other users. If Apple were to say, "screw Adobe, here's iSomething" it will force graphics shops to have to choose between PC+Adobe and Mac+iSomething. All this will do is take marketshare away from Apple.
I think that Safari and Keynote (and the iOffice/iWork/iWhatever suite that is likely to follow) are simply a response to the dead-end relationship that Apple is in with one vendor - Microsoft. I don't see the practice of duplicating every major application as a trend for Apple in the long term. At least I hope it's not.
Image Errors (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the first image, it has two times, 54 seconds and 1 minute 25 seconds. The second time is shown at well over double the length of the first, even though it only took ~50% longer. If you look closely, you will see that 1:25 got placed at 1.25, and 0:54 got placed at 0.54, hence the error.
Any of the images where the minutes are different are going to be skewed a fair amount. The error will decrease as the minute difference increases.
metric system (Score:5, Funny)
Adobe is just using the superior metric system, which has 100 seconds / minute.
Re:Image Errors (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.adobe.com/misc/webform.html [adobe.com]
There's the link to they're feedback page.
Re:Image Errors (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Image Errors (Score:3, Funny)
Commodity hardware makes sense for Adobe (Score:4, Insightful)
Letting customers spend less money on hardware means there is more money leftover for buying pricey Adobe software. Moreover, Adobe may soon abandon one of its development team to shave costs-- guess which one won't survive: the one not making that much money.
Re:Commodity hardware makes sense for Adobe (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad move?? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is it a bad move? They know which platform they sell more copies of their software for. Hint, hint.. it's not the Mac! So it makes perfect business sense for them to say what they prefer their users to use their products on.
"Upset Mac people.." Come on! As if they aren't used to it by now.
I'd be upset knowing I spend 2-3 times as much for my computer to do the same work a PC will do.
That's just dumb.
Open Apple (Score:2)
Re:Open Apple (Score:2)
Re:Open Apple (Score:2)
Platform preference (Score:5, Interesting)
And.... (Score:2)
In any case, the article referenced didn't exactly state what effect this pronouncement (of sorts) would have on Adobe's products. I don't think that they'll bag their Apple lines, but is Adobe going to use this to nudge their customers onto an platform? Somehow, I just don't see that happening.
GF
/me shrugs (Score:5, Insightful)
However, does this mean Adobe are going to start favouring Windows in terms of releases and support? I suppose that could make more of a dent . . .
Re:/me shrugs (Score:2)
What do you mean "start", kemo sabe? Look at the Acrobat 5 release and the way that certain features weren't available on the Mac version. Look at Acrobat Reader for Palm OS--the conduit launches Classic under Mac OS X, and wasn't available for Mac at all until v2.0.
At least InDesign is ahead of QuarkXpress in terms of OS X support--not that that's a real difficult thing to manage....
Re:/me shrugs (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire theory that Adobe is now "preferring" the PC platform is based on the fact that there's a page called pcpreferred.html on Adobe's site. A page that simply says 'looks like some stuff is faster on this here PC'.
The fact of the matter is that for most applications, both PCs and Macs are so damned fast that it doesn't matter which is faster, it matters which OS allows you to work more efficiently. Adobe's Mac support has shown no signs of trouble whatsoever. They continue to pump out simultaneous or near-simultaneous releases of their apps for both Mac and Windows. They continue to provide patches for both versions nearly simultaneously.
This whole article simply shows how sensationalistic slashdot is willing to be in order to get some ad views. It's no different than any other editorial column really. You say something retarded, then watch everybody earn you money while they discuss whether or not you're a retard.
Re: parsing the URL incorrectly? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, you mean it's
PCpreferred.html
and not
PCPreferred.html
There goes my theory that it was a page set up for referrals to Adobe software by your Primary Care Physician.
Adobe "has picked" ...? (Score:2, Informative)
This changes very little and seems hardly worth the effort sensationalizing.
Hmm (Score:2)
For what it's worth, I'd like to see properly optimised code run on both PC and Mac, to see which really is faster for Photoshop et al. Would be a nice real-world comparison, which is worth a lot more to me than a benchmark...
Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
From the man himself:
"Those who win one hundred triumphs in one hundred conflicts do not have supreme skill. Those who have supreme skill use strategy to bend others without coming to conflict"
Where do they prefer it? (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:3, Redundant)
"Abobe has picked Windows as the preferred platform for running Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator. I don't know how many Mac people this will upset, but given the large hold Apple has on design pros and film, this seems like a bad move on Adobe's part."
The article linked says nothing like that at all. It just states that in a test performed in July 2002 a Pentium 4-based workstation outperformed a G4 workstation. It does not say that Adobe has picked Windows as the preferred platform.
The link says it all (Score:2)
http://www.adobe.com/motion/pcpreferred.html
This is not what Adobe is saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Software differences (Score:5, Interesting)
That is, could it be that the Windows Adobe team simply writes better software than the Mac Adobe team? How much of this can be put down to the underlying operating systems on both machines?
Just thoughts
The New Math (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark
MDI Window model (Score:2, Informative)
MacOS and even the UNIX versions of Photoshop/Illustrator do not suffer from the same design flaws.
Doesn't match up... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, this doesn't look like an Adobe recommendation so much as Adobe showing one group's results of a comparative test. There is more to a computer than render speed, just as there is more to a computer than compile speed.
Adobe needs to watch their step. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop pissing us off. You've created products to compete with us in photo management. You've added nonlicensed PDF capabilities to your new OS (which we had to update for OS X!) and you've utterly stolen the video editing market from us - which was quite profitable, despite the absolutely abysmal Premiere.
We will continue to promote PCs as the better machine on our website, despite the fact that we ship for both platforms, because you've stepped on our toes. We recommend you go back to making machines and stop with the polished, useful, FREE software.
Thanks,
Adobe
Re:Adobe needs to watch their step. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, as I understand it, it went something like this:
Adobe had a great team of programmers working on Premiere once upon a time. They created Premiere 4 which was a staple of low-cost video editing (and where many of us got our start). It was a quirky program but very flexible and people liked it.
This team had a radical new idea for the
What's this about "preferred platform"? (Score:5, Informative)
While that kind of does seem like an endorsement of the PC on adobe's part, it also is just good business sense to explain to your customers what hardware your software runs best on.
Speed at raw data-crunching is just one of the factors in which computing platform you are going to use, though if you're using AfterEffects or Photoshop or something it's going to be a much, much larger factor.
Typical bad benchmarking (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to to with the tests he's running! It's also very possible that what he was doing wasn't taking advantage of both processors in the Mac. Given the sketchy information on the actual testing, we don't know.
Granted, both camps do this kind of stuff - it proves nothing.
Better!? (Score:2)
Not to mention the fact that Photoshop for Windows chokes when you throw too many VM pages at it... Try creating a 1.5 gig canvas and zig-zag a 300 pixel dithered brush from one corner to the other. Even my 500 Mhz G4 is capable of finishing the task without a time-out.
Just yesterday I tried this on a 2.6 Ghz P4/WinXP and got Mr. Hourglass for about 45 seconds 80% of the way through the render...
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just business reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe gets most of their money from the PC market, and the truth is that regardless of all the hype Steve Jobs has made recently regarding the Mac G4's, almost all benchmarks comparing a top of the line G4 to a top of the line PC simply give the PC a winning mark by a landslide in graphics and video tests.
Now let's not get into a flame war over this, I love Macs too, but hey, if I have to render a large project, and it takes half the time to do so on a PC, then I will use a PC even if its user interface is not as nice as the Mac.
This is why for some time now I've been advocating that Mac OS/X be ported to the x86 architecture. It's the only way Mac OS/X will be able to run on equal footing to Windows. Let's face it, Apple being the only major consumer of Power PC chips for consumer (I know, IBM uses them on large servers too) is not a good incentive to innovate, while on the PC market AMD, Intel, and Transmeta are always killing each other to come up with the fastest and "bestest" processor, and at the cheapest possible price.
Macs either move to the x86 architecture or they are dead. And *please*, I know many fanatics will argue that "what makes Macs great is the amazing integration between hardware and software, something which cannot be acchieved or guaranteed in a commodity-based PC market", however not only is this not true (Apple for example could publish open APIs to have hardware vendors support in order to support all needed integration, and it could also build Mac PCs itself if it chooses to), but simply getting stuck with the past. Yes, it'd be great to control the hardware and the software, but right now business reality is telling Apple that this is not the time to do so.
