A few days ago Adobe introduced Soundbooth, a free download (in beta form) from Adobe Labs.  Notably, and happily, the app not only supports Mac OS X, but also runs natively on Mactel systems.  More controversial, however, has been the news that the app runs only on Mactel systems, not those using a PowerPC.

"The elimination of PowerPC support in Photobooth [sic] raises major issues," writes Macintouch.  I’m a little puzzled: how is it that people can refer to the "elimination" of something that never existed–namely, PPC code in Soundbooth?

Here’s the reality: Apple’s migration to Intel chips means that it’s easier to develop for both Mac and Windows, because instead of splitting development resources optimizing for two different chip architectures, you can focus on just one.  That’s all good, and it makes Mac development more attractive. Users benefit from having developers’ efforts go elsewhere (features, performance tuning, etc.), rather that into parallel, duplicate work. In the case of Soundbooth, the team could leverage Adobe’s expertise in building great audio tools for Intel chips (namely Audition) to bring the app to market faster and with a richer feature set.

Now, if you were Adobe and had started developing a new application at exactly the time when Apple told you, "This other chip architecture is dead to us," would you rather put your efforts into developing for that platform, or would you focus elsewhere?

This logic seems lost on a lot of online posters, who leap to some fairly outlandish conclusions.  "Oh my God, next thing you know, Photoshop and the other apps won’t run on PowerPC, and the next thing you know, they’ll kill Mac versions altogether and just tell us to run Windows using Parallels!"  At what point Adobe will burn Snuggle the Fabric Softener Bear in some dark pagan ritual isn’t specified, but that must be the natural next step, right??

Come on.  As regards Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, etc., these apps have been tuned for PowerPC for many versions, and therefore continuing that support is a very different matter than creating support from scratch. To put the freaking out to rest: the next versions of the CS and Studio apps are being built as Universal apps, and they’ll run great on PPC.  Someday Apple, Adobe, and everyone else will stop supporting PPC, as they did with 68k chips, OS 9, etc.–but not anytime soon.

Macintouch writes, "There are 10 or 20 million active PowerPC Macs and no excuse in the world for abandoning them and forcing people to buy new Intel Macs to run applications."  Doesn’t it seem like something would have to exist before it could be abandoned?  "That’s completely contrary to Apple’s whole approach to the Intel migration," they write.  And again, in order to migrate, you have to start somewhere (namely, on the PPC). Soundbooth is a fresh start, not a migration.

If you’re a Mac user, I think it’s important to ask yourself, "Would I rather encourage software developers to bring their titles to the Mac, or would I rather jump down their throats given any opportunity?  If Adobe were to bring other Windows-only apps to the Mac, would I be happy about that, or would I rather give them hell for focusing on features & functionality rather than a discontinued chip architecture?"

I have to ask myself, Why on earth am I devoting part of my weekend to writing all this?  Why not blow it off and get out of the house?  Maybe I should, but as a die-hard Mac user I feel like someone has to speak a little truth to the Mac community–or rather,
to that vocal little group of
zealots and forum trolls. So here’s my message for those folks: You’re hurting the Mac platform. You’re hurting the Mac community. You need to crush a little aluminum foil against those antennae of yours, because you’re hurting everyone concerned. You’re making it harder (and less appealing) for people of goodwill to make the effort to support the Mac.

In economics, Gresham’s law states that when both legitimate money & counterfeit money are in circulation, the bad stuff tends to remain in circulation while the good stuff tends
to be hoarded or exported.  This applies to politics and to online conversations: extreme voices drive out (or at least silence) more moderate, level-headed thinking. I’ve bothered to write this, and to risk catching a lot of slings and arrows, because it’s important that someone stand up and say, "Whoa, hey, simmer down.  Take another look at the situation, and let’s take a second to accentuate the positive."

At the end of the day, instead of supporting only Windows, Adobe is bringing a new app to the Mac.  As a Mac user, I think that’s great news, and I suspect the vast majority of Mac users do, too.

Grabbing the Aerobie and heading out the door,

J.

[Update: Soundbooth PM Hart Schafer shares his perspective on the question of making Soundbooth support PPC. Suffice it to say, it’s not a “flip the checkbox in Xcode and you’re done” kind of thing.]

