Comments on: Why no PowerPC support in Soundbooth?

By: Silicontrip

Silicontrip — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:43:33 +0000

At the time this article was written I would’ve had a shiny new Quad G5 machine, which I spent a pretty penny on. This was just before the Mac Pros were released there were no High End Intel machines available, The Quad G5 was the most power Mac available at this time. Then to have Adobe release an app that was not able to run on my machine, that was less than a month old. I would’ve been very dark about.
Apple have played up their Universal Binary strategy saying how easy it is to build for both Intel and PPC.
Open Source software doesn’t have this sort of issues, I can take an open source application and build it on my Macbook or on my Quad G5, If a bunch of enthusiasts can do it, maybe some commercial companies should look at that build model.
I now get treated like a second class citizen because I’m not planing on upgrading my 3 year old Quad G5 machine, I don’t have the budget to buy a new mac pro.
/rant

By: Ken Ness

Ken Ness — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:17:45 +0000

The latest HP Z3100 update means that you can only print down the length of a roll. As the machine is 42 inches wide and so is the paper this is rather wasteful! WHY

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 03:24:30 +0000

First of all, let me just say that the transition from PPC to intel has felt more fluid and ‘transparent’ than the original 68k to PPC. I went through this transition and it felt like pulling teeth. I think much of the anger regarding Soundbooth being Intel only is mis-directed. let me explain. I currently have an ibook G4 which I bought last March and a G5 which I bought in June, and shortly after each the machines became obsolete. I figured this was to be, but needed the PPC not a slower Intel running emulation. Now even though I don’t regard this as a problem for me, I think what has perhaps annoyed many ‘Apple’ customers is the feeling that after paying a tidy sum they are now feeling ‘redundant or at least their machines are within a short space of time. Furthermore that they are to be left out in the cold, with projects like Soundbooth, unless they part with another bucket load of money for an Macintel. There are many students that I know of that invested heavily in PPC machines. As I have said I think the ‘ranting’ is perhaps mis-directed at Adobe and other developers and perhaps we the customers should be pointing at Apple and asking them as loyal customers why they don’t consider a trade-in upgrade path-certainly in the UK when I asked there wasn’t one.
Personally I commend Adobe for developing the new app and sticking with the intel only approach, because really a universal binary is a ‘Jack Of All Trades’ and focusing on the Intel chip means the application will be fully optimized. So here’s to the future developments at Adobe, I personally can’t wait to see the new Flash 9 when it arrives.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:04:01 +0000

Even a plate of shit can be made to look tasty.
The power of words really is amazing. Anyone want to buy a bridge. Apples choice to go with the intel chip was more then just speed. Remember, they are a business. They need to keep creating new things to sell, a new twist. These computer companies have sound proof meeting rooms that are scaned for bugs. They sit around thinking of the best way to make more money. That’s the first rule. The public is way down on their list. I know the people that run intel, apple, HP, ashton tate, etc. I’ve built their buildings and their homes. I grew up and went to school with the guys at intel. Remember, there’s always more to it.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 12:14:14 +0000

p.s. Thanks to John Nack for his impeccable ability to do his job; if only more people over at Adobe had his ability to listen to us head-on and engage us. It’s never easy dealing with Mac users, we’re an incredibly passionate bunch, which is one of the traits that allow us to see the beauty and appreciate the Mac-experience in the first place. Ultimately one would think this to be one community (demographic) which not to ignore; for even if their numbers are a far cry from Win-users, the loyalty and viral evangelism that manifests from passionate users can be very valuable. Unfortunately this sort of thing is built on trust, and over the past few years Adobe has absolutely lost our trust. Our inability to promise certain solutions to clients because of Adobe’s unreliability has become a consistent boon to our offering of Adobe solutions (be it web-based solutions for our customers or solutions in which to provide, we employ (employed) Adobe tools to do so. We’ve been weaning our workflow and solutions off of all Adobe products for two years now, with just under half of our original Adobe tools to go. Some wonder why not simply inject a Windows box or two into the studio? The reasons a many including security, open source bloodlines, etc, but our primary reason parallels the traveling salesman’s explanation for not spending his long hours in an old Tempo. And of all the software outfits in the world developing for Mac, Adobe is close to the last one when it comes to whining about how hard it is to develop for multiple platforms. Last I checked it cost $20,000 per CPU for Flex Data Services, and Adobe has the gall to turn around and tell Mac-based designers and developers that they don’t have the resources for cross-platform development? (Maddening!)
Sorry Adobe, as forgiving as we aspire to be, you’ve rattled us more than twice (be it incompatibility, declining quality, no avail Mac versions, ppc/intel debacles) and that is something that neither we nor our clients can afford.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 11:45:46 +0000

