Adobe Can Help Apple

Apple took everyone by surprise when it introduced Intel processors in 2005, making the jump from the PowerPC ones. The bad part about this is that the Mac Pro workstations using Intel CPUs were not received by the graphics professionals community with joy, and one of the main reasons for it was the lack of support for these processors from the software companies such as Adobe. Well, it's not about "lack of support", but you can't rewrite a huge application like Creative Suite to run natively on Intel processors in a snap. The good part is that things are about to change, as Apple Insider's Kasper Jade wrote yesterday.

"Sales of Apple Computer's professional Mac line could receive a shot in the arm later this month if Adobe Systems proceeds with plans to release an early public beta of its Creative Suite 3.0 software bundle", wrote Apple Insider, and today is the right time to talk about this here...

Adobe is under a lot of pressure from its large Mac customer base and they had to say something about the plans it has for supporting the Mac Intel architecture. The first statement they made was that native Intel support will be available with the new versions of its applications, and this should be next year's spring, when Creative Suite 3 should see the light of day.

Obviously, most professionals using Macs for graphic design purposes decided to wait until the software that runs natively on the new workstations will be available. However, while Apple doesn't sell the computers it should, Adobe's Mac software sales are rather slow too, since everyone is waiting for the new release. These being the facts, Adobe made a courageous move and announced the launch of a public beta of Creative Suite 3 this month.

The beta version will be freely available to the Creative Suite 2 license holders as a Universal Binary able to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, but Windows XP and Vista users should also get a version able to run on their computers. There are no prices or specifications out yet, so we'll get back to this subject as soon as the beta will be released. Stay tuned!