Adobe passes on 64-bit code in Photoshop CS3

[AppleInsider]

Photoshop co-designer Scott Byer said Thursday that his team fully intends to launch a 64-bit version of its popular image editor, but that doing so for the upcoming version included with Creative Suite 3.0 (CS3) would be impractical.

Responding to questions from users about a lack of 64-bit support in the latest Photoshop CS3 beta, Byer in his official blog pointed out that many of the perceived benefits of 64-bit computing simply won't manifest themselves with current generations of hardware and software.

Byer said most Photoshop users are still running operating systems that only support 32-bit memory addressing for each program -- including Mac OS X Tiger, which can only assign 3GB per application. This, he says, eliminates the primary advantage of 64-bit technology: memory addressing beyond the 4GB barrier inherent to 32-bit software.

"Let's check all the 64-bit hype at the door," he wrote. "[64-bit apps] can address a much larger amount of memory. That's pretty much it. 64-bit applications don't magically get faster access to memory, or any of the other key things that would help most applications perform better."

In fact, Byer added that most of today's computers would actually incur a performance penalty as the code -- which is literally twice the size when accomplishing the same task -- would bog down the memory subsystem, reducing the amount of information that could pass through at any given time. Contemporary AMD and Intel processors only occasionally stand to gain from 64-bit code and often see their advantage negated by file caching.

The Adobe developer particularly rules out Mac development of a 64-bit edition of Photoshop CS3, blaming Tiger's fundamental 32-bit restrictions despite its selective 64-bit elements. "Many of the libraries an application would need to be fully 64-bit aren't available. So, on the Macintosh side," he wrote, "the answer [to the likelihood of a 64-bit version of Photoshop CS3] is zero."

While Byer says that he would love to update his company's star program and take advantage of more than 4GB of memory, he admits that the time spent on 64-bit technology would be better used for polishing the Universal Binary for Mac users and adding features that would be more immediately appreciated by artists looking to upgrade from earlier versions. However, he promises that a 64-bit edition is all but inevitable when more computers start using the greater memory space.

"It's a when, not an if," he wrote.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[fuyutsuki]

Another edict from the Adobe Attitude Division I see. Wonder what the extra caffeinated coder drinks are spiked with over there?

[audiopollution]

Originally Posted by fuyutsuki

Another edict from the Adobe Attitude Division I see. Wonder what the extra caffeinated coder drinks are spiked with over there?

I didn't read much 'attitude' into his comments ... unless there's a new definition for pragmatic that I haven't heard about yet.

[Booga]

Thank goodness someone is talking reality with regards to 64-bit. It's silly hearing about how 64-bit is some sort of panacea. Everything the Adobe rep said is exactly spot-on. Kudos!

On the other hand, Leopard WILL be a 64-bit OS, and Photoshop users are likely to be some of the first to demand more than 3-4GB from a user-facing app, so hopefully we won't have to wait until CS4.

[Hattig]

Hmmm, 64 bit code is a little larger than 32 bit code (for AMD64 vs x86) as there is a prefix byte for 64-bit instructions. On the other hand the extra registers in AMD64 often counteract this increase as you need less loads and stores. Typically a 64-bit application will be a small bit larger, but certainly not twice the size. Of course you also have compiler maturity to account for - it could be that generate 64-bit code is less size-efficient.

And as for 64-bit pointers, yes, they'll increase the code size a little bit (IIRC AMD64 is 48-bit pointers anyway). 64-bit integers? Only if you need them, you can still use 32-bit integers.

Now the arguments regarding 32-bit operating systems are actually true, and also for image work 64-bit integers aren't useful, SIMD instructions are and AMD64 only adds extra registers for these, and 64-bit addressing is useful when you have >2GB images - and a decent application specific mechanism for managing files of this size is probably just as good a mechanism to use right now.

[jbelkin]

CS3 is not out until Spring when Leopard comes out - why should we deliver you maximum performance to match your hardware when we could save a few bucks and sell you 75% of the performance match and in 2 years, sell you an upgrade to 100% - of course, then I'm sure Apple will be on 16-cores but their version of CS will only be able to access 8 cores so never mind that 100% match thing.

Basically, its what do we care what YOU want - you're just the user, we're Abobe.

You will take what we offer and like it.

