Photoshop for OS X

MolGOLD writes: "Well, finally OS X users are getting their wish: Adobe has finally made good on their promise to bring native OS X support to their graphical applications. C|Net is running a story on the upcoming version of Photoshop, which will feature native OS X support. Now that Photoshop 7 will run natively under OS X, will we see companies like Macromedia (who also promised native OS X support) hurry along to follow suit?"

Comments

Killer App!

[SJ]

Wooo Hooo!!! Now I can write PHP scripts and colour-correct my CMYK pRon on the same machine! YAY for multitasking!

Re:Killer App!

[Ford Fulkerson]

Why stop there. You could write a PHP script that calls an AppleScript that colour-corrects your CMYK pr0n using Photoshop!

Re:Killer App!

[Tjp($)pjT]

Of course Steve Jobs derided Adobe for not having Photoshop ready in January, but where is DVD Studio Pro for Mac OS X. You'd think that Apple could at least get their own high end software out the door a bit faster ... Sigh.

Re:Killer App!

[jlower]

Screw that - I want a "sort by breast size" plug-in!

Re:Killer App!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has had less time. Adobe has had three years to port photoshop.

Re:Killer App!

[BeagleBoi]

Ummm, you've been able to do that (PHP and Photoshop) for ages with Windows 2000. :-)

Re:Killer App!

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe publicly demonstrated Photoshop _5_ running on Mac OS X. Note that the first native release is Photoshop 7.

Anyway, Adobe hasn't been so bad. InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, and other apps are already native.

Big day for Apple

[ciryon]

I pretty sure they'll sell quite some more OS X packages now. I know many people have been waiting to upgrade from 9.x and Photoshop has been the main reason.

Ciryon

Re:Big day for Apple

[SilentChris]

" pretty sure they'll sell quite some more OS X packages now. I know many people have been waiting to upgrade from 9.x and Photoshop has been the main reason."

Probably because their primary user base continues to be artists and publishers, which is a bit disturbing. PC users don't upgrade their OS's every time one particular app gets upgraded (although it helps). I've seen users run Office XP on first editions of Windows 98.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Shadowlion]

PC users don't upgrade their OS's every time one particular app gets upgraded (although it helps).

To be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges. The last time the PC world saw such a tremendous shift in the capabilities of the base operating system was August 1995, when Windows 95 was released. After that, it's been incremenetal upgrades to the OS.

In late 1995, quite a lot of people were upgrading their applications (at least, the ones from MS) in order to take advantage of what Windows 95 offered. In this case, the particulars may be different, but the essence is the same: a lot of people want to upgrade their software to take advantage of what Mac OS X brings them.

Re:Big day for Apple

[KarmaPolice]

I pretty sure they'll sell quite some more OS X packages now. I know many people have been waiting to upgrade from 9.x and Photoshop has been the main reason.
Why would that be? OS X can run MacOS 9.x programs as well as MacOS 9.x - it just loads the classic inviroment like OS/2 loaded the windows 3.x program manager to run windows software. It's a bit slow to start but otherwise it works like a charm...

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

"To be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges. The last time the PC world saw such a tremendous shift in the capabilities of the base operating system was August 1995, when Windows 95 was released. After that, it's been incremenetal upgrades to the OS."

Wrong and the origional poster was right.

Love it or hate it, MS has been more stable in their OS updates so that one did NOT have to buy the majority of their apps again. That's compatibility. Instead they worked on making compelling changes to their apps and used that to drive sales (budling/preloads helped too) If you compare 95 to NT or XP maybe you will notice that MS managed to shift the whole underlying internals of their OS while still keeping the majority of older apps compatible. Something Apple has not.

Re:Big day for Apple

[marmoset]

No, you are wrong.

The equivalent in the PC world was the shift to the Win32 API (debuted (really) in Windows 95) from 16-bit apps, which happened in 1995. The equivalent shift in the mac world is OSX with the Carbon and Cocoa API's, in 2001. What application running under Windows 3.1 are people still running without upgrading -- I'd like to know!

Re:Big day for Apple

[llamalicious]

PS on OSX is certainly a major reason, but there a few "critical" apps left to go. The ones I actually need before I can make the leap:

Dreamweaver UltraDev
Flash
Director

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, wrong. graphics hasn't been the primary part of the mac user base for some time.

lately the os x user base has largely consisted of ex-linux users happy to have a *nix with a decent GUI. :)

heh

heh

Re:Big day for Apple

[nycdewd]

sorry, you are more than dead wrong... i have had exactly ZERO apps broken by subsequent Mac OS upgrades over a period of many years (maybe seven, who knows, after so many years one loses track), UNTIL OS X... and that is because OS X is a sea change of the most monumental proportions. and thank god for that.

nice try, fudster.

Re:Big day for Apple

[arhra]

No, it is more akin to the shift from the old DOS/9x codebase to the NT kernel. It's just that MS managed the transition better, since they provided an API (win32) that ran on both, and didn't confuse the situation with another API that ran only on the NT kernel. Apple could have had a similar transition using Carbon, which runs on both OS9 and OSX, if they'd planned ahead better, rather than fscking about with the whole Copland ("hm, no, maybe not, it's crap and we aren't getting anywhere..."), Rhapsody ("yes! a decent OS that actually WORKS! What do you mean people don't want to rewrite everything from scratch to target a new API that has precisely nothing in common with the old one?"), OSX ("OK, we'll clean up the old Mac Toolbox API, and port it to OSX, so you can target both the old OSes and the new one at the same time. We'll just not actually finalize the spec for the new api until after we've released the first version of the new OS!!"). If they'd come up with Carbon when they first bought Next, they could have rolled carbonlib out with OS9 (or maybe even 8.5 maybe? i'm not sure of the timeline), and got most apps targeting it relatively easily. Then when OSX was released, they could have had Photoshop et al running natively right from the start.

Re:Big day for Apple

[ciryon]

No, Windows XP is not very compatible with older Win apps. It has happened so many times now I seriously consider installing Windows 98 instead, for those crucial apps I really need. Or perhaps one would buy a VMWare licence so I can run them without rebooting from Linux. :-P

Ciryon

Re:Big day for Apple

[Hitch]

heh....while I agree with you, I do know some people who run a version of timeslips (a time tracking and billing program) from windows 3.1, primarily because the later versions are so unreliable and complicatedly copy-protected as to be nearly unusable.

Re:Big day for Apple

[dbrutus]

Actually, artists who are heavily using Photoshop buy machines frequently to take advantage of better hardware speeds. It's just that they've been taking their machines and telling them to boot into OS 9 instead of OS X.

This holds back adoption of OS X because there's no compelling reason to invest in cocoa for such a small base and even carbon can be put off until you start getting requests for it. Well, now all those artists are going to start swapping over and that's going to make it easier to shift the programmers as well.

Upping the OS X adoption rate and moving forward with their competitive strategy is important for Apple because it provides unique abilities that you don't get on Windows boxen (like system wide spell checking for all Cocoa apps). It's going to be nice to be able to have functionality bought once and spread throughout your application irregardless of vendor. Apple wants us to get to that nice world fast because *that's* going to get a lot more boxes sold.

Remember, Apple is a hardware company, not a software company. They like OS X primarily because it's a driver of their hardware sales, and only secondarily because of the money they get directly from it.

They need to sell more boxes because if they get to a magic point, one very clear advantage will appear, PPC chips are smaller and cheaper to produce at like volumes. At that point, Macs will not only become the easier to use alternative, they will become the cheaper alternative as well.

Re:Big day for Apple

[norwoodites]

It has happened twice now in Apple world, getting rid of 68K, and now, from Mac OS 9.x to Mac OS X.

When the PPC came out `Modern Memory Manger' came out and it was a semi-protective memory; only had read-only spaces for code and some stings.

Re:Big day for Apple

[piecewise]

Apple is absolutely a software company. iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, AppleWorks.

All *very* important to Apple's strategy. Without Apple's groundbreaking software, the hardware sales would be hurt quite a bit.

My neighbors bought iMacs for the house. They don't care about Photoshop. What sold them was the idea of iMovie and iTunes. That's what sells a ton of people.

Apple's a 60/40 hardware-software company, I'd say.

Re:Big day for Apple

[rizzy]

because most mac users *hate* that "slow start".

the thought process is basically "why would i run photoshop in os x under emulation [ yes, that's the mindset] when i can run it natively under os 9?".

Re:Big day for Apple

[TotallyUseless]

Yes, the main point of the excellent Apple software is to generate more hardware sales. This is of course Apple's biggest source of revenue. They are a hardware company because they get most of their revenue from new machine sales, but they are also a software company because those nice new machines would be nothing without the excellent Apple software.
Apple makes great hardware, then develops software which encourages people to go out and get that hardware. I think this is a win-win situation. Apple is motivated to make top of the line software, much of which they release for free... and we are motivated to buy new machines. For some people it is still a better idea to stick with their old trusty machines they have had a few years, but for those of us that are interested in burning our own movies and such, Apple makes it worth it to be a customer

Re:Big day for Apple

[TotallyUseless]

but.... the old photshop is still compatible... it runs in the Classic compatability layer, and quite well I might add. If you are so inclined, you could keep running the classic version of photoshop, presumably forever. How is that a lack of compatability? The problem with photoshop wasn't that people couldn't run the old one, it was that they wanted the native version. No on HAS to buy this new version of photoshop, as you seem to imply. Same with Office and countless other apps. If people are happy running them OS9 style then more power to them

Re:Big day for Apple

[jlower]

3 times - the first being our jump to 32 bit world with System 7.

Of all the transitions, that one was the most painful.

Re:Big day for Apple

[thrig]

What application running under Windows 3.1 are people still running without upgrading -- I'd like to know!

In my experience, lots of Medical devices are still running off of Windows 3, DOS 6.22, or similar. Probably due to the computer being bundled with the $50,000+ device

Luckily, newer devices come with Windows NT and a seething mass of Oracle, Java, and homegrown code. The software corrupts itself every month or so, and doesnt work if you put a password on the Administrator account.

So as far as Microsoft OS controlled devices go, I prefer ones running on older operating systems to dumb to be cracked.

Re:Big day for Apple

[York the Mysterious]

How many people do you see running Office XP on a Windows 3.1 machine. Apple maintained API compatibility from 1984 to OS X. Not bad considering in that time period you'd have DOS, Windows to 3.1 then 95. It's not the app that's "making people upgrade". It's the app that's allowing people that have wanted to upgrade for a while to do it. 98 to XP or 2k or NT might be an architectual change, but it's the same application API so you better hope that will work, but then again 95 has the same API and MS has broken compatibility with 95 all over the board.

Re:Big day for Apple

[SilentChris]

"My neighbors bought iMacs for the house. They don't care about Photoshop. What sold them was the idea of iMovie and iTunes. That's what sells a ton of people."

Actually, I know certain average users who won't buy Apple machines today because they think they're primarily for video editing, something they're simply not interested in. Most users still (and a few years ago, when the iMac became a hit) want decent Internet. I know, this flies in the face of most internet appliance sales, but the predominant thing I hear is "I want to do word processing, a few games, and get on the net".

Re:Big day for Apple

[Alan Partridge]

I've had one go south - for instance my copy of Another World from 1992 (designed for System 6 compatibility) only plays for a minute under OSX 10.1.3/Classic before unexpectedly quitting! Lucky I finished it 10 years ago then...

Re:Big day for Apple

[Lars T.]

Yeah, PC users only upgrade their OS when somebody discovers a new security "feature" and a new SP comes out to fix it, or when Linus made a boo-boo and a new Kernel gets released to fix it. They don't wait for an app to actually use the new features of that new OS.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Macs for a long time, and I don't think more than a handful applications survived the whole System 7 -> 32 Bit Clean -> PPC -> PCI transition.

Maybe Apple is better at back-compatibility now, but they used to suck horribly in that department.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

give it a rest

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

"like OS/2 loaded the windows 3.x program manager to run windows software'

Right Classic works just like WinOS2 did. However, a "better Windows than Windows" was not a compelling sell for OS/2 as a product. Most people preferred to run Windows programs under Windows, even after trying OS/2 (as evidenced by the OS/2 sales figures versus the size of the user base).

Same story with MacOS X -- it has to sell itself on native applications, not emulation ability.

Re:Big day for Apple

[SilentChris]

"How many people do you see running Office XP on a Windows 3.1 machine."

Well, none actually. But that's because Microsoft only supports it back to Windows 98 (Why? Who knows. Probably it uses some kind of IE layer that came with IE 4).

"98 to XP or 2k or NT might be an architectual change, but it's the same application API so you better hope that will work, but then again 95 has the same API and MS has broken compatibility with 95 all over the board."

See above. Actually, think the changes from the 9x series to NT are pretty drastic, and represent a positive step for Microsoft (the more applications I can run without hosing my system, the better). The API may be similar, but many of the underlying file system and process creating calls are completely rewritten. The fact that most 9x programs (which relied on relatively open system restraints where they had pretty much free reign to do anything) run on the NT protected model with little modification at the front end is kind of amazing.

Re:Big day for Apple

[scsiboy]

That isn't the only reason. Photoshop running in Classic mode has device issues. You can't acquire from scanners or USB devices properly, and things like pen-based input devices don't work. A lot of graphics people rely on these devices to function, so they stick with OS9 because OSX's Classic can't do these things properly.

Re:Big day for Apple

[overunderunderdone]

Apple is absolutely a software company. iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, AppleWorks...

Apple's a 60/40 hardware-software company, I'd say.

In terms of money its more like 91/9 hardware-software (At least for this last quarter - $114 Million software revenue; $1.261 Billion hardware revenue) In terms of effort you may be right but that 40% effot in software is done to drive that 90% in hardware revenue.

Most of the software is given away for free with a hardware purchase. Even the software they sell is part of a strategy to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, etc are intended to be "Killer Apps" that drive hardware sales in a particular niche market. The 9% of revenues is just a nice bonus. The only software that doesn't fit this bill (though it used to) is Filemaker, which for that reason is not part of Apple but was spun off as a subsidiary.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's just that MS managed the transition better,
> since they provided an API (win32) that ran on both
> [DOS-Windows and NT-Windows]

The Carbon API is available on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Same app can run on both systems.

Re:Big day for Apple

[madbrain]

>The last time the PC world saw such a
>tremendous shift in the capabilities of the
>base operating system was August 1995, when
>Windows 95 was released. After that, it's
>been incremenetal upgrades to the OS.

I would make that March of 1992, when IBM released OS/2 2.0, a 32-bit pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-threading operating system with memory protection for the PC. It's been roughly 10 years that I have been using it as I write this under OS/2. While most of the PC world didn't go with OS/2, OS/2 had some market share in the 3.5 years period during which the only other available OS from Microsoft was the laughable DOS+Windows 3.1 combination.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2 is a footnote in the history of personal computing. You need to move on - you sound almost as pathetic as an Amiga fan.

Re:Big day for Apple

[SpitefulBen]

Uh, right. I'm sure that Photoshop 7 for OS X will run on Mac OS 6.0.8.

Re:Big day for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that good old DOS games run on Windows XP. When was the last time Maccies played a game from 1983. IBM Alley Cat anyone?

Re:Big day for Apple

[smyle]

OK, so I'm a day late, but I was just waiting for somebody to say...

To be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges

No, you're comparing Apples and PC's.

Re:Big day for Apple

[stux]

4 times

Color QuickDraw.

:)

Re:Big day for Apple

[DavidRavenMoon]

PC users don't upgrade their OS's every time one particular app gets upgraded (although it helps)

You got it backwards! Photoshop 7 will run in OS 9 and OS X, so that's not the reason to switch to X. We don't need X to run PS 7, we need PS 7 to run X! Currently most print/publishing businesses are running OS 9.

We WANT to run OS X, but can't do so unless everything is going to work properly.

So this is one more reason to switch to OS X. Now we just need Quark 5 for X.

Is this really news?

[AirLace]

Proprietary software gets released for the Apple Macintosh. When there are amazing Free Software projects around the world that are dying for a little publicity, why is news of a proprietary piece of software released by Adobe, a company that has shown contempt for peoples' rights, for Apple Macintoshes, another proprietary system that isn't even targeted at geeks, supposed to interest me?

Re:Is this really news?

[einstein]

yeah, this is big news. there are a multitude of people who want to use OSX for their everyday computing, but can't because their main app wasn't working on the OSX yet, though I agree that their are definitely some attention starved free projects out there.
---

Re:Is this really news?

[SJ]

Trying not to be flamebait, but could you please show me a Free Software project in the same category as Photoshop (read, Graphics app) that even come close to matching PS's feature set and usability. And No... GIMP isn't even in the same league as Photoshop. I have tried both and speak from experience. Thats not to say GIMP isn't a good program, because it is.

I understand that you value free software, and for good reason. But Photoshop is THE app for OSX, as far as Apple's core graphics market is concerned.

Give please at least give credit where credit is due.

Re:Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the parent post modded down? This was my thought exactly! Another lame advertisement for companies that don't care about your freedom one bit. While I understand it could be something of a bias, I'd prefer a site where the news was decidedly geeky (as in programming, math, science only), free-software-centric, and didn't involve reading about video games (except stories like making a vector game out of a wall and a laser), anime, Apple, and the latest DVD movie release. Any suggestions?

Re:Is this really news?

[Penrod Pooch]

Because OSX is like a really, really cool toy, like. And 'round here we really, really, like cool toys. It is much more important than freedom because you can't use freedom as a really, really cool toy.

Therefore we choose to ignore the proprietary nature of OSX and Photoshop, we choose to ignore that Apple threatend to sue people who make themes that looked like OSX and we choose to ignore that Adobe invoked the DMCA to have Dimitry Sklyarov arrested because apple and adobe makes really, really cool toys. And nothing is more important to us slashdot-dwellers than really, really cool toys.

Re:Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's widely used and perhaps the most important app for the Macintosh. Maybe if your free software were able to compete with Adobe, it would get more publicity.

Re:Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much as I like the Mac (and I really do. I use one at work and have never
taken the offer to upgrade to a M$ PC) I really hate to see its life thread
depending on one application.

ac

weird idea maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

but now that it is ported to Mac OS X wouldn't it be relatively easy to port it to other unix-like environments?

Re:weird idea maybe

[KH]

I can't tell if this new PhotoShop is a carbon app or cocoa app from the tiny screenshot at c|Net. But assuming that it is a cocoa app, which I somewhat doubt, it may not be too difficult to port it to GNUStep. But again, I doubt anybody (Adobe or Apple) would encourage such a port.

Re:weird idea maybe

[SJ]

No. Photoshop is a carbon application, which is based on the old Macintosh Toolbox. This is partly the reason for it's delay. Being one of the oldest apps from Adobe, it contains very significant amounts of old code. Most of which had to be re-written.

Re:weird idea maybe

[psyklopz]

AFAIK, Adobe develops all of it's apps on it's own GUI framework. This is how they can maintain both Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop.

So really, the issue is porting the in-house GUI framework. And from my experiences with porting stuff to OS X, they're probably either using carbon or cocoa, both of which are proprietary Apple APIs.

The best chance of an easy port to Linux is probably tying in the Windows version of the Framework through WINE.

Of course, OS X is based on unix, and if you could get your hands on the source behind the carbon or cocoa APIs, things would be a lot easier.

Re:weird idea maybe

[sconest]

I can't tell if this new PhotoShop is a carbon app or cocoa app from the tiny screenshot at c|Net.

I'd say carbon since it still runs on Mac OS9

Re:weird idea maybe

[dbrutus]

Apple probably will encourage a Cocoa around 2005-2007. Photoshop 9 will be Cocoa because Carbon is going to be phased out over time. It's a native transition API.

First Classic's going to be deprecated by OSX 10.5 and probably gone by 11 (whatever they Chiat/Day calls it). After that, the push will be on towrds Cocoa for 12 because development gets very, very easy and you can write very little code yourself and get a functioning application with a lot of work being done via services.

I wouldn't doubt that in such a world Photoshop editing tools being available inside Quark would be a major inducement to the publishing market to pick up more copies of Photoshop. It would also reduce the temptation for people to move away from photoshop because a new tool has a few features the Photoshop of the moment doesn't have. They'll be available in Photoshop via services.

Re:weird idea maybe

[rednever]

Adobe ported a Mac framework called MacApp to Win32 to maintain a common codebase for Mac and Windows versions of their applications.

