Adobe: 64-bit Mac Creative Suite apps won't happen till v5.0

[AppleInsider]

Adobe's plans to deliver 64-bit Photoshop support as part of the upcoming release of its Creative Suite 4.0 software bundle for Windows PCs, but Mac users will have to wait till version 5.0 to see the same treatment.

This has nothing to do with software maker's commitment to the Mac platform and is instead an unfortunate side affect of Apple's decision to scrap plans for a 64-bit version of its Carbon API set mid-course, said John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Photoshop applications.

Apple has long offered its developers two primary sets of programming interfaces (APIs) for writing Mac OS X applications: "Cocoa," which supports 64-bit development, and the legacy "Carbon" set, which only supports 32-bit. However, with a significant number of existing applications relying on Carbon, Apple at its 2006 developers conference said it had begun work to enable a 64-bit version of the API set.

As such, Adobe's original plan for its Creative Suite applications on the Mac was to add Intel support through the existing Carbon API set with the release of v3.0 and then deliver 64-bit support in v4.0 via the 64-bit Carbon API set, according to Nack.

"At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon," he explained. "This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa."

Nack said Adobe immediately began adjusting its product development plans after learning of the change, but added that no one at the company "has ever ported an application the size of Photoshop from Carbon to Cocoa." Therefore, pushing for 64-bit support by v4.0 was just not feasible.

"It's a drag that the Mac x64 revision will take longer to deliver. We will get there, but not in CS4," he assured Mac users. "Our goal is to ship a 64-bit Mac version with Photoshop CS5, but we’ll be better able to assess that goal as we get farther along in the development process."

In a blog posting, Nack also took a stab at dispelling some myths about the benefits of 64-bit applications, specifically the notion that they instantly perform at twice the speed of 32-bit apps.

In its own tests, Adobe found the average 64-but app to run about 8 to 12 percent faster than a 32-bit one. But the primary advantage of 64-bit applications is their ability to address very large amounts of memory in excess of 4GB.

"This is great for pro photographers with large collections of high-res images," said Neff, who added that opening a 3.75 gigapixel image on a 4-core machine with 32GB RAM is about 10x faster in the 64-bit version of Photoshop currently under development than it is on the existing version.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Booga]

Apple really screwed up here. In 2006 WWDC they promised a 64-bit Carbon and even held sessions on it. Then they remained tight-lipped for a year until 2007 WWDC, where they abruptly cancelled it. If Apple actually communicated with developers and kept their promises, we'd have a 64-bit CS4.

[kim kap sol]

Originally Posted by Booga

Apple really screwed up here. In 2006 WWDC they promised a 64-bit Carbon and even held sessions on it. Then they remained tight-lipped for a year until 2007 WWDC, where they abruptly cancelled it. If Apple actually communicated with developers and kept their promises, we'd have a 64-bit CS4.

Who cares...nobody.

[hmurchison]

64-bit apps....big deal really. The primary benefit would be more RAM access per app but I'm betting that Adobe's apps would be faster if they just threaded them exceptionally well.

[sapporobaby]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Who cares...nobody.

Lack of knowledge manifesting itself.

[gregmacoy]

It surprises me that Photoshop (and other apps of this size and stature) haven't improved that much over the years — they seem to have minor iterations. No-one seems to be doing anything revolutionary.

They could look at this and say we're gonna look at how to make an amazing app utilising the best that Cocoa has to offer. It seems instead that they'd have preferred to see what they can get away in porting old code into a new app.

With CS4 or CS5 it would be great to see Adobe pulling out all the stops to make things more efficient, and vastly improve the interface.

I'd like to see Photoshop load in a modular way. It seems completely nuts that I have to wait for all of my fonts to load in even if I only want to do some image processing. It'd be ace if things loaded 'on demand' and/or in the background

[dreamraj]

When is CS4 expected?

[Booga]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

64-bit apps....big deal really. The primary benefit would be more RAM access per app but I'm betting that Adobe's apps would be faster if they just threaded them exceptionally well.

Photoshop is probably one of the most common apps that actually COULD benefit from 64-bits. If you have to use more than a few GB of RAM for your image especially-- now for the most "serious" users, Windows is going to be about 5x faster than the Mac. I forsee a bad year for Apple sales among the top-end graphic artists.