They thought the 4-minute launch and 2-minute to see a transition Adobe Premiere was good enough for the Mac video market - rewrite the code - pawshaw, next thing, you'll want to call it imovie and give it away for free when we charge $499 for the priviliedge ...

If there was no MS, Adobe would win the crown for longest time between apps for no real reason - and like the new CS, instead of making it 64-bit, they spent all this time appreantly re-doing the icons ... good choice of time usage.

It's one thing to be arrogant if you over-deliver what people expect but to always be two years late (that OSX version, yea, it's coming) just because? I think you might just be asking for Apple to release a PS killer and then ...

[stormj]

Certainly a guy with as much experience as Byer has been around long enough to know that the computer graveyard is littered with products that people claimed would be good enough because people "would never use" the next level of features. (640k max on the original PC, anyone?)

Plus, his whole spiel about the Mac is intentionally stupid since CS3 will correlate in time with Leopard. Talking about Tiger's lack of true 64bitness is a red herring.

Time was when Photoshop was a leader because you needed the latest gear to run it correctly. Now, ironically, when it is most relevant in the era of the death of film, Adobe is making it lame.

[Frank777]

I can understand not going the 64-bit route right now, but has Adobe addressed whether CS3 will be able to fully utilize Macs with Dual Quad Core chips?

That to me is the more pressing question, given that many of us will be buying such Macs this spring with CS3.

[JeffDM]

The filters wouldn't benefit from 64 bit code? I suppose that's all handled by vector ops now. But I thought people were begging Adobe to have something to handle images larger than 2GB for many years.

[melgross]

64 bit is overrated. The primary function is for the extra memory addressing.

Only the Mac Pro addresses enough memory now to accommodate 64 bit programs. That is a small market at this time.

Leopard won't have significant sales compared to Tiger for at least a year, perhaps more.

Pros and shops don't rush out to embrace a new OS.

Remember he did say "when", not "if".

Don't be in such a hurry.

Almost no one here will benefit.

[macman2790]

Originally Posted by jbelkin

CS3 is not out until Spring when Leopard comes out - why should we deliver you maximum performance to match your hardware when we could save a few bucks and sell you 75% of the performance match and in 2 years, sell you an upgrade to 100% - of course, then I'm sure Apple will be on 16-cores but their version of CS will only be able to access 8 cores so never mind that 100% match thing.

Basically, its what do we care what YOU want - you're just the user, we're Abobe.

You will take what we offer and like it.

They thought the 4-minute launch and 2-minute to see a transition Adobe Premiere was good enough for the Mac video market - rewrite the code - pawshaw, next thing, you'll want to call it imovie and give it away for free when we charge $499 for the priviliedge ...

If there was no MS, Adobe would win the crown for longest time between apps for no real reason - and like the new CS, instead of making it 64-bit, they spent all this time appreantly re-doing the icons ... good choice of time usage.

It's one thing to be arrogant if you over-deliver what people expect but to always be two years late (that OSX version, yea, it's coming) just because? I think you might just be asking for Apple to release a PS killer and then ...

You pretty much summed up my anger towards adobe's lack of respect to their customers. But they do things like this because their product will still be bought regardless of how much better it is than cs2. Well the new news is macman2790 passes on buying another adobe product.

[barefeats]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Photoshop co-designer Scott Byer said Thursday that his team fully intends to launch a 64-bit version of its popular image editor, but that doing so for the upcoming version included with Creative Suite 3.0 (CS3) would be impractical.....

"Let's check all the 64-bit hype at the door," he wrote. "[64-bit apps] can address a much larger amount of memory. That's pretty much it. 64-bit applications don't magically get faster access to memory, or any of the other key things that would help most applications perform better."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Accessing extra memory may not speed up some apps but with more and more Photoshop users editing RAW files, I would think that, with numerous history states and cache levels set in preferences, being able to use more than 3GB of RAM for caching (and less instances of going to the the scratch disk) would be very helpful.

I posed this question to one of the Photoshop programmers and he reminded me that CS2 (and CS3 beta) are able to conjur up more than 3GB cache by "asking" OS X Tiger to grab unused memory for bonus cache area. I was able to demonstrate this by setting the cache preference to 100MB. When I opened and rotated a 300MB file, the total memory usage jumped to over 7GB. Photoshop CS2 was the only user app running. It could be called "silent partner" caching. Apple's Motion 2 does the same thing if you do a RAM Preview render of multiple projects.