So, let's get on with it: I know this is a blow to Apple, and I know many Mac users will cry foul to Adobe, but I also think this is a necessary blow to Apple (and mostly, Steve Jobs) to let them know that things are simply moving really fast in the PC world in comparisson to Apple.
Heck, you can already buy WiFi "g" for PCs much cheaper than on the Mac already, plus all PCs nowdays come with USB 2.0, and FireWire is almost standard or really cheap to add (20 to 40 bucks or so). About the *only* things Apple has going for itself right now is (1) FireWire 800 (and I bet you'll eventually find it cheaper on PCs), (2) the iApps, which are very easy to use, but I bet Microsoft or someone else will copy them soon enough, (3) the iPod (competitors are getting close also on copying it and improving it as well), and (4) Mac OS/X, which is a nice piece of work.
So Steve: Port Mac OS/X to x86 *soon* before you let Apple die in obsolescence. It's just you versus *thousands* of companies making products for the PC commodity market, a market which due to competition is making products better and cheaper all the time. The choice is clear, evolve or die.
Re:It's just business reality (Score:4, Funny)
You can snag Darwin [apple.com] from here. There's a lot of $10 no-name ethernet and sound cards that need porting. Get to it.
On behalf of all x86 users out there, thanks in advance! :)
Re:It's just business reality (Score:4, Interesting)
It also ignores the fact that the newest PowerPC's are imbued with a practical SIMD execution engine, the instruction set of which is not only heavily leveraged in MacOS X itself, but numerous 3rd party applications. The SSE2/3DNow! engines just don't stack up to AltiVec for widespread usage, and once Apple machines supply a 1.8-2.5Ghz, 200+ simultaneous instruction Integer/fpu core alongside Altivec, the argument for x86 Macintoshes will entirely evaporate.
This is the dumbest bunch of graphs I've ever seen (Score:5, Insightful)
Their scale:
123456789123457 Mac
12345678912345678912345678912345678912 PC
How it should be:
123456789123456 Mac
12345678912345678912345678 PC
Morons.
BTW I hate these slashdot filters isn't that what the moderators are for?
Gimp (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of these tasks are many orders of magnitude smaller than rolling your own Photoshop replacement, and The Gimp has a far more flexible plugin architecture and tons of people who are happy to write plugins in C, scheme, Perl, Python and other languages!
Anyone have the money to kick something like this off? Consider this you Make Money Fast wakeup call!
And, if you need more of a push... there's CinePaint [sourceforge.net] (ne "Film Gimp"), which you could integrate into your product and add a whole other market.
Re:Gimp (Score:5, Interesting)
Photoshop and Gimp are wide and far apart Performance and Featurewise. I'm a Linux User all the way through - with strong ties to multimedia. Allthough I hate Windows (for good reasons too) and love Linux it's utterly impossible for Linux to reach design power parity with Windows. Even with a full license of Corel Photopaint and CorelDraw for Linux. This is - along with broad range gaming - still a major drawback with Linux.
Since you're talking about 'not fact heavy' I'd like to point out that especially Photoshop is a programm that plays in it's own league with no other competitor even close to reaching the same power in grafical editing. Especially Gimp which, while being an astonishing OSS project with unmatched ease of installation and considerable powers, is far away from stuff like the PS rendering filters and scaling/interpolation algorythyms. One of the strengths of all Adobe 'pixel' programms.
Re:Gimp (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, is it so hard to read the *rest* of what I wrote? I was suggesting that a company take The Gimp, modify it as needed (contributing back the OSS parts, and keeping proprietary plugins for patented stuff that they will have to chage money for to pay royalties and fund their staff).
The Gimp is a pain in the ass to use, but most of what PS gives you above and beyond The Gimp in terms of real features center around the ready-for-print market (patents prevent much of this technology from entering The Gimp) and some of PS' advances layering features (again, likely patented). Their scaling and interpolation is nice (also probably patented, which again leads to my point), but rarely worthy of chosing them over a competitor. In fact 90% of the ready-for-print market cares about only 10 or so of PS' core features asside from simple image editing. Of those 10 or so features a good chunk are covered by patents, and that's really what's keeping PS afloat right now.