It would be one thing if this were the first instance of Adobe shorting the Mac-base. Unfortunately, it’s closer to an growing trend. And don’t quote me any Lightroom anecdotes as it’s plain to see that Aperture can be thanked for this little fire under Adobe’s pants.
How easy it is for so called “pundits” to dismiss all frustrated Mac-based Adobe customers as trolls. Many of those that Adobe is so quick to dismiss as the mere scourge of the web, are actually loyal customers who grow weary of the bottom-line platform antics of aging and bloating companies like Adobe. As time passes, it’s becoming more clear that economy is beginning to trump quality over at Adobe. Since the Macromedia acquisition, developers are also feeling the effects of Adobe’s lack of dimension and their need to pander.Flash Platform developers who base their projects on the Mac are an entire year behind when it comes to Flex Builder 2 as Adobe quickly catered to Win-based developers why leaving *nix-based savants in the waiting.
The market is in definite need of some pound-for-pound alternatives to many Adobe products, especially Photoshop. (Maybe this accounts, in part, for the consistently declining quality of Adobe apps). In fact going beyond pound for pound would be very welcome indeed. Let’s face it, Photoshop is the best of the bunch right now, but it could sure use an intelligent makeover. As tools evolve, so does workflow, but Adobe apps maintain the same core graphical interface arrangements and strategies every upgrade. Anyone who wants to clearly witness Adobe’s inability to understand workflow need only look at Adobe Bridge or Adobe Acrobat. Only Redd Fox packs more clunk and junk than those clod-shod solutions.
If only Adobe would hurry up and short-change Mac-based Photoshop users somehow in order to prod Apple into releasing a gorgeous alternative. One only needs to look at the differences between applications like Aperture and Lightroom; Final Cut Studio and Premiere; Shake and After Effects to quickly see that Adobe is the interminable slouch here.
So do I now think I’ve weakened the Mac-base by speaking the truths of many Mac users? Of course not. There are many solid reasons why the lot of us won’t use Windows, and of all things, Adobe applications are close to the last reasons on earth we’d invest time or money in WIndows, (even on Parallels).
Labeling dissatisfied customers as trolls is Yet Another Deliberate Occurance of Belittling End-users. It’s what we’re beginning to expect from YADOBE. But would anyone listen to me, I’m probably just another little internet troll in Adobe’s eyes!
(To all you entrepreneurial developers, note that our shop is on a perpetual lookout for solid Adobe alternatives on the Mac platform.)

By: Matt E.

Matt E. — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:07:15 +0000

“according to Steve Jobs at WWDC’06, there are 19M active OS X users”
I’m not sure where Steve Jobs got those numbers, but they seem rather low. Apple sold more systems than that in the last couple of years, and that’s not even counting all of the older systems that are happily running OS X.

By: Rich.Y

Rich.Y — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:15:21 +0000

Even the After Effects team was not endorsing for AE's external developers until recently with XCode 2.4.1: "Apple fixed the issues the After Effects team was having (and which were blocking me from using 2.4, and supporting you folks' usage of 2.4)." http://blogs.adobe.com/ae_api/

By: nick t

nick t — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 12:39:56 +0000

On the one hand, no one with a PPC G5 wants to hear that Adobe is leaving them out, but who on earth would purchase an audio application from Adobe in the 1st place, especially when they can’t even eliminate the bugs in the latest versions ofPhotoshop & Bridge?

