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Graphics OS X Operating Systems Software

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Will Be 64-Bit For Windows Only 478

HighWizard notes that Adobe Systems has shared the first scrap of information about its next version of Photoshop, CS4, and it's a doozy: there will be a 64-bit version of the photo-editing software, but only for Windows Vista and not for Mac OS X. Ars explains the history of how this conundrum came to pass — blame Apple and/or Adobe as you will.
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Adobe Photoshop CS4 Will Be 64-Bit For Windows Only

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  • 64 bit is no panacea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jgarra23 ( 1109651 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @08:57AM (#22961872)
    just like the article says, it's not like it's going to make your app run any faster. In fact, with tday's machines, 64 bit will probably run slower than 32 bit...
    • by joaommp ( 685612 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:01AM (#22961908) Homepage Journal
      Well, it will run faster if you have a large pool of physical memory and do some heavy Photoshop editing, because Photoshop will be able to access more than 3GB of memory (remember that 1GB of the 4GB address space is already reserved for system code sharing) and not resort to it's own swap/disk cache system as much.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:24AM (#22962118) Homepage
        Yep, and memory prices have dropped *extremely* over the last year. If I was working with many and large photoshop images, getting 4x4GB memory wouldn't be out of the question. Honestly I don't need it, but if you're working with high-quality print images I can easily see why you might need that...
    • by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:07AM (#22961966)

      Remember, going to 64-bit on x86 can make programs faster, but not because of the extra bits. The speedup comes from the fact that, in addition to increasing the bits, AMD also added a bunch of extra registers to the spec.

      • Well, for those of us working with large images, programs speed up because they aren't constantly thrashing the swapfile.
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:26AM (#22962138)
      32 bits is just fine...until the day that Apple announces better 64-bit developer support, at which time it will immediately become the greatest thing since sliced bread.
      • by larkost ( 79011 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:31AM (#22962784)
        Apple has already announced (and shipped with 10.5.0) better 64bit support, but just not for Carbon. And since all of Adobe's products (except Lightroom) are Carbon applications, they have no access to GUI-integrated (single process) 64bit support.

        Adobe has been dragging its feet on a port to Cocoa (about which everyone saw the writing on the wall a long time ago), aided by Apple's thinking that it was going to give 64bit Carbon a future (rescinded quite some time ago). I don't know why this is at all surprising to anyone.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) *
        According to this [apple.com], 64-bit cocoa was introduced back in March 2007
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      You are running 64bit on the wrong OS!
      Linux 64bit apps are very fast and for photo editing I would use the GIMP over Photoshop. there are a lot of plugins for the GIMP too! Also I have a powermac G5 (real mac) running tiger. GIMP is very fast on that too! So I am not missing anything.
  • by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @08:57AM (#22961874)
    I guess there's no hope now...
  • Apparently Apple suddenly mentioned that carbon would not be supported in 64bit, meaning that a lot of code will have to be ported to cocoa.
    • Re:I vote Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:05AM (#22961954)
      Didn't Apple say nearly 10 years ago that Carbon was a stopgap solution and that you shouldn't particularly rely on it anyways?
      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        It's not much of a stopgap if you many millions of lines of code written against it. Which I expect Adobe have.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cowscows ( 103644 )
        Yeah, but even Apple still writes some stuff in Carbon, and up to the point where they suddenly changed their mind, they had been telling everyone that 64-bit carbon was coming.

        Nobody's really saying that Apple sucks for moving away from Carbon, the argument is that they should've communicated the timeline better to developers.

        Not that I think giant developers neccessarily deserve special treatment, but you'd think it prudent to at least not waste a ton of time for a developer of one of the most significant
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dpbsmith ( 263124 )
        No, my recollection is that they said exactly the opposite: that Carbon and Cocoa were co-equal and would be kept feature-comparable.

        I don't have my notes from WWDC 2000, however.
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:13AM (#22962030)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Please keep in mind that the cocoa framework has changed significantly in every release of OSX since the beginning. It wasn't until the last couple of years that it started stabilizing and applications remained compatible with new releases of the OS.

        They're still adding new features and improving the way things work internally, and applications, although they run, have some weird glitches with new OS features; namely, older applications sometimes behave strangely when one uses Spaces.