Create a company that can ship patented plug-ins for The Gimp, and you remove the barrier that has kept it a second-class citizen for so long. Of course, getting the starting capital would be tricky in today's market, but this is a huge area with lots of profit to be had. The early worm will most certainly get the worm.
Remember that the power of open source is that the larger and more complex the software that you're imitating/improving, the more of an edge you have because of the large community of contributors who have source code.
Times Change (Score:5, Insightful)
For reasons mostly related to my profession (Landscape Architect, at the time), I switched to a PC, and began the task of using Photoshop in a Windows environment. At the time, version 3.0 or so was getting better, but still pretty nasty. Now we're up to 7.0, and it is a remarkably better piece of software. I love it. I now do 3D work and image editing, and Photoshop work probably comprises 25% of my time. I'm extremely happy with it, as I am with the copies of Premiere, Pagemaker, and Illustrator that I use in the course of my work, as well.
That being said, I have never been able to escape the notion that it has seemed that Adobe has never quite gotten the knack of porting the software over to the PC. Granted, it runs like a champ, but just little things . .
I fight this battle with my cluster of close friends, most of whom are designer types, about once every three months. I think I've finally got them convinced that you CAN run Photoshop and Illustrator on a PC. For years, they assumed that you couldn't. But that opens up a whole different can of worms that I'm not even going go get into. Use what you want.
So, I'd say this is a surprising development, given my experience with Adobe software over the years.
Re:Times Change (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure it's more to do with the OS than Adobe being lazy or whatever. Apple is stricter with their UI guidlines for software developers. Partially because they've had such a legacy of documenting a
Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Source of Error (Score:3, Informative)
It's interesting to look at Digital Video Editing, the site that published the original article entitled "Macs vs. PCs III: Macs Slaughtered Again".
I'm not enough of an editing guru to comment on the validity of the tests, but the writing is strikingly unprofessional: "Mac stalwarts will cling to the notion that Mac OS X is so much better and easier to use than Windows XP". He's obviously got an axe to grind. Writers who compare Macs and PCs and *start out* with a chip on their shoulder kind of piss me off.
It seems quite possible that Adobe asked the author for a couple of images, and he came up with these worthless, mis-scaled pieces of junk to force his own point. But maybe it was an accident, and I'm just a pessimist.
News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe has for a long time now achieved feature and interface parity between their Windows and Mac products. That's no mean task, and they should be applauded for it. But it seems a little short sighted of them to name Windows the "preferred" platform just because it's faster. Photoshop may be the same on Windows and OS X, but Windows and OS X are very different. And no matter how graphically productive you are, you are still going to end up spending a large amount of time outside of Photoshop's isolated interface.
If speed were really the end-all and be-all of graphic design (or computing in general) Apple would have died a long time ago and PC users would still be using DOS.
This is all about video production (Score:3, Insightful)
Color management defines the platform choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I mod this article a troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, if one may ask, would Adobe miff a huge established user base by "choosing" one platform over the other, especially when they keep the Mac and PC versions more-or-less concurrent anyway? What possible motive would they have for declaring one platform "preferred"?
On the other hand, I can think of a trolling motive for someone to see if they could get this thing posted. This "news" appears to date to 11 november of last year, to boot.
Adobe setting itself up for a Quarking (Score:5, Interesting)
They are this way because they believed they had an unbeatable product, a single killer app the world could not do without: Xpress. The Mac dweebs would buy and keep buying, because there was no credible choice.
Until Adobe came up with InDesign, which is easier, faster, every inch as powerful, compatible with Xpress "Xtensions" and runs on OS X. Adobe shows their users lots of lovin', with trade shows, rational support, and deep Mac roots. Now InDesign is poised to topple Xpress into irrelevancy.
Adobe does not have the only pro-caliber image editing app out there. If they're upset that iPhoto killed ImageReady, and incensed that FinalCut destroyed Premier, wait until Apple decides to buy the TIFF-any codebase, or Avisa Image, or just roll their own Photoshop killer based on the GIMP.
Adobe is playing a very dangerous game. If Quark can be dethroned, you better damn well believe Photoshop can be, too. Apple's got pockets deep enough to do it, and marketing savvy that put FinalCut Pro on a Powerbook in the news vans of every TV station in the civilized world.
