In a conversation today with MacCentral, Adobe Vice President of Marketing Cross Media Publishing Susan Altman Prescott reiterated her company’s commitment to its Macintosh customers and Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.
“The Mac platform has been, and absolutely remains an important part of Adobe’s business — we’re about publishing and the Mac still has a very strong presence in the publishing community,” said Altman Prescott.
In fact, Prescott told MacCentral today that InDesign and Illustrator would be the first Adobe applications released natively for Mac OS X. Although Adobe is openly committed to releasing Photoshop as a native application for OS X, the company would not specify when users could expect to see the program.
“Adobe absolutely supports the direction Apple is taking with OS X,” said Altman Prescott. “We have intentions in the next release of our major applications to deliver native applications for OS X. We are stating publicly that Adobe InDesign and Illustrator will be the first to be OS X compliant.”
So when can you expect to see these two applications come to OS X? Adobe won’t give a specific timetable when customers will see these two native applications for “competitive reasons.”
What it comes down to, says Altman Prescott, is Adobe’s commitment to quality products. In its migration to Mac OS X, Adobe is making sure the products work the way Mac users have become accustomed.
“Our reputation is built on delivering innovative software, but also stable high-quality software,” said Altman Prescott.
Speculation about a strained relationship with Apple is not what some people are making it out to be. Altman Prescott compared Adobe’s relationship with Apple to that of a family — very close, but with some occasional friction.
“In general the relationship between the corporations is very strong. The thing that keeps our relationship close and strong is we have common customers that require Adobe and Apple to have a good relationship and deliver premium solutions,” said Altman Prescott.
Apple’s built-in Quartz layer of OS X — built on the PDF format — will not offer users of Adobe products any advantage. But the company doesn’t have any problem with Apple’s use of the technology. Adobe Acrobat Reader — already available for OS X — will continue to be developed for OS X. Even though there are some built-in PDF capabilities available to OS X users, Adobe feels it still makes sense to offer the advanced features of Acrobat.
Altman Prescott also reiterated the reason Adobe would not be exhibiting at Macworld New York — finances.
“Adobe is not exhibiting at Macworld New York, although there are a number of Adobe employees that will be at the show. Within the current economic environment, Adobe is taking an aggressive posture around expense management,” said Altman Prescott.
Next week’s Macworld Expo is not the only show Adobe will have missed. Adobe did not attend this year’s PC Expo, for example. The company also missed Spring Internet World — all of these are shows that the company historically exhibits at, but won’t be this year.
“The decision around Macworld New York was in no way singling out Macworld. The decision has nothing to do with our Mac platform or Apple’s OS X operating system. Macworld San Francisco continues to be one of our larger trade shows in terms of participation, our exhibits and our dollars,” said Altman Prescott.