POLL: Adobe, Quark critical to Intel Mac shift
Source: Macwold UK
Written by Jonny Evans
History, they say, repeats itself - and the success of Apple’s Intel transition looks set to be based on speedy delivery of key graphics, photography and desktop publishing applications.
In a recent online reader poll, we asked: “What software do you most want optimised for Intel?”. The largest slice of the open vote (359 voters, or 39 per cent of the 912 readers who voted) demanded: “Graphics, photography, DTP”.
Design and graphics key to transition
Interestingly, when Apple moved to Mac OS X the success of that transition was also determined by the speed with which such applications migrated to the new processor.
The at that time market leading DTP application, QuarkXPress was late to the OS X party, while Adobe landed early with InDesign. Quark’s tardiness in making the switch gave Adobe a chance to steal market share. Now it stage seems set for that game to play out again.
Universal v. Rosetta
Adobe this month introduced its “Universal Support FAQ“. This states that the company will not re-release Universal binary versions of its current applications - such as Photoshop and InDesign - until it ships full upgrades, perhaps as late as next year.
Universalhttp://www.apple.com/universal/ versions of Mac software are optimised to run natively - and therefore faster - on Intel-powered Macs. PowerPC-based software that has not been optimised to run natively on Intel Macs works on those Macs using Apple’s Rosetta emulation software - and runs slower than optimised “Universal” code.