14 DAY TRIAL // John Nack writing over at the Adobe blog has confirmed that the company behind Flash has decided to drop PowerPC support in the next generation of its Creative Suite. In other words, Creative Suite 4, or CS4, is the last version of the powerful collection of programs that is compatible with the PPC architecture.
“It'll probably come as no surprise that Adobe is following Apple's lead & going Intel-only with the next generation of the Creative Suite,” John Nack writes on the Adobe blog. “That is, CS4 is the last version that'll run on PowerPC-based Macs [...] By the time the next version of the Suite ships, the very youngest PPC-based Macs will be roughly four years old. They're still great systems, but if you haven't upgraded your workstation in four years, you're probably not in a rush to upgrade your software, either. Bottom line: Time & resources are finite, and with big transitions underway (going 64-bit-native, switching from Carbon to Cocoa), you want Adobe building for the future, not for the past,” Nack explains.
According to him, additional details on Adobe’s decision to drop PowerPC support can be found in the FAQ on Adobe.com. To save you the trip, Adobe puts it as bluntly as this: “Adobe intends for future versions of the Creative Suite range of products to run on Intel based Macs with no support for their installation on PowerPC systems.”
For those who aren’t very familiar with the software, Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a collection of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications made by the folks at Adobe Systems, who also make the Flash Player. All applications in CS4 feature a new tabbed interface for working with concurrently running Adobe CS4 programs where multiple applications can be opened inside multiple tabs.
Adobe CS4 is also known to perform better under 64-bit and multi-core processors. The Windows version of Adobe Photoshop CS4 runs natively as a 64-bit application, and although they are not natively 64-bit applications, Adobe After Effects CS4 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 have been optimized for 64-bit computers.