[sunilraman]

I think for now it's more important for Adobe to focus on CS3 and Macromedia Studio9 (I guess all called Adobe CS3 now), in terms of refining the Universal Binaries to bring the Mac creatives/ producers back into the fold, so to speak. More importantly, to get people upgrading their Macs and moving to Leopard.

A well-thought out, decently updated Adobe CS3 full suite will be the best thing for Apple from Adobe for now. Addressing more than 3GB is cool but creatives/ producers can work around that in various ways. In any case Final Cut Pro and Motion are strong options for video peoples anyway.

I am very much looking at this in terms of what's best for Apple. Adobe CS3 Universal roll-out from April 2007 to coincide with Leopard (to some degree) and Leopard and Parallels supporting BootCamp/ Virtualization for Vista, looking good for the April-May-June 2007 quarter.

Looking down the line, the next upgrade, Adobe CS4, will be let's say April 2009. By then pretty much everything will be 64-bit, 8-10GB could be mid-end, 12GB - 16GB could be max supported on PC prosumer desktop, iMac, MacBookPro.

An arithmetic progression of RAM spec'ed* doubling every year, would show:

2001 - 64mb RAM
2002 - 128mb RAM
2003 - 256mb RAM
2004 - 512mb RAM
2005 - 1gb RAM
2006 - 2gb RAM
2007 - 4gb RAM
2008 - 8gb RAM
2009 - 16gb RAM
2010 - 32gb RAM

*Market forces, not necessarily "What are we gonna do with all this RAM???"

2008 to 2009 will be the year(s) of 64-bit. Let's say you have a PC/Mac with 6GB of RAM (mind-boggling to think of, but look at the yearly progression I showed above) ... 1GB to system, 4.5GB to major application (3D, others????) and 512mb to misc applications, this scenario starts to make sense.

2010 - 32GB RAM. Awwww YEAHHHH.

[sunilraman]

Originally Posted by barefeats

Accessing extra memory may not speed up some apps but with more and more Photoshop users editing RAW files, I would think that, with numerous history states and cache levels set in preferences, being able to use more than 3GB of RAM for caching (and less instances of going to the the scratch disk) would be very helpful.

I posed this question to one of the Photoshop programmers and he reminded me that CS2 (and CS3 beta) are able to conjur up more than 3GB cache by "asking" OS X Tiger to grab unused memory for bonus cache area. I was able to demonstrate this by setting the cache preference to 100MB. When I opened and rotated a 300MB file, the total memory usage jumped to over 7GB. Photoshop CS2 was the only user app running. It could be called "silent partner" caching. Apple's Motion 2 does the same thing if you do a RAM Preview render of multiple projects.

I think for 2007 and 2008 this workaround works well for Adobe CS3 and Apple applications. I'm thinking start of 2009 for full 64-bit apps to really start taking off, based on my projections on average mid-high-end computer RAM market specs.

[sunilraman]

(Remember, I'm not talking clusters or special MacPros fully kitted out to 16GB or whatever, these are special cases for 2007)... The weird thing is that the hard disks are lagging behind. The CPUs are there, 4-32 cores will start popping up from 2007 through 2009. The RAM is there, as projected, going up to 32GB... In 2007 to 2008 we need to see decent-performing 15,000RPM desktop SATA2 drives start to show up and/or RAID 0/ RAID 0+1 configs over just two hard disks really pony up in terms of speed, power consumption, vibration and noise factors.

As a side note, if Adobe CS3 is not multi-threaded, that would be really freakin' tragic. But maybe not sooo much, because one would have different apps going at once, but given CS3 will be the latest up to about middle of 2009, you'd want the software to make the most of your 2 to 4 to [16/32 cores in 2009].

People will use Adobe CS3 in many different ways, and there's a lot one can do with CS2 and Macromedia Studio 8 right now for 2007, even 2008.

But we're discussing the bleeding edge here. It's sharp, but lean and mean. Apple Macs are there. I hope Adobe CS3 will be too.

[yama]

Heh, this doesn't surprise me at all. Having worked for Adobe for a while, I know customers have been requesting 64bit support since the G5s came out. The reason they gave then for not having 64bit support was that Panther didn't support 64bit apps. Then Tiger came out with 64bit support - but only for the UNIX tools. Four years on and they're still saying no to 64bit support even though Leopard is fully 64bit. Never mind the fact that 64bit versions of Windows XP and 2003 have been around for ages.