By: FARfetched

FARfetched — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:02:19 +0000

Yes, Hart Schafer’s explanation, “we have buckets of Intel-specific code for modules in Soundbooth that would all have to be re-written to work on PPC chips,” is truly sufficient.
Part of the problem that Adobe faces is that they’re the only company complaining about how difficult it is to follow Apple’s transitions. Certainly, small firms are releasing simpler apps, but they have perhaps 1/10 of 1% of Adobe’s resources. So, again, while Mac users complain about Adobe, Adobe is the one complaining about “how hard it is.”
Those Mac users who depended on FrameMaker as their primary work application have plenty of good reason to be suspicious of Adobe, by the way. We heard the moaning about how hard it was to move to OSX, the “think incompatible” barbs, and saw endless delays ending in Adobe totally abandoning us. And then you’ll wonder why I’ve chosen Quark instead of InDesign for the upcoming page layout work I have to do — the answer is that I’ve learned that I can’t trust Adobe to be there for me when I need them.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 12:17:43 +0000

MacIntel market share is already a lot bigger than has been suggested by some people here. I’d like to throw in a couple of numbers to dampen the rage. Maybe something sticks.
Apple has been selling Intel machines all year, with 50% of it’s line-up running on Intel by the end of the 1st quarter and 80% and 100% by the end of the 2nd and 3rd quarter respectively. Apple went on record stating that 75% of Q2 sales were Intels, and we can assume that a good chunk of Q1 sales, most of Q3 sales and all of October sales were Intel Macs.
If you add those numbers there are already about 3.3-3.5 million Intel Macs in use right now. By the end of this year we will see more than 4M Intel Mac users and by the end of 2007 – right around the time that Soundbooth will actually go on sale – probably close to 10M.
On the other hand we have about 16M PPC Macs still in use (according to Steve Jobs at WWDC’06, there are 19M active OS X users), which sounds a lot (though not 10 times or 19 times bigger as has been said in this discussion).
It’s just that most of these machines are G4 and older, and we can assume that a PPC version of Soundbooth, should it have any innovative features worth buying it in 2007, would require a G5 which has never made it into the majority of Apples products.
If you look at the sales numbers for the iMac G5 and the PowerMac G5 that Apple used to provide up until early 2005, they probably sold no more than 4.5M to 5.0M G5 Macs overall.
Intel Macs are on track to outsell G5 Macs within the next 2-4 months, and G5 Macs will shrink into a minor platform for Pro Apps with every day passing after that.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 22:19:08 +0000

You know what I think – I think Adobe makes great products, is a great supporter of the Macintosh (always has been), and is free to make the business decisions they choose to make.
I’m fairly confident they’re unlikely to have a bunch of folks sitting around at Adobe with titles like “Macintosh Pisser-Offer”, “Bigot Who Wants to Short the Mac in Favor of World Domination via the OTHER Platform”, or “Short Sighted [fill in blank with Engineer, QA Manager, Product Manager, or Marketeer] Who Doesn’t Think This Crap Through”. As a public company and with their financial track record, I am ABSOLUTELY confident there’s no “Chief Revenue Prevention Officer”, although some who’ve posted negative feedback regarding the Soundbooth decision might not belive this.
Here’s what I say, John – keep doing what you’re doing as long as it interests you, its supported (or at least not fought) by the folks you work for and with, and most of all don’t sweat the small stuff, which this little backlash surely is. Adobe busts its collective ass making great products, and hey – at least some of us realize it takes time to switch development platforms (boy, folks who want to ding you guys about CS REALLY don’t get THIS), not to mention swing what I’d guess would be several million lines of code for some products over to a new dev effort/architecure.
Is it fair to wish for better/cheaper/faster applications? More quickly? Or to have every application support everything? Sure – why not? I’d like to be better looking, have a nicer car and be the benevolent ruler of a small island nation where the weather’s great and the food is better, but wishing hasn’t make that so, either.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:49:46 +0000

John
thanks for engaging us.
that makes you an Adobe hero.
you kind of hit it on the head when you feel more heat than you should about this.
the problem is that adobe PR is silent and you’re the only one brave enough to have a discussion.
and some adobe folks signed on at cluetrain.org… is Mr. Hunt gone?