MacApp is similar to Metrowerks PowerPlant, a RAD/GUI Framework toolkit.

They also used MacApp to port Photoshop 3.0 and Illustrator 5.0 to IRIX and Solaris.

Re:weird idea maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

So really, the issue is porting the in-house GUI framework. And from my experiences with porting stuff to OS X, they're probably either using carbon or cocoa, both of which are proprietary Apple APIs.

Actually, the Cocoa source is closed and proprietary but the API is open to the extent where you can freely implement your own version of it. This is where GNUStep comes from.

Re:weird idea maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

> Carbon is going to be phased out over time.

Carbon will be around as long as it's needed, in other words, as long as there are Carbon apps to host. Same with Java2, BSD, and Cocoa. They are there to host the apps that rely on those API's.

Some developers have moved from Carbon to Cocoa, but you have to understand that Carbon is not just for Mac OS 9 apps, but also for developers who just want a procedural environment. For example, Maya for Mac OS X is a Carbon app, even though it never ran on Mac OS 9. MS Office X doesn't run on Mac OS 9, but it, too, is a Carbon app. It has something like 30 million lines of code, and Microsoft's Mac division (a separate unit located in Silicon Valley) doesn't have the manpower or inclination or time to rewrite the app for Cocoa. They need to use some libraries on both Mac and Windows, and Cocoa would get in the way of this.

It's all about hosting the apps. You buy a VHS VCR to play VHS tapes, and a DVD player to play DVD's. As long as there are DVD's, there will be a need for DVD players. As long as there are Carbon apps, there will be a need for Carbon. There is a huge Carbon/MacToolbox codebase out there, with a long history that goes back to the early 1980's.

Carbon is also the best way to port many Windows and UNIX apps to Mac OS X, and a pretty good chunk of the new developers in Apple's developer program are doing just that (their developer program tripled in size over the last year or so). If you have an app that is already object-oriented, then Cocoa would be your best choice for porting, but if you have to maintain a common codebase for both Windows and Mac OS X, then Carbon is the best bet. Also, there are tools that build both Carbon and Win32 apps, and those have been updated for Mac OS X. Director will run on Mac OS X using Carbon, and it will spit out more Carbon apps itself.

Re:weird idea maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

"Carbon is going to be phased out over time. It's a native transition API."

FYI, the Finder is written in Carbon. I doubt they will want to rewrite that _again_.

Re:weird idea maybe

[Lally Singh]

Carbon's been officially deemed a "peer" of Carbon. Apple insists that it's not going anywhere. Now, Apple may change their minds later, but the truth is that due to Apple's deeming Carbon a fine solution, nobody's going to rewrite their apps in Cocoa. So, Carbon's not going anywhere.

Classic's going to be around for quite a while too. Many apps in use no longer have a company to update them.

Re:weird idea maybe

[DavidRavenMoon]

but now that it is ported to Mac OS X wouldn't it be relatively easy to port it to other unix-like environments?

There was an Irix version of Photoshop out... I used to run it on an SGI Indy... I didn't like it very much though... it ran better on the 9500's we had at the time.

Anyone know if Adobe still makes an Irix port?

Re:weird idea maybe

[dbrutus]

Given the flack they've gotten over it, I doubt they will not rewrite the finder.

Beautiful !!!

[roguerez]

What a beautiful theme has the MacOS X page in Slashdot!!! I want all of Slashdot to be like this.

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will for sue sue us all for this!!

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

By God yes! That was the same thing I thought as soon as I saw it.

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get over it.

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the graphics! I only noticed after you told me, but you're right, it does look neat, if a tad too much on the iMac side.

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks great running in OmniWeb, with Mac OS X's new text rendering and the Aqua GUI. Nice.

Re:Beautiful !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No its not its awful looks nothing at all like OS X's lickable GUI..

What OS? I dodn't catch it...

[Nailer]

Photoshop for OS X
[OS X (Apple)] Posted by michael on Sun February 24, 06:21 AM
from the brighter-colors-and-whiter-whites dept.
MolGOLD writes: "Well, finally OS X users are getting their wish: Adobe has finally made good on their promise to bring native OS X support to their graphical applications. C|Net is running a story on the upcoming version of Photoshop, which will feature native OS X support. Now that Photoshop 7 will run natively under OS X, will we see companies like Macromedia (who also promised native OS X support) hurry along to follow suit?"

porting with gnustep

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when will we see OSX software running on Linux (and BSDs) using GNUstep? Shouldn't be too hard, right?

Re:porting with gnustep

[SJ]

I am pretty sure GNUStep is WAY out of date with Cocoa. I don't think it would be an easy task to update it either.

Don't for though, most "Mac" applications are coming across as Carbon, which means they will only run under MacOS X.

Re:porting with gnustep

[legis]

> I am pretty sure GNUStep is WAY out of date with Cocoa. I don't think it would be an easy task to update it either.

No, GNUstep actually follows the Cocoa API very closely. One of its goals is easy porting of Cocoa and GNUstep apps.

NO

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been said a hundred times. The problem you'd encounter when porting an application from OS X to *ix is that OS X apps use Cocoa, which doesn't exist for your fave open source OS. Some years ago Photoshop (3.0) was ported to Irix using a MacOS->motif toolkin. It sucked ass. You won't see any OS X app running on *ix/X anytime soon.

Re:NO

[D_Fresh]

The problem you'd encounter when porting an application from OS X to *ix is that OS X apps use Cocoa, which doesn't exist for your fave open source OS.

Just because an app runs in OS X doesn't mean it's automatically Cocoa - most apps ported from OS 9 to X use Carbon, which, while it can still be a task, takes nowhere near the time it would take to port to Cocoa.

You won't see any OS X app running on *ix/X anytime soon.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if you are proved wrong within a year. With OS X infiltrating the hardcore *ix crowd, it's only a matter of time before someone climbs the Carbon learning curve and ports some cool stuff over. I suggest you educate yourself a little on the Carbon/Cocoa difference before you go batting others down.

Re:NO

[angelo]

Just because an app runs in OS X doesn't mean it's automatically Cocoa - most apps ported from OS 9 to X use Carbon, which, while it can still be a task, takes nowhere near the time it would take to port to Cocoa.

When they refer to Photoshop as native OS X, they do indeed mean Cocoa. Cocoa apps are completely native. Adobe could have carbonised the Photoshop app, but they would have done so months ago if that were the case.

Re:NO

[legis]

> The problem you'd encounter when porting an application from OS X to *ix is that OS X apps use Cocoa,
> which doesn't exist for your fave open source OS.

I disagree, it should be easy once the GUI-kit of GNUstep is complete which should be later on this year.

Re:NO

[dair]

When they refer to Photoshop as native OS X, they do indeed mean Cocoa
No, they mean Carbon. A prototype Photoshop 5.0 was one of the first demos of Carbon, at 1998's WWDC.

Cocoa apps are completely native.
As are Carbon apps.

-dair

Re:NO

[jcr]

Just because an app runs in OS X doesn't mean it's automatically Cocoa - most apps ported from OS 9 to X use Carbon, which, while it can still be a task, takes nowhere near the time it would take to port to Cocoa.

Actually, this isn't true in all cases. OS 9 apps tend to carry around a whole lot of code that becomes redundant in Cocoa. I've seen cases where a Cocoa re-write was done in less time than was originally planned for a Carbon port.

As for the availability of Cocoa on other platforms, check out www.gnustep.org. They're making amazing progress for being basically un-funded.

-jcr

Re:NO

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop 7 is a Mac application written to the Carbon API, which exists on two operating systems: Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. The fact that Mac OS X also has a UNIX compatibility layer doesn't make a whit of difference.

People like to say that Mac OS X is "based on UNIX", but the reality is that it is its own operating system from top to bottom, but wherever possible, Apple made the system compatible with UNIX, and also used tried-and-true open source BSD code for all the benefits in security and compatibility and performance that it brings. Similarly, the fact that OS X has a great Java2 environment doesn't mean you can now run Mac apps on Solaris.

Re:NO

[Anonymous Coward]

> When they refer to Photoshop as native OS X,
> they do indeed mean Cocoa.

NO NO NO NO NO. That is completely wrong, and it's a common misconception. Cocoa is just one of the API's a developer can choose on Mac OS X. A "native OS X app" means that a) the app doesn't use the Classic compatibility environment at all, and b) the app uses the Aqua GUI. Whether the developer decides to use Carbon, Cocoa, BSD, or a mix of all three is purely the choice of the developer, and makes no difference to whether the app is "native". Mozilla on Mac OS X is a blend of the Mac OS 9 and UNIX versions ... the GUI and such is Carbon, and the networking is pure BSD. It's still a native app.

Cocoa is object-oriented, Carbon is procedural, both are native.

In truth, Mac OS X doesn't give a shit how you want to program. It just wants to host any and all apps that aren't written for Microsoft systems. Carbon apps with a Mac OS 9 heritage (Photoshop 7), Cocoa apps with an OpenStep/NeXTSTEP heritage (OmniWeb), Carbon apps written just for Mac OS X (MS Office X), Cocoa apps written just for Mac OS X (a popular Shareware called Watson is an example), Java2 apps written for any system (that get full Aqua through Swing), UNIX apps written for any system, Web sites that run in IE:Mac (very standards-based, with a totally different codebase than IE for Windows), and finally, Classic apps (Mac Toolbox) from 1984 onward that were written for the old Mac OS and will think they're still running there.

Re:NO

[angelo]

And of course, that's why it loads a middle-ware loader to launch a carbon app, and this doesn't happen in cocoa apps. Sounds non-native to me if there is a helper layer in-between.

Re:NO

[dair]

If you're talking about the LaunchCFMApp process, this is just to let Launch Services, which is Mach-O, prepare and launch apps which are built as CFM binaries.

It's not "middle-ware", and it's not used to launch Carbon apps which are packaged as Mach-O.

-dair

OT: How to set preferences

[beezly]

AirLace,

You have an account. Are you incapable of changing your homepage preferences to exclude the stuff your not interested in?

If your not sure how to do it, click on here and use some imagination rather than whinging about it.

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[AirLace]

Sure, I could configure it myself. Hell, I could download Slashcode, set it up to use the RSS provided by Slashdot and then tweak the Perl code to my heart's content.

That's not what it's about. It's all about the defaults. Have you noticed how the Apache news, the BSD news only rarely makes it to the front page? What I'm saying is that both of these topics are more geeky than Apple, which is just a company producing consumer hardware and software, and Adobe which seems not to have any interests in the geek community whatsoever.

This kind off news should be restricted to the OS X pages by default. Sure, I have no vendetta against proprietary systems and software, but it looks rather silly when Slashdot, most famous for its popularity in the Linux community, posts on its front page an article that has no bearing on its target audience -- programmers, Linux users, geeks.

This is some photo editing software for an OS designed for the computer-illiterate. Just think about it: What would the response be if an article about Microsoft Photo Editor being released for Microsoft Windows XP made it to the front page? Double standards and hypocracy, I say!

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[cloroxcowboy]

This is a big deal. Adobe carries allot of users with their products. Graphic Designers are numerous and without tools they will not follow the movement to X. It may not be earth shattering but it is news and it will change the dynamics involving the users on X. It may not right now seem as big as when Corel came to Linux. However over time it may have a far greater impact.

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL has more users than any other single computer entity outside Microsoft, should we expect that major and minor releases of their software will be front page news at Slashdot now too?

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the possiblilty that there are many more Photoshop users here than AOL users. :P

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[nycdewd]

Well, aren't we just full of ourselves today, eh AirLace? Love that sweeping generalization of yours:"This is some photo editing software for an OS designed for the computer-illiterate."

Hmm! Comes as a surprise to me. Gosh, I guess that having thrashed at mainframes for years (my first job at age 18, fresh from highschool, IBM Systems 360 and 370 and later, though not exactly a mainframe, PDP-11's... etc) throughout the late 60's and all through the 70's makes me computer illiterate all because i prefer to use a more human computer *and* not support the wintel alliance (half of which is criminal and the other half antiquated)?

you are ridiculously presumptuous.

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[dbrutus]

OK, it's not news for nerds. It is, however, stuff that matters. It's driving the universe closer to a Unix v. Microsoft world by reducing the number of desktops running neither (classic Mac OS). Every desktop that goes OS X incrementally changes the calculation that all developers do when they start programming, who is my target audience and to what platforms do I code?

If Mac OS programmers tweak their code so that Cocoa apps they write run under GNUStep, that's a win for Linux. If traditional Unix vendors tweak their code so their stuff compiles and runs under OS X, that's a win for Apple. If Windows programmers conclude that the collective Unix world is once again large enough to start supporting it's a win for everybody in that world BSD and Linux included.

Get it now? It's important because it goes to market share, specifically desktop market share and the software development houses largely follow market share because they've got to pay the bills.

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

In a response yelling at someone for being "full of himself" you go on to show that you are... full of yourself.

Re:OT: How to set preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, AirLace ... it's desktop UNIX, for fuck's sake. Go to O'Reilly's Web site and check out THEIR Mac section. Mac OS X is as geeky as you want to be. The user has the freedom and flexibility to use the machine for their own purposes. Sometimes you don't care about MB and MIPS because you are too busy being a doctor or a graphic artist, and sometimes you like to program Java2 on the train to work with a five-hour battery and your documentation being served by Apache.

Get over yourself. Come into the new century, man.

Perfect...

[Cyclopedian]

Now I can combine cron jobs to download pr0n and clean them up on photoshop while I sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

Man, I tickle at the thought of starting Photoshop from the command line. =)

-Cyc

Re:Perfect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I tickle at the thought of starting Photoshop from the command line. =) You can already do it- run "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 5.0\Photoshp.exe"

Re:Perfect...

[elbles]

Well, if you get a Sun, RS/6000, PA-RISC, or a SGI system, and Photoshop 3.0, you can type photoshop at the shell, and watch it load (and promptly crash, at least that is my experience on my SGI Indigo2 Extreme). ;-)

Re:Perfect...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to launch GUI applications from the terminal, even without the open command. Try the following: "./OmniWeb.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniWeb"

Re:Perfect...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can start Photoshop from the command line in Mac OS X like this:

open /Applications/Photoshop.app

or you can just go

open "~/Documents/Name of Document.psd"

Seen it

[Mattygfunk]

At Macworld Expo during Steve Jobs' keynote presentation, Adobe had a copy of Photoshop running on OS X. Looked pretty cool.

No release date yet unfortunately except that it will be available in the first half of this year.

Re:Seen it

[Daytona955i]

You mean like the release date of TOMORROW? Before you comment, check your info.

to clear up some misconceptions

[Hadlock]

just b/c it's ported to os x, doesn't mean you can automatically port it to linux, or any other variant. photoshop 7 will be run on top of aqua, which in turn runs on top of darwin, among other things. apple has a great explination on their http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/ os x site. in neat aquazied-graphics even.

porting photoshop 7 to linux/KDE/ect would be about as easy as porting age of empires w/o wine. did i miss anything? i hope that clears up alot of porting questions

Re:to clear up some misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

All your port are belong to us!

Re:to clear up some misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't they port it using GNUstep?

It's a great application

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played with it at work for about 15 minutes, they beta test, and it's easily as good as inn OS 9. They get an A.

wonderful...

[Cipher13]

One more proprietary app down. How many more to go?

I hardly think this is the point.

Sure, PS7 will be available for OSX - availability isn't the problem, suckage is.

Is it gonna suck? THAT's the point. This will be the definitive test for Aqua; I for one don't see Aqua standing up to it.

One things for damn sure, if Apple doesn't fix the mousing in OSX, nobody's going to even ATTEMPT to do grapics work at any resolution greater than 1024*768.

Re:wonderful...

[mstrjon32]

Aqua is the colorful interface that Mac OS X has. That has nothing to do with Photoshop. I think what you are referring to is Quartz; Apples new display package to replace the aging Quickdraw. Quartz is Apple's most advanced graphics engine ever and I think it should be up to the task. If it and OpenGL can handle Maya, I would think Photoshop would be a breeze.

What is wrong with Apple's mouse handling? It works the same for me in X as it did in 9. Granted after I replaced my Apple mouse with a logitech cordless I lost a little resolution, but it still works fine.

Re:wonderful...

[nycdewd]

as the poster remarked in his reply to you, previous to mine here, Aqua and Quartz are two different animals...

Mousing? ha! MouseZoom, freeware. Great.

Do not confuse yourself by assuming that i am conceding the mouse action in OS X is not up to snuff, it is. But Mousezoom is for freaks like myself who want ridiculous mouse speeds, and don't care to spend any time cooking up their own solutions when they could be doing something more important like using their comps to pay the rent or posting at /.

heh.

just another reason to appreciate OS X, there are so many people making great little apps and tweaks for it...

"lest we forget, the world is so much more than black and white, there are infinite shades of grey" (attribution: me)

Re:wonderful...

[MaxVlast]

Proprietary apps make the world go 'round...

I don't see major newspapers or magazines doing their work in Gimp and, uhh, right, there is no OS page layout program.

Gimp is not Photoshop. Gimp is a mess. Gimp has a dumb UI. Gimp won't be Photoshop for a long time.

Sure, it's nice to sit around and jerk off while struggling to make layer and alpha channels, but cooing over the open source-ness of it all. Meanwhile, real people are doing real work on real programs.

Not to be too bitter about it, but all those people who knee-jerk yell "closed source! Evil! Gimp! Who needs anything else!?" get my goat.

Re:wonderful...

[autechre]

There's a program called Scribus which is released under the GPL and aims to be a free replacement for software like Quark and Indesign. I wrote an article about it a short while ago:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/04 /1 79247&mode=thread

As I pointed out, it does have some shortcomings (though I was very surprised to learn that Quark has a pathetic undo feature...maybe I shouldn't have been, since I've experienced many bad things with Quark.). However, it already has things such as text kerning which made Quark the default app for publishing (despite the fact that Quark doesn't actually do things well, it just does everything you need well enough that people have gotten used to it...except for opening files across a network without exploding and destroying them).

I think software like this and the GIMP have real promise, though I am aware that there are those few things (like getting colours right for print publications) that still tie many people (like me!) to Quark and Photoshop on MacOS.

Re:wonderful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Scribus and it serves well to me. At least my needs are acomplished easy.

And Gimp's not a mess. It's much more sophisticated than you think it is. Maybe you haven't see "newspapers and magazines....". But your sorry ass is right now reading internet news which do not require cmyk. And guess which software is better for making rgb pictures.

Personally I can use both but Photoshop is just not usable for my drawing needa.

You know there's more to publishing than you know, and publishing as you hail goes down the drain (as you).

Re:wonderful...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the top mouse speed that's available in the GUI preferences, you can also up it with a simple command at the command line, or use MouseZoom or USB Overdrive or a couple of other choices to get truly geeky control over it.

Geez ... think about it: it's a Mac. The mouse has almost 20 years of history on this platform. There are zero Macs made without mouses. You will not lack mouse options on a Mac.

Re:wonderful...

[DavidRavenMoon]

Is it gonna suck? THAT's the point. This will be the definitive test for Aqua; I for one don't see Aqua standing up to it.

I have the beta for PS 7... it does not suck! Illustrator 10 doesn't suck either.

One things for damn sure, if Apple doesn't fix the mousing in OSX, nobody's going to even ATTEMPT to do grapics work at any resolution greater than 1024*768.

My monitor is set to 1280 X 1024 and I have no mouse problems. I'm using an MS IntellimouseOptical with USBOverdrive. I can get the mouse as fast as I need. Faster actually. You really don't want a fast mouse when you are using it to draw with or making clipping paths though. You want it to move as fast as your hand is moving.

other neat features

[mashy]

besides being OS X native, photoshop 7's text engine is gonna have spell check! whoo hoo!


<offtopic> just love the aqua-like slashdot logo on apple.slashdot.org</offtopic>

Re:other neat features

[mirabilos]

Try to persuade CmdrTaco to post news
using Photoshop instead of $browser

Re:other neat features

[EddydaSquige]

I don't understand the spell check. Do people do wordprossesing in PS?

Re:other neat features

[Knobby]

People don't do word processing per se, but if you're laying out a fairly complex advertisment with a half dozen lines of test, wouldn't it be nice to run a spellchecker over it quickly to make sure all's well?.. It's one of a handful of tools that Apple has included in the OS as a service and it's nice that companies are taking advantage of them..