The Sony Bravia "Paint" ad (also available in high res–requires QT7) looks like someone doused the Bellagio fountains with a tanker full of Punky Colour.  The spot took 10 days and 250 people to film, not to mention 5 days and 60 people just to clean up.  (Putting your eco-worries to rest, they say, "A special kind of non-toxic paint was used that is safe enough to drink.")  [Via Paul Ramsbottom]

Meanwhile Turkish film studio Imago New Media has created OÏO, featuring paint "catapulted into the air, filmed by a high-speed camera and then composited with other catapulted paint footage."  Here’s a clip.  (The soundtrack has "deservedly obscure James Bond score" written all over it.) [Via]

See also the first Bravia spot (high res), featuring colored balls cavorting around SF.

It’s with enormous sadness that we learned this week of the passing of Hans Grande, a dear friend to many, many Adobeans; a stellar product manager; and an all-around excellent fella.  There’s a huge lump in all our throats, but at the wise suggestion of his wife, I’d like to take a moment to remember and celebrate his life.

Hans joined Adobe in 2002 as a PM on the Creative Suite team. Although we worked in different teams & disciplines, our paths would cross periodically, and I remember thinking, "Man, I’m not sure I understood all that MBA science he just laid on me, but I’m glad to have that guy on our side!"  When the Macromedia deal was announced last year, Hans took the reins on leading the planning activities.  Once again, although he was in the "clean room" and thus couldn’t talk much to the rest of us about the plans, I remember thinking, "Well, whatever he’s doing in there, I think those Macromedia folks are going to be impressed."  I couldn’t think of a better rep for that tricky assignment, and I knew he’d do Adobe proud.

Both Hans and I got married last year, and as we each dealt with the planning details, we’d compare notes.  I told him, "Oh man, this whole business of marrying a project manager is great–highly recommended, if you have the means!" He laughed and replied, "Yeah, but I’m marrying another product manager, and you know how that’s going to go: we’ll have all kinds of brilliant ideas for the wedding, and none of them will ever get implemented!"  I knew, though, that somewhere between driving the next great Adobe business initiative & going for long training rides with other Adobe cyclists (a real underachiever, this guy), he’d get it all put together.

I wish I’d gotten to know Hans better.  I wish we’d acted on more of those tossed-off oh-hey-let’s-grab-lunch suggestions.  I’m grateful that he came into the Adobe world for a while, and for the wonderful influence he exerted on so many folks here.  Maybe we can best honor him by picking up the phone & actually having that lunch, making that connection.  I know it would make Hans smile.

Sneak-previewed on Tuesday at the Adobe MAX show, the new audio-editing application Adobe Soundbooth is available in beta form on the Labs Web site.  "Built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16" (my trusty, lightweight sidekick for many years), Soundbooth is geared towards:

• Editing audio quickly
• Cleaning up noisy audio
• Visually identifying and removing unwanted sounds
• Recording and polishing voiceovers
• Adding effects and filters
• Easily creating customized music—without musical expertise

It’s a professional application, but it’s simpler and more streamlined than Audition, Adobe’s tool for audio professionals. In other words, it’s the kind of thing a Flash developer can grab and start using immediately.  Soundbooth PM Hart Shafer has posted his intro, and there’s also a press release.

By the way, note that in addition to supporting Windows, it runs on the Mac.  Intel-natively.  (And so does Flex Builder, for that matter.) In fact, given that it’s brand new, the app is Mactel-only.  I’m a little disappointed that I can’t run it on my PowerBook, but I understand why the team has decided to focus entirely on the future.

At risk of swamping you with MAX coverage, I wanted to pass along a bit more info.  Jen deHaan has posted in-depth coverage of the Day 2 keynote, and Matt Woodward offers complementary coverage (PDF). Jen’s notes mention some new hooks for doing mobile authoring from Photoshop:

• Using Photoshop.next, Bill has Café Townsend open. Before he hands it over to the developer, he wants to make sure the design looks correct.
• In Photoshop, he selects "Save for Web and Devices."
• He clicks the button at bottom to preview content, and it opens mobile emulator — a newer version of mobile emulator that we’re working on. Making sure that image size, display, alignment is OK for the designer. Can check that it works on a variety of devices. You can change things like brightness, make sure that the contrast is OK when the phone is indoors, outdoors, etc.

