1. You know, I really like this site. I come here on a daily basis to get some great news and links to the latest tutorials and such. But this is ridiculous. I am tired of seeing this same story. Please, can you post news and relevant info and not use this to complain about things that you dont have? This is what, the fifth post about this? If you want to keep the argument going, why not just update your original post, like joystiq and engadget instead of reposting the same arguement? It was new the first time, maybe a review the third time, but reposting to keep people arguing in the comments is what you seem to be doing at this point.

Posted at 12:39PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by James Godwin

2. They're good articles, both of them, but there's one point that neither of them make properly. A big deal is made of the fact that Lightroom and Soundbooth are both new products, but both writers overlook the fact that neither has been started from scratch. Lightroom is based on Adobe's own Photoshop code libraries that have been PPC-compatible since the early days of PPC, and Soundbooth is based on Cool Edit, which was always been Windows-only and was built outside of the Adobe labs.

I'm sure that Adobe, being a business, just did a cost-benefit analysis of each app and found that while tweaking Lightroom into a universal binary was simple, the expense of making Cool Edit's round peg fit the PPC's square hole was going to be larger than the sales revenue from the rapidly diminishing number of PPC users. That's not arrogance, that's business. No matter what size the PPC market for this app might be today, it is shrinking. I can see a lot of reasons NOT to spend considerable time and money developing a product with a shelf life of less than three years.

Posted at 1:31PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Isaac Botkin

3. James,
Because it is not important to you, it doesn't mean it is not to others. All you have to do is scroll past the article. How difficult is that?

Updating the original post will not update the people who are interested in the story because people don't go back to the articles generally. And yea, generally what happens when people are dissatisfied is that they talk, a lot. I am sure you have done this yourself. I want some sort of change from Adobe and their policies. This will not happen if we just sit around and say or do nothing. Again, I am sure you know this already.

Isaac,
One of the points made in the Gruber article is that it actually does not take "considerable time and money." That is the point.

Posted at 3:18PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Ajit

4. Right. I've worked with game companies where we wrote, compiled, and texted for multiple platforms, and while I'm not a professional programmer, I know the drill. Compiling a universal binary isn't hard, provided you've put things together with that in mind.

As Gruber says: "Developers of new software, started after the Intel announcement at WWDC 2005, already know the deal: use Xcode, and don’t make assumptions about the underlying processor architecture. The way Apple has set things up with Xcode, once you’re compiling a universal binary, it’s not that much more work to keep producing universal binaries than it would be to produce binaries for a single architecture."

However, Cool Edit wasn't written in Xcode. It wasn't written with anything in mind except for Windows, as proven by it's heavy use of SSE optimization. I'm a long-time Cool Edit user and a current Audition user, and it's clear that Audition is about 90% Syntrillium legacy code with Adobe additions. Soundbooth is Audition Lite - it's not something that has been developed with multiple platforms in mind.

Gruber realizes this might be a possibility: "If Soundbooth is written entirely in standard C or C++, and they’re using GCC, no extra writing is necessary: the same C code can be compiled for both architectures. Those are two big ifs, though."

I don't think those are ifs. From what I know about Cool Edit, I'm betting those are definitely nots. Therefore, much more dev time to get a PPC version, and much more expense. The fact is, companies don't decide NOT to create revenue-producing products out of spite or arrogance. If it has an upgrade path and will make a profit, they will release it.

Posted at 5:40PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Isaac Botkin

5. Isaac,
No one said Adobe's motivation is to be arrogant. But that doesn't mean their actions weren't. The results show arrogance. Like I said in my original rant, these guys figured they will just wait till everybody upgrades. They decided to ignore a huge group of users. Nack said Apple users should be happy they are developing for Mac. Do they seriously think they are doing us a favor? Give me a break. They are the only company to stop supporting PPC. All these actions smell like arrogance. Look how they have handled the transition with CS. Wait till the next cycle. They think we are sitting around designing postcards, come on.

If you know Mac users, especially sound or even amateur sound people, the majority of them used desktop computers. The G5's were the Pro desktop till august..? You are telling me, compiling a version for those users is not profitable. They would have had more PPC users than Intel users, and if they released the app sometime next year, the same would be true.

I highly doubt Soundbooth Intel-mac code is simply a watered down version of Audition. In their own press release, Adobe states "Designed from the ground up to deliver high-quality sound to web and video workflows." That if isn't big anymore is it?

