Initial Photoshop CS3 feedback encouraging for pro Mac sales
Experts at the financial research firm PiperJaffray said on Wednesday that a wave of positive feedback on the Photoshop CS3 beta is a harbinger of much stronger Mac sales waiting in the wings.
As part of two separate research notes for investors, PiperJaffray's Gene Munster and Michael Olson noted that testers of the new photo editor were overwhelmingly in favor of the changes made since the CS2 edition and that the software was likely to have a "measurable positive impact" on Apple's pro computer sales. If released during the expected mid-spring window, they say the suite could boost Apple's total marketshare as much a full percentage point in combination with other factors.
This is due in no small part to Apple's dependence on creative pros, the analysts said. They claimed in the notes that roughly 15 percent of all Mac owners use at least one Adobe program as the backbone of their careers. Munster and Olson also pointed to an almost deafening level of requests for an Intel-native update to the Creative Suite as the primary reason so many Mac users were keeping their wallets closed.
"My company was ready to get 2 new Mac Pros," wrote one user quoted by the research firm. "But I recommended against [them] until CS3 is out. We can't run at half (quarter?) speed for months until they get their act together."
Thankfully for both Adobe and Apple, feedback on the Photoshop CS3 beta released last month was uniformly positive, according to PiperJaffray's data. An astounding 88 percent of respondents said they were pleased at some level with the overall quality of the beta, with 71 percent of the entire group saying it was "very satisfied." Surprisingly, not a single negative comment was received in the feedback.
Most of the testers studied by the financial group praised the sheer speed of the Photoshop build, even on PowerPC Macs that many thought would gain little from the transition to a Universal Binary. They also saw Adobe's new features, such as Smart Filters and automatic layer alignment, as genuinely useful.
To Munster and Olson, the early software seeds may bear real fruit for pro Mac sales when mixed with the rest of the CS3 release, which will be the first to see Fireworks and other ex-Macromedia applications interface directly with Adobe's software.
"Our belief is that the true value in CS3 is the collaborative workflow between the Adobe and Macromedia products," they said. "The real user excitement will not be apparent until Adobe releases the integrated suite."
As part of two separate research notes for investors, PiperJaffray's Gene Munster and Michael Olson noted that testers of the new photo editor were overwhelmingly in favor of the changes made since the CS2 edition and that the software was likely to have a "measurable positive impact" on Apple's pro computer sales. If released during the expected mid-spring window, they say the suite could boost Apple's total marketshare as much a full percentage point in combination with other factors.
This is due in no small part to Apple's dependence on creative pros, the analysts said. They claimed in the notes that roughly 15 percent of all Mac owners use at least one Adobe program as the backbone of their careers. Munster and Olson also pointed to an almost deafening level of requests for an Intel-native update to the Creative Suite as the primary reason so many Mac users were keeping their wallets closed.
"My company was ready to get 2 new Mac Pros," wrote one user quoted by the research firm. "But I recommended against [them] until CS3 is out. We can't run at half (quarter?) speed for months until they get their act together."
Thankfully for both Adobe and Apple, feedback on the Photoshop CS3 beta released last month was uniformly positive, according to PiperJaffray's data. An astounding 88 percent of respondents said they were pleased at some level with the overall quality of the beta, with 71 percent of the entire group saying it was "very satisfied." Surprisingly, not a single negative comment was received in the feedback.
Most of the testers studied by the financial group praised the sheer speed of the Photoshop build, even on PowerPC Macs that many thought would gain little from the transition to a Universal Binary. They also saw Adobe's new features, such as Smart Filters and automatic layer alignment, as genuinely useful.
To Munster and Olson, the early software seeds may bear real fruit for pro Mac sales when mixed with the rest of the CS3 release, which will be the first to see Fireworks and other ex-Macromedia applications interface directly with Adobe's software.
"Our belief is that the true value in CS3 is the collaborative workflow between the Adobe and Macromedia products," they said. "The real user excitement will not be apparent until Adobe releases the integrated suite."
Comments
Seriously though, when things like CS3 and Office are FINALLY universal, it will be fun to see the figures.
Either way... hurry up adobe. I certainly hope that the latest rumors of a june 1st release are not true. 5.5 months is a ways away.
I hope it is not just Intel compatible but 10.5 Leopard compatible also.
I suspect this is a widespread phenomenon.
the collaborative workflow is great and everything. But the awful new icons are Macromedia's doing. >=(
I rather like the icons, sure beats guessing which is what for those of us who may use PS or Illistrator or Golive some, but not at the core of our livlyhood (EG, Illustrator and /or PS to do lower thirds in video and Golive to add the content to the site)
Hmmm...do I want the purple swirly thing, the green or blue feather, or this other little thing here...the new icons are intuative, like iLife, the CD is music managment, the guitar is music creation, the webpage is a web tool, the camera is photo management etc -- they just replace the pics with letters...great move adobe.
???
There were a slew of complaints on the Adobe beta forum. And I really don't think any serious PS user running the beta on an Intel Mac could use it native with the defective brush size issue. But that being said, I use it everyday in the Rosetta mode and LOVE it. It takes a little getting used to with the new palettes, and it is plenty fast on the dual 3.0 Mac Pro with 8 gigs of ram, so no complaints here.
the collaborative workflow is great and everything. But the awful new icons are Macromedia's doing. >=(
Those are beta icons. They will change for the final version.
I use it everyday in the Rosetta mode and LOVE it.
Uh.. yeah. Well if you run it as native Intel the brush sizes are broken which means the whole thing is useless as a photo retouching application, so I run it in Rosetta.
m
Yah, I have always felt cs2 was sluggish. I just figured it was because I didn't have a quad g5 =P
ps cs2 is sluggish, period.
waiting for cs3
"My company was ready to get 2 new Mac Pros," wrote one user quoted by the research firm. "But I recommended against [them] until CS3 is out. We can't run at half (quarter?) speed for months until they get their act together."
what is the actual performance comparison here? Surely if MacPro/Rosetta runs quicker than an existing PPC-based Mac it justifies the purchase now and when CS3 come out all the better. www.barefeats.com suggests anything less than a Quad G5 is going to be slower (http://www.barefeats.com/quad06.html)
Sounds like this argument is coming from the finance dept not the IT dept
McD