        I agree, adobe should h
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by mini me ( 132455 )

        Developers are just plain LAZY

        Of course. That's why were are developers. When job X needs to be done, the average person will just jump in and get it done. Where as we developers, being lazy, would rather tell the computer to do the job instead. Had we not been lazy, we would have just done the job manually like the average person, and the software would have never been written.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mzs ( 595629 )
        Well in WWDC 2006 they had sessions about how to port your apps for 64-bit Carbon. I decided to go with it for a new mac project at that time. The reason was simple, at the time it was a linux/windows app that was written in mostly C++ and I did not want to bother with a bunch of obj-C glue code. I simply could put the Carbon calls into the C++ classes. I'm still okay, 32-bit carbon is still around, but yeah now I have been working on those icky little .m files.
  • by G3ckoG33k ( 647276 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:00AM (#22961890)
    Sorry, but I will blame Microsoft.

    It may be a knee-jerk reaction, but still. ;)

  • blame Apple and/or Adobe as you will

    You must be new here, I don't even need to read the article to know MS and thier monoply is to blame for this :-)
  • by DragonHawk ( 21256 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:01AM (#22961904) Homepage Journal
    Blame Apple? I didn't think we could do that, here.
  • by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:01AM (#22961916) Homepage Journal
    they promised, and then rescinded, 64 bit Carbon, and didn't even bother to tell developers until WWDC 2007. This is the big problem with Apple's secrecy, sometimes they are secret just to be secret. There was NO reason not to let developers know there would be no 64 bit carbon as soon as the decision was made, but Apple waited until the last possible second for who knows why.

    Yeah, Carbon is dead and they should be going to all Cocoa, but that takes time, and if it was your intention to kill Carbon, why even promise a 64 bit version at all? Why not state from the getgo that you plan to phase out Carbon and that if you want a 64 bit GUI you better be making it in Cocoa? Apple goes out of their way to piss people off sometimes I swear.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zootm ( 850416 )

      Yes, it's Apple's fault, and the blame should lie pretty much just with them. From what I can tell of the situation, though, I don't think they made the wrong decision - I think they just administered the right decision very poorly. They made the decision fairly late in the day, and without prior notification this will push back the schedules of many projects.

      The article pushes this very even-handedly, and I do think that Apple's decision will pay off in the longer term. They just could have handled the sh

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

        I don't think they made the wrong decision

        32 bits should be enough for anybody.

        • by zootm ( 850416 )

          I think that the fact that we've been stuck with as many as that has been a testament to the waste in our industry. Clearly the only true solution is 4 bits, where the fourth can be a rudimentary checksum for data integrity.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      "Yeah, Carbon is dead and they should be going to all Cocoa, but that takes time, and if it was your intention to kill Carbon, why even promise a 64 bit version at all?"
      Actually killing carbon is DUMB. To use Cocoa you have to use Objective-C for the GUI. There is a lot more experienced c++ developers than Objective-C developers. Objective-C isn't widely used on Windows or Unix so cross platform is now going to be a bigger pain for developers.
      This is going to be a great thing for TrollTech.
      The end result wi
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Henriok ( 6762 )
      Apple have never promised 64-bit Carbon. Everything that's in developer seeds are subject to change. As far as I can tell Apple didn't make the decision to drop 64-bit Carbon until about same time as WWDC'07, so Adobe and everyone else, including many developers inside Apple, found out at the same time. Adobe are going to migrate to Cocoa at some time or another, and it will be in everyone's best interesst to do it sooner rather than later. Adobe is lazy and they've shown it time after time.. just watch the
      • by Teese ( 89081 ) <beezelNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:16AM (#22962644)

        Apple have never promised 64-bit Carbon.
        They did promise 64bit carbon, during the 2006 WWDC. It wasn't until the 2007 WWDC that they rescinded the promise. Before the 2007 WWDC, they backed up the promise with seeds with 64bit carbon support in. They removed that 64bit carbon support in the 2007 WWDC seed. Of course they also slightly redefined what carbon meant. It now means the GUI portions of what used to be called carbon. So there are parts of "carbon" that are 64bit. They just aren't called carbon anymore.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:04AM (#22961934)
    You misread the article:

    The Lightroom news naturally raises the question: What's Adobe doing with Photoshop? In the interest of giving customers guidance as early as possible, we have some news to share on this point: in addition to offering 32-bit-native versions for Mac OS X and 32-bit Windows, just as we do today, we plan to ship the next version of Photoshop as 64-bit-native for Windows 64-bit OSes only.
  • XP too...? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by snarfies ( 115214 )
    Will it run on 64-bit editions of Windows XP? I certainly hope so, as I have zero intention of downgrading to Vista, but I do intend to run XP x64 on the computer I'm currently building for video editing work. If 64-bit Photoshop works out, I'm hoping 64-bit Premiere Pro will be following.
    • by Zebra_X ( 13249 )
      Speaking from experience, you will gain nothing by using XP x64 as opposed to Vista X64. XP64 has the same problem that Vista 64 has - lack of driver support and lack of most apps supporting x64.