Now about this drivel that 64bits won't make any difference - rubbish. Adobe apps are RAM hungry beasts, and if they cannot access RAM they start hitting the hard disk(s). As Adobe will point out themselves - RAM is faster than a scratch disk. So how they can now turn around and claim that more RAM won't make a difference is baffling.

The most they can claim is that it won't make a difference for customers who don't work on large files. Even so, Adobe is pushing RAW support for each new version of Photoshop, and created a new file format (PSB) for saving files larger than 2gig. There is clear indication that people are starting to use larger files with more filters and layers all the time. Yet this guy is insisting that people don't need to use the extra memory that a 64bit app can offer. Sure, customers are often stupid and don't really understand what it is they need, but if there is a clear trend for using larger files they really can't brush this off.

I expect the real reason they don't want to add 64bit support is that it is going to be a major rewrite of the code and it'll be a nightmare to make it work on both Windows and Mac OS X.

As an example even though Photoshop 7 had support for 16bits per channel colour support, it wasn't until Photoshop CS 2 until all the filters and adjustments supported this colour depth (actually, there still might be some that don't work). Likewise, it wasn't until Photoshop 7 that some of the blur filters worked on files which were larger than 500MB.

Cross-platform compatibility and grotesquely old legacy code are the main things which are stopping development of Photoshop these days.

[solipsism]

Right around the time when CS3 comes out Apple will be a completely 64-bit from the OS down to the hardware, so I can see why people will want the ability to address more than 3GB RAM to Adobe. On the other hand, I think that 3GB RAM is more than sufficient for most people, but most importantly, see this as a way (read:reason) for Adobe to get you to buy CS4 in a couple years.

2007: Buy CS3 because it's a Universal Binary that will work great with your Intel Mac
2009: Buy CS4 because it's a 64-bit app that will work great with your average 8GB RAM Mac running 10.7.x.

[jpellino]

They pulled the same stunt with Xcode - and spent a few product cycles backpedaling on things Apple told them to prep for years ago. Leopard's launch is imminent, and PS's advancements have been incremental for far too long now. The poster was right - they'll be the new Quark- given the CoreImage tools available in Tiger and Leopard - they coul be pwned in short time by an upstart. Case in point - we dropped PageMaker for Pages based on performance, turnaround and price with our non-profit's production needs.

[Wojciechowski]

Originally Posted by Booga

Photoshop users are likely to be some of the first to demand more than 3-4GB from a user-facing app, so hopefully we won't have to wait until CS4.

Although there are not as many After Effects user than there are Photoshop users, I think the people that use After Effects and other Video software would much more appreciate a 64-bit version that allows them to use 3-4.

[jwdawso]

Originally Posted by jbelkin

CS3 is not out until Spring when Leopard comes out - why should we deliver you maximum performance to match your hardware when we could save a few bucks and sell you 75% of the performance match and in 2 years, sell you an upgrade to 100% - of course, then I'm sure Apple will be on 16-cores but their version of CS will only be able to access 8 cores so never mind that 100% match thing.

Basically, its what do we care what YOU want - you're just the user, we're Abobe.

...

It's one thing to be arrogant if you over-deliver what people expect but to always be two years late (that OSX version, yea, it's coming) just because? I think you might just be asking for Apple to release a PS killer and then ...

JBelkin - you are so right! 64-bit has not been a rumor, it's been available, so why hasn't Adobe been working this for CS3? See above for the answer. Adobe is just like MS, milking their cash cow.

[Lemon Bon Bon.]

Adobe DEFINITELY the NEW Quark
CS3 is not out until Spring when Leopard comes out - why should we deliver you maximum performance to match your hardware when we could save a few bucks and sell you 75% of the performance match and in 2 years, sell you an upgrade to 100% - of course, then I'm sure Apple will be on 16-cores but their version of CS will only be able to access 8 cores so never mind that 100% match thing.

Basically, its what do we care what YOU want - you're just the user, we're Abobe.

You will take what we offer and like it.

They thought the 4-minute launch and 2-minute to see a transition Adobe Premiere was good enough for the Mac video market - rewrite the code - pawshaw, next thing, you'll want to call it imovie and give it away for free when we charge $499 for the priviliedge ...

