Comments on: Adobe Defends Intel-Only Mac Release for Soundbooth

By: Create Digital Music » Adobe Soundbooth Beta 2: Now Easier, More Photoshop-y

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:31:25 +0000

[...] Adobe Defends Intel-Only Mac Release for Soundbooth [...]

By: Jaymis Loveday

Jaymis Loveday — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:47:13 +0000

I’ve got your back boast :)

I definitely think we can get comment editing going. It would have to be for registered users though.

By: Hellgi

Hellgi — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:08:47 +0000

If the choice is between “A PC application and no Mac port” or “A PC application and an Intel-Mac-only port”, then of course the second choice is better.

Better doesn’t mean great. Most companies are making efforts to deliver Universal apps. Microsoft? Ahh, we don’t care, users can wait and pay $$$ to upgrade to Office 2007 next year. Adobe? Ahhh, we don’t care, users can wait and pay $$$ to upgrade to Photoshop CS 3 next year.

Of course it makes financial sense. But anything can be justified by “financial sense”. In the end, the question is, does it serve users? I’m not sure.

Jerome

By: boast

boast — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:55:40 +0000

wow, i really messed up the XHTML tag in my comment above. i was talking about Audiofile Engineering’s WaveEditor. it should read:

“don’t forget about Audiofile Engineering’s WaveEditor”

By: boast

boast — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:51:22 +0000

don’t forget about Audiofile EngineeringÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s WaveEditor. it’s Universal Binary already and has been rock solid on my MacBook.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:11:48 +0000

I can see Adobe’s point. I’ve coded low-level DSP functions in assembly on both PPC Altivec and x86 SSE3. It’s entirely possible to get identical results from both, but the architectures are completely different and the code likewise. Considering it took me a few hours to get a simple FIR to match, multiply that by the complexity of the functions they’re doing and the ROI just isn’t there.

By: bliss

bliss — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:21:13 +0000

If MAGIX announced that they were bringing Samplitude to the Mac platform and only for MacIntel, as a PPC user I would not be upset about hearing that. Sure, if I had purchased one of the Quad G5s a year or so ago I’d be hella frustrated, but I wouldn’t get upset. Well, maybe I would but more than likely I would be upset with myself because at that time it was quite clear where Apple was headed as far as Intel is concerned. Still it would be great news to hear if MAGIX made such an announcement. Anyway - at least apps are not being taken from us PPC users just yet, the future looks bright for all of the other Adobe products that are currently available for PPC and MacIntel.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:05:11 +0000

Oh, and editing comments … we’ve talked about that before. I’ll see if there’s anything we can do.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:03:30 +0000

Well, clearly what got Adobe some attention here is that the bulk of development now *has* been Universal, not Intel-only. This is the first Intel-only app I’ve seen, myself (not saying there aren’t others, but I haven’t seen them). I’d say for the most part, the universal binary system has made this transition transparent for PowerPC users (less so for Intel Mac users, because of waiting for Intel-native software!)

Anyway, not all applications are the same, and in this case we have an application that has a high concentration of the things that are hard to port.

I’d still notice that there are comparisons made between Intel-native code in Soundbooth and Audition. I think the really interesting detail here might be that we’d finally see Audition for Mac, which really would demonstrate that this makes things easier to port. Don’t want to get hopes up, though, as this may not be practical — no idea what’s actually in Audition’s code base.

By: bliss

bliss — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:58:20 +0000

Pardon my spelling of “equivalent” as “equivilent” above. I’m an edit junkie, wish I could edit these things.