This, like the Photoshop/Dreamweaver and Photoshop/Flash integration shown yesterday, elicited spontaneous applause from the crowd–always music to a product manager’s ears. 🙂

During yesterday’s MAX keynote, Flash evangelist Greg Rewis gave a sneak preview of some integration we’re planning between Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

In numerous visits to Web shops, designers made it clear that instead of always exporting a whole Photoshop file to the Web, they’d often like to grab just a chunk of it and drop it into an HTML composition.  Greg showed that in a future version of Dreamweaver, it’ll be possible to copy a chunk of data from Photoshop, paste it into Dreamweaver, and have the built-in Fireworks optimization engine pop up with compression options.  Better still, Photoshop passed along enough info that DW knows the location of the source PSD & can tell PS to re-open that file.

Jen deHaan has posted an excellent, detailed write-up of the keynote, including info on Fireworks improvements (e.g. the much requested better PSD import); the After Effects "puppeting" demo; the new Soundbooth application (more on that soon); and much more. Flashmagazine offers good coverage with photos. [Via]

During a packed keynote address at Adobe MAX yesterday, the company made a rather interesting announcement: according to (and buried in) the press release, "Adobe also plans to invest approximately $100 million in venture capital over the next 3-5 years in companies leveraging Adobe platform technologies, particularly companies delivering applications via Apollo, as part of Adobe’s commitment to building an ecosystem for the Adobe® Engagement Platform."

Tschka-tschka-ehWHAT?  As they say in Congress, "$100M here, $100M there–pretty soon you’re talking about real money."  I wasn’t hired for my math skills (at heart, I remain a simple unfrozen caveman Web designer), but this kind of money strikes me as a huge vote of confidence in the platform & the developer community around it.

Last week a group of Mac developers–Rich Siegel of Bare Bones, Jayson Adams of Circus Ponies, and  Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, and I–sat down (virtually) with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices.  We discussed the state of software development on the Mac, as well as the future of the platform, hosted apps, and more.  You can hear the hour-long podcast here.  (For the impatient: my comments largely boil down to "Lots of work is ongoing, but on the whole, things are all good.")

[On a slightly related note, Apple announced these fire-breathing bad boys yesterday. My 17″ is on its way! (Laptop-induced scoliosis, schmoliosis. Come to JNack…)]

Here’s a pair of interesting examples of using Flash technology to build hosted applications for a very specialized market: 

• Developed at Penn State, ColorBrewer is designed to facilitate selecting good color schemes for maps. To that end it makes it easy to test drive various options using a sample map.  The warning icons, indicating whether a particular scheme works well for  colorblind users, monochrome copiers, etc., are a nice touch.
• UW Madison’s TypeBrewer, meanwhile, is "an online map design tool that lets mapmakers explore typography in a semi-structured environment."  It can preview more than 300 unique combos of typeface options; check your machine to see whether you have the fonts being previewed; and even generate a downloadable Illustrator template from the results.

From my perspective it’s cool to see the rise of highly focused, easy-to-use complements to larger design apps, developed in a way that makes them accessible to anyone with a computer, regardless of platform. [Via Colin Fleming]

[Update: If this kind of thing is up your alley, you might also want to check out Digital Vector Maps, purveyors of fine stock maps for Illustrator. [Via]]

Microsoft UX dude Dave Vronay has a great sense of humor about his company’s occasional struggles to make Windows elegant and usable. In his mock-apologetic list of features that didn’t make the cut for Vista, he mentions "Mimesweeper," a more politically sensitive version of the venerable Minesweeper game. "Just like wandering around Paris, the goal is to figure out where all of the mimes are without actually encountering one."  Sadly, he reports, the game came to naught, as did the, ah, highly discoverable "Safe Delete" feature.  [Via]  [For more tech parody see previous.]

Microsoft UX dude Dave Vronay has a great sense of humor about his company’s occasional struggles to make Windows elegant and usable. In his mock-apologetic list of features that didn’t make the cut for Vista, he mentions "Mimesweeper," a more politically sensitive version of the venerable Minesweeper game. "Just like wandering around Paris, the goal is to figure out where all of the mimes are without actually encountering one."  Sadly, he reports, the game came to naught, as did the, ah, highly discoverable "Safe Delete" feature.  [Via]  [For more tech parody see previous.]

Splice Music is an interesting example of using Flash-based tools to build a social network.  Aimed at aspiring DJs, the site echoes the spirit of JumpCut, the video mash-up service that Yahoo! recently acquired, and the Flash-based sequencer offers some fairly sophisticated audio tools.  It’s cool to see a site embracing rich internet app technology to bring creative folks together.