If there was no MS, Adobe would win the crown for longest time between apps for no real reason - and like the new CS, instead of making it 64-bit, they spent all this time appreantly re-doing the icons ... good choice of time usage.

It's one thing to be arrogant if you over-deliver what people expect but to always be two years late (that OSX version, yea, it's coming) just because? I think you might just be asking for Apple to release a PS killer and then ...

Well said.

Lemon Bon Bon

[melgross]

Originally Posted by sunilraman

I think for now it's more important for Adobe to focus on CS3 and Macromedia Studio9 (I guess all called Adobe CS3 now), in terms of refining the Universal Binaries to bring the Mac creatives/ producers back into the fold, so to speak. More importantly, to get people upgrading their Macs and moving to Leopard.

A well-thought out, decently updated Adobe CS3 full suite will be the best thing for Apple from Adobe for now. Addressing more than 3GB is cool but creatives/ producers can work around that in various ways. In any case Final Cut Pro and Motion are strong options for video peoples anyway.

I am very much looking at this in terms of what's best for Apple. Adobe CS3 Universal roll-out from April 2007 to coincide with Leopard (to some degree) and Leopard and Parallels supporting BootCamp/ Virtualization for Vista, looking good for the April-May-June 2007 quarter.

Looking down the line, the next upgrade, Adobe CS4, will be let's say April 2009. By then pretty much everything will be 64-bit, 8-10GB could be mid-end, 12GB - 16GB could be max supported on PC prosumer desktop, iMac, MacBookPro.

An arithmetic progression of RAM spec'ed* doubling every year, would show:

2001 - 64mb RAM
2002 - 128mb RAM
2003 - 256mb RAM
2004 - 512mb RAM
2005 - 1gb RAM
2006 - 2gb RAM
2007 - 4gb RAM
2008 - 8gb RAM
2009 - 16gb RAM
2010 - 32gb RAM

*Market forces, not necessarily "What are we gonna do with all this RAM???"

2008 to 2009 will be the year(s) of 64-bit. Let's say you have a PC/Mac with 6GB of RAM (mind-boggling to think of, but look at the yearly progression I showed above) ... 1GB to system, 4.5GB to major application (3D, others????) and 512mb to misc applications, this scenario starts to make sense.

2010 - 32GB RAM. Awwww YEAHHHH.

I pretty much agree, though I'm not so sure we will see RAM numbers quite as high as that as a standard install for a couple of years later. After 8 GB, few people will see any benefit.

[Lemon Bon Bon.]

Adobe seem to have a PR attitude problem.

It seems like their Pshop app' has been very incremental since version 4 (which I loved.)

X, Universal binaries. 64 bit. Hmmm. Reasons to get us to upgrade no doubt. But obviously so.

Have they taken advantage of Core Image?

X only features?

Multi-core support?

I hope CS3 is going to be much faster than previous treacle like efforts. We've got bigger hard drives, more ram, faster cpus, more cpus, faster bus speeds etc. It's about time Photoshop flew.

It's about time Adobe got off their lard asss code and delivered.

I still hope some start up company will come up with a Photoshop killer...or Apple themselves. It's like Word from M$. Geeze. You just type stuff. Big deal.

What was that old Photoshop rival called? Live Magic? Pity Apple couldn't have bought the code from them...

Lemon Bon Bon

[melgross]

Originally Posted by sunilraman

(Remember, I'm not talking clusters or special MacPros fully kitted out to 16GB or whatever, these are special cases for 2007)... The weird thing is that the hard disks are lagging behind. The CPUs are there, 4-32 cores will start popping up from 2007 through 2009. The RAM is there, as projected, going up to 32GB... In 2007 to 2008 we need to see decent-performing 15,000RPM desktop SATA2 drives start to show up and/or RAID 0/ RAID 0+1 configs over just two hard disks really pony up in terms of speed, power consumption, vibration and noise factors.

As a side note, if Adobe CS3 is not multi-threaded, that would be really freakin' tragic. But maybe not sooo much, because one would have different apps going at once, but given CS3 will be the latest up to about middle of 2009, you'd want the software to make the most of your 2 to 4 to [16/32 cores in 2009].

People will use Adobe CS3 in many different ways, and there's a lot one can do with CS2 and Macromedia Studio 8 right now for 2007, even 2008.