Re:other neat features

[damiam]

I believe someone's working on a patch for Mozilla to allow optional spell checking in textboxes.

However, there's already a feature in Slashcode where it'll run a story through ispell as you preview it, but apparently Taco doesn't have it turned on.

Re:other neat features

[dr00g911]

Actually guys, that wasn't a joke.

Text in Photoshop 7 really *does* have spell checking via system services. I've used a beta of it off and on for a while now.

Sounds useless, but there's a lot of Web developer types who do most of their mockups for clients in 'Shop.

Reading and writing wbmp natively for WAP & palms is a bit more useful, though IMO.

--d

Re:other neat features

[MaxVlast]

I use a browser written in Cocoa (OmniWeb.) Since it uses the Cocoa text objects, I get ten years of work on interoperability (including a modular spell-checking system) for free. It's convenient, automatic, and gets the job done without me worrying about it.

How refreshing.

Re:other neat features

[bay43270]

I don't understand the spell check. Do people do wordprossesing in PS? I never really understood this attitude. Every computer program should have access to spell checking. Why should I have to open word and copy/paste text into it every time I want to post on /.? I suggested adding spellchecking to my favorite Java IDE recently, and everyone thought I was joking. I just want it to check spelling in my Javadoc comments... how hard is that? Its funny, how even (especially) the die-hard geeks, still don't understand that no human should have to do extra work that the computer is capable of doing on its own.

Re:other neat features

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. You only need one word to have a tpyo...

Re:other neat features

[bsartist]

Every computer program should have access to spell checking.

Every native OS/X program does have access to the system-wide spell checking service. :-)

Re:other neat features

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac OS X speller is also real-time, and underlines misspelled words. Really great to have it in all of your HTML forms. Spelling is something that should be part of the system. It's a shame MS puts it in Office but not in Windows.

Re:other neat features

[MaxVlast]

That's because the libraries are thin, compared to the bulk of the OS. The joy of Cocoa is that the libraries are what have all of the richness. Because much of the OS uses those libraries, all of the richness comes for free. In Windows, the programmer is on his own for much of the work. That's why Windows programs (and Linux ones even more so) are such a hit-or-miss situation.

Re:other neat features

[JuliaNZ]

besides being OS X native, photoshop 7's text engine is gonna have spell check!

But that breaks the one true rule of graphic design: Every l33t d3s1gn must have at least one glaring spelling mistake...

...and there was much rejoicing.

[solios]

I use computers for one thing only: content creation. This includes Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Fireworks... essentially, media creation and manipulation. I've tried every toy I can get my hands on, and have come to the conclusion that what works best for me is the Adobe and Macromedia suites on a Macintosh.

UNIX/Linux/BSD is neato, but I failed math, suck at logic, and can't grep to save my life. I'd like to play around with it and learn it, but I have no real reason to- and my experience with Free Software has been pretty nasty- I bitch about nonexistant intallers, suck-ass window managers, poor hardware support, and I'm told "FIX IT YOURSELF!"... and as a non programmer, I'd rather stick with something that already works for me to begin with.

Apple has brought UNIX to the desktop. Now I can run all of my happy fun day to day tasks and learn the bash (well, ZSH), discover the joys of suing to root and doing a kill 0 to see what happens, and generally have the best of both worlds. I see this as being rather relevant, really- if the company known for making "idiot friendly" machines can make UNIX useable for an idiot (or those of us that know a few lines of HTML, Lingo and BASIC)...and the companies that support that company port their apps.... then what the hell is keeping the rest of the world from following suit? Hmm?

Hell. With OS X, I can run Apache, X-11 apps, Gimp, Photoshop, Maya, Combustion, Quake.... dear gods, it can do absolutely EVERYTHING I NEED. I only need to run ONE OS for all of my art geek and computer geek needs. Hot damn. THAT is relevant.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[SteveM]

Again - what's the point?

The point is the right tool for the job.

As you clearly point out in your post, "... I like being able to choose my own processor and motherboard and then the case I want to put it in...", you have a much higher comfort level with computer technology then does Solios.

Thus the right tool is a Mac because that is what works for him/her.

It is not clear if you have ever used a Mac for any length of time. And your comment, "... and I'm proud to say not one is a Mac ..." makes clear your anti-Mac bias. So despite claims to the contrary it would appear that you avoid Macs not because you don't see the point but because you don't like Macs.

I don't know how many computers there are in a bunch. I have four on my home network. Two Macs and two PCs. I run Mac OS (9 and X) apps, Linux apps, Windows apps, Darwin apps, and even the occasional Palm app (via an emulator).

My prefered system is my TiBook running OS X which also allows me to run OS 9 and Darwin apps. I've installed VPC on it and can run Windows apps as well (albeit slowly).

For me the TiBook is the right tool for the job. And as I said above, that is the point.

Steve M

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[fferreres]

I think your point is valid. And as you can see, the problem is not Unix itself but something really deeper.

Companies, in general, want NOT to release their source code.

Companies do like people that are willing to PAY for software (as in advanced cash).

Desktop users want computers where programs INSTALL easily.

Desktop users want computers where hardware configuration is TRIVIAL

And that's why OSX is perfect for you. It addresses your needs. Of course, it doesn't address the need of people that need freedom and flexibility for EVERYTHING that runs under their computers. I don't use Linux because GIMP is better than Photoshop, i use it because GIMP has what i need and i know that GIMP will eventually beat Photoshop.

In some way, i think i use Linux because i feel i'm on the right side. Microsoft used my money to lock me into their OS and after doing that, all my money started funding them so they could lock me into more of their stuff (like Office). I don't like that and many companies are starting to feel this way too.

Note: this is only my opinion. Please disregard it completelly if you don't agree. It's ok and i understand it.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[mrpull]

Now I can run all of my happy fun day to day tasks and learn the bash (well, ZSH),

If you prefer to use the bash shell (as I do) in OSX point your browser here.

mr.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[schvenk]

I'll echo an earlier response in pointing out that your mind already seems quite made up, between being proud of not owning a Mac and wondering why the story is slashdot-worthy. (Answer: Because it's news about the computer industry, like many other posts on slashdot.)

And if you absolutely must build your own PC, then no, don't get a Mac. If, on the other hand, you'd like an OS that lets you perform similar configuration at the software level, but still runs major consumer apps, OS X is a great choice.

Beyond that, when you're working in Photoshop or Word, you're not gonna notice a whole lot of significant differences between platforms. I share the view of a lot of Mac users that the user experience is better in a number of ways, but if you're happy with your Windows machines, no, there's probably no hugely compelling reason to switch, just as there's no real reason to be quite as anti-Mac as you seem to be.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[MicroBerto]

Posts like this REALLY make me want OS X. And i would get it and use it!

That is... if I didn't have to pay for their hardware.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[cosmo7]

hey dudes, another mac voyeur!

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[mikemcc]

You write, "I truly cannot understand what's so great about Macs." Then you state, "...there are only two [computers] I use regularly:" a Linux server and a win2K/winXP/linux desktop.

You should be able to answer your own question. You use an operating system (Linux) in preference to other options for a particular task (as a server) because you think it's best for that task. For every task you can think of, there is probably an os/app combination that you feel will be the best environment for you to accomplish that task.

Many people believe that the Macintosh is the best platform for a set of tasks. You don't claim to have used a Macintosh, or benefitted from the graphics friendly technology which is baked into that OS, yet you suggest that you're correct and they're wrong.

Perhaps the work that you're producing on a Win32 machine is better than that of your coworkers. How much of that is because of the operating system involved? Perhaps the answer for you is "none," and since the OS doesn't help you on your current platform, you assert that it won't be a factor on other platforms.

But what if, after the unavoidable learning curve of a new platform, you discovered that you were 10% more productive on a Macintosh, because of the design and technology of the OS? What if it were only 5%, or the improvement were as great at 15%? What is 10% more time worth to you?

You don't use a Windows server. Why not? Isn't the windows server Good Enough? Or did you want the Best Available Option? Did you arrive at that opinion by reading trade magazines? By listening to your coworkers? Or by direct experimentation and observation?

If you're using your Windows desktop and Win32 ports of your preferred applications because they're Good Enough, that's your prerogative, but at least recognize your stance. But if you are interesting in using the best tool for the job, it is self-limiting for you to dismiss the Mactinosh without seriously exploring the platform.

Your final two questions:
"what's the point?" and
"why is this story even slashdot worthy?"
should also be immediately obvious. Because the availability of Photoshop for Mac OS X will go a long way toward making or breaking the short term success of Mac OS X. Photoshop dominates its market, and its not a trvial market. This release will directly lead to increased sales for both Apple and Photoshop. In a time when many tech companies are struggling, Apple and Photoshop will post numbers that are better than their neighbors. This will translate into increased positive media attention, which will create a more receptive management, which will lead to more OS X Macs in your office.

One last question:
Why is it a source of pride that none of your home computers is an Apple?

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the majority of Slashdot Readers broke asses? Do you also:

By the cheapest car you can or weigh options and cost vs quality?

By the cheapest toilet paper and chafe your anuses?

On the other hand Mac Hardware is very comparable (don't respond with Fry's generic AMD knockoffs that you got for $50)

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I would really like to drive a BMW M3.

If only I did not have to pay for it.

I mean, I can pick up a Honda Civic for under $20,000!

You obviously do not want to use OS X that badly if you are not willing to pay a slight premium for the machine to run it.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Ryan Amos]

Sorry, this is probably a bit offtopic.. but it really irks me how people compare GIMP and Photoshop. GIMP is a cool program, don't get me wrong, but if you're doing any sort of serious image manipulation, it's not even close to Photoshop. There's a reason that Photoshop is the only program that anyone professionally considers for graphics manipulation.

Sure, GIMP is about as good as Photoshop 3.0. But keep in mind that Photoshop 3.0 was released about 7 or 8 years ago. GIMP is great if you're just going to stick with web graphics, but if you ever have to do any print quality stuff, you'll see why the Adobe line of software is so popular. Where Photoshop really starts to kick ass is with large files (>200 MB, yes, this size files are common, many people work with them on a daily basis.) GIMP would slow to an unusable crawl just trying to render the 15 or so layers, but Photoshop is so highly optimized that it doesn't even flinch. In fact, the main speed bottleneck in Photoshop is the hard drive, not the program. Photoshop is one of the few expensive pieces of software that I consider worth the price.

The moral of this story is that while yes, GIMP is sufficient for people's needs (read: web site graphics, basic file resizing type things, etc,) it's not in the same ballpark as Photoshop. It's not even playing the same game, and it's ludicrous to say that "GIMP will eventually beat Photoshop." If you think that, you've never really used Photoshop.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[kilrogg]

People already own the hardware(!), they've invested lots of money in their computers. Their not going to pay for an extra computer just to play with OS X! Its like if you had to buy a specific brand of car just so you can install a kick ass car stereo on it. It doesn't matter how good the stereo is, if its not going to fit on my already purchased car, I'm not going to buy it. Same goes for computers & OSes.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GIMP has a chance to replace something like Photoshop Elements, which is a $99 "Photoshop Lite" for consumers and hobbyists, maybe in a few years if they want to do that, and if they port to Aqua (running in X Windows there is no chance to get the mainstream market that requires that level of graphics software). If they were to use iMovie and iPhoto and iTunes user interfaces as models, they could make a very popular app for anyone who doesn't do graphics for a living, all day long.

It would take the GIMP 10 years at least to get to where Photoshop 7 is right now. Plus, to get Photoshop pros to switch, they'd have to be able to open old Photoshop files perfectly. It's a lot to ask.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhh. but it DOES matter. if that stereo made you get to your destination FASTER and you found yourself HAPPIER and having more FUN in the process...and all the chicks...the chicks looked at you in awe when you drove by because your machine was so much sexier than the other 95% driven by the common man...i'd bet you'd pony up the marginal "premium"...if you could!?!

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no premium on Mac hardware anymore. If you add the cost of Mac OS X, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and the 15 other great apps you get with every machine to the competing Windows-based computer, the Mac is actually cheaper. Plus, you don't have to buy anti-virus and firewall software for your Mac (it has security built-in from the start), and the Mac updates itself and all those applications automatically, too.

Apple uses all the same price points as other manufacturers, but Apple is at the top of each price point, because they include so much stuff. In the $599-$799 entry-level price point, Apple's machine is a $799 CRT-based iMac with FireWire, Wi-Fi antennaes, optical mouse, and a great software bundle, just like any Mac. In the next slot up, which is $899-$1299, Apple has a $1299 LCD-based iMac. Keep comparison shopping all the way up to the $2999 pro workstation, which on the Mac side is a dual 1GHz machine with niceties such as Gigabit Ethernet, dual display graphics, SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-RW), 1.5GB RAM capacity, four empty high-speed PCI slots, Wi-Fi antennaes, and much more.

Don't even get me started on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). I just retired my first Mac after three full years of use, and it has a flat panel display, FireWire, 1.5GB RAM capacity, and can take CPU upgrades, so it is still a very current machine for most users, great for surfing the Web and such. I could have kept using it longer if I wasn't doing music and audio, which can basically always use more power. I have never had a Windows machine get to two full years. Every major Windows upgrade always broke one hardware component and forced me to go hunting for drivers, and Windows is famouse for getting more unstable every day the machine ages. The Mac has just kept updating itself automatically, and has been basically trouble-free. It's as fresh now as it was three years ago.

Hardware is not a 10-year investment. You get two years from your x86 PC and still people are saying they want OS X for Intel. Microsoft doesn't even recommend upgrading a current machine to XP, but rather to just get XP with your next machine. You are going to get either Windows XP or Mac OS X with your next machine, no matter what you do. I would humbly suggest that the overwhelming majority of users are better off making a Mac their next purchase, and dedicating their old system to Linux or keep it around for what it currently does, if it is a Windows system. Since I got my first Mac, almost all of my friends have switched to Macs, too, just from seeing and using mine. I only have two friends who have Windows PC's, and right now, both of those machines are down because of viruses. One user is shopping for a new LCD iMac, and the other has basically given up on computers because of virus troubles and Windows crashes, which is really sad. She doesn't want to hear about how easy an iMac will be to use, because she is convinced that she is a "computer dummy". It's really tragic.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[zenyu]

The moral of this story is that while yes, GIMP is sufficient for people's needs (read: web site graphics, basic file resizing type things, etc,) it's not in the same ballpark as Photoshop. It's not even playing the same game, and it's ludicrous to say that "GIMP will eventually beat Photoshop." If you think that, you've never really used Photoshop.

Gosh, I always grumble when it takes 5 seconds to start up that it's TOO much like photoshop ;)

Seriously, while GIMP is years behind photoshop I think there is a chance it may displace photoshop eventually, simply because it's open. Consider if you're a graduate student inventing a new filter.. where are you going to test it? I'd feel a little better giving it to gimp and enforcing the patent against photoshop if they tried to use it without paying.

Even if that never happens and it keeps photoshop from slowing down on improving, GIMP has been successful. I no longer need photoshop since most of my uses are simple things like resizing or basic color correction.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[fferreres]

Everything granted, except the "it's ludicrous to say that "GIMP will eventually beat Photoshop" part. Because it's not ludicrous.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, the open source argument. Yes, open source has made a good amount of headway. But that headway was in a market that was largely stagnant, namely the Unix server market. Sure, there are lots of people who use Linux on their desktop boxes, but anyone who says Linux will succeed because "it's open source" has their head up their ass. At best Linux will endure as a niche, something geeks revere and most others have no knowledge of. Linux will be the AD&D of our generation, relegated to geeky obscurity. Yes, Linux is incredibly useful in many areas such as education and research. But for anything else (excluding basic TCP servers,) Linux is underdeveloped, immature, and generally a bad alternative to Windows/Macintosh.

Oh, moderators: Don't mod this post down because you don't agree with it. If you want to knock it down because you think I'm just a troll, feel free, but I actually am trying to make a point (as AC cos I don't want to deal with e-mail flames.)

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

People already own the hardware(!), they've invested lots of money in their computers.

That's what eBay is for...

Their not going to pay for an extra computer just to play with OS X!

By the way, the word you want is "they're"

Some people own cars too, but eventualy they want a new one.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[q-soe]

Actually i agree - i would love a mac myself, but at australian prices i cannot ever hope to afford it.

www.apple.com.au\store

Summary
800MHz PowerPC G4
256MB SDRAM - 1 DIMM
40GB Ultra ATA - 7200rpm
CD-RW drive
ATI Radeon 7500 dual
56K internal modem

$3695 PLUS monitor

This is a machine with zip or removable drive (a must have for my needs)

ADD 256MB ram - $252 (why is thi so dear?)
Bring the HDD up to the same as my PC (80gb) $231
Add a monitor - 17" cheapest $2299 (gues what YOU cannot buy a G3 from them with a CRT only a flatscreen)
Zip Drive $231
I want a DVD like my PC - $231 (superdrive not available in this box)

Our 'Cheap' mac is now Subtotal $6,929.00

Thats exactly 3 times the cost of MY 1.5gb PC and i used name brand gear (motherboards etc) to build it.

A notebook

yes a notebook i hear you say

OK on my desk i have a Dell Latitude C600 with 80gb HDD,512mb ram, Nvidia Video Card, Wireless 100mb network, CDRW/DVD, 15.1 screen etc. The apple i need to match it is a G4

So lets go entry level.

Summary
256MB SDRAM - 1 SO DIMM
550MHz PowerPC G4 @ 100MHz - 16MB VRAM
20GB Ultra ATA drive
15.2-inch TFT display
Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW)
Gigabit Ethernet
56K internal modem
1 FireWire 2 USB ports
Mac OS 9 boot-up (Mac OS X included)

Subtotal $5,495.00

Add RAM - $242
Add HDD (only goes to 48gb) $935
Add Air Port - $199

Subtotal $6,871.00

I mean MY dell cost $5100 and it was DEAR.\

I love Apple - i supported them for 2 years in advertising and would kill for one but at these prices i couldnt afford the badge - and thats BEFORE $3500 for a copy of photoshop.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Maybe you shouldn't get all your stuff from apple. Just what you need: Bare minimum RAM, one good HD, or a really small one, no monitor etc. etc. and get the rest else where. We all know that apple charges heaps for extras.

What pissises me off though is the stuff that is apple only. I just found about the an A/V cable for my iBook will cost NZ$100, when if it was made my any ordernary company would prolly only cost $20. Maybe $60 for a fancy gold plated one. But most certinly not $100!

BTW. Does anyone know if anybody else make an A/V cable similar to the one needed for the iBook?

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Anonymous Coward]

UNIX/Linux/BSD is neato, but I failed math, suck at logic, and can't grep to save my life.

Maybe you should run for President.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[stux]

I know the NZ$ is weaker than the AU$ but not by that much.

Buying an iBook AV cable from an Apple centre in Sydney costs about AU$45

The NZ$ can't be *THAT* much less than the AU$

So you're getting raked... go to a different dealer, pay a different price.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[Explo]

's not even playing the same game, and it's ludicrous to say that "GIMP will eventually beat Photoshop." If you think that, you've never really used Photoshop.

It's ludicrous to say that it's impossible. Not extremely probable, but it's not realistic to say that it can't happen in any case ever.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I'll have a look. Maybe they just jack-up the price of things like that, because the price of the computers themsselves are pretty much eaxctly the same whereever you go.

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[alex_siufy]

It is *exaclty* because it's open that Gimp will always stay a couple of years behind Photoshop!

Most open source software just copy features of the commercial applications, once these are introduced. Right now, the Gimp doesn't have all the features of Photoshop 7, but even if it had, once Adobe comes out with 7.5/8.0, the Gimp folks will have to play catch-up again!

Do you really think any of the open source word processors are more full featured than Word or WordPerfect? Don't you think they still need several years just to catch up? Same thing with the Gimp...

Re:...and there was much rejoicing.

[stux]

They do :)

Good New

[Influencial]

This is very good news for apple, without Adobe support a large core of professionals will not take up Mac OS X, which imho has the ability to do very very well.

Re:Good New

[October_30th]

without Adobe support a large core of professionals will not take up

Just remember that Adobe was the company that sued Sklyarov and is actively participating in locking down the books of the future in the name of the intellectual "property". I will blame it partially on Adobe when I am seen as a criminal if I loan a book to my friend. Also PDF is still a proprietary format.