[Inkling]

This sort of behavior would be less disgusting if Adobe did anything that was Mac-only.

Why, for instance, hasn't Adobe created a Spotlight plug-in for InDesign? Why haven't they created a QuickLook module? They can't really claim that Carbon issues affect either of those. There's even a third-party product that does the latter.

Also, why don't Mac versions of high-end products such as InDesign and Photoshop have any features that'd be easy to add to a Mac (because of OS X) but hard to add in Windows (because Vista is still so crippled)? Why do various technical 'issues' always spin one direction?

I can't really believe that something "out there" is driving this pattern of always more on Windows than on Macs. I think it's a deliberate policy, probably at the level of the bean counters who dole out the money. And given the large Mac share in graphics and the growing Mac share in general, it's also a foolish policy.

[shawnathan]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Who cares...nobody.

graphic designers do.. for one, me.

[Booga]

Originally Posted by Inkling

This sort of behavior would be less disgusting if Adobe did anything that was Mac-only.

Why, for instance, hasn't Adobe created a Spotlight plug-in for InDesign? Why haven't they created a QuickLook module? They can't really claim that Carbon issues affect either of those. There's even a third-party product that does the latter.

Also, why don't Mac versions of high-end products such as InDesign and Photoshop have any features that'd be easy to add to a Mac (because of OS X) but hard to add in Windows (because Vista is still so crippled)? Why do various technical 'issues' always spin one direction?

I can't really believe that something "out there" is driving this pattern of always more on Windows than on Macs. I think it's a deliberate policy, probably at the level of the bean counters who dole out the money. And given the large Mac share in graphics and the growing Mac share in general, it's also a foolish policy.

Certainly Adobe is out there to make money. And for the last several years they've probably been very distracted just trying to keep up with Apple's shifting direction. First the move to Intel meant that they had to switch compilers and IDEs for their entire Macintosh suite, then debug everything for two processors. Now with Apple doing an about-face on Carbon64 support, they have to do another fire drill. It's amazing they get stuff out for the Mac at all, let alone have time to do Mac-specific things with the way Apple treats its developers.

[jawporta]

Why worry about the Mac platform, it's not like 85% of the designers use Macs?

[mdriftmeyer]

that is how long it will be this May since Carbon was revealed.

They have had 11 years to gear up for a porting.

Adobe and Microsoft no longer determine the future of Apple in both growth and financial stability.

Either Adobe ports or sees it's quarterly reports damaged.

[kpluck]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

..."Our goal is to ship a 64-bit Mac version with Photoshop CS5, but we’ll be better able to assess that goal as we get farther along in the development process."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Actually, I don't think they are promising 64 bit PhotoShop for CS5, what they are saying is that is the earliest it would appear.

If you want a sample of Adobe's commitment to OS X, just have a look at this thread in their support forums:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c06277e

If you read through that thread, you will see that Adobe's stance with CS3 problems in Leopard is that it is basically Apple's fault and they are not going to be doing anything about the issues.

I have been working in the printing industry full time since 1986. Most of that time spent using the Mac platform. I love Apple stuff and have a MacBook and AppleTV at home. However, if a design student came to me and said should I go with Vista/XP or OS X, I would recommend the former.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by Booga

Apple really screwed up here. In 2006 WWDC they promised a 64-bit Carbon and even held sessions on it. Then they remained tight-lipped for a year until 2007 WWDC, where they abruptly cancelled it. If Apple actually communicated with developers and kept their promises, we'd have a 64-bit CS4.

Wrong. Adobe was first made of the transition back in 1997 and along with Macromedia and Microsoft strong-armed the delay.

Now it's over and Adobe has no longer the leverage it once held.

Apple can thrive without them.

What's worse for Adobe is this little known application that they borrowed many ideas from back starting in 1997:



What makes this point relevant is the fact that it's creators shutdown operations of Caffeine Soft to go work for Apple in the Quartz Team, Applications Teams.

If Apple wants to really screw Adobe it can release a new product that can do 90% of what Photoshop does, today, and for a fraction of the price.