      Things like the old Cisco VPN client simply don't work.

      Just go to Vista 64 if you think you want or need to use 4GB of RAM.

      Despite what you've heard there are some nice things about it too, it isn't that bad and you will get more drivers for it as the years wane on. It is also more secure, and you don't run the risk
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Wow, can nobody here answer the man's question with anything except sarcasm?

      Yes, it will run on 64 bit editions of XP, it says so in the article. The summary just assumes that 64bit means "vista". Great slashdot editors as always./sarcasm
  • (Our goal is to ship a 64-bit Mac version with Photoshop CS5, but we'll be better able to assess that goal as we get farther along in the development process.)

    So the mac is not cut off. They just need time to move from carbon to cocoa. At least they are not trying to rush something through the door.
  • by MrMacman2u ( 831102 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:14AM (#22962036) Journal
    Personally, I'm taking Adobe to task on this one.

    Carbon was initially meant to be a "type" of backward compatibility with old Mac OS "less than X" applications so that they would require minimal re-writes of code to allow the program to be Mac OS X "native".

    Apple has been pushing people to use the "more native superior" Cocoa framework for a number of years now by not only urging programmers and developers to use Cocoa but, by also enhancing the speed, stability and capabilities of Cocoa while Carbon stagnated (comparatively) and Adobe has constantly and stubbornly refusing to re-write ANYTHING they make to use the superior Cocoa framework.

    This has been the case since the "Photoshop 7 ver.2" generation of Adobe's Mac products.

    Lightroom uses Cocoa because it was made from scratch. That's it. If it was a hold over from pre-X days, I would bet my geek creds that it would be written in carbon.

    Yes, I do fully realize that re-coding all of Adobe's Creative Suite to the Cocoa framework is a monstrous task, but Adobe has been severely dragging their feet regarding the switch-over which, I might add, they "hoped for in CS2 and "promised" for CS3!

    That totally happened..... oh wait, it didn't! So now Adobe is caught with their pants down and doesn't want to admit it, despite Apple saying "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" for years.

    So no, this is not Apple's fault. It's Adobe's and I look forward to seeing any counter-arguments!

    This should be interesting!
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      Ah, don't worry. It's not like anyone uses Apples for graphic design.
    • by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:41AM (#22962296) Homepage

      So no, this is not Apple's fault. It's Adobe's and I look forward to seeing any counter-arguments!
      TFA said that Apple promised Carbon would get 64 bit support in 2006, then changed their minds and cancelled it in 2007.

      If Adobe expects Carbon to get 64 bit support (because Apple said so) and then it suddenly doesn't, its pretty easy to see how that is going to screw things up. That part is Apple's fault.

      So since their Carbon version isn't going to ever be 64 bit, they need to do a Cocoa port to get there. Thats only necessary because of Apple's cancellation of 64 bit Carbon, so its Apple's fault.

      (Though I tend to agree with TFA that Apple's decision to do that was right, in the long term.)
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MrMacman2u ( 831102 )
        You act as if planned and/or announced features/products have never been canceled or abandoned and Apple is the only one to ever do this. *COUGH!*M$VISTA*COUGH!**COUGH!*

        They decided to cancel 64 bit support for carbon and announced it. It's not like they simply decided to ship the next update/version of Carbon as 32 bit only and never told anyone.

        Adobe's fair warning came 10 years ago. Carbon has always been a stop-gap. IMHO, no amount of blame directed anywhere but straight at Adobe should be cast.
    • I blame Apple (Score:3, Informative)

      by kuwan ( 443684 )
      It's uninformed BS like this that makes me sick. Carbon may have initially been a "backwards compatibility" layer in the initial versions of Mac OS X but since that time it has involved into a fully native modern API that is every bit as native as Cocoa is on Mac OS X. Modern Carbon applications work just as well, look just as good and can have just as many features as any Cocoa application.

      Also, prior to WWDC 2007 Apple has never said that "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" Apple has been evolv
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by anarkhos ( 209172 )
      I'm tired of people who don't write Mac programs pontificating on crap they have no clue about.

      Carbon and Cocoa aren't in direct competition. Carbon is a lower-level API that works as advertised. Cocoa is a higher-level API like PowerPlant or MacApp that, in spite of Apple's marketing, isn't some kind of all-encompassing masterwork of new technology. In fact, it hasn't changed significantly since the debut of OPENSTEP, and the fact it wasn't written for the same market as the Mac shows.

