Anyone Care About CS Native on MacTel?
Apologize for the tardiness in my next entry. It's strategy planning season and I'm neck-deep in understanding and delivering what's next for Adobe's Creatives Business.
Photoshop World
Just returned from my first Photoshop World and my first keynote in my new role. There is good news and bad news about standing in front of 3,000+ people who have deeper knowledge than you about your own products. Some of the interesting facts are that the show, put together by the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals), is the largest in its 14-year history, even ahead of the numbers during the dot com boom. My new best friend Scott Kelby (NAPPs president) roasted me well in his introduction. I asked him not to use my corporate bio as a reference point since I find them to be ultimately boring. When Scott asked what I recommend as an alternative. I suggested that he just make something up. "Tell them I was an astronaut, then professional baseball player, then part-time open heart surgeon prior to coming to Adobe. See if anyone's awake at 9 a.m." He took that as a challenge and proceeded to introduce me, as best as I can describe it, in a style that was a cross between a presidential national convention and WWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation). I'm not usually at a loss for words, but this was one of those rare moments. It was great. I don't get mad, Scott, I get even.
Lightroom
I polled the audience on a couple of subjects. Based on my guesstimates, it looked like about 70% were running Photoshop and/or the Creative Suite on the Mac platform. It was great to then see that about the same number were also running on Windows (many shops run both). I'd estimate about 60-65% of the attendees said they'd downloaded Lightroom. It's been astonishing to see the interest in Lightroom since we began making the Beta available early this year. Closing in on 350,000 unique visitors, half of those Windows, and we've only made the Windows version available for a couple of months now.
Red Pill
I jokingly asked if anyone was interested in seeing us put Photoshop and CS natively on the MacTel platform. Strangely, about 99% raised their hand and applauded. Hmmm. That prompted me to give folks a glimpse of "Red Pill", the code name for our universal binary version of Photoshop "next". This is a monumental effort within Adobe. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your view), we are not able to simply do a quick and dirty port of Photoshop to MacTel. Our customers have an expectation that we do an optimized, performant, killer implementation that takes full advantage of what the new hardware is capable. Therefore, we committed to, and are sticking with, our spring delivery.
All in all, a great couple of days in Vegas (a city I could easily do without). What was most enjoyable for me was the interaction with the passionate community that has made Photoshop what it is today. Meeting the Hall of Fame inductees, the NAPP staff, the trainers and guest speakers, the folks bending my ear on the show floor, the partners -- great stuff. You can build great products, but the real test of extensibility is how fast and broad an ecosystem forms to support and expand the product's success. There are few with more passion and who are more boisterous and opinionated than our Photoshop world.
Wouldn't have it any other way.
JohnnyL