Here’s
an example song sequencer interface (press play button to hear and drag clips around).  The site enables users to:

• Remix existing songs by other DJs
• Drag and drop sound clips
• Embed remixes in a blog or web page with an HTML snippet they provide (similar to YouTube)  
• Rate songs as well as sounds that compose a song, and search a database of community-rated sounds
• Record new sounds directly within the UI
• Browse existing sounds via tags
• Click on a sound in the sequence to see metadata about that song (BPM, community rating, length, tags, etc)
• Create detailed artist profiles
• Add friends

[Via Rob Christensen]

I know I’m not an unbiased source, given that I work for Adobe, but I have to take a second to plug the new Contribute 4, released earlier this month.  Until now I’d never used any flavor of Contribute, though having been a Web designer I’ve always liked the idea of a tool that let clients do their own updates/grunt work.  I grabbed the release build of v4.0 ("C4"? Hmm–too explosive) on the weekend and, after taking a couple of days to switch gears, have been on a tear with it ever since.  Being able to compose blog entries offline in a WYSIWYG editor, then publish them in one click, just crushes my previous approach (typing raw text in a Movable Type interface).

By the way, on a blogging-related note, Adobe’s acquisition of Serious Magic brings with it Vlog It!, an app designed to make video blogging similarly easy.  The built-in Teleprompter & green-screen capabilities sound particularly sweet. I don’t have any inside info on Adobe’s plans here, but a combo of MacBook Pro + built-in iSight cam + some green construction paper mean you may be seeing more of me here soon.  (Wait, don’t unsubscribe that feed already…!)

Earlier this year Logitech announced the NuLOOQ Navigator (crazy name, cool device), a button/dial combo that’s designed to sit in your non-dominant hand (i.e. the one you aren’t mousing/drawing with) and provide quick access to tools, zooming, panning, and more.  There are some brief video overviews on the product site, showing how you can bring up a little on-screen tool dial that’s context-aware (displaying options relevant to the app & tool you’re using at the moment).

Now they’ve made the product much more affordable (chopping the price to $79.99) and made the product compatible with Windows while adding support for a number of additional apps (iTunes, iMovie, etc.). These moves make the device much more of an impulse buy, and I hope it sells like hotcakes (er, Krispy Kremes, or Tickle Me Senseless Elmo, or whatever people are buying like mad these days).

Earlier this year Logitech announced the NuLOOQ Navigator (crazy name, cool device), a button/dial combo that’s designed to sit in your non-dominant hand (i.e. the one you aren’t mousing/drawing with) and provide quick access to tools, zooming, panning, and more.  There are some brief video overviews on the product site, showing how you can bring up a little on-screen tool dial that’s context-aware (displaying options relevant to the app & tool you’re using at the moment).

Now they’ve made the product much more affordable (chopping the price to $79.99) and made the product compatible with Windows while adding support for a number of additional apps (iTunes, iMovie, etc.). These moves make the device much more of an impulse buy, and I hope it sells like hotcakes (er, Krispy Kremes, or Tickle Me Senseless Elmo, or whatever people are buying like mad these days).

Want a free trip to Rome?  If you win Best in Show in the Photoshop User Awards, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals will send you on just that.  According to site, "The Best of Show winner will go on assignment for Photoshop User magazine to Rome, Italy to create a cover image for the magazine. Photoshop User will provide round-trip airfare for the winner, and an assistant of their choice, along with hotel accommodations, hotel transfers, and daily expenses. The cover they create will be used on the cover of Photoshop User magazine."  Other good loot goes to winners of the 11 categories.

Sweetness.  Check out the full details (categories, rules, etc.) in the press release.

The Bay Area Photoshop User Group is meeting this Tuesday, Oct. 17, at the Adobe San Jose office (map). Pizza and drinks kick off at 6:30pm.
Computer scientist Nelson Chu is visiting from Hong Kong and plans to demo his badass painting technology (scroll down for videos). We’re also planning to present an overview and demo of Lightroom Beta 4, as well as a tour of the new Acrobat 8 and the collaboration tools in Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze).
Hope to see you there,
J.