Re:NO (Carbon API on Unix)

[spearway]

This would be a very cool open source project port the Carbon API to Linux or other Unixes.

Why hurry?

[puckhead]

I can't imagine that software companys that sell to the wintel world are in a hurry to release more products for Apple users. The people who use Apple products will wait. They're used to it.

Re:Why hurry?

[Beetjebrak]

Adobe's market is HUGE in the apple section, the Wintel market for their products pales in comparison. Practically every publishing shop in the world runs on Apple hardware using Adobe and Quark apps. So yes they're in a hurry. It's their biggest market.

Re:Why hurry?

[puckhead]

The newest figure I found was for 1998. Wintel %58 of sales and rising.

Re:Why hurry?

[Anonymous Coward]

A large portion of this is Acrobat (not Reader, full app) to government agencies and bundleware with PC scanners.

Re:Why hurry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe was Mac only when you were a glimmer in your daddy's eye.

Re:Why hurry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe takes in more revenue from their Mac apps than they do from their Windows and UNIX apps combined. Photoshop on Macs is their core market, just like Office on Windows is Microsoft's core market. Photoshop didn't even arrive on Windows until Photoshop 4 or so. Windows still doesn't have built-in color calibration, wheras you buy an Apple machine and it comes calibrated and stays that way for life.

Windows users who think every business uses Windows are like Americans who travel and can't understand why everyone doesn't speak English or eat hamburgers. Get over yourself. A Windows machine with a copy of MS Office is a typewriter that can be pushed into doing other things. It replaces the IBM Selectric. It is not the best choice for graphics, video, music and audio, and many, many other tasks. There are about 50 Billboard Top 100 hit records that were recorded "tapeless", and all of them were done on Pro Tools running on a Mac. Not a single one of them was done on Pro Tools running on Windows, which has been available for NT for about three or four years.

Re:Why hurry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe's low-end stuff ships in volume for Windows, but in $, they make more on the Mac side, where they sell their big pro apps in volume.

More in-depth view at MacCentral

[JimRay]

MacCentral is running a much more in-depth article, complete with screenshots you can actually see. Also included are a hands-on review and some intelligent commentary missing from the very PC-centric C|Net.

Re:More in-depth view at MacCentral

[dilger]

Thanks for posting that -- it was a good article. It sounds like Adobe is actually doing some additions which amount to more than bells and whistles. And here's something else:

With Photoshop you can customize commonly used tools and save your preferred settings as a new tool for easy recall. You can also customize and save your workspace for the different types of projects you are doing in Photoshop. "With the increased customization, you can setup your workspace so it is more efficient for the work you are doing," Weisberg said.

Hopefully, this means that I'll be able to make the interface actually usable again. I've been using Photoshop 3 for years because of the featuritis and clutter of the newer versions. Maybe I'll upgrade. I wonder if they'll give me a discount since I already have a (seven year old) license? :)

cbd.

Re:More in-depth view at MacCentral

[Cuthalion]

It sounds like Adobe is actually doing some additions which amount to more than bells and whistles.

The first version of photoshop I ever used is 3.0. I don't know about versions previous to that. But since then, every release (4.0, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0) have made significant improvements to Photoshop. Every version the font engine has gotten better (though the UI for it has been up and down). They've added automation and batch processing, multiple levels of undo with a reasonable interface, support for vector shapes (more than just paths), previewing various levels of compression, the Extract tool, layer effects, text effects, slices (the ability to partition up an image and automatically save various parts of it to different files), as well as increasing stuff like how much virtual memory photoshop can use.

To you they may be bells and whistles or bloat. To me they are features that I have found extremely useful on countless occasions.

Macromedia & OSX

[Brento]

will we see companies like Macromedia (who also promised native OS X support) hurry along to follow suit?"

I bet you'll see a press release from Macromedia soon, but that'll be it for a while. They're behind schedule releasing Dreamweaver 5 and Ultradev 5, which is rumored to support dot-Net, and they've gotten to the point where they're just putting out open-ended Microsoft-style vaporware press releases instead.

Not to disrespect Mac folks, but I bet the profit involved in putting out Ultradev 5 with dot-Net authoring will result in a lot more sales than Dreamweaver in native OSX, but of course, that's just my betting. Then again, maybe this is the reason DW/UD5 is so behind schedule - maybe they're trying to release everything at once, including native OSX support and dot-Net authoring. I'm getting to the point where I wouldn't accept anything less when this thing finally comes out.

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[JasonOrrill]

Not to disrespect Mac folks, but I bet the profit involved in putting out Ultradev 5 with dot-Net authoring will result in a lot more sales than Dreamweaver in native OSX

That may be true, but they've also got to worry about the potential of lost sales. At the moment I'm using Dreamweaver 3 in Classic mode, which works fine but as more and more apps run native it becomes increasingly painful to have to do that. If GoLive is native before Dreamweaver, I may well consider switching.

As a side note, it's not just OS X support that is lacking. Full OS X support still isn't here yet. I just upgraded to Freehand 10 and have been dismayed to learn that pressure-sensitivity for my Wacom tablet isn't supported yet with it. So it's back to Freehand 9 in Classic for that, or look to Illustrator, which I hear does support it.

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[ahfoo]

Personally I think the main reason Microsoft doesn't compete with Macromedia is largely because they are already one and the same company from a management perspective.
They'll devote a few people to Mac stuff now and then --you know throw a bone to the Mac people-- but for a company that started out Mac, their efforts are pretty lame especially when you get into the top of their higher level tools like Director and Authorware. It's pathetic that Authorware has become almost totally MS Windows(TM) focused to the point that you have to do your design work in Windows even if you're going to build your project with a Mac runtime if you plan on using one of the more recent versions of the product.
From what I've gotten off their corporate news server, that's the way THEY like it. They take a rather dismissive view of Mac in their Director/Authorware discussion groups and boy don't you even mention Linux unless you want to get all these communist stereotypes laid on ya. I wouldn't hold my breath for innovation from Macromedia on the Mac despite the similarity in the names and the former association that was implied by that connection.
The only solution is a decent icon/flow control development package for Linux, but we're still a long way from that. Until then, Macromedia is the solution to Microsoft's problems, not Mac's or Linux's.

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[Spydr]

actually, i heard it through the grapevine that these releases are closer than you may think.

Flash 6 (mm_corp() has renamed all their new stuff to MX)-- Flash MX, DW MX, Fireworks MX should be out next month - and from what i know, they all run native in OSX

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[pizero]

I just wanted to point out that Macromedia released FreeHand 10, which runs natively on OS X, almost a year ago. I'm guessing that one of the delays in getting Photoshop 7 out was a mad dash to finish Illustrator.

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[Lysander Luddite]

" Not to disrespect Mac folks, but I bet the profit involved in putting out Ultradev 5 with dot-Net authoring will result in a lot more sales than Dreamweaver in native OSX, but of course, that's just my betting."

You're probably right. But, OSX has been out almost a year. While not finished, it is further along than dot net, so why not work on that until dot net gets figured out?

Or are you saying that dot net features of UltraDev/Dreamweaver won't be on the Mac?

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why Macromedia is seen as PC-centric is because many Mac users are already using Adobe products. GoLive had a head start on Dreamweaver on the Mac side, and didn't come to Windows until GoLive 4. On Windows, there was more of a vacuum to sell Dreamweaver/Fireworks into. Lots of users with plain text editors and no graphics software bought the Dreamweaver/Fireworks studio. Many Mac users had Photoshop already and haven't given Macromedia as much of a chance.

With all that, though, Macromedia still sells about 60/40 Windows/Mac. I think what makes it hard to judge is that it's not uniform across all their products. Some products are heavily Windows or Windows-only, especially after the Allaire merger.

Also, I know from talking to other Dreamweaver users that there are a LOT of them who are going to Mac OS X. Having Apache and UNIX right there is hard to resist for the heavy code-jockies, especially on a 1" thick notebook with FireWire, Wi-Fi, a combo drive, and 5-hour battery life built-in.

Re:Macromedia & OSX

[DavidRavenMoon]

Not to disrespect Mac folks, but I bet the profit involved in putting out Ultradev 5 with dot-Net authoring will result in a lot more sales than Dreamweaver in native OSX

That may be true, but they've also got to worry about the potential of lost sales. At the moment I'm using Dreamweaver 3 in Classic mode, which works fine but as more and more apps run native it becomes increasingly painful to have to do that. If GoLive is native before Dreamweaver, I may well consider switching.

It will be. It's supposed to be out at the end of the month. Adobe had some beta copies of GoLive out already. I tried one and it runs great. Plus GoLive 6.0 has some of the features of Ultradev already without having to pay extra!

Check out this review of GoLive 6 on OS X from CreativePro.com

The Creative Toolbox: A First Look at GoLive 6.0

I hate Dreamweaver

Re:NO (Carbon API on Unix)

[Beetjebrak]

Yeah great, but we still won't be able to recompile the Adobe stuff to run on x86 hardware instead of PowerPC. As an avid Adobe user due to lack of alternatives I'm not going to hold my breath until FreeBSD runs Photoshop natively. I'd rather have a Mac with OSX running most of my current FreeBSD apps AND proprietary Adobe/M$ apps. I could even install Linux onto my future Mac if I wanted to, but frankly I don't see any reason to do so.
As far as I'm concerned, Apple has a major winner on its hands here and I, for one, will certainly move to the Mac platform ASAP when my graphics apps have all been ported properly. My current x86 servers are running FreeBSD+Samba, it won't take much work to put Netatalk on there instead. Now if only I had enough cash to spend...

Eh Eh, you cant

[skymester]

Unfortunately you cant run GUI apps from the Terminal in OS X as you can run X11 clients on another unixish system. Ok, maybe it is possible, but not in the simple was.

So, this is only possible with windows right now.

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[yomegaman]

Actually it's quite easy using the "open" command:

open /Applications/iTunes.app

would start iTunes for example. Another nice use for "open" is that you can give a file as the argument, and it will start your preferred handler for that file type and display it. So if you said "open file.pdf" it would show you the file in Acrobat. Much handier sometimes than mousing over to a Finder window.

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[moof1138]

You cannot "run" them directly from the Terminal, but there are a few tricks that you can use to control them from the Terminal a little less directly. As was mentioned above you can use the 'open' command to launch a GUI app. Beyond that if the app is scriptable to do what you want you can use 'osascript' and its brethren to execute AppleScript commands for the command line (making it possible to use shell/Perl scripts to automate functions of GUI apps). 'apropos osa' will find you all the relevant commands, which have man pages. Photoshop in the past was very scriptable, so as long as they have maintained this, you should be able to write shell and perl scripts that take advantage of this, or fire off oneliners in the shell. Since you are using a shell command to execute an applescript it might be a little more complicated in a oneliner than just selecting something from a menu or clicking a button or two. But automating a task in a script could be more worthwhile since you can perform repetitive tasks.

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[stux]

"open /Applications/SomeGuiApp.app"

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on guys, stuff this "full path to" nonsense: use a bit of open's grooviness to get it to do that sort of hackwork:

open -a console

will open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app (yep, case irrelevant in the -a argument). Or

open -a itunes

and so on.

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[Anonymous Coward]

eh eh - that's under windows dufus

Re:Eh Eh, you cant

[stux]

Nice,

pitty it gives me a bus error...

open is crap that way

Macromedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we slam Macromedia:
They released their vector Illustration App: Freehand (IMHO: a better competitor to Adobe's Illustrator) native on OSX, months ago.

Re:Macromedia

[skribble]

I have both Adobe Illustrator aand Macromedia Freehand for OS X. While Freehand may have been first, it absolutly sucks compared to Illustrator. FWIW, Until recently I actually prefered Freehand, but Freehand for OS X is so bad it's unforgivable.

It screams ...

[d0n quix0te]

It is bloody fast on OS X. Beats the hell out of OS 9 as far as speed is concerned. And of course it toasts the XP version by a large margin. Expect Steve to do a OS 9/ OS X/ XP bake-off at MacWorld Tokyo.

Looks like the threading model and the new disk drivers have made a huge difference.. And of course better memory management

Here's a snippet from another BB.

Anyhow, I recently had made available to me a 'future copy' of PS running on X natively. The 'carbon' version that comes after 6.0. I have been using PS 6 on XP and thought things were slower so i did some testing. If you are interested in the results, here they are:

The systems:

The Mac-
OSX 10.1.3
PowerMac G4 'Sawtooth' 533 Dual Proc.
768MB PC133, 40GB DiamondMax 7200rpm
nVidia GF2 MX w/32mb

The PC
Win XP
Athlon XP 1800+
512MB 266DDR, 40GB DiamondMax 7200rpm
GF3 Ti200 w/64MB DDR
(the GF3 is overclocked and runs @ Ti500 speeds)

Photoshop tests

MacAddict actions and 15mb Steve Jobs.tiff from the 03/98 Mag cd

results:

Beige G3/266: 2min 48sec (reference from Mag)

PS 6.0 -- Win XP: 36.5 seconds
PS 6.0 -- Classic 9.2.2 24.5 seconds
PS 7.0b -- OSX 10.1.3 12.5 seconds

I am gonna be running more items in other programs, but i could not believe the result and the difference.

....

This isn't scientific test, of course. FWIW

Re:It screams ...

[Waffle Iron]

Here we go again. With this new release the Mac people are going to be once again touting the same old obscure algorithm in Photoshop that is custom tuned for the bizzare custom coprocessing unit in their 12MHz processors. They will try to extrapolate that to the general case to prove that Macs are always faster than PCs.

PC users know better though. The truth is that the only valid metric of computer performance is Quake III frames per second. :-)

Re:It screams ...

[sg3000]

> touting the same old obscure algorithm in Photoshop
> PC users know better though. The truth is that the only
> valid metric of computer performance is Quake III frames per second. :-)

As soon as Mac users can figure out how to make money playing Quake III as opposed to using Photoshop, I'm sure they'll be willing to switch their performance metrics.

Re:It screams ...

[Andy_R]

"bizzare custom coprocessing unit in their 12MHz processors"

umm, I think you're mixing up your Amiga fanatics with your Mac fanatics here?

Re:It screams ...

[Waffle Iron]

As soon as Mac users can figure out how to make money playing Quake III as opposed to using Photoshop, I'm sure they'll be willing to switch their performance metrics.

That's easy. There is no shortage of positions where you can make money playing Quake III. Just find a company with a project that has no clear direction and poor management.There are countless thousands of these situations available at any given time.

I've seen highly paid engineers go for months at a time doing nothing but playing Quake and surfing the web. These positions don't tend to last that long, though, so you'd have to be prepared to move arouind a bit.

It also helps to find a group with a good technician/sysadmin who orders workstations outfitted with the right "goodies".

Re:It screams ...

[IronChef]

That's easy. There is no shortage of positions where you can make money playing Quake III. Just find a company with a project that has no clear direction and poor management.There are countless thousands of these situations available at any given time.

Man, I have been looking for one of those jobs for a year, since my last one laid me off! Post if you know of any such clueless companies in the Seattle area.

Re:It screams ...

[renoX]

Your test is interesting, but it miss one major component: $$!

How much does each configuration cost?

No, I'm not trolling I'm just curious..

Re:It screams ...

[Anonymous Coward]

NO NO NO NO NO ... it is NOT just one particular filter that is used again and again in these shootouts. In Photoshop, you can hit "Record" and then work all day long, and at the end of the day, you will have a script that you can run on either a Mac or PC that will recreate your whole workday in its entirety, including every filter you ran, every rotation, resize, etc. The shootouts are these scripts picked at random from actual users. Sometimes it is a movie poster from Universal, or an ad poster from an advertising agency. You run these scripts on both machines, and a blank document turns into the final product, like a player piano. The Mac always finishes first. The whole platform is designed from CPU to display for graphics. Why would it surprise you that working with graphics is better on a Mac?

The reason the Photoshop shootouts are good benchmarks is that not only does all graphics software do the same kinds of image resizes and rotations, but they all also run the exact same Photoshop filters. So even if you are using Fireworks or Painter or a browser that is resizing images on the fly or whatever else, you are going to see that speed improvement in graphics performance. When you watch one of these Photoshop shootouts, the first image resize or rotation is when the Mac pulls well ahead. The Mac will rotate a 200MB image in a few seconds, and the Intel system will take 45 seconds or more than a minute. The user just sits and waits, because they can't do the next thing until they see the result of the last thing ... it's not like a 12 hour compiling job where you go home and come back to see it done, which is another reason why the shootouts are important.

Is it surprising that Apache runs better on UNIX than on Windows? NO. Is it surprising that Photoshop runs better on Macs? Fuck NO. Windows is the new guy in both markets. Graphics pros are laughing at your arrogance for thinking that you know better.

Re:It screams ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the Mac system were twice the price (it's not), it would still be worth it. If an artist can do 25% more work per day, you will pay for the more expensive system inside a week. The most expensive Mac is $2999. There are no graphics workstations for less than that, regardless of platform. You don't pay a guy $80,000 a year to push pixels on a $1799 Gateway or something, just like you don't use the cheapest machines as servers. Photoshop itself is $700 ... c'mon.

Re:It screams ...

[ajiva]

Not a fair test, dual proc with more memory vs a single proc with less memory.

Re:It screams ...

[Bodrius]

Money? You post on slashdot and you want to make money?

Everyone here knows that you can only save the world by playing Quake and giving free broadband to everyone in Angola.

Why would you want to make money?

Are you with the MPAA/RIAA or something?

Re:It screams ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes we are the f**king RIAA

We own all your music!

Re:It screams ...

[AICASN]

I'm W@tching choo

Re:Beautiful !!! -mod parent article up please!

[Andreas(R)]

I agree with you, Slashdot looks a lot smoother with the extra graphics. The new /. logo is a lot more modern looking.

It's about time that Slashdot updates its look a bit!
Please!

Macromedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash 6 MX for OS X is due to be announced Very Soon Now (R)... probably about a month. From what I've seen, the beta is quite stable.

-ac.2063

Someone tell me...

[Dark Paladin]

I use Gimp, and I've got it running on OS X at the moment.

I'm not trying to be an idiot, but I've never used Photoshop. Ever. Just never had a need to. When I was running Linux and I finally had to do some graphics tweaking, Gimp was right there.

So if I were to consider Photoshop, what would it give me over Gimp?

Re:Someone tell me...

[RussGarrett]

One word: Plugins.

There's very little that distinguishes the base image-editing capability of Photoshop ($600) from Paint Shop Pro ($99) and the GIMP ($0). The main differences being good CYMK and colour-matching support (and, personally, I find the GIMP's interface an absolute pain to use).

The range of different Photoshop plugins is what makes it what it is, and nobody's managed to beat it yet.

Re:Someone tell me...

[mrm677]

The little things in Photoshop make the difference. For example, Photoshop has a filter called "Remove Dust & Scratches". I'm doing photo restoration for my family pictures. That filter is absolutely amazing. Nothing compares in the Gimp. Sure, anything is possible using the Gimp, however with Photoshop, it just takes 5 seconds as compared to 30 minutes to remove scratches cleanly.

Re:Someone tell me...

[marmoset]

So if I were to consider Photoshop, what would it give me over Gimp?

1. Live CMYK editing (essential for real-world print publishing)

2. Font handling well beyond anything available within XFree86

3. Tight integration with tools like Illustrator (e.g. being able to specify vector masks using Illustrator's sophisticated Bezier tools and use them directly in Photoshop) and inDesign.

4. Peerless Postscript/PDF integration (i.e. produce Postscript that will actually rip on a professional imagesetter and produce usable output on the first try, instead of wasting hundreds/thousands of bucks on trial and error while your client stands around angrily looking at their watch)

5. Best of breed built-in algorithms for things like scaling, color correction, etc.

6. Polish.

I've used the Gimp, and I'm impressed by what it can do, but in a past life I also worked in a graphic arts shop, and I cannot stress enough the importance of some of the above items (particularly 1 and 4) in real-world paying applications.

If all you're doing is touching up vacation snaps, then Photoshop's big pricetag probably isn't worth it to you, but if you're trying to make a living pushing pixels, no other app comes close, and the Gimp (as cool as it is) isn't even in the ballpark.

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dust and Scratches. You are so right, that's about 50% of the reason I don't use gimp. The remaining 50% is a combination font support (I honestly don't know if I could port font collection to unix, but I can't be bothered) and UI.