You don't take on Apple and win.
SoupIsGood Food
This is about Final Cut Pro (Score:4, Interesting)
SO WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
When it comes to my client wanting me to either A) work on a specific platform so when I give them my files they know it will run on there machines fine or B) Needing an APP that only runs on one particular platform - Argueing over which is faster doesn't matter, it comes down to the FACT that as a graphic designer I NEED to have both my Apple Dual 500 AND my P4 1.6ghz Windows XP machines.
Having one or the other ONLY in these fields WILL limit you.
Do You Even *Bother* To Read Linked The Articles? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the July 2002 issue of Digital Producer Magazine, Charlie White reported on a head-to-head duel between a single-processor Dell 2.53GHz Pentium® 4 -- the Dell Precision Workstation 340 -- and the fastest Macintosh then available -- a 1GHz dual-processor G4. The contest compared renderings of files created in Adobe® After Effects®, Illustrator®, and Photoshop® software that are typical to the video post-production workflow. The graphs below show some of the results, which were consistent. While the computers used in this study are no longer the fastest in their respective classes, the information is still valid. The PC outperformed the similar Macintosh machine, at an impressive rate.
And this above all the pretty graphs:
Graphics courtesy of DMN - DigitalMediaNet.com
Listen up, dumbasses... this was an article written entirely external of Adobe and most likely was on Adobe's website simply because it was an Adobe product in the press. This has nothing to do with Adobe's own preferences.
Furthermore, you can't take a single set of benchmarks as indesputable proof of anything. Different benchmark tests can get widely different results.
Finally, if you look at the page one directory up, you'll see one of the links that says the following:
Prefer a PC for DV? - See what an industry expert says about PC vs. Mac for digital video editing."
It really has little to do with Adobe's preference for platform and more likely was put there because the sales of the PC versions are trailing behind the Mac versions. Adobe is at it's best when both platforms sell products evenly.
Same for this (current/long time) MacOS user (Score:5, Insightful)
I have used MacOS since late versions of System 6. I have only recently, in the last couple years, been using Windows full-time.
I feel like a traitor, but I have to say that, personally, I too prefer Windows when using Adobe apps. I don't know if it's the OS itself or shoddy programming for OS X, but Photoshop and Illustrator both seem slow to interact with uder OS X, whereas they seem snappy on XP.
I prefer OS X over XP in almost all other areas, but I feel that someone (probably a combination of Apple and Adobe) has seriously dropped the ball for Photoshop and Illustrator under OS X. It's just not as usable, IMO.
This (current/long time) MacOS user = not a pro (Score:5, Insightful)
Scratch disks, hard drive kind, size make huge differences for some reason on Macs, also lots of RAM, same kind fastest machine can take RAM matters too.
Further, lots of geeks will disagree but to an artist it makes a huge difference - INTERFACE = PRODUCTIVITY - even XP is pixelated and ugly, there is little that is not pleasing to the eye on a Mac.
Nice Graph on Ya (Score:3, Informative)
The PC bar lines up with
Tricky! (But not as tricky as the incredibly misleading title on this SlashDot posting.)
Re:Goodbye Motorolla! (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goodbye Motorolla! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Goodbye Motorolla! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Goodbye Motorolla! (Score:5, Funny)
"We were using Motorola processors, and all. And then, like, they stopped improving them and stuff. We were like, Huh??
We had to tell our customers that, you know, 3X the clock speed was only a myth. But they weren't trying to hear that.
That sucked.
Then we, like, lost our market share, and stuff... It was good market share.
Bummer.
My name is Steve Jobs, and I switched to X86."
Hello Gimp (Score:5, Interesting)
This would:
In short, this could be a good thing for Free Software.
Or not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Innacurate benchmark - only uses 1 cpu. (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't been following the Mac world for a while. This comes as a bit of a surprise, since Adobe was *always* the app vendor out in front when it came
Re:Crack??? (Score:5, Interesting)
The differences in interface: negligible.
The differences in speed: imperceptible.
The differences in cost: the pc's are cheaper.
Which do you think we are buying more of next year?
Our ENTIRE business rides on our ability to turn high end photoretouching (PS) and layout and design (AI). And there is no longer a big enough difference between macs and PC's to warrant the cost diff on our budget.