      Cocoa has missing API
  • hey (Score:3, Funny)

    by Neuropol ( 665537 ) * on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:18AM (#22962060) Homepage
    who cares.

    GIMP runs well on macs with xcode & developer tools installed.
  • I've been using 64-bit systems since 1994... including ILP64 Alpha processors... and unless you're memory starved 64-bit software tends to be slower than 32-bit software... with one exception: there's a serious problem with 32 bit mode that the 64-bit mode doesn't have.

    On the Alpha, the problem was that 32-bit mode requires trapping many accesses because the CPU is *purely* 64-bit.

    With AMD64, AMD implemented a large register file efficiently, so a good compiler can generate better code for it. Intel's implementation of AMD64 doesn't seem to be as good, and since Apple is on Intel...

    Also, Adobe has to have a 64 bit version for Windows, because Windows comes in 64- and 32- bit versions, but OS X has the same support for both 64- and 32- bit in the same OS...

    So unless you're editing truly enormous images, far larger than most users ever deal with, this doesn't matter.

    On the plus side, Apple's been trying to kick Adobe into converting to NeXTSTep/Yellow Box/Cocoa since 1997, and Adobe's knuckle-dragging over abandoning Classic is what made Carbon necessary in the first place, so I don't think Adobe's in any position to say Apple didn't give them plenty of warning.

    It's been 11 years and they're finally going "oh, man, I guess Apple's really serious about this Objective C stuff!".
    • What are you talking about? 64-bit Windows runs 32-bit software just fine.
    • x64 Windows runs 32-bit applications fine unless they rely on some 16-bit components, or it relies on some form of virtual driver. Photoshop CS3 is a x32 program, and it runs on my x64 Vista.
  • On the upside (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:23AM (#22962108)
    At least you can run Windows on Macs now.
  • Sheesh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MyDixieWrecked ( 548719 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:33AM (#22962196) Homepage Journal
    At my old job, I worked in the art department doing production work and created a whole range of applications for CS2, Office, Mail.app and Transmit using PERL and Applescript. There's a whole workflow that's been built around the products they use on the platform that they use (OSX).

    The guys in charge of purchasing hardware/software know little about the details of technology, although they gloss over eWeek and read the Technology section of the Times. Inevitably, they will read about this and try to convince the art department that maybe they should put Vista on the MacPros, or maybe get some standard PCs (if they decide to upgrade the hardware).

    this news is especially relevant to that shop since they frequently get 2GB and 3GB files (and that's compressed!).

    The good news is that the majority of their clients are running OSX, as well, and this lack of 64-bit photoshop should not cause them to start sending in even larger files... however, I do know that many of the larger clients get whatever the latest and greatest Mac is and max it out. This means that they could just get a copy of Vista and use Bootcamp.

    Apple kinda shot itself in the foot with this one. Shops that can, may install Vista and get CS4 for windows just to keep up with incoming work. If MS gets Vista's usability up, and can offer a competitive experience, users may get used to it and stick with the platform... although I seriously find that highly unlikely.
    • by mgblst ( 80109 )
      Apple decided to move over from some old technology left over from support for pre-OS X, to the current technology. They had to do this sometime. This is a big decision, but not one that was taken lightly.
  • 1. They have taken entirely too long to come out with 64-bit versions of their software.

    2. They aren't very good at change. Basically all Adobe does now is buy other companies that have good software or market share. After the company is acquired they make few efforts to improve the software. If they make any changes it's to make it more bloated and riddled with advertisements.

    Or maybe I'm just bitter because they don't have a 64-bit version of Flash and there is no Shockwave for Linux.
  • by SwiftX ( 672557 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:39AM (#22962274)
    Trolltech(/ nokia) is working with Apple to get QT on MacOSX using Cocoa.
    Problem solved!
    SwiftX

  • The thing is... and if anyone else was there and still has their notes I'd appreciate it if they'd confirm or deny this... I could swear that Apple pledged at WWDC 2000 that Carbon and Cocoa would be co-equal on Mac OS X.

    I do not remember Apple saying that Carbon would be discontinued, and I do not remember their suggesting that there was any reason to move to Cocoa _other than its intrinsic merits_.

    I realize that computer companies have a very bad track record of keeping any long-term commitments, and that
  • by sgt scrub ( 869860 ) <saintium@NOSpAM.yahoo.com> on Friday April 04, 2008 @09:47AM (#22962338)
    It must be because Windows has had such a long and stable history of running on 64bit hardware.

    http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ [gimp.org]
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cyberjessy ( 444290 )
      I don't know if your comment was meant to be sarcastic, but:

      Tiger had very limited 64-bit support (GUI apps ran in 32-bit mode). The fairly recent 10.5 is much better though.