Re:Someone tell me...

[2nd Post!]

You don't have to consider using Photoshop if you're comfortable with GIMP.

However, you can consider this; without Photoshop, GIMP may not have been developed (the way it was), just as Killustrator-->Illustrator and GNUStep-->NeXTStep...

I'm not saying GIMP is a clone or anything, but that Photoshop created the market that GIMP lives in right now.

Re:Someone tell me...

[nycdewd]

if you're comfy with GIMP, you're not really doing any serious work with it (read: stuff that pays the rent).

other posters have rightly pointed out that there are such things as CMYK, Pantone, etc (ColorSync, anyone?!?!?) that are missing from GIMP. nifty as it is, it is no substitute for the real thing.

and lest we forget, Gamma on a PC is atrocious, or it damn well used to be. just another reason to use the de facto standard in the graphics biz: Mac.

Re:Someone tell me...

[2nd Post!]

Well, sure, but if you're comfortable with GIMP, you're not going to be using CMYK, Pantone, ColorSync, etc.

No need to trivialize what GIMP users do or don't do (like pay the rent)

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell none of the things you mentioned there are necessary for a web graphics developer. Gimp does fine in that market. Photoshop still has the polish advantage, but as far as functionality is concerned, if it doesn't leave the screen, it can be done in gimp.

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly, mac users are more likely to be artists.. which usually has a lot less job security than pc users which are more typically business oriented people. The former has more emphasis on design and how pretty something is compared to how much something costs. I suspect a lot of mac users don't pay the rent.

Re:Someone tell me...

[MaxVlast]

Every time I use the GIMP, I run into an odd quirk that invariable becomes a giant pain in the ass. The handling of layers is one such thing. As is selection handling. One of my big pet peeves is when things work and look closely like others, but don't do so consistently. If a UI or functionality looks or works a little like something already established, it better works a lot like it. Or it will be frustrating, make me angry, and will cause me to reject the whole thing (no matter how worthy it is.)

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Healing Brush- 'nuff said.

Re:Someone tell me...

[ccontrol]

Do not forget No. 7, which is color matching. Color matching is in its infancy under Linux and under GIMP in particular.

When doing serious image editing you want to make sure that the colors you see on your display correspond to those on your scanner, on your printer, etc. In my mind, color matching weighs even more heavily than 1-6. Unless GIMP offers this feature, I doubt you can work professionally with GIMP.

Re:Someone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop also has recordable scripting, pressure sensetivity (a must), and print services understand the format. Also, Mac OS X has the best font handling of any OS, whereas GIMP is running in X Windows, even on Mac OS X. Paint Shop Pro ... if you like it, then fine, but it's not for graphics pros.

Re:Someone tell me...

[2nd Post!]

Only for now.

You can run a publication business without worrying about color matching or color processes, either. You lose business from people who want to guarantee that print output matches design intent, but you will find people who don't care, either.

Not quite

[stux]

having played with PS betas, I'm pretty confident in saying that Adobe Photoshop 7 for OSX is a Carbon application.

All this means is that its linked to the Carbonlib (think share library)

rather than the Cocoa frameworks.

They're both native, its just that Cocoa apps get more features for free from the OS, which means they implement more of the standard OSX features.

Carbon apps can implement just as many of those features... but tend not to because it takes a lot of work to implement them (for instance, BBEdit supports the Services menu)

Photoshop will probably implement a lot of the Cocoa features even though its a Carbon app, simply because Adobe has the resources to do this (Just like Microsoft)

Another serious difference is that Cocoa can only currently be targetted via Objective C (ObjC++ too), Java and AppleScript (this is another major reason to use Carbon for Photoshop.

And thats about it.

Re:Another Dead end

[phillymjs]

Who the hell modded this flamebait "interesting"?

The Mac *rules* the design world. Every Mac client I have is chomping at the bit for OS X native versions of all their heavy-hitter apps, so they can switch. Limited appeal, my ass! A very sizable chunk of Adobe's revenue comes from their Mac applications-- probably around 35-45%. From a platform that has 5% market share. That's nothing to sneeze at.

~Philly

Upcoming.

[saintlupus]

Well, finally OS X users are getting their wish: Adobe has finally made good on their promise to bring native OS X support to their graphical applications. C|Net is running a story on the upcoming version of Photoshop

It's been upcoming for months. I'll believe it when I can get my mitts on a copy from the Apple Store.

Of course, the way things are going, I'll be able to get that new G4 Amiga first.

--saint

Re:Upcoming.

[Large Green Mallard]

It actually has "Buy now!" links on http://www.apple.com/macosx/ now :)

So no G4 amiga for you! :D

Why bother at all for 2% of the globe ?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/January/os.ph p

Scheduling.

[saintlupus]

I disagree, it should be easy once the GUI-kit of GNUstep is complete which should be later on this year.

Great. Hope I can run it on HURD, which has been complete since the Reagan administration, right?

--saint

Contention.

[saintlupus]

I'm constantly told that Macs are best for contention creation

Meaning that mentioning Macs is the best way to start a flame war?

Typo, or clever pun? You be the judge.

--saint

Pantone

[paugq]

Pantone is one of the things Gimp will NEVER have. Pantone is a patented technology and requires the Gimp community to pay them $$$ if they want to implement it.

Re:Pantone

[MaxVlast]

That's one of the things I really miss from NEXTSTEP. NeXT licensed Pantone for the syste-wide color picker. For those who don't know, NeXT machines (and operating systems) had a unified color system with a system-wide color picker and tools. I could pick Pantone colors by name/number in any app and know that the colors I was getting would be standardized and output properly. _That_ was a good idea, and it was just one of countless little details that make NEXTSTEP the most user-conscious OS I have ever used. Everywhere you turn, there is a little convenience (where you would expect, but not think of) that makes life just slightly easier for the user. Amazing, really.

Re:Pantone

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be unlikely, but it's not impossible : there could one day be a licensed, paid-for addition covering pantone. It worked for Motif (until it went free).

Re:Pantone

[jcr]

Pantone numbers were far more important in the days before ColorSync.

OS X does have named color spaces though, so it would be possible for Pantone or anyone else to offer their color libraries up on OS X.

-jcr

Re:Pantone

[MaxVlast]

Hi John,

The beauty of the OS, though, was that NeXT already did it for us. They did a lot for us, and we could sit back and be very productive.

Re:Pantone

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac also has a system wide color picker, and Pantone plug-ins are available for it, if you need them. It lives on in Mac OS X, as does the less-capable and less-friendly NeXTSTEP picker. Most apps have their own color pickers, though, since Windows has such a shitty one. I mean, really, really shitty.

Re:Pantone

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent will eventually expire. Or we could find a way to do something equivalent to Pantone which does not violate the patent. Or prior art could be found. Or IBM could buy Pantone's patent and license it for free use in GPL'd programs.

Adobe vs. Corel

[InsaneCreator]

Why is it such a big news that Adobe finally decided to write a native version of Photoshop for OSX, but noone ever mentioned that Corel's Draw and PhotoPaint have been available for OSX quite some time now. Doesn't anyone use them any more or is everyone preocupied with Gimp vs. Photoshop flamewar?

Re:Adobe vs. Corel

[sg3000]

> but no one ever mentioned that Corel's Draw and
> PhotoPaint have been available for OSX quite
> some time now

And Macromedia's vector graphics application FreeHand has been available for almost a year. It has a few quirks in it, so it's clear that they rushed it out, but it was nice to have a native professional-grade vector graphics app available so soon after the OS X launch.

Re:Adobe vs. Corel

[ElementCDN]

Don't foget the other apps Procreate has released months ago native to OS X: Painter 7, KnockOut 2, KPT effects. Adobe is lagging far behind. Just for kicks look up Adobe in the dictionary....

Re:Adobe vs. Corel

[pressman]

What?! A crash prone, buggy version of Freehand?!?! The minds reels!

Re:Adobe vs. Corel

[overunderunderdone]

Why is it such a big news that Adobe finally decided to write a native version of Photoshop for OSX, but noone ever mentioned that Corel's Draw and PhotoPaint have been available for OSX quite some time now.

Because the professional graphics market that is key to Apple's success makes their living using Photoshop and was not even aware that Corel made a 'competing' product.

Re:Adobe vs. Corel

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the majority of graphics pros have Photoshop "in their hands". Their basic toolkit is a Wacom tablet plugged into a Mac running Photoshop, and they have years and years of muscle memory and expectations that go with that combination. They want to pick up the selection tools and have them respond the way they always have, not the way that Corel makes them or whatever. Photoshop is to graphics manipulation as UNIX is to network computing. You get a head start like Photoshop has and Corel will have to do better than they have done to get a bigger piece of that market.

Why did it take so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just looking at the feature set of the new Photoshop 7 for OSX on adobe's site. I didn't really see anything too groundbreaking there, maybe it will really help some people. It is as follows:

• File Browser to visually browse and retrieve images
• Healing Brush to effortlessly remove artifacts such as dust, scratches, blemishes, and wrinkles while preserving shading, lighting, and texture
• Web output enhancements to easily apply transparency or partial transparency to Web page elements, including seamless edges that blend into any Web background
• Single, enhanced Rollover palette to manage Web page rollovers, animations, and image maps more easily
• New "selected" rollover state for creating more sophisticated Web site navigation bars without hand-coding
• Customizable workspace for saving the arrangement of palettes and settings for tools, and instant access to a personalized Photoshop desktop
• New Auto Color Command for reliable color correction
• New Painting Engine to simulate traditional painting techniques
• Pattern Maker plug-in to create realistic or abstract patterns such as grass, rocks, and sand simply by selecting a section of an image
• Enhanced Liquify (distorting) tool to allow you to view other layers, zoom, pan, and undo multiple steps -- even save custom meshes and apply them to other files

I don't know about the rest of the community, but while these features will be nice (I guess) the feature I REALLY wanted was running natively on OSX. And that has taken some time for Adobe to deliver.

When OSX came out, everyone asked "Great, when do we get Photoshop to run natively" Adobe's response was "We're not going to change our software release schedule, just because Apple has released a new OS."

Which from a business perspective seems a little weird, why not do a OSX port and charge people for it. There would be no shortage of customers willing to pay.

They chose not to. Ok fine but it seems like quite a long time ago, especially since a year ago, (don't remember, maybe it was 2 years ago) they showed an alpha version of PS 6 running at WWDC, that had been ported to OSX by one of the project managers. One person! And a self-admitted "average" coder. Said it took him a couple of weekends.

I can only guess that there was a heck of a lot of more work to do to create a good carbon app than Apple and Adobe originally led us to believe. Or maybe an earlire release just didn't fit Adobe's financial schedule.

Also of note. Lately Adobe has gotten in this bad habit of "announcing" new software, but not actually having it available, and then slipping on that date as well. See Adobe GoLive as an example. All kinds of press about it's release, a lot of users thinking its available for immediate purchase and use. Not the case though, still not shipping yet. Hopefully Photoshop will not take a similar course. They are saying April as of now.

Re:Why did it take so long?

[Daytona955i]

Ummm... it's one thing to make it look like it runs on OS X it's another thing to optimize it and get all of the features working on os x. I'm sure adobe wanted make photoshop on x to be as nice as possible and as fast as possible because you only get one chance to make a first impression. The fact is, they've had the Beta out for a while now and have been working on it... it's wasn't just sitting around waiting to be shipped. If that was the case I think we would have a more specific release date don't you? This is adobe's flagship app, I think they want to make it run great before releasing it.

Re:Why did it take so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop 7.0 used the mac toolbox apis more than just about any other 3rd party software. Carbon apps don't use the now non-existent toolbox apis.

Had to rewrite much of the app.

Re:Why did it take so long?

[MacOSXHead]

This is just my guess as a long time Mac developer. It is likely that Photoshop contained lots of 68k assembly code that had to be rewritten for PPC. Photoshop was written back when you had to squeeze every bit of processing power out of the Mac. While this could work on Mac OS 9 and earlier (Mac OS 9 has a great 68k emulator), this needed to be changed for OS X.

You are wrong about the APIs. The vast majority of APIs still exist in Carbon. It is true there are preferred APIs (e.g Event Handling) that are new. The old APIs are at least 80% intact and native to OS X. This is the whole purpose to Carbon.

Adopting the new event model and porting 68k assembly code would have taken some time in an application as complex as Photoshop.

Re:Why did it take so long?

[Chris Johnson]

Because in order to SELL a new version they've got to be coming up with new 'features' to do new and different things.

Unfortunately for them, Photoshop has been damned near utterly feature complete for fine-arts and professional prepress work since what, version 3? I use version 4, which is faintly less stable but includes layers and the layers palette- and that includes ALL the high-end stuff like CMYK work, LAB colorspace for conversions, duotones/tritones/quadtones, the full gamut of overlay/brush modes: all the deep stuff.

It's a hell of a lot like, say, GCC versus some version of Visual Basic that keeps coming out with more pre-built controls: GCC is more 'pro level' but is a working environment way beyond a list of 'features' that it can do. Hell, in Photoshop 4 you could say there are no 'framing' features, you know, those 'make a button for your web page' things that put your image on a bevel or some other embossing effect? Yet through layers, layer position offsets, overlay modes and channel operations you automatically have ALL POSSIBLE 'framing' results, and it's down to how you use them, producing a creative work rather than running some plugin...

Which brings us right back to the original question: once they've sold that, and sold it under a license that allows people to use their copy forever without it expiring, how do they expect to sell it over again? The answer is convenience features, and _supplying_ those 'plugins' so people, given the opportunity for complete flexibility, can get lazy and quit bothering.

Finally, Adobe's actual programming is not that bad for a proprietary software vendor- so they're stuck trying to overcomplicate their code by building in all sorts of 'convenience' short cuts and feature after feature, but they are still making an effort to not crash like a Microsoft program. And that answers your question: they probably could have coded up a version of Photoshop 4 for OSX without too much heartache, but they felt a need to both do that and to up the feature list enough to compel upgrades.

Interestingly this is not confined solely to proprietary guys. I'm facing a very similar situation with "Mastering Tools". As I keep pursuing newer versions (this is a GPLed project, not for pay) I keep coming up with new variations on dithers, new controls for tone shaping etc. and the temptation is to include everything- making the program bloated and unwieldy. Instead I've done some pruning- but I definitely feel the desire to be able to say 'hey, NEW thing! Check out the new thing you can do now!'. If I do, can you imagine how much more pressure the Adobe guys feel?

What about TIFFany

[skribble]

Caffine Software sells TIFFany which very well could be every bit as good as Photoshop. This is actually a cocoa app that was originally designed for OpenStep. On the plus side it's very powerful and very different. On the minus side it's pretty expensive (They really should offer a $149 competitive upgrade from Photoshop!) and it's very different.

Anyway... I'll probably end up with Photoshop (I've been using it since Version 2.5). But there are options for OS X. (And I'm sorry, but GIMP is not an option for professional photo editing... It's a step above most graphics software, but it's not Photoshop or TIFFany. (I actually think people who use and like GIMP on OS X should really download TIFFany3 Trial, I think they'll be pleasantly supprised).

Re:What about TIFFany

[freshmkr]

A quick note for those of you with old NeXT boxes or NEXTSTEP/OpenStep on your PC or workstation: it looks like Caffeine is offering licenses for the older version of TIFFany for free. Check out http://www.caffeinesoft.com/pricing.htm (scroll down to the bottom third of the page).

--Tom

Re:NO (Carbon API on Unix)

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a post on the discuss-gnustep@gnu.org m,ailinglist about such a project not long ago. I think he was going to call it "Graphite".

You must think Slashdot is a Linux site

[NDPTAL85]

I think the main problem is you seem to think Slashdot is a Linux site. Its not. Its a site for geeks and techies. That also covers Mac users now with OS X. Do you complain when AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Tru64 news is posted? Because those are also proprietary operating systems. But you see that doesn't matter, since they're geeky operating systems.

The defining standard for news to be posted on Slashdot is not "Does this promote opensource" but rather "Is this geeky enough or interesting enough for our audience?"

One would have thought that after Slashdot added apple.slashdot.org it would be obvious that there is a sizeable Mac using audience who visits Slashdot.

"Any suggestions?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Start your own site.

Finally someone who gets it

[NDPTAL85]

Despite your sarcastic comments, you only point out the obvious.

Slashdot isn't a solely opensource free software site. Its also a site for geeks who just like cool things in general. The world would really start to suck if you exclude the products of companies who have done bad things in the past. All we would be left with are extremely boring SourceForge projects that are still at the 0.04 beta level of progress. How many of THOSE stories does one need to read?

Re:Finally someone who gets it

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you're a faggot who meets other men in bus station restrooms for fisting and anal sex. Am I right?

Nailed ya' !

Re:Finally someone who gets it

[Anonymous Coward]

What if my really, really cool toy is Windows ?

Re:Finally someone who gets it

[NDPTAL85]

Then enjoy it and have fun!

The last thing needed is AutoCad

[Anonymous Coward]

I know hundreds of architects, contractors, engineers and so on that would switch instantly to Mac if it just had AutoCad.

Until then, we are stuck with PCs, because everyone uses AutoCad.

waiting...

Re:The last thing needed is AutoCad

[Anonymous Coward]

As an engineer, I say BOLLOCKS! AutoCAD is a piece of crap, as is Inventor. You are way better of using IronCAD, pro/Engineer, even Designspace is better. I only thought AutoCAD was the standard construction drawing app when I started studying. Now I know better. But then again, I bet above mentioned applications don't run on OS X either, nor do (m)any simulation/analysis packages (Matlab, pro/mechanica) or CNC packages. So even if OS X got Autocad, a Mac would still be useless to an engineer.

Re:The last thing needed is AutoCad

[JHromadka]

Check out Architosh for the latest news on bringing AutoCad to OS X.

Re:The last thing needed is AutoCad

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I use the old Mac Turbocad to build movie studios and it works just fine an dandy thank you, and then if the client wants an AutoCad version which is like never I'll use my Ti with VPC and conver it to an AutoCad file, no sweat at all.

Because its a substantial part of their revenue

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the Mac has a small marketshare, Mac applications make up 40% of their revenue. As a matter of fact, when Apple had a bad year in 1997, it substantially hurt Adobe.

Chew on this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it for a few months for HOURS ON END, and I can absolutely say that it the MOST STABLE BETA that I've EVER USED on ANY platform. Never one crash ever and no data loss. What a fantastic application. If you use this anywhere NEAR as much as I do, run, not walk to CompUSA when it's finally released. It'll pay for itself.

OS X + Photoshop 7 = best combo ever!

Re:to confuse the matter a little further

[Anonymous Coward]

porting photoshop 7 to linux/KDE/ect would be about as easy as porting age of empires w/o wine.

Wrong.

Age of empires was built for Windows using directX and win32 APIs without any thought of portability whatsoever

The code base of Photoshop 7 on the other hand has to have a layer of portability engineered in as it is supporting two widget sets(win&mac).
Does this make make portability automatic to Linux/KDE/Qt? Hell no. But it does make it easier than starting from scratch as you would be doing for age of empires.

BTW, Age of empires 2 was a great game. However, I met the programmers at E3 a few years ago. Ensemble had totally sold it's soul to microsoft by then and the programmers were completely ok with that.

that's open source logic for you

[Anonymous Coward]

but now that it is ported to Mac OS X wouldn't it be relatively easy to port it to other unix-like environments?

Why do you care whether Adobe programmers have a hard or easy time porting software? They'll do whatever they're paid to do. Oh! You were thinking Adobe should turn PS in OSS because, all of a sudden, magic like, it's has become easier to port to Lunix.

Too funny.

It doesnt matter if Photoshop were a line of shell code, it would still be proprietary (read: superior.) Concentrate on getting the GIMP up to snuff; maybe in 25 years it will be as good as PS 1.0.

Gimp & OSX

[rixdaffy]

I run Gimp on my OSX iBook... even though I can imagine some of the graphics professionals need certain things from Photoshop... as I use it for my hobby work, Gimp is more than enough... and even better at some points... plus I don't feel like cashing in the $$$ for photoshop and I want to keep my ibook clean of warez...
It's too bad I have to run Gimp on XDarwin/Xfree86, as the screenrefresh is a bit slow on a ibook...
it would be cool to have a native OSX version of Gimp though...