But we're discussing the bleeding edge here. It's sharp, but lean and mean. Apple Macs are there. I hope Adobe CS3 will be too.

I haven't been running my beta on a four core system, so I can't say, but I've heard that it works better with four cores. Remember that the current betas aren't optimized as yet. We usually don't see much of that until a couple of months before release. Sometimes later. I've been running it for almost three months now, and have seen some optimising, but ny no means what I would expect for the finished product.

From what I've been told, all of the testing code has not been removed from the current beta either, which slows it down as well.

In so far as drives go, I expect to see manufacturers to begin phasing out the 3.5" models in a year or two.

In a tech article about drive technology in this weeks Science, they mention that before the end of the decade, we will see portable drives with 400GB. Before that happens, I would imagine more companies to follow Apple's lead and start to go to the 2.5" models in their smaller machines. Speeds are already rising, and even with video, most people really do not need more than 200GB right now.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by yama

Heh, this doesn't surprise me at all. Having worked for Adobe for a while, I know customers have been requesting 64bit support since the G5s came out. The reason they gave then for not having 64bit support was that Panther didn't support 64bit apps. Then Tiger came out with 64bit support - but only for the UNIX tools. Four years on and they're still saying no to 64bit support even though Leopard is fully 64bit. Never mind the fact that 64bit versions of Windows XP and 2003 have been around for ages.

Now about this drivel that 64bits won't make any difference - rubbish. Adobe apps are RAM hungry beasts, and if they cannot access RAM they start hitting the hard disk(s). As Adobe will point out themselves - RAM is faster than a scratch disk. So how they can now turn around and claim that more RAM won't make a difference is baffling.

The most they can claim is that it won't make a difference for customers who don't work on large files. Even so, Adobe is pushing RAW support for each new version of Photoshop, and created a new file format (PSB) for saving files larger than 2gig. There is clear indication that people are starting to use larger files with more filters and layers all the time. Yet this guy is insisting that people don't need to use the extra memory that a 64bit app can offer. Sure, customers are often stupid and don't really understand what it is they need, but if there is a clear trend for using larger files they really can't brush this off.

I expect the real reason they don't want to add 64bit support is that it is going to be a major rewrite of the code and it'll be a nightmare to make it work on both Windows and Mac OS X.

As an example even though Photoshop 7 had support for 16bits per channel colour support, it wasn't until Photoshop CS 2 until all the filters and adjustments supported this colour depth (actually, there still might be some that don't work). Likewise, it wasn't until Photoshop 7 that some of the blur filters worked on files which were larger than 500MB.

Cross-platform compatibility and grotesquely old legacy code are the main things which are stopping development of Photoshop these days.

I don't see as much of a problem as you do.

The program doesn't have to be 64 bit. That's a misconception. It does need to address more than 32 bits of memory. That isn't too difficult to impliment. They can do that later. The chipsets themselves don't address 64 bits for RAM anyway.

Most filters are already being handled by either Altivec on the PPC, or SSE on Intel. Both address 128 bits.

We don't need 64 bit menus and such.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by jpellino

They pulled the same stunt with Xcode - and spent a few product cycles backpedaling on things Apple told them to prep for years ago. Leopard's launch is imminent, and PS's advancements have been incremental for far too long now. The poster was right - they'll be the new Quark- given the CoreImage tools available in Tiger and Leopard - they coul be pwned in short time by an upstart. Case in point - we dropped PageMaker for Pages based on performance, turnaround and price with our non-profit's production needs.

XCode was crap for years. Even now it isn't as sophisticated as MetroWorks. That's why they didn't switch.

Even Apple doesn't do what they tell others to do.

Let's see just how many of Apple's own programs will be 64 bits come MacWorld. All aren't even universal as yet, such as Shake, and that needs more RAM.

Many of Apple's programs can only address two cores, some, only one. We see that in the tests.

What is that about throwing the first stone?

[melgross]

Originally Posted by jwdawso

JBelkin - you are so right! 64-bit has not been a rumor, it's been available, so why hasn't Adobe been working this for CS3? See above for the answer. Adobe is just like MS, milking their cash cow.

Don't be so naive as to think they haven't been working on it.

When more than 5% of the computer users out there have real 64 bit systems, Adobe will show it. There are more important things for them to worry about right now.

[Wally]

Originally Posted by melgross

Let's see just how many of Apple's own programs will be 64 bits come MacWorld. All aren't even universal as yet, such as Shake, and that needs more RAM.
?

