Adobe MacTel apps, mice, encrypted iChats, more...
Adobe CEO on MacTel apps
Although he's enthusiastic about Apple's switch to Intel processors, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen has no illusions about the task ahead. In an interview with CNET News.com, Chizen said Apple cofounder and chief executive Steve Jobs likes to "trivialize the process" and "make it seem easy." Not so, says Chizen: "moving the apps over is not that easy...Getting over to MacTel is work."
Still, the Adobe chief is optimistic that in the long run, users will get better performance and greater value from the new Apple hardware. Chizen told CNET not to expect Creative Suite for "MacTel" until late 2006 or early 2007. By that time, Apple's transition to Intel-based hardware will likely by complete.
Apple wired mouse officially EOL'd
Apple's wired Pro Mouse has now officially been declared end-of-life, meaning no new units will be produced for consumer resale. Rather than ship new Macs with the Mighty Mouse, Apple will continue to include the single-button Pro Mouse with orders until supplies run out, a source familiar with the subject said.
The company believes it can garner "incremental revenueÂ*from Mighty Mouse upsells," the source said. One could speculate that Apple is planning a wireless Mighty Mouse to generate future "upsells" once Macs begin shipping with the standard, wired Mighty Mouse.
Readers looking to purchase a standard Apple wired mouse should still be able to find them at some resellers like Amazon.
Encrypted iChat coming for .Mac members
There's a rumor floating around that, in addition to hundreds of bug fixes, Mac OS X 10.4.3 will offer .Mac subscribers a simple way to encrypt their iChat conversations. The rumor appears to be true.
By tapping into .Mac servers, the new version of iChat will reportedly allow users to encrypt text, audio and video chats with other .Mac members who have also have the latest version of the Apple-branded instant message client.
Supply of 17-inch PowerBooks dwindles
According to verified reports, in recent week's Apple's 17-inch PowerBook G4 offering has been tough to come by, even for the company's own retail stores. Tipsters say the high-end model has become increasingly constrained as the end of the month approached.
It has been reported that Apple holds one final PowerPC-based PowerBook G4 update that should debut this fall.
Although he's enthusiastic about Apple's switch to Intel processors, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen has no illusions about the task ahead. In an interview with CNET News.com, Chizen said Apple cofounder and chief executive Steve Jobs likes to "trivialize the process" and "make it seem easy." Not so, says Chizen: "moving the apps over is not that easy...Getting over to MacTel is work."
Still, the Adobe chief is optimistic that in the long run, users will get better performance and greater value from the new Apple hardware. Chizen told CNET not to expect Creative Suite for "MacTel" until late 2006 or early 2007. By that time, Apple's transition to Intel-based hardware will likely by complete.
Apple wired mouse officially EOL'd
Apple's wired Pro Mouse has now officially been declared end-of-life, meaning no new units will be produced for consumer resale. Rather than ship new Macs with the Mighty Mouse, Apple will continue to include the single-button Pro Mouse with orders until supplies run out, a source familiar with the subject said.
The company believes it can garner "incremental revenueÂ*from Mighty Mouse upsells," the source said. One could speculate that Apple is planning a wireless Mighty Mouse to generate future "upsells" once Macs begin shipping with the standard, wired Mighty Mouse.
Readers looking to purchase a standard Apple wired mouse should still be able to find them at some resellers like Amazon.
Encrypted iChat coming for .Mac members
There's a rumor floating around that, in addition to hundreds of bug fixes, Mac OS X 10.4.3 will offer .Mac subscribers a simple way to encrypt their iChat conversations. The rumor appears to be true.
By tapping into .Mac servers, the new version of iChat will reportedly allow users to encrypt text, audio and video chats with other .Mac members who have also have the latest version of the Apple-branded instant message client.
Supply of 17-inch PowerBooks dwindles
According to verified reports, in recent week's Apple's 17-inch PowerBook G4 offering has been tough to come by, even for the company's own retail stores. Tipsters say the high-end model has become increasingly constrained as the end of the month approached.
It has been reported that Apple holds one final PowerPC-based PowerBook G4 update that should debut this fall.