Then Apple can open up the plugin-in API and offer a low cost add-on to bury Adobe by duplicating what Photoshop does but works seemlessly within Apple's workflow application suites.

Apple can but will it?

[K.C.]

Originally Posted by kpluck

However, if a design student came to me and said should I go with Vista/XP or OS X, I would recommend the former.

It's the same story as Flash. If you want, or need, the bleeding edge of the technology you're not going to get it from Adobe on the Mac.

It's really about market economics isn't it ?

[Zweben]

It's not very surprising that Adobe would have to delay such a big port after being forced to change its plans so abruptly. I'm sure Apple considered this problem when they made the decision to scrap 64-bit Carbon. I don't know what the motivation was behind Apple's decision, but as their goal is to go Cocoa only, it does make sense to force applications to use Cocoa to take advantage of newer technologies like 64-bit.

The only thing that I could see as being a problem is the bad PR of having an 'inferior' version of CS4. While 32 vs 64-bit won't make any significant difference for 90% of users, 64-bit is a bigger number, and that will be enough to convince many people that the Mac version is terribly crippled and completely unusable. That said, the Intel transition was a similar situation and people didn't switch platforms just because they had to run their apps in Rosetta.

Overall, I don't think this will end up being that big of a deal.

[rain]

Originally Posted by Booga

Photoshop is probably one of the most common apps that actually COULD benefit from 64-bits. If you have to use more than a few GB of RAM for your image especially-- now for the most "serious" users, Windows is going to be about 5x faster than the Mac. I forsee a bad year for Apple sales among the top-end graphic artists.

I consider myself one of those "top-end graphic artists" and I disagree with your comments. I don't think any design firm is going to change from Mac to PC just so they can run CS4. That would mean buying new fonts, new font utility programs, new production flow, new hardware, and all for what? So we can render a poster a few seconds faster on an Adobe product with probably 3 redundant new options and a new menu system to give the appearance they actually did something to make their software better to justify the $1500 price tag?
I think Not.
Systems are so fast now that it doesn't make much of a difference. If a render is going to take 5 min over 4 minutes, no designer cares, we are busy trolling sites like this or off getting a cup of coffee and conversing with co-workers.
Render time is our 'creative time'... if anything, Hey Adobe... make your crappy apps slower.

[Frank777]

Yet another opening for a real Photoshop competitor.
But with Macromedia gone and Quark receding, who's going to do it?

CS4 will be out by March '09. Is Pixelmator up to the challenge?

[sapporobaby]

@mdriftmeyer,

Great post. While this area is not my forte, it is good to see all the info out there.

[minderbinder]

Originally Posted by Booga

Apple really screwed up here. In 2006 WWDC they promised a 64-bit Carbon and even held sessions on it. Then they remained tight-lipped for a year until 2007 WWDC, where they abruptly cancelled it. If Apple actually communicated with developers and kept their promises, we'd have a 64-bit CS4.

Exactly.

This is bad news, but not the tiniest bit surprising. Virtually every mac developer I've heard from has said the same thing, lack of 64 bit cocoa pushes back a 64 bit osx version months or years.

As alarmed as people seem to be that adobe will take that long, I'm more shocked that those same users seem to be willing to cut Apple slack for not having 64bit or cocoa versions of their apps, particularly the pro ones.

Seriously, if the guys who created the OS can't even get their own apps updated, how can anyone expect third parties to do it quicker?

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

that is how long it will be this May since Carbon was revealed.

They have had 11 years to gear up for a porting.

Adobe and Microsoft no longer determine the future of Apple in both growth and financial stability.

Either Adobe ports or sees it's quarterly reports damaged.

First, many users won't even see a benefit from 64 bit. Second, Adobe will sell plenty of the windows version, so a slight drop on the mac side won't make that much difference.

Third, what app would users bail to? Apple can't even update the apps they're already shipping much less create a new "PS killer".

I'll bet by the time Adobe gets a 64 bit version out, Apple still doesn't have a 64 bit version of Logic or Final Cut.

