Adobe Systems Inc. has slowly but surely been implementing support for Mac OS X across their product line. Until now, though, it’s been a mystery as to when their digital image editing software Photoshop would be released for Mac OS X. That mystery is over: Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen says that Photoshop is headed to Mac OS X in the second quarter of next year.
In the last few months the company has released Mac OS X-native versions of their vector graphics illustration software Illustrator and their video effects package After Effects, as well as a Mac OS X-native version of their Acrobat Reader software. For months, Adobe has been demonstrating an OS X-native version of their page layout software InDesign. Yet Photoshop — Adobe’s flagship software application and a core tool of so many Mac-based graphic designers, illustrators, pre-press professionals, and others — has remained tantalizingly out of reach. Many Mac users have cited Photoshop’s lack of Mac OS X support as the reason they haven’t migrated to the new operating system already.
In a recent interview with CNET News.com’s Joe Wilcox following Adobe’s latest financial announcements, Adobe’s Chizen outlined the company’s continued support for the Macintosh. In the course of the interview Chizen also stated unequivocally that Photoshop would debut for Mac OS X during the second quarter of 2002. Chizen’s comments come in a new article entitled Staving off the HTML tsunami.
“All of our key design products, like Illustrator, InDesign, LiveMotion and, of course, Photoshop are going OS X,” Chizen told Wilcox. “… Many of [Adobe’s customers] are waiting for Photoshop, which we intend to release in the second quarter of next year.”
Chizen also told Wilcox that while the company has made inroads to the Windows market, Adobe recognized that “the true creative professional or designer is still predominately Macintosh.”
Chizen also provided some insight about Adobe’s recently announced relationship with Sonic Solutions, which makes DVD authoring software. Chizen spoke in sanguine terms about the future of the DVD market. When Wilcox asked Chizen if Adobe planned to support both Mac OS and Windows with forthcoming products based on Sonic’s cross-platform DVD authoring technology, Chizen said that his company hadn’t decided — yet.
The Mac, Chizen explained, already has DVD authoring solutions from Apple: Apple includes iDVD on its DVD-RW-equipped Macs and makes DVD Studio Pro available to professionals who need more extensive DVD authoring capabilities. If Adobe decides that Apple has an unfair advantage in that market, Chizen posited, the company would probably choose not to compete.