Comments
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Adobe CEO on MacTel apps
Although he's enthusiastic about Apple's switch to Intel processors, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen has no illusions about the task ahead. In an interview with CNET News.com, Chizen said Apple cofounder and chief executive Steve Jobs likes to "trivialize the process" and "make it seem easy." Not so, says Chizen: "moving the apps over is not that easy...Getting over to MacTel is work."
Still, the Adobe chief is optimistic that in the long run, users will get better performance and greater value from the new Apple hardware. Chizen told CNET not to expect Creative Suite for "MacTel" until late 2006 or early 2007. By that time, Apple's transition to Intel-based hardware will likely by complete.
So, what are the bets about whether Photoshop will run faster on a 2 Ghz G4 Powerbook (provided they still come out) or under Rosetta in a 2 Ghz Pentium M Dual-core? At least untill 2007 this question will remain relevant.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
Well if Adobe ever got off its collective asses and wrote their applications with Cocoa as one option provided OS X apps with Cocoa interfaces then they wouldn't be whining about how "non-trivial" is their port situation.
I think adobe is right, apple is trivializing the process, as if migrating to a new processor is ever that easy. What next, apple cures cancer?. Secondly, a lot of apps are carbon, yes, writing stuff in cocoa will make process easier but that is not the point. Even with cocoa apps, it is not a trivial process. There are tons of windows apps that suck. Is this the goal of apple?.. for companies to declare "look, i assigned one developer and he did it in a day, the app is sucky but hey, stevie is right!!"?. Is that the goal?.
I was checking out Mac mini's on the Apple homepage, and I noticed that they have already replaced the wired pro mouse with the Mighty mouse under the options for mice/keyboards.
Originally posted by noirdesir
So, what are the bets about whether Photoshop will run faster on a 2 Ghz G4 Powerbook (provided they still come out) or under Rosetta in a 2 Ghz Pentium M Dual-core? At least untill 2007 this question will remain relevant.
That's a tough one. It would depend upon the filter you're using, but I think the result would be close, on average.
Originally posted by wnurse
I think adobe is right, apple is trivializing the process, as if migrating to a new processor is ever that easy. What next, apple cures cancer?. Secondly, a lot of apps are carbon, yes, writing stuff in cocoa will make process easier but that is not the point. Even with cocoa apps, it is not a trivial process. There are tons of windows apps that suck. Is this the goal of apple?.. for companies to declare "look, i assigned one developer and he did it in a day, the app is sucky but hey, stevie is right!!"?. Is that the goal?.
I don't think that Apple is trivializing it at all. One of the reasons the changeover is going to take so long is because they realize that some big complex apps that optimize and use Altivec for performance will take a while.
But Adobe has sat on their hands. I beta test PS, and I along with others have wondered why Adobe hasn't even played with Cocoa. Shame on them!
Originally posted by noirdesir
So, what are the bets about whether Photoshop will run faster on a 2 Ghz G4 Powerbook (provided they still come out) or under Rosetta in a 2 Ghz Pentium M Dual-core? At least untill 2007 this question will remain relevant.
I vote for the G4, seeing that x86 = no Altivec, which many PS filters use. Does Rosetta even support multiprocessing for emulated apps?
Originally posted by chych
I vote for the G4, seeing that x86 = no Altivec, which many PS filters use. Does Rosetta even support multiprocessing for emulated apps?
X86 = SSE = Altivec
not exactly of course but altivec is not the hold up here. it's their crappy codewarrior code
Originally posted by Bronxite
X86 = SSE = Altivec
not exactly of course but altivec is not the hold up here. it's their crappy codewarrior code
SSE doesn't equal Altivec. Even SSE3 which so far, I believe, only AMD supports isn't the same thing.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
Well if Adobe ever got off its collective asses and wrote their applications with Cocoa as one option provided OS X apps with Cocoa interfaces then they wouldn't be whining about how "non-trivial" is their port situation.
Porting the whole app to Cocoa would be way more work than porting what they have to x86.
Originally posted by melgross
That's a tough one. It would depend upon the filter you're using, but I think the result would be close, on average.
Really?
Most stuff I've been doing on a 1.8Ghz G5 iMac completely whups a 1.7Ghz Pentium M. Especially Photoshop running native on both. Alien Skin filters, stuff like that. Not even close. I get 3 to 5x speeds out of the iMac at some things. The Pentium M wins on others though.
So a 2Ghz G4, which has better Altivec and double the cache than the G5 and better vector code than SSE on the Pentium M would be better still.