[nagromme]

Shaving 10-12% off my blinding fast Mac (or rather, failing to ADD 10-12%... until CS5) won't kill me. I survived Rosetta, this is nothing

I'll just save money by skipping CS4 anyway.

I don't blame Adobe or Apple. Change happens--in this case OS X happened--and sometimes that change is well worth it.

Adobe had to go with what looked safest--NOT go Cocoa until they had to. Fair enoughL it's a huge task.

And Apple intended to deliver 64-bit Carbon but then it didn't look practical after all. Apple wasn't lying or keeping secrets, they changed their mind for reasons which we may or may not ever know, but which may have had technical merit. The OS 9 to OS X transition was NOT some little thing.

It's fun to decide on a "bad guy" and rant, but I won't rush to blindly throw blame at either party, and I won't lose sleep over CS4. I don't think I've processed 37 GIGApixels of image data in my LIFE

[Booga]

Originally Posted by rain

I consider myself one of those "top-end graphic artists" and I disagree with your comments. I don't think any design firm is going to change from Mac to PC just so they can run CS4. That would mean buying new fonts, new font utility programs, new production flow, new hardware, and all for what? So we can render a poster a few seconds faster on an Adobe product with probably 3 redundant new options and a new menu system to give the appearance they actually did something to make their software better to justify the $1500 price tag?
I think Not.
Systems are so fast now that it doesn't make much of a difference. If a render is going to take 5 min over 4 minutes, no designer cares, we are busy trolling sites like this or off getting a cup of coffee and conversing with co-workers.
Render time is our 'creative time'... if anything, Hey Adobe... make your crappy apps slower.

I said 5x-- that's the number Adobe is quoting. You're talking 10s on Windows and a minute on the Mac. Or a minute on Windows and 5 minutes on the Mac.

It might not cause people to shift en-masse, but if you're already a mixed Mac/PC shop, buying a Mac for Photoshop in the next two years is pretty silly. Buy the Windows PC.

Adobe isn't going to lose many sales over this, but Apple sure will.

[SteveK9]

As usual, insightful, informative and interesting:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits...sody-and-blues

[kim kap sol]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

that is how long it will be this May since Carbon was revealed.

They have had 11 years to gear up for a porting.

Adobe and Microsoft no longer determine the future of Apple in both growth and financial stability.

Either Adobe ports or sees it's quarterly reports damaged.

Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that instead of doing some parallel work during those 11 years (like take an hour or two every week to port things over to Cocoa and/or rewrite chunks of code while eating crumpets and sipping tea) they decided to just go all out on their legacy beast without thinking that one day perhaps they will get nailed in the ass HARD.

Just a few hours a week for 11 years...they'd have something that might look close to being ready to ship today.

[roehlstation]

Originally Posted by Booga

Apple really screwed up here. In 2006 WWDC they promised a 64-bit Carbon and even held sessions on it. Then they remained tight-lipped for a year until 2007 WWDC, where they abruptly cancelled it. If Apple actually communicated with developers and kept their promises, we'd have a 64-bit CS4.

If Adobe had begun coding for Cocoa 8 YEARS AGO, we'd have more stable, and faster Abobe apps much quicker to market.

[kim kap sol]

Originally Posted by Booga

Certainly Adobe is out there to make money. And for the last several years they've probably been very distracted just trying to keep up with Apple's shifting direction. First the move to Intel meant that they had to switch compilers and IDEs for their entire Macintosh suite, then debug everything for two processors. Now with Apple doing an about-face on Carbon64 support, they have to do another fire drill. It's amazing they get stuff out for the Mac at all, let alone have time to do Mac-specific things with the way Apple treats its developers.

I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone at Adobe is afflicted by down syndrome. How else could we explain that, after being repeatedly told over and over and over again to move to the Cocoa framework, a company would just blindly keep developing a Carbon version without even starting ANY work on a Cocoa version?

The "last several years distraction" and "the way Apple treats its developers" bullshit you're trotting out is some funny stuff because Apple has been warning Adobe for 11 years to move to Cocoa.

If you think Adobe is getting nailed twice unjustly, you need your head examined because had they headed the warning years ago, they'd have a Cocoa port ready before the Intel switch, which would mean that a fairly simple recompile would take care of both PPC and Intel versions. And they'd be ready for 64-bit today.