      In contrast, the Windows API's were well supported in 64-bit platforms since 2003. (Windows 2003 server, for IA-64 and later X64). While XP 64-bit was pointless, and soon discontinued, Windows APIs remain the same on Server and Client editions.

      This would have allowed Adobe to start working on a 64-bit version anytime in the last 5 years
  • by courtarro ( 786894 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:26AM (#22962744) Homepage

    When it comes to software development, companies prefer to make changes that affect the customer directly, and in the short term. The Ars article mentions that it would take a serious redistribution of resources to begin the port from Carbon to Cocoa, which means that feature development and stability improvements (things that the customer sees) would have slowed significantly. CS4 might come out with a few new features, but users would complain that it is basically a rehash of CS3 and there would be significant negative press. Arguments would intensify that Photoshop has hit a plateau, and future sales would be hurt.

    All that would be the result of the forward-looking decision to port to Cocoa far before this point, and that decision would have had the potential to cause more problems for Adobe than they're seeing now by not having a Cocoa version ready. Today's news is bad press for Adobe, but it's not as bad as it could have been. In reality, people will get along with a 32-bit Mac version or the 64-bit Windows version instead. Since the problem of making a Cocoa port is now very customer-facing, the marketplace will likely be more forgiving of a feature stall over the next few years.

  • by Toe, The ( 545098 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:26AM (#22962748)
    Remember the enormous delay Adobe had in bringing CS3 to OS X? Their excuse for that was that they the Intel chipset was making them abandon their CodeWarrior-developed code and they had to start over from scratch.

    So now they are saying that when they made the decision to start over from scratch, they chose the older, backward-compatible API instead of a forward-looking modern one? If their mumbling about the delay of CS3 were true, then there was no reason at all that they wouldn't have just moved to Cocoa right then.

    Adobe needs to get their lies straight if they hope to be as awful of a company as Microsoft (something they seem to be striving for with increasing vigor).
  • Misleading title? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguin_dance ( 536599 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:36AM (#22962850)
    When I read the title, "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Will Be 64-Bit For Windows Only" it sounded like it will ONLY run on 64-bit computers with Windows. Which sounds crazy that they would limit their market to 64-bit Windows Vista. But after you read the article and comments, it will be able to run on 32-bit computers also. There are 32-Bit macs, aren't there? (I realize the 64-bit is especially useful in all things graphic that take up a lot of memory.)

    Perhaps a better title would have been, "64-Bit Macs Snubbed by Photoshop CS4"
  • by leamanc ( 961376 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @10:53AM (#22963092) Homepage Journal

    ...but the Windows version is just coming out first. It's not like Adobe is totally abandoning 64 bit apps on the Mac. It's just that re-writing millions of lines of Carbon code is going to take a bit longer.

    If you read the Ars article, and John Nack's blog at Adobe, you get a sense of the history involved here. Back when Apple's next-gen OS was going to be Rhapsody, Apple developers were looking at re-writing all their apps in what came to be known as Cocoa. Many of the big developers, Adobe among them, said "No way, Steve," leading to the birth of Carbon, to allow an easy transition from OS 9 to OS X.

    It's been known for a while that Carbon would eventually be deprecated, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's going to be a huge job for Adobe. Adobe shouldn't be chastised for this move. They should be lauded for developing the an x86_64 version for Mac at all, even if its release will lag behind the Windows version.

  • by greymond ( 539980 ) on Friday April 04, 2008 @11:42AM (#22963862) Homepage Journal
    I work as a Marketing and Design manager and we are, for the most part, OS X exclusive. We do have a couple older windows machines we use for some web related items, but as far as print ready designs go and even websites we're all mac based. That said we don't have the budget to upgrade every year when the latest and greatest items come out. Instead we usually upgrade software about once every two to three years and our hardware every four years (though small upgrades like memory are evaluated each year)

    Besides our budget limits, the other reason for this is that most of the printers we work with as well as publication companies follow a similar trend in their upgrade patterns. As it is right now we just finished migrating all of our offices over the last year from CS (a couple offices did have 2 already) to CS3. Depending on when CS4 comes out, we'll more than likely just wait until CS5 is released.

    With that said if we run into an issue where we need to have the latest for some given reason chances are we'll require only InDesign or Illustrator upgrades as those are our main priorities. While photoshop seems to add in yet another ten ways to adjust the shadows/highlights of an image every version, it never seems to be high on our list of requirements.

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