Re:Apple

[mkelley]

You can get an iMac for $699 over at Circuit City or go lowend and get an upgradeable beige G3 under $400. Both run OSX. The hardware cost argument is old and used. Apple machines cost more becasue they're built like tanks.

Re:Another Dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

If they wanted to port to an OS with limited appeal, they would have chosen Linux.

OS X still in it's infancy

[discogravy]

That photoshop has just been ported to OS X speaks volumes about how much more OS X still has to go (although that it's been released does give OS X credibility and brings it that much closer to where it's going.)

I mean, is it polished? yes. Is it solid? yes. Is it ready for the people? it already has been. But OS X is basically a new OS and some kinks are still getting worked out. A lack of serious apps, like Photoshop, was one of those kinks that needed to be worked out and it's a good thing that it's being worked out now.

I can't wait for OS Z!

Re:OS X still in it's infancy

[MaxVlast]

Yea, it's polished. I've been using a beta version for some time now, and it really kicks ass. I can't find anything in the beta that would distinguish it from a release product.

Flawed "counts" by idiots...

[cirby]

Those "counter" systems don't really count the OS or machine. They count what the machine's browser claims to be. For example, my Mac's browser pretends to be Explorer 5 running on NT, because of all of the silly morons who use "you must use Explorer on this site" code on their front pages (which is seldom, if ever, necessary). Those "webcounter" pages all seem to use software based off of the same original flawed code, and seldom count anything like what their sellers claim.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. You think they're looking for fact? They'd much rather whine.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[fferreres]

So you are telling me half your reasons to spent $600 every two years is because don't have $600 for a nice digital camera (like in 4 megapixels Nikon lenses ones)?

Macromedia and OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit off-topic, but it was mentioned in the original post... I've heard from an insider that Macromedia will be releasing the next version of Flash in about a month, possibly shortly after Macworld Tokyo. Of course, there are numerous tweaks, but it appears the main draws are that it will be Mac OS X native and scripting will be heavily improved. And it won't be called Flash 6, but rather Flash MX.

offtopic

[nycdewd]

yes, so shoot/maim/flame/- mod me because i am about to ruin the *whole* world with this post (sarcasm)... this may seem a troll or a flamebait but i assure you it is my opinion, that's all.

thing that bugs me most is people that are angered that there are people that are less savvy/computer literate/call it what you will about using comps/OSes that are not the choice of these elitist geekoids who decry the existence of those less geeked out than said elitists.

the world is not simply black and white, as much as it *might* be desirable that it were so. and exclusion is NOT good, inclusion is.

stop whinging that there are things (like Photoshop and Macs) that are important to many in the world who do not share your techno worldview. the fact that there are entities like Apple and Adobe does not constitute a conspiracy to force you to do anything you do not want to do. CHOICE is GOOD, you have yours and others have theirs.

get over yourselves. you know who you are.

that said, supporting MS is surely supporting a criminal endeavor (see: 800 lb. gorilla stifling competition illegally to the EXCLUSION of other solutions... there's that "exclusion" word again). some people don't mind that. ok, fine. heh, extend and embrace, to use the MS Orwellian doublespeak.

(the preceding paragraph and ONLY the preceding paragraph has been a Public Service Announcement)

/end rant/

ok, now flame me or whatever, but do read my email addy first.

Re:offtopic

[nycdewd]

to clarify: there is surely such a thing as "bad' and there is surely such a thing as "good" but there are infinite shades of grey in between. which is to say that there are absolutes, but between those absolutes you'll find those infinite shadings.

so, no i am not being contradictory in my post previous to this post. have an absolutely damn fine day.

Re:offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you were out to late getting pissed to write a coherent post, so I'll cut you some slack there. Never the less, your post(s) were incredibly wordy and pointless.

It could also be argued that there is no "bad" or "good", there are only labels that we apply in context to what we understand about existance.

Re:that's open source logic ... (offtopic wish)

[fferreres]

{offtopic wish}
Shame we can't track who said what. Because you know, it'd be great if Gimp grows a lot and goes beyond Photoshop, to lock you out of it. Like many people that spread FUD against Linux, Apache, PHP, Sendmail and everything, and are now profiting from those.
{/offtopic}

I know it's offtopic, but forgive me for i can't send an email to this guy. A private message [x] checkbox in slashdot post form would be a great addition though...

not so soon

[pixel fairy]

but getting there,

os 9 is much faster (and better trusted) then X, so it will still be awhile before most photoshop users move over to X, probably when they sort out speed problems. (remember the move from 68k to ppc, at first the 68k machines were actually faster, due to the overhead of emulation, but that did not last long)

there are no compelling reasons for these user to take the speed loss. both speed and compelling reasons (apps,features etc) will come in time. this is just one of the steps that will allow more people to start OS-X regularly.

it probably was not a priority for adobe becasue photoshop 6 ran fine using the os9 subsystem making PS7 a higher priority. sure it was slow, but if that mattered, youd be running 9 anyway.

Re:Apple

[vukv]

wonder why they have high margins then...hmmm..must be miracle!

Re: digital camera anyone?

[mrm677]

1) I am scanning pictures that are 20-40 years old. I don't believe they had 4 megapixel Nikon digital cameras back in 1969.

2) I am a student. My school lab has really fast machines with Photoshop already installed. Its worth the inconvenience to do my retouching using a Photoshop machine not in my apartment. If I wasn't a student and had a real job, it would be well worth the $600 for Photoshop. The Dust&Scratch removal is simply amazing. Like I said, doing the same thing in Gimp could take an extra hour a picture. Lets see....I have about 400 old Polaroids with scratches in them. 400 hours is well worth $600 to me. Also, who says you need to upgrade every 2 years?? A friend of mine owns Photoshop 4.0 and it has 95% of the features of Photoshop 6.0. He's had that software for 5 years now I believe.

If Gimp had "Remove Dust&Scratches", it would be good enough for me. I don't need nifty fonts or CMYK. I've tried the Gimp "Despeckle" filter but it doesn't work like I want it too. Not even close.

Commercial software is often worth the price.

photoshop??

[jaavaaguru]

But they have GIMP, what more could they need? ;-)

Re:photoshop??

[Comrade Pikachu]

And programmers should forget about Xemacs and just be content with "Notepad". I love The GIMP, BTW, but then I'm not doing print graphics.

double ;-)

Re:photoshop??

[pressman]

Well, basic CMYK support would be useful. A history palette, non-destructive layer effects, vector text and layers, basic knockout features. Well, hell, there's a lot that Photoshop can do that the GIMP can't. Plus, PS has a very well thought out and useful interface.

The GIMP is a pretty decent application and you can't beat the price, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes a standard part of a professional graphic artist's tool box.

Re:photoshop??

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you should forget about Xemacs and just use Vim...

Re:photoshop??

[MaxVlast]

Don't forget the navigation panel. That's absolutely amazing.

Re:photoshop??

[pressman]

I actually never use that, but I can see the usefulness of it. I've generally found that you can navigate via the keyboard just as easily though. Spacebar and command + or - works just as effectively for me.

This just proves that there are as many ways to work in Photoshop as there are users of the program. Hence it's beauty.

Re:photoshop??

[TheAJofOZ]

Actually, you should forget about Xemacs and just use Vim...

Slashdot moderation really needs a "Bastardry" option for this comment.... I just can't decide if it's +1 or -1.....

Re:Apple

[sydsavage]

I can ignore the obvious AC troll, but who the hell modded this 'insightful'?

Perhaps the Apple section of slashdot needs a modified lame filter, with keywords (phrases?) 'too expensive', 'non-upgradable', and 'one-button'.

Flash and Fireworks are in late beta

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that aren't aware, both Flash MX and Fireworks MX are looming large on the horizon. Some of the rumore sites have it right, as I have them myself. :)

screen shots

[Anonymous Coward]

you screen shot whore... is that all you care about is screen shots?

Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Lethyos]

This from another (better) article someone posted...

Secure images before sharing them -- Photoshop now offers complete support for Acrobat 5.0 security settings, allowing you to add passwords and other protections to Photoshop PDF files before sharing them with others online or adding them to Adobe PDF workflows.

That last thing we need is more "security" on content. This "feature" only serves as more nonsense from Adobe to prevent users from gaining access to content they otherwise ought to have. I'm sure it's nothing at all sturdy either... just a thing that Adobe, its parterns, and special interests can use to brandish the DMCA.

I have always loved Photoshop. It's still got a big one-up over Gimp and other free and non-free alternatives. However, I incist that products that include content protection must NOT gain any support from anyone. This is without regard to the other features in a package. I'm sure 99.9% of Photoshop users can do with version 7 that they can do with 5.5 just as easily... without giving up little chips of freedom.

If a content house wants to keep images/documents secure, there's plenty of software to do it (encrypted filesystems, secure OSes, etc.). Encrypting/password-protecting documents with proprietary software is not the answer and must not be acceptable.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with content protection. Really. There is something wrong with the way some orgazinations/companies use it, but there's really nothing wrong with the concept. Do you think it's wrong that artists should get paid for their work and have some way to help ensure they get paid?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Lethyos]

There is nothing wrong with content protection. Really. There is something wrong with the way some orgazinations/companies use it, but there's really nothing wrong with the concept. Do you think it's wrong that artists should get paid for their work and have some way to help ensure they get paid?

This isn't about artists getting paid, you idiot. This is about huge, monopolistic corporations protecting their best interests at the expense of these artists you claim to care so much about. Adobe impliments file protecting schemes, like eBook encryption, to better their position at the expense of the producers and the consumers. Putting a password on a PSD/PS/PDF/whatever doesn't help pay anybody... except Adobe. Think about what Adobe can do with this. Deny you access to your own content if you don't make them happy (think subscription service to Photoshop, for example - using an unlicensed copy, and suddenly all your protected/encrypted Photoshop files are unreadable).

This doesn't give the artists more control... it gives a big ugly corporation who has already SHOWN they are willing to manhandle people who cross them on these grounds.

Proprietary software is not acceptable. Closing off access to software and information is not acceptable. Giving up your rights to those with more money in their pockets is not acceptable. HELLO!?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[pressman]

The security implementation in limited to Photoshop PDF fles. They aren't trying to lock you out of your own .psd, tiff, eps, gif, jpeg, etc. files.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Lethyos]

The security implementation in limited to Photoshop PDF fles. They aren't trying to lock you out of your own .psd, tiff, eps, gif, jpeg, etc. files.

You're right. Adobe has never pulled any bullshit before. Sure, it's a proprietary format... and sure, there's a strong chance that this "protection" is already implimented... But we'll never know until Adobe actually does start yanking strings. We can freely read their eBook format, right?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[shinma]

Oh, for God's sake.

The "little chips of freedom" you're so afraid of giving up are the ability to steal. People these days are so busy proving Hobbes right about his opinion of human nature that they don't stop to consider why his "social contract" is necessary in the first place.

As someone whose livelihood depends on his writing, I can tell you that a secure way of distributing electronic media is vital to publishers and authors, both big and small, before they consider the internet anything more than a playground. Password-protected documents are, to me, a much better choice for content distribution than the alternatives, where it can only be used with one e-book reader and/or system.

You do not have a right to access content that you do not own. Ownership implies that you were given the password to access the data.

You don't present any valid reason that it is a bad thing other than your reactionary comment about the DMCA. Care to give some reasons that password-protected files are a bad thing?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep... Proprietary format, can't be read in anything else... Oh, wait, I can open .PSD files in Macromedia Fireworks and others.

Please.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[adrew]

It is exceedingly simple to get around this "security." I've downloaded a number of files that disallow printing and content extraction.

Just use good ol' Cmd-Shift-3 and take a screenshot. If the image is high-res, just zoom in and take a bunch of screenshots and piece 'em together in Photoshop.

AFAIK, they can't prevent screenshots.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Lethyos]

You don't present any valid reason that it is a bad thing other than your reactionary comment about the DMCA. Care to give some reasons that password-protected files are a bad thing?

Great. Now I have to preach to the choir. *sigh* I thought we had technical readers on this site that could reason these things out. Here we go...

The schemes are proprietary. Non-public protection schemes can be changed by the owner without the consumers' knowledge. As a result, much power is given in the hands of corporations to limit access to your own content if you do not meet their approval. ("Upgrade to Photoshop 11, or we'll revoke the unlocking scheme in your existing software.") This does nothing but give more power to Adobe down the line. Soon, these protection schemes will work their way into all of Adobe's products and file formats (the latter of which I'm sure have already been implimented). With software becoming more and more connected to the developer, and subscription fees more and more likely on the horizon... what do you think that restricting access to the file actually means? Think about it!

There already exist a plethora of superior, open-standard protection schemes for securing data. These are, but not limited encrypted data storage/transmission (SSH/PGP/GPG/etc for securely sending your PS/PSD/PDF/SUX/etc to your coworkers), one-time access to a resource, and so on. Tools to secure data have been in development since long before Adobe entered the graphics market. These tools and open standards are far superior to any offerings Adobe can make. Why not just use them if you're interested in protecting your IP? I'm sure that Adobe is also not interested in really protecting your data. These schemes are almost always token just so that companies can leverage laws in their favor. This is not reactionary or imaginary. It's reality, stupid. And as mentioned, if you're serious about protecting your data, you use tried and true methds of doing it - not some buzzword feature fizzle in Photoshop. Otherwise, if you're going for protected public distribution, this is utterly useless.

It's stupid. Purely feature bloat. PkZIP added this feature years ago just so you had something to spend more money for. Easily cracked. However, if you crack something like this... you get sued. And not by the owners of the content.

You cannot protect your content once it has entered the public domain. It's not possible. There's always at least one person in the world that's smarter than you and will find a way around your protection. Adobe knows this but people are dazzled by their silliness. They think these features protect them. They don't. Makes Adobe stronger, doesn't increase security, and adds a tiny pebble as a stumbling block to anyone who wants to pirate content.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Lethyos]

Yep... Proprietary format, can't be read in anything else... Oh, wait, I can open .PSD files in Macromedia Fireworks and others. Please.

Care to guess how many hundreds of thousands of dollars Macromedia pays Adobe to license code to read their formats flawlessly? Can you or your small print house pay that much?

Please.

That's right. Post anonymously when you post something stupid.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[stubear]

PDF content protection is intended, in this regard, for distribution amongst work groups in geographically distant loactions or even to make distribution between clients and designers easier. I can safely send a client a file in Photoshop .pdf with a pre-determined passsword we agree to. This way if someone not approved to view the images were to obtain them, perhaps a competitor working with the design firm (don't laugh - it happens) were to get a hold of the new ad then there could be serious reprecussions both to the client and the design firm. This will allow designers to use the web as a means of client contact thus streamlining the design process. This is an excellent feature that myself, and many designers, welcome openly. Personally, many of us couldn't care less what the Slashdot crowd thinks.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[pressman]

And how much does Adobe pay Macromedia to license the SWF format? (maybe nothing. I don't know MM's licensing terms) How much for LZW compression and Pantone and who knows what other licenses so that I and millions of other Photoshop and Illustrator can create smaller color corrected graphics.

Damn those closed source proprietary bastards for making my life easier and more profitable!

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I think it's only a matter of time until Windows FU has a Screenshot DRM manager that does a certificate check when you push Print Screen.

These are the folks that think it's a good idea encrypt the DVI signal between your computer and your flat panel, after all...

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[funky womble]

I bet the support for PSD in IrfanView wasn't the result of giving Adobe hundreds of thousands of dollars...

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Anonymous Coward]

PKZip's password protection was in the unregistered version. Maybe you were thinking of AV (authenticity verification)? Anyway, you were meant to spend money to use the program at all beyond the evaluation period.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Upgrade to Photoshop 11, or we'll revoke the
>unlocking scheme in your existing software.

umm, how are they going to do that? hack your system to patch your previous version to stop unlocking?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[paulbd]

a secure way of distributing electronic media is vital to publishers and authors suppose i were to convince you that no such system exists? what then? what makes you believe that such a system does, or could, exist?

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[lunenburg]

And when the content moves into the public domain, your decendents will make sure that the password protection is removed, so that society can enjoy unfettered access to your work, right?

Oh, I forgot. The idea behind the "content protection schemes" is that if anyone is left alive in 150 years who still has a copy of the work, and has the technology to read it, they should be able to figure out a way to crack it.

People are so greedy, and want to wring every last penny that they're "entitled" to out of their customers, that they would sooner revoke the rights of the people than have one person read their work or hum their tune without paying. At least with posts like this I know who's supporting laws like eternal copyright extension and the DMCA.

Try this on - people were able to create beautiful works of art and make money off of them before technology existed to skull-fuck their readers/listeners. I don't see writers, artists, and musicians all destitute on the street in this world of photocopiers, videotapes, MP3s, and more. I don't see people refusing to create new art, music, and writing. In fact, publishing seems to be a bigger business every year.

Here's a nickel and some advice - people generally act in accordance with your views of them. If you and your ilk treat your readers as criminals, they'll probably respond in kind. If you sell a good product at a fair price, while not impeding legitimate use of it (even if that means it's easier to copy for illegitimate use, too), you will probably be pleasantly surprised. Your fans will want to reward you for your work, people who aren't your fans and copy your work probably wouldn't buy your stuff anyway. Do you really want your fans to have to jump through the hoops of remembering which password goes with which book, or having to use an internet connection to verify their copy before they can read it, or any of the other myriad "I know you're going to steal this, so I'm going to make it as hard for you to use as possible" ways you can make life harder for people? If so, I'm pretty sure I don't want to buy any of your stuff anyway.

Re:Great... Content Control Features For Creators?

[Ogerman]

As someone whose livelihood depends on his writing, I can tell you that a secure way of distributing electronic media is vital to publishers and authors, both big and small, before they consider the internet anything more than a playground.

You sir, are a moron. The people who modded this comment up are also morons. That being said, look at the pure stupidity of your comment. If you're talking about protecting content within an organization, people don't need proprietary systems for doing so when there already exist free solutions such as GPG. The only thing this does is ensure that only other Adobe product users can open the files. This is the same concept as Microsoft keeping the Office formats secret so that only genuine MS Office products can properly load documents. So when Gimp gains perfect import of Photoshop documents, it still won't work if they're encrypted using Adobe's proprietary system.

So maybe you were talking about trying to protect content from casual copying by consumers. Well wake up, because it's not possible. Publishers and authors are going to have to realize that the Internet is a different market than they're used to. Ultimately, that means not relying on copyright as a means of ensuring income. The only other option is to take away our constitutional rights, ala DMCA. To suggest otherwise is downright asinine.

Re:Apple

[dangermouse]

So you can't justify the price. That doesn't mean other people can't either.

Apples are too expensive for you. I can't justify the cost of a BMW for myself, but I don't run around acting as though BMW is clueless and whining about how much I'd like to buy a BMW if only the price were lower.

If a Wintellish PC gives you all the bang you need for the buck you want to spend, it's all good.

Re:Adobe vs. Corel -- I'll take Corel, please

[Reziac]

I use Corel PhotoPaint almost every day; I couldn't do without it. The interface is far better than PhotoShop so every task is easier to accomplish, it runs at least 3x as fast (I am *not* exaggerating) on the same hardware, and it does most things as well and some things better (JPG compression is 2-3x better for the same quality image). Only time I ever need to drag out PhotoShop is for colour masking.

Tried The GIMP but wasn't impressed -- struck me as too much like an update of PaintBrush. Oh well.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[fferreres]

Commercial hardware is also often worth the price.

Scratches are best removed during the scanning process. Instead of spending $600 for GIMP + Scratch removal, why not buy a...Nikon CoolScan IV ED Film & Slide Scanner at near $600?

2900 dpi resolution

36-bit color depth

USB interface

Amazing "Digital ICE" dust & scratch removal

New Digital "ROC" and "GEM" correct for faded negatives and film grain automatically.

But since you already have access to Photoshop at school, i can understand your point. I mean, if it's free (or freely available), great!

Re: digital camera anyone?

[mrm677]

"Film & Slide Scanner". Can that scan regular photographs?? If not, do you know of a normal flatbed scanner that has hardware dust & scratch removal? Is it less than $1000?