All of our PC users were forced onto their PC's having been hardcore mac users. They complained, they spent a week getting into "natural" mode with XP, and then no problems at all. Two of them are looking at upgrading their apples and they are looking at the new line of Vaio's.
Re:Crack??? (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I have. In addition to systems administration, I've also worked as a professional graphic designer (and sometimes still do for side cash). And pound-for-pound, the newest versions of Photoshop run better and faster on Windows than on Macintosh.
Personally, I find myself more and more using The GIMP on Linux because it's faster than Photoshop on *any* platform (and it's open source
Re:Crack??? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess those Adobe folks are on crack... have you seen PS run on a Mac vs Windows??? It is SO much faster doing nearly all filters. The 3rd party ones even show considerable differences. - RR
In fact, I have. In addition to systems administration, I've also worked as a professional graphic designer (and sometimes still do for side cash). And pound-for-pound, the newest versions of Photoshop run better and faster on Windows than on Macintosh.
The reason PhotoShop was much faster on Classic (Mac OS 9.x and earlier) for many fucntions was due to the way mutlitasking and memory management were handled.
Multitasking was "competitive" multitasking, meaning that the process in focus could, in theory, steal as many CPU quantums as it wanted and ignore interrupts from other programs. To demonstrate this, start a large network download or upload in an application (Netscape, Finder, and Fetch all work). Now load a large image in PhotoShop, and resize the editting window so horizontal and/or vertical scroll bars appear. Now scroll and hold the mouse button down for about 90 seconds. Go back to the application that was responsible for the download. Notice that it has timed out because it stopped receiving data. The application and its IO interrupts were ignored while you held the mouse button down to scroll. Obviously this is more advantageous when running one process "that matters", such as a filter benchmark.
The memory management on Classic is also pretty simple. First, there is no protected memory in Classic. An application has a preset "Preferred" and "Minumum" amount of memory setting attached to its binary. At runtime, Classic attempts to find as close to the preferred memory setting as possible, down to the minimum amount. It allocates all of that memory at run time, or fails to launch if the minumum memory setting is unavailable at that time. Throughout runtime, memory management really only consists of using that memory and possibly swapping some of it out. This vastly reduces memory management overhead.
With OS X, these advantages are erased. The processing capabilities of the system (especially AltiVec) still help vastly with some filters. However, handling other processes, context switching, memory allocation and of course the more complicated Quartz graphics engine offset the advantages. You can run filters faster in the background, the application and OS is vastly more stable, but you cannot run them them as fast as when they are in the foreground in Classic.
Re:Nice graphs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Um.. but the mac didn't win what the test was about. It lost.
If they really wanted to show info rather than a predetermined conclusion they would have done both bars in the same color.
You know, i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe
Re:It's ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
they move now when UNIX (include MacOS X) is gaining ground
It seems stupid to me for them to make such a proclamation which will only serve to inflame loyal Mac based customers of many years.
It's the same sort of backward move as when they decided to indefinitely discontinue the Linux FrameMaker beta program. [adobe.com] [They still support it for the Mac - for now.]
At MyCorp the UNIX desktop has moved from Sun to Linux, largely because of the cheaper x86 hardware. Needless to say, FrameMaker users emigrating from Sun are quickly getting an extra reason to be weaned off of Adobe's product because the way they can run it on their Linux box is over the network (mmm, latency) via X from a Sun.
The net outcome will be that more people will use the ubiquitous MS Word, and maybe StarOffice/OpenOffice on Linux, but we'll clearly be buying less Adobe products in the future.
It's got to be strange being an Adobe executive, watching MS eating chunks of your bread and butter business, but having to be nice to them so that you don't get on their shit list when it comes time to get a reasonable head start developing your product for the next version of Windows.
Re:It's ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the parent link [adobe.com] on adobe's site.
Quote::
Is it only me, or isn't ironic that they move now when UNIX (include MacOS X) is gaining ground at all fronts including the desktop users.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
While the Mac is attracting a record number of new users to the platform it is also loosing its established niches and customers. Apple's share in education, for instance, has gone from 50-60% to about 20% under jobs. Apple is also loosing quite a few customers in pre-press although I don't have any numbers on that. I think it is also telling that while Steve has shown in previous macworld keynotes that that the number of new users to the platform has gone from ~10% to 25-30%, Apple's market share is stagnant or decreasing and PC sales are flat which implies that for every new user to the platform Apple is loosing an established user.