Posted at 6:06PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Ajit

6. I'm sure the basis, features, and workflow of Soundbooth was designed from the ground up (even if most of this designing happened years ago during the Audition revamp). I'm certain that Adobe did a lot of market research and found the right balance of features to price for the app and its target market. But do you seriously think that every loader, saver, vu meter, visualization mode, diagnostic tool, fader, multi-band eq, pitch adjuster, file interface, noise-reducer, reverb control, playback engine, preset manager and plug-in was coded from scratch when Audition (and Cool Edit) already has every single one of these components written, tested, and working together? Soundbooth is unquestionably Audition Jr. I have them both right here, and the features (not counting a few new UI widgets) that Soundbooth offers are absolutely identical in every way to those features on Audition.

If the market they're ignoring is as big as you say, then someone else will fill it, because there's always money to be made in an untapped market. If Adobe misjudged its potential, they'll miss out and lose a big chuck of the market, but if they were right, they'll have a steady influx of new customers as people upgrade. And these people will be glad that Adobe is developing audio software for Mactels. And besides, Adobe is not abandoning PPC yet. Lightroom is a new product (based on Photoshop code) what is universal. Apps previously PPC-native will continue to be upgraded. Shafer said he wanted Soundbooth to be PPC-compatable. By porting a previously PC-only piece of software to the Mactels IS doing all Mac users a favor because it strengthens Apple's media production options, and by not spending time on supporting EOL platforms, future versions of the software will be better.

Posted at 8:23PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Isaac Botkin

7. Isaac said "By porting a previously PC-only piece of software to the Mactels IS doing all Mac users a favor because it strengthens Apple's media production options"

Eh..what? They are doing the opposite. All users would include PPC users. You are turning out to be an Adobe apologist. You say they are not abandoning PPC because by using Lightroom to prove that. But then say they are doing all of us a favor when they don't do it with Soundbooth. It doesn't make sense?

No one is arguing someone else wouldn't take its place. I and others are arguing against dumb policies. Inconsistent, arrogant, and not in the interests of the users.

Every platform is in a sense is a dying one if you want to look it at that way. Apple has indicated one thing, they will be not be tied down to a processor. There have arranged their code base that will allow for this flexibility (which is fantastic). There is a chance they could go back to PPC. Then what? Gruber indicates that is a possibility, even if it is a small one. Why is Adobe taking it upon themselves to break away from the OS guidelines?

What amazes me is that people will argue against users who are dissatisfied. Why? What motivation drives you? When I heard Adobe was going to wait till the next cycle to update CS, I was pissed. But it wasn't a terrible blow because I am not on it all day like FCP. But I understood that was the wrong policy to take and that the users had every right to make a stink.

Posted at 1:48AM on Nov 4th 2006 by Ajit

8. I just don't think we're in a position to know whether these were right policies or wrong policies yet. All there's been so far is speculation on why these product paths were decided on, and there's no evidence of impact on any markets yet. Why did Adobe wait until the next CS upgrade cycle to go universal? We don't know for sure. But if the only options were a) rush it, releasing a buggy product that would ultimately frustrate users and undermine Adobe's market share, b) pour a huge amount of money into the upgrade, weakening Adobe as a company and forcing them to cut back on future product development, or c) wait and do the job properly... then C was actually the right answer, for Adobe and for you.

Because I think that keeping SoundBooth on platform it was designed for, thus ensuring a solid product, is good for YOU, Agit, even if you personally can't run it. It's frusterating and disapointing, but if you use ANY Adobe software, every good business decision that Adobe makes benefits you eventually in that they can, because of it, afford to make better software for longer. Every developer that makes ANY good product for any Apple platform benefits all Mac users because every tool that's available for Mac is another sales point that strengthens the Apple company financially and the Apple community eventually.

I understand that you and many people are dissatisfied with that decision, but if Adobe, after researching the matter carefully, chooses to save itself an unspecified amount of time and expense by not porting a new version of an EXISTING program to a platform that it was NEVER designed for, this is not betrayal, arrogance, or stupidity.

Posted at 2:14PM on Nov 4th 2006 by Isaac Botkin

9. You say "I just don't think we're in a position to know whether these were right policies or wrong policies yet." but you also say "but if Adobe, after researching the matter carefully, chooses to save itself an unspecified amount of time and expense by not porting a new version of an EXISTING program to a platform that it was NEVER designed for, this is not betrayal, arrogance, or stupidity."

