Now the news is old news, Apple has switched to an Intel Platform. I don’t really know the technical implications of what that means, other than the marketing mombo-jombo that I’ve been fed. And that’s fine. I’m not “techy” enough to have to know all the details why it’s better than IBM’s Power PC processors they used previously.
But where it does become an issue, is how it works with software… particularly the Adobe graphic design software I use all the time: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. To begin with, it was already pretty darn irritating when I upgraded my computer to Apple’s System 10, and all of a sudden all my applications had to be booted up in the older clunky system version that I always seemed to have trouble with. (QuarkXpress especially still doesn’t want to work right). And thus the need to pay to upgrade to the all new software – again.
Okay, so I’m in the market for a new computer. I’m also in the market to get the latest and greatest version’s of Adobe’s Creative Suite (which includes Illustrator, Photoshop, etc in case you didn’t know). I’m ready to plunk down $3K on the computer and another $2K on software. But now I find out, that the Adobe’s newest software actually runs slower on the latest and greatest Intel-Mac than it does on my current PowerPC-based Apple Computer. Hu?
According to Adobe’s Press release on the subject, they put out some marketing stuff about “being dedicated for 20 years to the support of Apple Products” and that their normal life-cycle for developing software to work on something new is 18-24 months. It also seems by the release that the whole Intel switch was a surprise to them, and “now that it has been released” they’ll begin designing for it. Is this really Adobe saying this? Does a company as large as Adobe really wait until something is released to start making a plan to design for it?
So other than my strong thoughts on going to a PC at home (I’ve worked on a PC at work for years, and actually don’t really have a preference PC or Apple at this point other than what I’m use to), I just sit on my hands and wait. Since Adobe does NOT offer an upgrade from the software I buy today (which runs slower on the Intel-Based Macs) to the software I’d like to have later (which runs like it should on the Intel-Based Macs) what am I suppose to do?
I guess I’ll just deal with what I got, and keep my little investment in Microsoft stock.