I originally intended to do all of my work using the Gimp. So I purchased an Epson Perfection 1240u scanner (i realize that it is amateur quality only). Then I discovered the "Dust & Scratch removal" function included with Adobe Photodeluxe which came bundled with the scanner. Because photodeluxe does not offer full-blown color correction, I either use Photoshop exclusively (at school), or I remove the dust&scratches using Photodeluxe and then reboot to Linux to use Gimp for color correction, cropping, etc.

I'm becoming more and more interested in this little photo restoration hobby I started on and would be interested in hearing about higher quality scanners that have advanced hardware features such as dust/scratch removal...

So GIMP can handle CMYK now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I don't know. Last I checked, it couldn't. If it can handle CMYK files, then maybe you are right -- GIMP will perhaps be a better app than Photoshop. Until then, it just isn't useful to anyone doing print design (you know, that stuff on paper).

Photoshop for OSX

[gh0ul]

Yay for that.

Now I just gotta get a copy for the imac

It helps make life easer.

[jellomizer]

Linux and Win systems have their place they are inexpensive and get can be configured to get the job done. I have been using Win/Linux Intell type systems for years but after a while I got tired of building my boxes and ballancing the quality vs. cost for every part just got tiring. So after a while I decided to give SUN and Apple a try and I found that using a combanation of a SUN Ultra with Apple TI book it makes a really good combation. Sure they are more expensive but I get what I payed for. The Ultra 10 with solaris makes a great server it dependable, configuration is easy, and it can take a real heavy load much better then a Linux box can do. And my Apple Powerbook with OS X is great for my personal work. Sience they are both unix based I get simular funcationaly and control at the console level so I can do common porgraming jobs on both systems. There are some programs that Fly on on the Ultra Sun but Crawl on the Mac (like compiling code) and there are oposit is true as well (Like heavy graphics manupliation). Intel type Boxes are in the middle systems they they seem to perform in the middle in performance. Sure it is nice to choose you own hardware for the system but think of getting a prebuld system like a Mac and Sun box as an alternate to using PC stuff where you can get specialized hardware with a ballanced archecture to perfom there tasks makes life easier and haveing a custom made OS for the hardware can make life easer. Not to say the PC Boxes are any better or worse there better if you dooing a little bit of everything.

Re:It helps make life easer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Word to the wise.. it's "TiBook", ie, a play on "iBook", and it's "Sun", not "SUN". Also there is no such thing as a "SUN Ultra". There are "Sun Ultra NN's", where NN is a number such as 5, 10, 60, etc.

Using poor spelling/capitalisation/lack of paragraphs like that makes you look like an uneducated illiterate shmuck.

Re:It helps make life easer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Needless response and harassment of someone only attempting to help better the conversation with information makes you look like a stupid fuck.

hush about UNIX ports already...

[Anonymous Coward]

... because if you recall, Photoshop ran on Irix back in 94. Irix's 4DWM is Motif-based. Depending on how you feel about Motif, it's already been ported to X, and has been for most of a decade.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[pressman]

Dust and scratches are just the tip of the iceberg. Very complex photo restoration is very easy with Photoshop. The toolset native to Photoshop is amazing. I've repaired photos that were torn and mangled very very quickly. With the GIMP or anything else it would have taken much much much longer. The care and thought that Adobe put into the engineering of Photoshop is worth the price tag/ Initially $600 and then only $99-149 for upgrades every two years. My copy of photoshop usually pays for itself in the course of one job that takes about 2 days. I actually MAKE money by using Photoshop. I could make money using other tools, but Photoshop allows me to do my work the most efficiently.

If you're looking into good scanners check Agfa out. Expensive, but worth the money, especially if you're into photo restoration.

Be sure to get the whole story...

[J.J.]

Cautious readers will want to be sure to read the whole thread. Take the numbers above with a grain of salt.

These results have not been seen across the board.

J.J.

I see Macromedia going the other way

[devleopard]

I have no doubt that you'll see support for Macromedia products on OS X. However, I don't think it will be native. Macromedia's #2 seller, ColdFusion Server, is going to J2EE. It's rumored that the CF IDE, CF Studio, is being rewritten too, and I don't think it'd be too crazy to see it rewritten in Java. Along the same lines, a Java-base for all products would make it quite easy to move into new platforms, with little or no new development required.

Re:I see Macromedia going the other way

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, there's no way they're rewriting Dreamweaver and Flash in Java. They already run on Macs and Windows, which is what the users have. Apps like this need a lot of features and performance that Java can't offer, even with Swing and Java2 on OS X.

Re: digital camera anyone? YES AND NO

[fferreres]

Mhh...I'd suggest something like this which is well under $1000, and scans Film + Prints and has hardware dust & scratch removal BUT ...

(and here is the bad part) you don't get scratch removal from prints (because the scanner needs transparent media for the infrared scan pass that detects the scratches). But then again, if you have the negatives it doesn't matter. It will always scan better and remove scratches flawlesly (much better than any Photoshop or software thing)

What is the status on other apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop alone will not encourage designers to switch to OS X. Are Freehand and Illustrator already available?

Re:What is the status on other apps

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, they are. But why bother asking Slashdot a question like that when you could look at their websites you lazy fucking cunt

Why it took so long...

[PrimeWaveZ]

Before I started taking all of the CS classes I'm in now, I couldn't understand why Adobe was so slow in getting out a native OS X version of Photoshop. However, I've come to these conclusions:

1. Carbonizing seemed easy, at first. When they demoed their "Carbonized" version of PS back in the day, there was really nothing to it. All they had to do was modify the non-complying API calls. However, since OS X's paradigm shifted so much, they also had to remake a lot of the interface to conform and work with Aqua. That is a very difficult proposition when you have a program with a code base such as PS.

2. Their apps also seem to have a lot of legacy 68k-centric code. While I'm certainly not an expert in OS X programming, I'm sure that it doesn't help to have 68k-based instructions when you're trying to have your program run on a modern PPC-based operating system with a new set of APIs. It just doesn't make things easy.

3. Trying to develop Carbonized apps is a difficult proposition because the API isn't set in stone. When the "Carbonization is easy" thing was first floated, most folks probably didn't think it was going to be still under development. A lot of people have likened it to a moving target. I would agree from my point of view, because if you don't know what is going to change from one CarbonLib revision to another, life becomes a bitch

There are probably many inaccuracies in this posting, but from my point of view, Adobe isn't completely to blame. Right now, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and hope it was worth the wait.

Re:Why it took so long...

[moof1138]

My contact at Adobe said that Carbonizing the app and getting the interface Aquafied took very little time. In fact when Adobe's CEO said at a MacWorld long ago that it took them a weekend to Carbonize PS that was not too far off. But. There was no support for plugins unless they were recompiled for OS X. The thing that took them forever was integrating support for Plugins that were written for Mac OS 9, and there are tons of 3rd party plugins that would be caught in the lurch, quite a few of which are not maintained by the companies that made them, though thay are used by a lot of artists. Those plugs are compiled, so they basically had to implement their own mini-Classic and create a virtual runtime that acted like OS 9 for them.

Re:Why it took so long...

[randomshiznat]

If this is true, then why isn't Adobe trumpeting it? Photoshop users would love to know that their existing plugins will work. Users of other Adobe products, like After Effects and Illustrator are faced with having to upgrade/update all their plugins. On the Adobe website they basically plead, "It's not our fault, Apple upgraded the OS, so everything must be rev'ed, including the plugins".

For example,

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@51.hl bh aZl4qTI^7@.ef52871

Re:Why it took so long...

[moof1138]

That's what he told me, but looking into it more today it looks like he was not correct. I got a copy of a beta today, and they did not work. AlienSkin and Andromeda sites mention Carbonizing their plugs, so it looks like PS does not have support for legacy ones. Dang.

lawsuit?

[zerOnIne]

so if adobe implements an alpha-blending algorithm in photoshop (i know ... very far-fetched idea, right?), are they infringing on apple's patent on alpha-blended computer graphics?

if so, why is apple so excited to have someone breaking their patent?

Take with 2 grains salt and call me in the morning.

Re:lawsuit?

[pressman]

Well, essentially Apple and Adobe are merketing to the same people and they share a lot of technology. Last I saw, Mac sales of Photoshop accounted for the largest pecentage of the application's sales. 5% of the desktop market creating more than 50% of the demand for Photoshop is signifigant. The same is true for Illustrator and InDesign as well.

The Mac is a huge part of Adobe's market and they know this. They put a lot of effort into the UI design of their programs and let each of the programs share some basic functions of each other reducing the learning curve between apps. I'll gladly pay a premium for a company that caters to me in this sort of way.

When the GIMP and Killustrator can boast this sort of interoperability, I will be duely impressed. Here's to hoping that happens.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[chrsbrwn]

dude, you are so misinformed (or you're trolling, in which case you are misinforming others):

1. Photoshop upgrades are only $150. They usually have at least 1 or 2 significant new features that make the upgrade worth buying (like 5.5->6 added a full vector type engine). Plus, when I was doing photo retouching for a living, $150 was the target price for a single small retouching/restoration job (about 1 1/2 hours of work).
2. Some people aren't satisfied/can't work with a point-and-shoot camera. A decent, professional level digital camera, that works with existing pro lens systems is way more than $600... the Nikon D1x is over $5000. If you don't need the flexibility of a full digital system, but still want the flexibility of interchangeable lenses, it is still cheaper to buy an N90 or N100, some decent lenses, and a film scanner (total of around $1500-2000).
3. Plus, while cameras like the D1x are able to rival some 35mm film stocks in quality, they aren't even close to the quality of a 2-1/4 or 8x10 transparency.

So, basically what I am saying is that there are still a lot of people scanning from transparencies, and that some really good retouching tools (plus being able to deal with large files) are worth the price of Photoshop.

If all you ever have to deal with are teeny RGB images targeted to the web, by all means, use the GIMP... it'll get the job done. But if you ever have a need to edit a 75Mb CMYK image (a 2 page 8/-1/2x11 full bleed spread at 150 line screen), and you'll get fired (or not get another contract from the same people) if the color is off or if there is a huge scratch right through the middle of the model's face, then $150 for a Photoshop upgrade, or even $600 for the full version of Photoshop, starts to look quite reasonable.

Apple is more like a systems company.

[PotatoHead]

What Apple has that the PC world does not is holistic system design.

Since they produce the hardware, OS and key applications they have the ability to provide a well thought out user experience.

Slowly people are beginning to understand that this approach makes a lot of sense.

Apple is like SUN or SGI only they don't target big systems. They do small ones. Machines sold by all three of these companies have value long after they should when performing tasks the machines were designed for. Why?

Because the machine was designed to get the job done right!

PC machines are general purpose. This was an advantage earlier because it was cheaper. Now that more of the high end functionality is cheaper, Apple can come in and make a very nice machine at a price most people can afford.

So really they are a systems company. Their value is in the whole solution, not the cheap combining of parts.

Re:Apple is more like a systems company.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind whether OS updates break third-party software, what's great about Apple's approach is that it's very rare for an OS update to break any included hardware. In other words, you don't ever lose your FireWire ports, your Wi-Fi, your TV out, your modem, whatever. The computer itself just always works. Instead of the user managing the relationship between hardware and OS, there is just "the computer". Similar to a Palm device ... most users don't ever think of the fact that they have a particular Palm OS, just a small computer that generally works.

Re:Apple is more like a systems company.

[PotatoHead]

Yep.

That is worth a lot to most people. This combined with the built in Apple software makes for a very nice machine with little hassle.

My next machine will be an Apple for sure. The hardware I have worked with has been fun, (SGI, PC Linux/win32) but OS X is looking better every day.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[fferreres]

Plus, when I was doing photo retouching for a living, $150 was the target price for a single small retouching/restoration job (about 1 1/2 hours of work).

Now i can understand! Overcharging clients compensates for overpriced software. Where i live, a designer earns like $900 a month (and lives rather well). They usually work 180 hours/month to earn your 6 hour/month salary. Plz tell me which country do you live in so i can tell my fellas to emigrate asap...

GIMP v. Photoshop

[call -151]

There has been a lot of comparison, and there
are definitely some nice things about Photoshop
that are more polished than GIMP. Furthermore,
if one is already accustomed to Photoshop, then
it would take a while to get comfortable with
GIMP.

But if not, there is a nice
implementation of
GIMP on Mac OS X that is pretty easy to install and of course
the cost factor is a big plus for those of us
on a budget. I wonder if Adobe's slowness in
getting Photoshop out for OS X has resulted in
more MacGIMP converts.

Re:GIMP v. Photoshop

[PhunkySchtuff]

There is one Four-Letter-Word that the GIMP is missing out on, and without it, it is useless for professional publishing.

CMYK

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all true.

Re:Apple

[Analog Penguin]

It's called R&D. If there was only one PC manufacturer, and this manufacturer was responsible for developing the operating system AND the hardware, this PC manufacturer would find it very difficult to do so on the standard PC profit margins. Think about it.

Nitpick alert!

[seanadams.com]

spread throughout your application irregardless of vendor.

Regardless of what you may have heard, "irregardless" is not a word. See also: "irrespective".

Nitpick of your Nitpick alert!

[dbrutus]

Let's take a look at the entry you are nitpicking on. You referred to dictionary.com so here's the entry

--begin quote--
irregardless Pronunciation Key(r-gärdls)
adv. Nonstandard

Regardless.
------------
[Probably blend of irrespective, and regardless.]

Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.
--end quote--

If you find a term that is a logical absurdity and fit only for nonstandard speech and casual writing to be unfit for slashdot use than you have a very strange idea of what slashdot is.

DB

Don't bother modding me up, I'm karma kapped

Macromedia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... merged with Allaire, got hurt in the Dot Com Delay, and as a result, this is the longest gap ever between versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash. They haven't shipped a new version of any of those apps for any platform since months before Mac OS X 10.0 shipped. When they do ship the new versions, Mac OS X versions will be there. They run fine in Classic, anyway. It isn't nearly the chore to run in Classic that some people make it out to be.