What I believe is happening is that Apple is loosing market niches in which it has gained a sizable number of Early Majority users (as defined in Geoffrey A Moore's "Crossing the Chasm") and trading them for early adopter type users in other market segments. This does not bode well as it implies Steve has absolutely no idea how to market to an established user base. Since going from the initial inroads to niche market domination is the hard part, Apple's decline implies that it's quite possible that Apple will never, under Steve, gain enough market presence under in any niche to control it properly. If you have 10% of every market you're not important in any of them and you will be marginalized in all of them.
This definitely matches my experience. I was once a rabid Mac fan, however both the iMac and MacOS X did not present any obvious upgrade path to me since the iMac and ilk broke compatibility will all my peripherals and MacOS X did not leverage any of the knowledge I had acquired in using and debugging the MacOS. Oddly enough, it was easier for me to switch to the PC since my peripherals we're all PC Mac compatible and Windows was at least as Mac like as MacOS X.. and of course everything was cheaper. So I went with a new PC and have been quite pleased with it. This situation is typical when an established market is not presented with an obvious upgrade strategy.
Oddly enough Steve is quite good at setting up situations where he *could* dominate a niche. Like at the moment he looks to be going after the consumer market and the Unix market (quite a spread!). The thing is, as soon as he gets anywhere, I think he'll get bored and abandon the niches and move on to some other interesting niche technology. I seem to remember it was this type of mentality that got him fired from Apple in the first place
Re:It's ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at this chart
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0007/18.share . shtml [macworld.com]
It details the sales per platform of every major platform in the last 20 or so year (yes even stuff like amiga and commodore 64).
Mac sales have been flat for at least 10 years. The mac market should be facing a steady state and they could main
Re:It's ironic (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
You've got it backwards. Photoshop 3 (or maybe it was 2, my memory is hazy! Like the moors of Scotland!!) existed as far back as IRIX 5 on SGIs. It was round about the time that SGI were pushing the Indy as a desktop PC, with the idea that you would use a Mac for low-end 2D and the Indy for high-end 2D and entry level 3D. Of course it never played out because IRIX 5 was a piece of crap, far too slow, too buggy and the fancy desktop environment required too much RAM. By the time SGI got their act together with IRIX 6 (a damn good OS, IMHO, and I've used 'em all), the Mac had come to dominate 2D, not that it was ever particularly great but it was there and it worked better than Windows at the time and it was cheaper than SGI, who had pretty much abandoned their 2D ambitions by then and only sold machines with expensive 3D included in the price.
Re:It's ironic (Score:3, Informative)
BOGUS HEADLINE (Score:5, Informative)
I'm making an exception this time because I can save a lot of people time before they delve into the over 500 posts of reaction to this story (at least for those who read /. in threaded mode).
Adobe is not expressing a preference for Windows PC's
The linked page is called "pcprefered.html" because it is the page which is brought up on the Adobe Digital Video Products page when you click on a link that says: "Prefer a PC for DV? See what an industry expert has to say about PC vs. Mac for video editing."
In other words, those who followed the link from The Adobe DV Products Page [adobe.com] are indicating a preference for PC's. Since it's a page for those who prefer PC's, it's called "pcprefered.html".
There is nothing in the body of the page to indicate that Adobe has any preference for PC's, reccomends PC's over Macs, or even likes PC's. The page is a mirror of some Dell vs. Mac speed tests that some guy did. That is all.
By deep-linking to this page out of context, the person who submitted this was obviously trolling... perhaps hoping that the article would not go up until a little closer to April 1.
You may now safely ignore all of the responses below and move on with your life. No need to mod up this post, I'm already posting it at 2. Save your mod points for a real article.
Re:What did Apple to do Adobe? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said Quark's inability to move Xpress to OS X in a timely manner has given Adobe a market in the DTP arena with In Design.
Re:Not really... (Score:3, Interesting)
This coming from 3% of the computing market! Ha!
I'll bet anything that there are still Quadra 840's out there running Photoshop 3 as scanning stations!