Shake is unversal.

[Squirrel_Monkey]

Melgross has it right. What is with all these kneejerk negative reactions? Have any of you worked on retail-bound software? I haven't, but I know those who do, and there are thousands of moving parts outside of the code itself -- namely the many business decisions that are considered in each iteration of a product.

I'm sure Adobe is aware that holding off on 64-bit apps and pushing RAW support are in conflict. It's just a necessary evil. High-end Mac Pros can handle this kind of thing, which is most likely destination for CS3. My 20" Core 2 iMac will probably be happy enough with a Universal Photoshop Elements.

Sunilraman also brings up a good point about hard drives. I don't know if a 15k drive or RAID solution will ever be useful enough (or quiet or small enough) for an iMac, but I wouldn't be shocked if they were available to Mac Pros this spring.

[vinney57]

Perfectly acceptable attitude. 64 bitness is of little consequence at this time. Next year's fine.

[jwdawso]

Originally Posted by melgross

Don't be so naive as to think they haven't been working on it.

When more than 5% of the computer users out there have real 64 bit systems, Adobe will show it. There are more important things for them to worry about right now.

Serial thinking! Give me a break! Do you work for Adobe? Do you think they have just one programmer? As far as throwing stones, none of us here work for Apple. Do you realize that Adobe just bought there main competitor - Macromedia. Adobe is a lumbering monopoly. As far as 5% - reread JBelkin's post. Your attitude appears to be monopoly-like - react to the market, don't strive for innovation and customer satisfaction. Keep in mind that the professional users who buy Adobe upgrades also buy current hardware.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by jwdawso

Serial thinking! Give me a break! Do you work for Adobe? Do you think they have just one programmer? As far as throwing stones, none of us here work for Apple. Do you realize that Adobe just bought there main competitor - Macromedia. Adobe is a lumbering monopoly. As far as 5% - reread JBelkin's post. Your attitude appears to be monopoly-like - react to the market, don't strive for innovation and customer satisfaction. Keep in mind that the professional users who buy Adobe upgrades also buy current hardware.

There have been several reasons covered, and if you can't at least accept some of them might be true, then there is not much to discuss except to resort to ad hominem attacks.

The only reason 64 bit is useful for Photoshop is if your images are greater than 2GB/3GB in size, and even then, there are techniques that can be used to break down images into segments. Using those techniques is a lot easier and probably pays off more rather than converting the entire program to 64 bit.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Wally

Shake is unversal.

Yes, you're right it was recently updated to that.

But the main point was that it needs more memory, and isn't 64 bit.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by jwdawso

Serial thinking! Give me a break! Do you work for Adobe? Do you think they have just one programmer? As far as throwing stones, none of us here work for Apple. Do you realize that Adobe just bought there main competitor - Macromedia. Adobe is a lumbering monopoly. As far as 5% - reread JBelkin's post. Your attitude appears to be monopoly-like - react to the market, don't strive for innovation and customer satisfaction. Keep in mind that the professional users who buy Adobe upgrades also buy current hardware.

I've been beta testing for them since 1991. They also came to my lab to test new versions of software.

I don't understand your odd post. I'm thinking serially? Please!

Belkin understands things about as well as you seem to, that is, not well at all.

[jwdawso]

Originally Posted by melgross

I've been beta testing for them since 1991. ...

JeffDM - "The filters wouldn't benefit from 64 bit code? I suppose that's all handled by vector ops now. But I thought people were begging Adobe to have something to handle images larger than 2GB for many years." You are right...

As far as "ad hominem attack" - melgross just reminded us that he has had Adobe in to let him test since 1991. Also, "monopoly-like thinking" is not an attack, but is a characterization of his stated view - that Adobe is working on what seems to be there best payoff, whereas some of us here have asked that Adobe use more of their resources (ie, they have a lot of programmers) to meet their professional users desires for state-of-the-art capability.

Final words - I enjoy this discussion, and I appologize for my "odd" and rude comments.

[kim kap sol]

This is definitely an Adobe ploy to nickel and dime faithful customers.

"You want 64-bit? You want 64-bit? 499$ mothahfuckah."