The Bay Area Photoshop User Group is meeting this Tuesday, Oct. 17, at the Adobe San Jose office (map). Pizza and drinks kick off at 6:30pm.
Computer scientist Nelson Chu is visiting from Hong Kong and plans to demo his badass painting technology (scroll down for videos). We’re also planning to present an overview and demo of Lightroom Beta 4, as well as a tour of the new Acrobat 8 and the collaboration tools in Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze).
Hope to see you there,
J.

Heh–hot on the heels of the Uncyclopedia Photoshop gag, the wisenheimers at Coloribus have announced that to combat piracy in emerging markets, Adobe will release a version of Photoshop slathered in corporate sponsorship. Hmm, yeeeah, this just might work… I’m imagining integrating the Flash Player into Photoshop to power interstitial ads. “The Brush Tool–but first, Will and Grace weeknights at 6 on Action 13!!” Or, maybe not. 😉 [Via Russell Brady]

To dignify or not to dignify, that is the question…
Normally I prefer to let random piles o’ nonsense pass by unremarked, but this one has been Dugg, and the resulting traffic makes me feel like saying something.
So, an anonymous article says that an unnamed Adobe exec “vented ire and shock^* ” at an unspecified company meeting. Very racy!
For what it’s worth, I don’t recall anything like this happening, and other folks don’t, either. That said, it’s hard to prove a negative, especially without names, quotes, etc. In any case, it would have been nice if someone–anyone–had approached Adobe for confirmation or comment, instead of taking the story at face value.
Here are a couple of tips for any self-styled business news source:

• Include bylines (y’know, so we know who’s saying what).
• Feature actual quotes and sources (ditto).
• Don’t suggest that big, publicly owned, successful companies would do manifestly stupid, self-defeating things like “dropping or delaying support for Apple’s new Intel platform products with the upcoming version of Adobe Photoshop CS3.” Mactel nativeness is expected to motivate a lot of folks to upgrade, and if Adobe could flip a switch and make it happen tomorrow, we would–Aperture and anything else notwithstanding.^**

Now, does the Lightroom team want to kick Aperture’s butt? You bet! And can we safely guess that the Aperture team wants to wipe the floor with Lightroom? Hell yeah! And is this all good for customers? Absolutely. I know both companies to be full of bright, passionate, ethical people, and some healthy competition benefits everyone.
So listen, my Mac brethren: We’re working like mad on this Mactel thing (with Apple’s excellent ongoing help) because it’s the right thing to do for customers. Everyone knows that, and assertions that Adobe would do something petty and stupid just to irk Apple–well, they’re not worth the pixels they’re printed on. (It was a pitch in the dirt, but I felt I had to set the record straight.)
Oh, and one more thing: news we share over the next weeks and months is going to confound a lot of critics. Stay tuned.
And now, back to work.
J.
——-
^* Incidentally, Aperture wasn’t a surprise to Adobe. As I said at the beginning, it’s something we’d expected for a long time. Apple had likewise anticipated Lightroom.
^** Not convinced? Here’s a little history: When the PowerPC first came to the Mac, Adobe released a free plug-in for Photoshop 2.5. And when the G5 was released, Adobe released a free update for Photoshop 7, despite the fact that CS1 was roughly six weeks away. We spent time this year trying to do the same for CS2, but it wasn’t in the cards.

First you could print on paper, then on clothes, mugs, stamps, then on furniture… and now comes printing on food. The Zuse Toast Printer claims to pump imagery right onto your morning carbs. Hmm, I wonder how you’d color-manage toast out of Photoshop… At least the consumables (!) would be cheaper than regular inkjet paper, and if the printer shipped with a clipart gallery of famous faces, you could probably make a bundle selling the output on eBay.
I wonder, do elephants eat toast? If so, maybe you could recycle the Zuse output into a different sort of paper (not one I’d care to see color managed). [Via]

What’s more fun and (amazingly) even less productive than screwing around in Wikipedia all day? Screwing around in Uncyclopedia! This parody of Wikipedia has an excellent take on “Photoshop or, as they want you to call it, Adobe® Photoshop® Image® Enhancement® Creation® Software®” (gah!). Among the bits:

A huge advantage was the simplistic and easy-to-grasp feature set — essentially, anything you would ever want to do graphically is about a single mouse-click away. You could easily undertake even the most challenging task and your workflow would be so smooth and processes so intuitive that you would actually *gain* time at the end of your project!

>;-) And do mind those Murphy’s Laws of Photoshop Phoniness. [Via Mark Hamburg]