Ok...they still would have to create a Cocoa version of Photoshop...but don't tell me you feel sorry for them that they had to port to Intel *and now* they have make a Cocoa version.

They could have killed 2 birds with one stone. But they chose to take 2 stones to kill a bird.

The only people disappointed here are the Adobe apologists. I don't give a flying fuck if Adobe releases a 64-bit version of their shit graphics composition app or not.

[Cory Bauer]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon," he explained. "This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa."

I thought Apple told developers in the transition to Intel-based Macs that the first thing they would have to do is getting their apps running on Cocoa, and I thought that's why it took two freakin' years for the Adobe Apps to show up as Universal Apps. I also thought Apple was urging developers to transition to Cocoa for their own good as far back as 2001. If Adobe's apps are all still running on Carbon, then what the hell have they been doing these past eight years?

[tink]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Who cares...nobody.

Hmm....

• Developers who spend a ton of time and money on this....
• Pro Photoshop users who would dig this (I was actually just working with a 1.2 GB file about an hour ago where I had to close out of the other psd docs I had open and I restarted Photoshop to clear the memory usage to save time)...,
• The general Mac user should care if developers loose trust in Apple...
• The geral Mac public when a major developer innovates fo the competing platform before the mac in one of the Macs core business...

Besides that not too many other people probably...
....except potentially the general press who jump on the story and regurgitate it as FUD in Apple.

[kim kap sol]

Originally Posted by shawnathan

graphic designers do.. for one, me.

Boo-hoo...64-bit won't matter for a while anyway.

[tink]

Originally Posted by roehlstation

If Adobe had begun coding for Cocoa 8 YEARS AGO, we'd have more stable, and faster Abobe apps much quicker to market.

Maybe if Apple made it clear 8 years ago, or even 2 years ago, that Carbon wasn't going to be fully supported that would be true.

[kim kap sol]

Originally Posted by tink

[*]Developers who spend a ton of time and money on this....

No...they get paid.

[*]Pro Photoshop users who would dig this (I was actually just working with a 1.2 GB file about an hour ago where I had to close out of the other psd docs I had open and I restarted Photoshop to clear the memory usage to save time)...,

No...wrong.

[*]The general Mac user should care if developers loose trust in Apple...

I don't think any developers will lose trust in Apple if they reviewed the fact that Apple has been warning everyone to move to Cocoa. And if some lose trust in Apple, GOOD...they're probably the ones that refuse to adapt to change.

[*]The geral Mac public when a major developer innovates fo the competing platform before the mac in one of the Macs core business...

O RLY?

Besides that not too many other people probably...
....except potentially the general press who jump on the story and regurgitate it as FUD in Apple.

Yeah ok.

[minderbinder]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that instead of doing some parallel work during those 11 years (like take an hour or two every week to port things over to Cocoa and/or rewrite chunks of code while eating crumpets and sipping tea) they decided to just go all out on their legacy beast without thinking that one day perhaps they will get nailed in the ass HARD.

And how do you know that? How do you know that they haven't been doing some parallel work all along, and the job is STILL big enough that it will take that long to do the rest?

After all, APPLE hasn't even released any of their pro apps in cocoa/64 bit - you think they've been staring out the window while sipping their tea instead of working on porting?

Not to mention that 11 years ago it wasn't clear that OSX would catch on or that Apple would stay in business, much less that apple would stick with the cocoa apis. With a company that changes strategy as much as apple, it's probably smart to put off things like porting millions of lines to new api (and language).

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone at Adobe is afflicted by down syndrome. How else could we explain that, after being repeatedly told over and over and over again to move to the Cocoa framework, a company would just blindly keep developing a Carbon version without even starting ANY work on a Cocoa version?

I'll ask it again - if adobe is dumb for not listening to apple and switching to cocoa, what excuse does APPLE have for not switching their apps to cocoa? And why would any third party take apple's advice seriously when apple doesn't even follow their own recommendations?