Wow, Apple and Adobe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Two sets of corporate jackboots for the price of one. Support bad patents and the DMCA! Buy Photoshop on OSX! Huzzah!

~~~

Adobe sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop...
Lamest interface I can think of for a graphic app.
Mac OS X : OS for pathetic losers who can't live in the real world (with a STANDARD).
Oh and look at that fantastic tech called PDF ! And if I want to be really cruel, Adobe is the
company who put a russian programmer behind bars for daring to reveal how lame their e-book
encryption really is.

Re:Adobe sucks

[DavidRavenMoon]

Photoshop... Lamest interface I can think of for a graphic app. Mac OS X : OS for pathetic losers who can't live in the real world (with a STANDARD). Oh and look at that fantastic tech called PDF !

Actually in the field I work, which is publishing, Macs and Adobe are the STANDARD! This is a BIG industry, and if you want to work in it, you need to know Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator - Period!

98% of all jobs we get are in one of those three formats and 90% of all files we get are Mac files.

Most PC users seem to hate Adobe's interface, but it is the standard as based on MacDraw and MacWrite.

This is the real world were people make a living at it, not sitting in their bedroom playing with The Gimp.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the iMac ?!?
Whahahahahaha !!!!

Now Photoshops users haven't have an excuse

[MrBomb]

No more, "I'm not going to upgrade to Mac OS X because Photoshop isn't carbonized" excuses!

Poor Adobe

[inkswamp]

I see so much finger-pointing aimed at Apple over the fact that Adobe took so long with an OS X-native Photoshop but many of these posts don't make sense when you consider the number of applications (not just from other companies, but from Adobe as well) that made the leap to OS X without much problem before Photoshop (many of them well before Photoshop.) Adobe may have had some technical problems with moving to OS X but that doesn't explain it all. Why did PageMaker and Illustrator get to OS X with relative ease then? And if a carbonized Photoshop was so quick to make, why didn't they release that to paid customers of PS 6 for free?

I've heard lots of rumors about Adobe using the release of an OS X-native Photoshop as leverage in some dispute they were having with Apple. I don't know what it was concerning, but I doubt it's totally fair to blame Apple and let Adobe off the hook.

--Rick

But...

[nougatmachine]

...must of us want the internet to be a playground, not some place where we need to get a hall pass to use a hyperlink.

Re:Another Dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than 50%, last time I heard. They sell a lot of their low-end stuff on Windows, but the Mac is where they make their day-in day-out money, like MS does with Windows and Office.

It's worth noting that Apple has still turned a profit during this whole Mac OS X transition, while their core markets have often delayed new hardware while they wait for Photoshop for Mac OS X, or Pro Tools for Mac OS X, or whatever their core app is. Between the flat panel iMac and graphics pros getting dual 1GHz machines for Photoshop, they should have a good year. Not to mention the iPods that they still can't make enough of, which will be more Windows-friendly in a month or two from now as well.

I'm sure the people at Apple are happy to have sold so many machines to UNIX geeks and developers over the past year or so. Those cats are the front of a really big wave, though. Good for Apple. They make great products that really do what they're advertised to do and don't require constant technical attention.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's margins are not as high as people think. You see 30% for them and 10% for Gateway, but remember that Apple also sells a lot of software, which is a higher margin product (AppleWorks, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Mac OS X, and more). Also, Apple keeps the portion of the profits on their machines that would go to Microsoft if the machine were a Gateway, as well as some of Intel's portion, because Apple makes the mobo and helped to design the PowerPC CPU.

You want to see obscene profit margins? Look no further than Microsoft.

Benchmarks!

[Thaidog]

I want to see OS X bencmarks with the dual 1ghz G4 vs... say a Dual AMD machine with Photoshop 6.0. Somebody needs to put there money where their mouth is in my opinion. I've got a P4 1.7 and a dual 533 G4 system at home... the P4 has 512MB of DDR ram with a R8500 graphics card and an ATA/100 drive... the G4 has 1.5Gigs of ram and a SCSI 160 drive. It better blow the doors os my P4... I'm so tired of these benchmarks! My OS X system is still slow and does not always work correctly and is almost useless in productivity compaired to my PC sometimes. I want a good Apple system... that's why I'm hard on it but I'm looking for something I can also get stuff done on. Once again Jobs, I'm all for you, but pit your money where your mouth is!

Dreamweaver vs. Go Live - Who's first?

[alienappliance]

I need an HTML editor for OS X. I'm a Dreamweaver person, but can't wait on them forever. I may go with whichever program appears first for OS X.

That would be a fair comparison except...

[Jayde Stargunner]

Adobe still sucks at Win32/x86 development.

I'm not trying to troll or be flamebait here, but it's just damn true. All of Adobe's software that runs on my WinXP Pro machine is simply the worst performing, most sluggish, and has the longest start-of time than anything else. (And I run a lot of other high-end development and graphics programs including Paint Shop Pro 7, Flash 5, Fireworks, etc...)

While Paint Shop Pro 7 certainly does not have all the advanced features of Photoshop, it is generally my workhorse for doing run-of-the-mill image work. Why? Virtually no start-up time at all, amazingly better JPEG compression capabilities, and faster general-purpose filters.

Photoshop 6 can sometimes have almost a 7 second start-up time. That's absolutely absurd! PSP 7 takes less than 1 second to load, as does Flash 5 or Fireworks. (Or just about anything on my souped-up system.) If Photoshop can't even start up in less than 6 second on my P4 1.4 ghz with 512 megs of RAM, something is seriously wrong.

Simply put, I think Adobe's Win32/x86 programming capabilities are absurdly behind what they do on the Mac/PPC platform. It's a shame that Adobe basically has a complete stranglehold on the high-end graphics market, since they will probably never correct this issue nor is there any competitor to force their hand. Paint Shop Pro 7 and Fireworks are really the only things remotely touching it at the moment, but they're still not advanced enough to be more than Web or general-purpose editors to compliment Photoshop sitting around as well.

-Jayde

Re:Apple

[vukv]

well actually, R&D is calculated in company's margins....

and afterall, Apple does not develop the hardware really... most of the components are actually done by 3rd part manufacturers, including R&D... like hard drive, cpu, video card, etc... main parts of your system... sure apple does design their systems but so do other companies... Apple is more invloved on software side when compared to other makers than hardware.

All that being said, as long as they have people buying their products, there is nothing wrong with high margins and nice profits... thats why companies are around for...

mod parent up please.

[valmont]

the above post shows exactly why everyone should be buying apple stuff. i've used x86 machines running windows 95 thru XP, redhat linux, apple machines from the old 'mac classic' with 40MB HD and 4MB RAM to early PCI macs (7500) to today's titanium powerbook, on system 6 (with multifinder) thru system 7, 7.6 (very stable), OS 9, linuxPPC Q4 2000 and now ...

OS X on a titanium powerbook.

apple hardware and software has NEVER let me down thru various upgrades off either.

don't get me started on x86/windoz platforms.

i've had my gripes about apple OS 9 bloatware and lack of stability. 'tis why i was on windows 2000 for a while. boy was that painful. right when windows corrupted my hard drive with bad sectors and turned my dell laptop into a door-stop, apple's OS 10.1 was out.

So i switched.

boy. lemme tell you.

computing has never, EVER, been this fun, reliable, painless, stable, solid ... sweet. And every single upgrade to OS 10, to today's 10.1.3 has been painless and brought a whole world of enhancements.

do you have any idea of the uptimes i get on my titanium powerbook? i've gone thru a whole MONTH without rebooting it. And that was to install the next upgrade.

Again, this is a LAPTOP, not a desktop server or workstation.

I take it home, i take it to work, i take it to my gilrfriend's place, i play DVDs, i import photos from my sony digital camera into iPhoto without installing any sony software, i rip CD's in iTunes and stick the songs on my iPod, i connect to the internet thru corporate LAN/static-ip, wireless LAN at my home, modem at my girl's place.

I export iPhoto albums to 'web site' directories in my home directory's linux-equivalent to public_html (~/Sites), i tar'em, i gzip'em, and upload them via ftp to a shell account of mine where i untar/gunzip'em for everyone to see (here). And that's because i was going a little crazy with iPhoto prior to this and filled-up my free 20MB account.

i run the NetBeans java IDE while coding web applications, i do heavy testing of those applications by running them off of a separate installation of tomcat, perform complex and very demanding 'ant' builds. i write shell scripts to perform common tasks. i grep/sed/awk/sort/uniq thru my filesystem.

I have a 435-lines /etc/hosts file filled with hosts pointing to 127.0.0.1 to filter ads.

I removed administrator privileges from my default/every-day user. So any application I run can only write stuff to my home directory. And this is how all OS X apps are designed anyway. Any aspect of an application's preferences are stored in a user's home directory. I can create a small roaming mirror of my home directory with all its libraries and apps preferences onto my iPod. I can go to a friend's house who's also running OS X. He can add me as a user on his box and point my home directory to the one located on my iPod.

and now ...

I can finally run Photoshop.

woohooo.

it just gets sweeter and sweeter :)

Steve has done it. totally. I believe I can say with ample confidence that I'm His Bitch. He has taken me to the Nirvana of Computing and boy, i'm hooked.

And i fucking swear to you, give me 30 minutes with ANY GEEK who has been in the trenches of trying to run a powerful, reliable, flexible operating system for any length of time, for productive and mission-critical use, working out hardware/software/drivers incompatibilities to get it to do what they wanted it to. I'll open a few terminal windows in OS X, point them to a few applications, let them play around. I'll show'em how to 'force quit' out of an application that doesn't respond anymore while not affecting any other resource on the OS. I'll start clicking thru all the application icons i have in my 'dock' and watch them all launch at the same time, independently, while being able to switch thru individual windows of those applications, while the operating system appears to just be sitting there waiting for you to ask more from it.

yes. it is THAT sweet. and more.

why am i rambling? heck i don't know. i don't even own apple stock. Apple has turned the "cool" on, in a big freakin' way, and i just wanna make sure everyone knows about it. bah. just ignore me. i'm owned. heh :)

Re: digital camera anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoa! you live somewhere that designers make $5.62 an hour? and lives rather well on that money? nice!

Apple Laptop Keyboards are Unacceptable

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Laptop Keyboards are Unacceptable to Unix Users

Apple designs horrible keyboards. ADB keyboards (which are still used on all of Apple's laptops) are unusable to unix users who need a Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.

Proper Keyboard Design

• When a key is pressed, the keyboard sends a keyPress event.
• When a key is released, the keyboard sends a keyRelease event.
• Each key is assigned a different keycode.

Nothing more, nothing less.

ADB Keyboard Mis-design

• When the key to the left of the 'A' (CapsLock) is pressed, the ADB keyboard sends both a keyPress event and a keyRelease event.
• When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard sends NO events.
• When the CapsLock key is next pressed, the ADB keyboard sends NO events.
• When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard sends both a keyPress event and a keyRelease event.
• The above cycle repeats over and over.

This is WRONG ! Apple's ADB keyboards are broken by design.

Unix Users Cannot Use Apple's ADB Keyboards

What this means is that unix users who need the key to the left of the 'A' to be a Ctrl key cannot use Apple ADB keyboards. You can easily reprogram the CapsLock key to be a Ctrl key and get rid of the badness of the CapsLock key, but you can't get the required goodness of the Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.

Apple Loses Sales to Unix Users

All Apple laptops have the horrible broken-by-design ADB keyboards which are unusable to unix users. I want to buy an Apple laptop, but I cannot and will not until Apple builds input devices usable by unix users.

Back to the Basics

[extrasolar]

"UNIX/Linux/BSD is neato, but I failed math, suck at logic, and can't grep to save my life. I'd like to play around with it and learn it, but I have no real reason to- and my experience with Free Software has been pretty nasty- I bitch about nonexistant intallers, suck-ass window managers, poor hardware support, and I'm told "FIX IT YOURSELF!"... and as a non programmer, I'd rather stick with something that already works for me to begin with.

Call this a huge change in perspective from you to me. But this paragraph makes me sad. You say you failed math and logic. Yet isn't this what a computer is meant to do? Its called a computer because it computes things. There is an entire field called computer science. Ever wonder what this kind of science is about? From the name you might think its about the science of computers. Yet this is rather far from the truth. Its about how to compute things.

You compute things every day. Many of us rely upon calculators but most of us know how to add and divide numbers by hand. You know how to sort a list of names and addresses. You know how to draw shapes and circles. The computer simply does that for us. A computer program is simple a notation for this computation.

You mention grep only to say how you are afraid of it. It simply writes a text file containing every line of another file that has a certain pattern of text. I don't even know regular expressions very well (again, just a notation for specifying patterns of text), I just match words. You don't need grep to do this. But grep makes it quite a bit easier.

After rereading your post, I realize you are trolling. If I am mistaken, then let us know who told you to fix it yourself. But I'll continue because you are moderated highly and others seem to agree with you.

If you truly are an idiot, then what use is a computer for you? You want to draw pictures, you want to make web sites. Yet to do any of these things correctly you need to be smart and you need to learn how. Perhaps you have backed yourself into a corner hoping that these reputable software packages will allow you to get away with not understand how the technology works. If you do understand the technology then the software ends up being only a conveniance over other less-reputable alternatives.

Let me tell you something. I grep; I program; I play with Unix configs. Yet I don't like Unix. It can be a pain to use. Its redeeming feature is that you can customize it away to make it less of a pain. But I stick with it because of the amount of quality free software that comes with free operating systems (free as in freedom, of course).

Oh, less me forget: you don't want to program. You think it is hard. You're afraid of it. But I think a part of computer literacy should be a minimal amount of programming simply because high-level programming gives you another skill in case you need it. Just like a proficient Windows user knows how to use defrag, notepad and MS Paint not because it is the software they'll spend most of their time using but because its handy at times.

I should stop this post here but as an example to the programming neophyte, lets say you want to write a message encrypted (loosely :) by rot13. All it does is take each character of the message and replaces it with the character 13 times upward in the alphabet. I just wrote this script in ten minutes:

(define (rot13 text)
(list->string (map rot13char
&n bsp;(string->list text))))

(define (rot13char char)
(reset-space (integer->char
(if (> (+ (char->integer (char-downcase char)) 13)
&n bsp;122)
(- (char->integer (char-downcase char)) 13)
(+ (char->integer (char-downcase char)) 13)))))

(define (reset-space char)
(if (equal? char #-)
#space
char))

(sorry for some dangling &nbsp;'s in there...can't figure out how to get them out)

This is just a sample of what you can do with a minimal amount of programming know how. Dreamweaver won't do the above; neither will Photoshop. There are packages that will do this. But what about the thousands of monotonous computations that you may have to spend a lot of time doing that the computer could do for you!

I have strayed off topic, I know. This has little to do with Mac OS X or any other operating system but rather I am speaking about the programming spirit. This exists on all operating systems on whatever system a hacker might use. True computational power comes not from the operating system or the applications you use but from whoever is in front of the keyboard.

Re:Back to the Basics

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Oh please....you post screams 'I'm elite' if I ever saw it.

There is no reason why people should need to learn programming. And just because someone can't program. It dosn't mean that they are: a) dumb. Or b) intelligent but affraid/can't be bother to learn programming.

People work in different ways--as I'm sure you know about the whole left brain/right brain/visual/audio/etc--some people simply find programing difficult. I'm partialy in that crowed. I consider my main skill to be design, photography, with a bit of multimedia. But I already know HTML CSS and learning PHP/MySQL. And just today, I managed to get MySQL installed on OS X using a terminal. I did it. But I found it hard, I can do PHP, but I still can spend ages dicking around fixing errors that any basic programer would spotted straight away. I have trouble deciding how to layout scripts, structure databases, and just general programing stuff. I do kinda like it, it's like a puzzle. But after completeing a task, I usaly find myself saying 'fuck that, I'm glade I did it. But I'm never doing that again!'. If it was just becasue I was still leaning. That feeling would have gone a while ago.

I'm simply not that good at programming. I find it hard to focas on specifics etc. I have trouble taking ideas and putting them into deffinition like a programmer has to. I have trouble translating an idea into something that is real/logial/complete/stuctured/specific/etc (as you can probably tell from my post). My brain simply is not geared that well to do it. I can do it, but is's alot harder that it would be for someone else who is good at programming.

Re:Back to the Basics

[extrasolar]

I'm sorry if you are offended by my post. I swear it is of the best intentions.

There is no reason why people should need to learn programming. And just because someone can't program. It dosn't mean that they are: a) dumb. Or b) intelligent but affraid/can't be bother to learn programming.

There is no reason why people need to use computers at all. But your proficiency with the computer often makes life easier with using the system. Hence why I think simple programming is a part of being literate with a computer. I used the word "idiot" with the assumption that anyone reading my post would first read the post I was replying to, who declaired himself an idiot with certain things. I could have tackled with this point (in fact I did, implicitly) but didn't really care to digress that much.

There is no one who can't program. Again, I mean a program in an abstract sense which means a notation for expressing computation. Lather, rinse, repeat. Add all the numbers and then divide by the number of numbers to get an arithmetic mean. If you mean more than one blocks, add an 's' to the end of the word "block", else omit the 's'.

You give less credit to your brain than it deserves. Of course, programming is a skill that you gain proficiency as you use it. If you don't use it you won't become proficient in it. The likely case is that you never need it. Which is fine. I am more interested in the case when either you do need it or find it useful and you don't use it. Why would this be? Because they are afraid of programming or because they blame their brain was born wrong.

Anyway, I got to go.

Re:Back to the Basics

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

...or because they blame their brain was born wrong.

I think you need to do your research. I'm sure you've heard of this thing called genetics? And how if affects how people grow?

I'm not saying that people can't learn programming. But that it is an awful lot harder for some people than it is for others. So you can't expect everyone to 'get it'. I know people that are quite computer literate, and that benifits them also in what they do. But even start to mention anything concepts like programming, and it just goes straight over their head.

Re:Back to the Basics

[extrasolar]

I think you need to do your research. I'm sure you've heard of this thing called genetics? And how if affects how people grow?

I'm sorry but the burden of proof is all yours. I would like some pointers on how people are genetically unable to program.

You say

I'm not saying that people can't learn programming.

but rather matter-of-factly said earlier

There is no reason why people should need to learn programming. And just because someone can't program. It dosn't mean that they are: a) dumb. Or b) intelligent but affraid/can't be bother to learn programming.
Emphasis is mine.

I don't mean to quibble on details but it would be nice if you were consistant. I am actually replying to your posts. I try to respond with thought and am careful not to make any hasty assumptions.

I'm not saying that people can't learn programming. But that it is an awful lot harder for some people than it is for others. So you can't expect everyone to 'get it'. I know people that are quite computer literate, and that benifits them also in what they do. But even start to mention anything concepts like programming, and it just goes straight over their head.

What if you don't call it programming? In the Gimp it is called Script-Fu. I think Photoshop has an equivalent. Emacs uses an extension language. AutoCAD is a leading engineering package and has a built in extension language as well. Apple computers have AppleScript (which reads quite close to english, as I have seen it). Pretty much all operating systems have some sort of a scriptable shell. Bash simply has you type in the commands as you would type them in the command shell with a few simple programming constructs such as if...then conditionals and variables. In Microsoft Word, when you write a macro Word actually writes a VB script that performs the macro. This is transparent to the user but you can modify the macro script if you wish (my knowledge of this may be inaccurate...I don't use Word often).

What you find is that user applications become more and more powerful and these applications begin to require extensibility at the programming level. This is not new and has been happening for some time. But instead of what we would call traditional programmers to build these systems for a generic set of tasks there will, as I see it, be nontraditional user-programmers extending existing systems for very specific tasks. I truly believe this is part of computer literacy. And you know, I don't think this will look like the kind programming you and I know. It will look like something else that your friends can take to that while some of it will go over their heads, some of it will stick, and they will be the better for it.

Re:Back to the Basics

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I'm sorry but the burden of proof is all yours. I would like some pointers on how people are genetically unable to program.

As I said before. I'm not saying some people can't program, but that some find it alot harder. I'm sure you know all about the whole right/left brain thing and how it affects the way people think and what skills they are good at etc. Go to google and do some research if you don't know, or are unconvinced.

What if you don't call it programming? In the Gimp it is called Script-Fu. I think Photoshop has an equivalent. Emacs uses an extension language. AutoCAD is a leading engineering package and has a built in extension language as well. Apple computers have AppleScript (which reads quite close to english, as I have seen it). Pretty much all operating systems have some sort of a scriptable shell.

What if you don't call it programming? Then it gets called something else. It still dosen't change the fact that it's programming. People aren't suddenly going to understand it better just because the name has been hidden. That's silly. But you already knew that.
Maybe I should have been more clearer. When I meant to say is that some people aren't as good at arithitic, calculations, logic, staistics, numbers etc (all left brain oriented activities). All these things are needed for programming.

What you find is that user applications become more and more powerful and these applications begin to require extensibility at the programming level.

Acctualy, it's quite the opposite. The average person can operate much more complex programs then were around 20 years ago, and not even need to know an ounce of programming.

Re:Back to the Basics

[extrasolar]

As I said before. I'm not saying some people can't program, but that some find it alot harder. I'm sure you know all about the whole right/left brain thing and how it affects the way people think and what skills they are good at etc. Go to google and do some research if you don't know, or are unconvinced.

I've heard about it in passing. But hopefully you'll see this in another light in this message.

What if you don't call it programming? Then it gets called something else. It still dosen't change the fact that it's programming. People aren't suddenly going to understand it better just because the name has been hidden. That's silly. But you already knew that.

Sure. But I am still concerned that you don't understand what programming is in the generic sense I am trying to convey. Its a notation for expressing computation. Everyone computes therefore everyone can program. Its really as simple as that.

Maybe I should have been more clearer. When I meant to say is that some people aren't as good at arithitic, calculations, logic, staistics, numbers etc (all left brain oriented activities). All these things are needed for programming.

First of all, not all them things are needed for programming. Here is something that I suspect may trip you up. What you say is true--people are better at different things. Math is difficult for some people, I know this. I don't mean to say that programming is working with math because that isn't at all true. There are more computations that don't deal with math than that deal with math. However, just because you find a certain computation difficult doesn't mean it isn't useful for you. And if you do make your way through a difficult computation wouldn't you like to store this computation into a computer program so that you can have the computer do every succeeding computation for you?

The your arguments is simple. If you don't know how to compute something, you can't program it. If you don't know calculas you can't create a program that does calculas. However, if you do know calculas it would be useful to put some of the load onto the computer.

Now that I think about it, you are right in one fashion. Programming requires you to be able to express a computation. If you get a result, you have to be able to say to the computer or to other people how you got that particular result. This is a skill that increases over time but is helped by the ability to think in an organized fashion. This could be said to be a left-brain function. But I feel that most people have mastered this function long ago.

What kind of computation doesn't require math? By math, I am assuming you mean high level math. I doubt that people without learning impediments would have trouble with basic arithmetic. (I hope you don't consider this an elitist attitude, I don't expect blind men to see either) Sorting and searching are obvious examples but most people don't actually need to program this. How about doing your taxes? If you know how to do your taxes then you know how to write a program for doing that. Certainly there are software packages that do your taxes for you and I would recommend one of these. But my whole point is for the computer to perform arbitrary computations for you. For you to have the power of the machine and not having to have other developers to bring this power to you. It really is computing power at your fingertips.

Re:Back to the Basics

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

First of all, not all them things are needed for programming. Here is something that I suspect may trip you up. What you say is true--people are better at different things. Math is difficult for some people, I know this. I don't mean to say that programming is working with math because that isn't at all true. There are more computations that don't deal with math than that deal with math. However, just because you find a certain computation difficult doesn't mean it isn't useful for you. And if you do make your way through a difficult computation wouldn't you like to store this computation into a computer program so that you can have the computer do every succeeding computation for you?

No....You still don't get what I'm trying to tell you. I didn't mean maths specificly. I meant all those kind of things, local, orginised, specific including mathmatical. I don't know one programming language, even something like applescript, where being exact is optional. It's nessesary. You can't have a program what will interperate anything other that deffinits and pure logic. Just look at how much trouble they are having design systems like AI etc, things that don't use exact and logical concepts.

Maybe you need to get out into the real world and have a look around for a while.

Re: digital camera anyone?

[fferreres]

Yeah and those are the lucky ones that can find a job. Latin America in general pays about $6/7 an hour...

It's nothing new...

[Lethyos]

Big Unix software venders have been doing this for years. There's software that authenticates against a license server each time it's run (Maple, large CAD packages, etc). That's easy enough for the "owner" of the package to disable. SCO did something very similar and even had its software report back to them when a license violation was detected. Also, if you had read the post more closely, I mention that subscription software is becoming a hot topic. Companies don't want you to own software anymore. They want to lease it to you in a service format. Don't think the idea of running all your applications from a server on the Internet is too far off. It's a lot closer than you think. Also, there's always the simple solution of Some B. Guy at Adobe calling up his buddies at Microsoft and getting them to fuck with your Photoshop installation.

Your systems aren't safe with proprietary software on them. It's best to assume that companies can do whatever they choose with your computer once you give them access to it. Would you stick a black box full of technology from someone you didn't trust in your house? Could be anything. Same goes for software.

Re:It's nothing new...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are so paranoid, then stop using it.

The future of OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they make a few new versions of OS X, will it be OS XXX? Would that have the Pr0n version of Sherlock?

Re:NO (Carbon API on Unix)

[georgewad]

Why bother with netatalk? OSX does smb out of the box (and IIRC, appletalk is disabled by default). You lose some things, like a share browse list (hopefully won't be lost for long...)

big ass deal

[Anonymous Coward]

like, who gives a flying fuck

that's too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping they would scrap OS X.
I much prefer booting in OS 9 and actually watching folders open when I double click them, instead of watching a color wheel spin around.

Re:NO (Carbon API on Unix)

[Beetjebrak]

Netatalk.. as in current x86-based servers. Or do you know of an OS X port for the x86 platform that none of us are aware of? ;-)

Re:Adobe vs. Corel -- I'll take Corel, please

[samdu]

Then you get to the stability issues and support problems of Corel software. I used to work in the design department for a company that relied on CorelDRAW! for designing the main product. Every single designer lost at least one entire drawing because of a problem with DRAW! I'd always go through the same rigamaroll with Corel, too. I'd call them and tell them what error we were getting. They'd tell me to delete the same two or three DRAW! files and restart DRAW! so that it could recreate them. It NEVER had any effect. Upon telling the support monkey that their suggestion didn't retrieve our lost artwork, they would invariably tell me that we were out of luck. I have NEVER lost a file in either Freehand (my favorite vector app) or Illustrator. And I HATE Corel's big, blocky interface. And I hate all the CRAP that comes with Corel software. Photoshop mops the floor with PhotoPaint and even Illustrator kills DRAW!