Adobe Photoshop CS4 is 64-Bit, but only if you have Windows
Not a bad thing, for about 90% of us, though it doesn’t help us.
I hear that other 10% screaming in agony though.
I’ve read a lot about it online and honestly, I just want to sum it up easily.
Adobe used the old method of doing things, an API to OSX called Carbon.
Apple is not making Carbon a 64-Bit API.
So…Adobe has about a million lines of photoshop code if I had to guess that needs to be re-written if they want it to work on OSX in 64-Bit glory.
Ars Technica made a nice blame chart:
Blame Apple: If Apple had not discontinued the 64-bit port of Carbon, Adobe could have shipped Photoshop CS4 as a 64-bit Mac OS X application as planned. At WWDC 2006, there were many sessions about developing 64-bit Carbon applications. At WWDC 2007, 64-bit Carbon was canceled. Adobe found this out the same time everyone else did, at WWDC. By canceling 64-bit Carbon so suddenly, Apple screwed Adobe.
Blame Adobe: The death of Carbon was inevitable. Adobe should have seen it coming and planned accordingly. It’s been clear for years that Cocoa offers many advantages to Mac application developers. Adobe should have started its Cocoa port of Photoshop years ago. By willfully ignoring Cocoa for so long, Adobe screwed Apple.
Sources:
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/04/1247246&from=rss
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2008/04/02/rhapsody-and-blues
One Response to “Adobe Photoshop CS4 is 64-Bit, but only if you have Windows”
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Good rant!
Just some food for thought. I’ll agree that Adobe has a TON of code they’d have to port over to 64 bit API, but I will throw my 2 cents in and say that it’s not that big of a deal. Why? Well, on a technical (programming) standpoint, it can’t be that bad. The API is just an interface, and with today’s object oriented programming techniques, combined with Adobe’s massive resources, it’s totally realistic for them to have released a 64 bit Mac version.
So I say blame Adobe. Bastards.