Originally Posted by Cory Bauer

I thought Apple told developers in the transition to Intel-based Macs that the first thing they would have to do is getting their apps running on Cocoa

I don't think so, I'm pretty sure the main thing they had to do was transition their apps to XCODE from other dev environments. Carbon was still supported on intel. It had to be, look at all the apple apps that still aren't on cocoa yet.

[Cory Bauer]

Originally Posted by minderbinder

I don't think so, I'm pretty sure the main thing they had to do was transition their apps to XCODE from other dev environments. Carbon was still supported on intel. It had to be, look at all the apple apps that still aren't on cocoa yet.

You're right, my mistake. Transition to XCode first, not Cocoa.

Wait, aren't Apple's Pro Apps 64-bit capable? I thought Final Cut Pro and others were.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by tink

Maybe if Apple made it clear 8 years ago, or even 2 years ago, that Carbon wasn't going to be fully supported that would be true.

Apple made it clear back in 1997 that Carbon was a 2 year transitional API. They caved due to financial problems.

They no longer have to cave.

End of story.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that instead of doing some parallel work during those 11 years (like take an hour or two every week to port things over to Cocoa and/or rewrite chunks of code while eating crumpets and sipping tea) they decided to just go all out on their legacy beast without thinking that one day perhaps they will get nailed in the ass HARD.

Just a few hours a week for 11 years...they'd have something that might look close to being ready to ship today.

Hell, they used to contract with NeXT to have an in-house Cocoa team [WebObjects and Openstep ObjC heads] to develop custom applications for their WebObjects and other in-house tools.

The fact they didn't manage to train their staff is their problem.

[minderbinder]

Originally Posted by Cory Bauer

You're right, my mistake. Transition to XCode first, not Cocoa.

Wait, aren't Apple's Pro Apps 64-bit capable? I thought Final Cut Pro and others were.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure none are. As far as I know the only 64 bit app from apple so far is Xcode.

Personally, I think it's pretty shameful and hypocritical on apple's part. Apps like FCS and particularly Logic can definitely benefit from the extended ram, I'd bet even stuff like iMovie and iDVD could probably as well.

Apple doesn't even have Aperture 64 bit, and that app is less than 2.5 years old, while Adobe already has a 64 bit version of Lightroom out. Pretty pathetic on apple's part.

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Apple made it clear back in 1997 that Carbon was a 2 year transitional API. They caved due to financial problems.

They no longer have to cave.

End of story.

So when is apple going to eat their own dog food (to use a term apple has already applied to OSX)? On the one hand they insist it's transitional and devs should know to switch over, on the other hand they are still releasing virtually all apps on the old api.

[Crtaylor]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Apple wasn't lying or keeping secrets, they changed their mind for reasons which we may or may not ever know, but which may have had technical merit. The OS 9 to OS X transition was NOT some little thing.

It's fun to decide on a "bad guy" and rant, but I won't rush to blindly throw blame at either party, and I won't lose sleep over CS4. I don't think I've processed 37 GIGApixels of image data in my LIFE

I think you are absolutely correct. CS3 just came out last year. Why should Adobe rush into creating CS4 anyway? I have been on several art websites, and there has been equally great work turned out using previous versions of Photoshop as there has been with Photoshop CS3. It all comes down to artistic craft. I don't think it is even that fathomable for the average person to work with that much image data anyway!

Apple is a respectable company and so is Adobe, but sometimes big companies just don't click over the smallest differences. Overall, it has to be up to the consumer what works for them. For me, the 64-bit bells and whistles can wait.

[Feynman]

Originally Posted by tink

Maybe if Apple made it clear 8 years ago, or even 2 years ago, that Carbon wasn't going to be fully supported that would be true.

I seem to recall Apple always talking highly of Cocoa and that Carbon was just to get your apps ported over quickly and easily but then start porting them to Cocoa...

[roehlstation]

Originally Posted by tink

Maybe if Apple made it clear 8 years ago, or even 2 years ago, that Carbon wasn't going to be fully supported that would be true.

Apple made it clear when they released Carbon that it was merely a Stop gap for Mac OS 9 apps to go to Mac OS X. I was at that WWDC, it was clear then.
Basically what is upsetting people is that it simply reminds everyone that Adobe still has a majority of it API in Classic.