Some things you want to know, others you don't.

Because someone designs good software for a small group of users, it doesn't necessarily mean it is good for the larger group of users. Because it means as much to me as someone making software for windows users. Great for them, means little to me.

You make all kinds of excuses why Adobe can't make either CS or Soundbooth properly configured within Apple guidelines. Yet, there are thousands of softwares, small and large, that have managed to pull it off. Is Adobe unable to keep up with these other developers?

But I am sure you and adobe will find an excuse.

Posted at 4:08PM on Nov 4th 2006 by Ajit

10. Tim,
You bring up some good points. But at the same time guys, I GET it that this is a business. Who doesn't? I get it that there is alternatives? But all these points are outside of the discussion.

The initial rant and much of the confusion is about why is Adobe choosing to abandon PPC users when they are developing Lightroom and other new apps for them. If they were developing for a dead platform, then all their apps should reflect that. Why did they wait till the next cycle for CS to be upgraded. I am certain, Apple told them about it earlier than Apple employees.

Then someone says: but this is code from Audition. And like I have stated before, Adobe has not claimed that in their press release, they said they built it from the ground up. And as John Gruber stated recompiling is not that big a deal. It is not simple but it is not as hard as some of the Adobe people are saying.

Adobe, especially in their response to this issue were and are arrogant. I am tired of it. And I will complain about their retarded policies.

Adobe apologists have basically said suck it up. And I am saying not yet. This is too early. I would have if this was a couple years down the line.

You guys have also said that Adobe did all this research. BULL!!! If they had, the would have realize how many pro users use PPC machines. Especially, the audio guys. Yikes!

Let us not forget their recent name changing of Lightroom to Photoshop Ligthroom. Which I guess somebody in management thought was brilliant but is a frigging joke. I think Adobe gets it less and less.

Tim,
You are blaming Apple for this problem citing their changes in processors. If Apple had done a bad job with the transition, I would have agreed with you. But no where else have I heard developers complain about the transition in terms of technial difficulty.

Posted at 7:59PM on Nov 4th 2006 by Ajit

11. I believe Adobe has done research on this issue because the record shows that they've done some pretty top-notch research on program development in the past. While I can't swear to it, I would bet money on it. I'll bet their research shows how many Mac guys are using PPCs, estimates many of those PPC guys would want a pared-down audio program fitting somewhere in between Fission and ProTools, and guesses how quickly these guys will upgrade to Intel (and since Adobe sells a large percentage of all the professional PPC software available, I'll bet their numbers are good). Every single business in the civilized world does similar research before creating or marketing products and Adobe is no different .

In fact, Adobe is a remarkably successful company, and they didn't get to where they were by making random guesses and picking on their customers. Their market research is legendary in this industry, and so is their track record. Photoshop is a household name even in third-world countries (making the Lightroom name change probably not a frigging joke). Pagemaker grew into InDesign and whipped Quark to nothin'. After Effects is everywhere, as is Illustrator, and Acrobat reader is almost universally installed. Adobe's file formats are industry standards and none of these achievements happened by blind luck.

Sure, their code may not always be efficiently streamlined and bug-free, but their programs are so complex and dev teams so large that that's understandable. John Gruber did not say that recompiling code was easy; he said recompiling SOME code was easy under certain circumstances, and explained why those circumstances are the optimal conditions. He then said it was doubtful that Soundbooth's code fit those optimal conditions (he also recently added an update explaining that most of it came from Audition and was largely SSE optimized - just as I mentioned before).

And all of these things have been said long, long before by Adobe spokesmen. They described how much they wanted to make a PPC version, and the bloggers whined that Adobe was vindictively discriminating against them. Adobe then explained that their code wasn't simply re-compilable to run properly on the PPC, and the maclots derisively disagreed - since smaller companies are writing simpler programs for both platforms, why can't the mighty Adobe do the same with it's powerful and complicated software? And for that matter, why can't a jet turbine be made as quickly and cheaply as a two-stroke weed-eater?

Occam's Razor: When an executive of a large public company run by capitalistic businessmen tells me that he would have loved to sell a product to a larger market group, I see no reason to doubt them. When a project manager who has been working with the actual code tells me how hard a PPC version would have been, and then a horde of indignant macfans explain how easy it actually is without even looking at the finished program (further demonstrating their ignorance by making silly comparisons between professional production software and simple shareware tools), I tend to think the software engineer is in better position to judge.