By: Matt E.

Matt E. — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 11:26:28 +0000

I only have one thing to add to this. You keep bringing up the fact that Soundbooth is a new app, started from scratch, which is part of the reason that Adobe has chosen to go Intel-only with it. How is that any different than the development history of Lightroom? Is it not also a new app from scratch? It seems rather silly to develop a Universal app (Lightroom) one month and then turn around and develop another app a few months later (Soundbooth) that is Intel-only. Perhaps this is why so many are confused about Adobe's intentions with respect to future apps. [Yes, that would be a useful clarification. Lightroom was able to leverage a great deal of optimized code for PPC and Intel, due to it sharing its rendering core with Adobe Camera Raw. Soundbooth, on the other hand, didn't have that advantage. For details on the latter I defer to Hart Schafer, Soundbooth PM. --J.]

By: Dude

Dude — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:30:52 +0000

John- I think you missing the point of people’s anger (not me, It merely means I won’t be purchasing new Macs until CS3 is ready). Ordinarily people would be very happy about ANY new app for the mac (Intel, PPC, 68k or otherwise).
It like the white elephant in the room Adobe seems to not want to acknowledge. Sure there are some people upset about Soundbooth being Intel only, but that is not the elephant that people want to talk about, the elephant the want to talk about is CS3.
Why is this so bad from the user perspective?
1) CS runs like crud on Intel through Rosetta.
2) No patch to make CS Intel native
3) CS3 at least 10 months away
So where does that leave a lot of people who have new macs? In the lurch waiting for software that can run on Intel.
So now here is someone from Adobe touting a new app for the Mac hopeful of a positive reaction. Are people going to be receptive of this new app? Under different circumstances they might be, but now… no way. There is a lot of pent up angst from users especially with no way to air their grievances. On other forums I have seen these people get labeled as cultists, fan-boys and worse. I disagree with labeling people this. The CS applications represent people’s livelihood. If others are in the boat of being able to wait on hardware purchases like I can for my users great, not everyone can.
Adobe is on a very slippery slope right now. Quark literally dropped the ball on the whole OSX migration, which worked out greatly to Adobe’s advantage. I agree making sure CS3 runs great is a far better approach then rushing it like they did with Quark 7, however and this is a big however, I believe Adobe would be far better served by not releasing ANY other apps for the Mac until the ones users actually need are there first. Last time I checked no one I knew was clamoring for a Sound App from Adobe. Doesn’t mean it isn’t cool or that it isn’t compelling. I simply find it hard to believe that you didn’t see this coming. To me this seems value added. But in order to add value to the Mac platform when the major contributions from Adobe are missing is dubious at best.
Again harkening back to Quark. I don’t think they realized what they were doing when the fumbled with OSX. They haven’t recovered since. Now Adobe is a far larger corporation, but even the perceived insult to Mac users can be horrendous as they spend and have a ability to finically harm a company in a far reaching manner then their numbers might otherwise indicate. I agree Adobe and Apple seem to be working on this and there is no hostility (at least outwardly). But 99.99999% of the time every mac user is going to side with Apple over any other company, and that includes Adobe.
Next, if the whole Intel bombshell taught the computing world anything it is this: Apple will never be left in the lurch again. If I recall Apple approached Adobe about some of the apps that would become iLife, Adobe said no thanks to Apple and Apple did it themselves. Going back to Intel, Apple kept this a secret from everyone for 5 years! Even the US government can’t keep a secret like this. Why do I point this out? I do not doubt for one minute that Apple has ready and waiting in the wings a professional Photoshop-like application (aimed at Adobe) and an Office Suite (aimed at Microsoft) ready and waiting to go. Why? Because Apple is a different company to be reckoned with this time with Steve at the helm. Note: Pure speculation on my part, but after the Intel shocker anything is possible out of Apple, which I applaud.
Lastly, I applaud any new apps for the Mac platform, keep them coming, but take care of the things people are asking for first.
[I hear you Mark--honest to God. Just hang with us a bit longer & stay tuned... --J.]