Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
My other computer is your Windows box
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.
What's your damage, Heather?
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.
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.
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
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.
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.