Of course, I suppose it could all be a deep, dark conspiracy. Adobe might indeed have the automagically optimized and bug-free PPC version of Soundbooth locked in a secret vault, along with the 100-mpg carburetor, the Roswell aliens, and a bunch of Steve Jobs voodoo dolls. Ooo. I've got nothing more to say on this issue, because this argument is pointless. I was originally hoping to just point out a few pieces of information about SSE code, Syntrillium, and Audition that would have given DVguru's future Soundbooth reporting a little more insight that they whiny mac blogs didn't have. I shouldn't have gotten pulled into an argument and would like to apologize to Ajit and anyone else that I may have offended.

Ajit, you are totally free to editorialize as much as your editors allow, and I understand that many things are open to interpretation. For example, none of the Adobe statements seemed to me to be arrogant, but you obviously feel differently. However, I would appreciate it if some of your seemingly factual assertions were backed up by a little more factual evidence. You firmly state that Adobe did NO market research. Proof? You say that if they had, they would have realized how many pro users use PPC machines. And how many is that? Do you have numbers? You say that a recompile would not be as complicated as Adobe said. Do you have proof that they lied? Apart from the existence of some completely different apps made under totally different circumstances that are multi-platform already? Why do you say their policies are retarded? Which policies? Retarded in a financially measurable way or just because you personally feel that they slight those vast, untold legions of pro PPC users?

I like DVguru's reporting, and I like the editorials, but please stick to what's provable. Respected web journalists like those at Weblogs Inc. have a greater responsibility to provide accurate stories. You must hold yourselves to a higher standard than the mere rumor-mongers because you are well-trusted in the production community. Please be worthy of that trust.

Posted at 3:03AM on Nov 5th 2006 by Isaac Botkin

12. Isaac,
I don't have numbers because that isn't my job. I started off my college life as a business major so I spent some time studying market plans, market research. Companies never get their market plans right first time up. They usually adapt meaning they get it wrong, look at the numbers again and then modify their approach. There have been only a few products that has have had the initial market plan match with the eventual result. Most times companies adapt. So when you say it is useless to doubt companies, that is ridiculous because they better be doing it themselves. Otherwise, it is crap research.

Meaning, be or pretend to be a critical thinker because that is how people arrive at the truth. People don't and shouldn't assume one guy is better suited to know so I shouldn't ask. Bull. If Adobe can't handle such questions, something is wrong.

As an outsider I have to rely on my experience and also whether the actions based on their research is right. Every sound guy I know has a different set of configurations. Which is different from video guys who usually have similar systems. For audio guys, one thing has to work with this and has to work with that and also work like this. In my experience, they are usually the last group of people to jump technologies. They usually embrace old technologies for whatever reason. This is my experience.

Now maybe Soundbooth is marketed for video people. In that case, people adopting to new computers is more frequent.

Whether this is the right thing is another matter. I think you will see a bigger adoption rate if it was a universal binary. Again, this is my opinion. I am not going or plan to conduct research.

It is "retarded" because Adobe policies are not uniformed, it has been the opposite of what they users need. Especially, in the case of CS. The policy and the response afterward is retarded. At least, other companies don't go around insulting people who want to use their products.

"For example, none of the Adobe statements seemed to me to be arrogant, but you obviously feel differently."

So when Nack basicall said "Mac users should be happy because Adobe brought this software to the Mac platform and, that alone, was enough" was not arrogant. Give me a break.

Stop making excuses. Mac people are asking sensible questions. It is the reaction to that opinion that is crazy. You mentioned voodoo dolls or whatever in relation to Mac questions. Then, I would say your actions and of Adobe can be seen as fascists. See everybody can make ridiculous comparisons.

"And for that matter, why can't a jet turbine be made as quickly and cheaply as a two-stroke weed-eater?"

What do you say then to all of the more complicated software than Soundbooth have made it. Jet turbines and all. Even Lightroom. Hmm.

You also listed some of Adobe's successes but failed to mention the failures or the times they have gotten wrong. People with long resumes aren't perfect or even the right person for the job. We have to look at each instance and see if it is right. Critical thinking.

Posted at 2:49PM on Nov 5th 2006 by Ajit