Rosetta will not get anywhere near close as it doesn't emulate AltiVec. About 70% of a theoretical 2Ghz G3 is what you'd expect on a good day.
Originally posted by CharlesS
Porting the whole app to Cocoa would be way more work than porting what they have to x86.
Yeah. That's what I was thinking when teh Steve said it was real easy for Cocoa apps.
I was sat their thinking of all the apps I used and how the majority of the big ones are Carbon. All of Adobe's, all of Macromedia's, Microsoft Office and a fair chunk of Apple's even including iTunes.
I can't see me shifting till there are some faster intel processors than today's G5s AND we've got OSX 10.5 plus the above software native.
Well that'd be news 3-5 years ago. The current apple mouse is simply called "Apple Mouse." The Pro Mouse was already discontinued years ago.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Yeah. That's what I was thinking when teh Steve said it was real easy for Cocoa apps.
I was sat their thinking of all the apps I used and how the majority of the big ones are Carbon. All of Adobe's, all of Macromedia's, Microsoft Office and a fair chunk of Apple's even including iTunes.
I can't see me shifting till there are some faster intel processors than today's G5s AND we've got OSX 10.5 plus the above software native.
keep in mind here, laptop macs are switching in 2006, and desktops are switching in 2007. sure the G5 may outperform some of intel's processors today, but which processor line is going to develop faster? it's a serious question that you have to think about
sure, the G4s may keep up with Pentium Ms right now, but where is Freescale going? Where are IBM's processors going? Are they going to compete with dual core 2.2Ghz Pentium Ms? I really don't know, but that's the question to ask.
Sorry Bruce but that's the price you pay for having a dinosaur app the size of a brontosaurus. Had you *maybe* considered cleaning up the code or starting a brand new product to replace Photoshop, you wouldn't be in this mess today.
How long can Photoshop keep using its current codebase?
One day, a completely native app is going to leapfrog Photoshop with clean code. That day is probably closer than ever.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Rosetta will not get anywhere near close as it doesn't emulate AltiVec. About 70% of a theoretical 2Ghz G3 is what you'd expect on a good day.
Slight correction, this comparison would have to be scaled by the difference between a native app on a 2 GHz dual-core Pentium M and a native app on a 2 GHz G3.
If the app runs on a G3 as fast as on a G4 then Rosetta would deliver about 80% (I have heard different numbers, but it must be around that) of the performance on a Pentium M where a native app would run as fast as on the G3.
Since a lot of apps will run faster on a Pentium M than on a G3 (the G4 and G5s beat the Pentium (M) mostly in areas where Altivec is used), this 80% might have to scaled by a factor of let's say 1.5, meaning you end up with 120% performance (alas only for non-Altivec apps). For Altivec-heavy apps this 80% drops down to 10% perhaps, so you would get 15% performance.
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Encrypted iChat coming for .Mac members
There's a rumor floating around that, in addition to hundreds of bug fixes, Mac OS X 10.4.3 will offer .Mac subscribers a simple way to encrypt their iChat conversations. The rumor appears to be true.
[/url][/c]
that is a joke, unless the only people you talk to are dotmac customers and they are always on Macs, then it is meaningless, AIM doesnt allow encryption, so if encrypted instant messaging is what you want, you should look elsewhere...the only good thing I see here is that you could do end to end encryprion with jabber clients, but that should be standard in the client anyway,
Originally posted by kim kap sol
How long can Photoshop keep using its current codebase?
One day, a completely native app is going to leapfrog Photoshop with clean code. That day is probably closer than ever.
you forget Adobes strongest card: 100% seemless cross-platformness that is not an easy thing to do, you see, so the codebase of any would-be competitor would be huge and complex, that is why there is so little competition here. The only competition that Adobe really has had recently has been from Macromedia...we all know what happend there.
The only hope for a "photoshop killer" seems to be Corel, but they are pretty much a 2nd class citezen in the design world, they have painter and that is about it.
Adobes biggest lock is in post script and PDF, that workflow is locked in and for many would be expencive if not impossible to replace.
P.S. Quark is a joke.
Encrypting iChats: I have a hard enough time getting my "buddies" to read what I write in iChats! Why do I have to make it hard for anyone else?! ;-)