[sunilraman]

Originally Posted by melgross

I haven't been running my beta on a four core system, so I can't say, but I've heard that it works better with four cores. Remember that the current betas aren't optimized as yet. We usually don't see much of that until a couple of months before release. Sometimes later. I've been running it for almost three months now, and have seen some optimising, but ny no means what I would expect for the finished product.

From what I've been told, all of the testing code has not been removed from the current beta either, which slows it down as well.

In so far as drives go, I expect to see manufacturers to begin phasing out the 3.5" models in a year or two.

In a tech article about drive technology in this weeks Science, they mention that before the end of the decade, we will see portable drives with 400GB. Before that happens, I would imagine more companies to follow Apple's lead and start to go to the 2.5" models in their smaller machines. Speeds are already rising, and even with video, most people really do not need more than 200GB right now.

Hi Melgross, Happy New Year 8) ... Actually I forgot my post several days ago somewhere else about 8 cores and Photoshop.
http://creativebits.org/8_core_mac_pro

[Wally]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

"You want 64-bit? You want 64-bit? 499$ mothahfuckah."

No Kidding. I would like to see the breakdown of Mac vs. Windows *legal* CS owners.

There is a lot of anti-Adobe sentiment because Adobe has been playing games with their Mac user-base. Ever since they came out with that web page years ago saying that PC's were better tools than Mac's.... they've been steadily jabbing Mac users ever since. I don't know if Adobe has a burr up it's a$$ from iPhoto or FCP or what, but their attitude towards Apple and the Mac in general is typical of a company that wants to monopolize an industry for the sole purpose of having everyone by the short-and-curly's. They own the design software industry and they're showing it. Apple's MacPro sales have been affected by Adobe's lack of native support and I'd venture a bet that Chizen is clasping his hands and laughing maniacally. Bastard.

[sunilraman]

Originally Posted by melgross

...... In so far as drives go, I expect to see manufacturers to begin phasing out the 3.5" models in a year or two...... In a tech article about drive technology in this weeks Science, they mention that before the end of the decade, we will see portable drives with 400GB. Before that happens, I would imagine more companies to follow Apple's lead and start to go to the 2.5" models in their smaller machines. Speeds are already rising, and even with video, most people really do not need more than 200GB right now.

I agree with the storage deal, people that really need storage past say 300GB will do Terabyte-level, redundant (BIG backup is as important as BIG data..!!!) hotswap local/ high-speed storage systems.

Whether 2.5" or 3.5", speed of the drives is most important, they need to move these up to saturation-level of SATA2 bus speed capacity. That means 7200rpm becoming more common, with 10k rpm targeted, for 2.5" drives, and 15k rpm for 3.5" drives. Higher spin speeds alongside perpendicular recording is the way to go to deliver close to SATA2-levels of hard disk throughput.

[sunilraman]

Originally Posted by Wally

No Kidding. I would like to see the breakdown of Mac vs. Windows *legal* CS owners.

There is a lot of anti-Adobe sentiment because Adobe has been playing games with their Mac user-base. Ever since they came out with that web page years ago saying that PC's were better tools than Mac's.... they've been steadily jabbing Mac users ever since. I don't know if Adobe has a burr up it's a$$ from iPhoto or FCP or what, but their attitude towards Apple and the Mac in general is typical of a company that wants to monopolize an industry for the sole purpose of having everyone by the short-and-curly's. They own the design software industry and they're showing it. Apple's MacPro sales have been affected by Adobe's lack of native support and I'd venture a bet that Chizen is clasping his hands and laughing maniacally. Bastard.

Well, that's what happens when you're dealing with essentially a monopoly as people pointed out, that is Adobe-Macromedia. There are no other tools, that really come close. Yet this I suppose is the same bias that stems from, "well I can't really use anything else than Microsoft Windows and Office" ... Jobwise any person applying for a creative/ production/ web design job has to have (almost) the full list of Adobe-Macromedia apps on their resume.

I'm happy for Final Cut Pro and Motion and Shake cutting its own market, but Adobe-Macromedia is much more accessible (in terms of target market, it's bigger) so what the frack, CS3 Universal for Mac, get it out, get it cleaned up as much as possible, get the Macromedia stuff to Universal, all important for Apple as a company and their financials/ market share/ etc etc.

An upgrade to CS4 in 2009/2010 is pretty much inevitable, and we'll have 8gb-16+gb machines then, and pretty much 64-bit addressing of memory past 4gb will be quite common.