You know, ever since the G4/G5 chips stagnated compared to intel chips (some time ago already) photoshop and the rest of Adobe software was much faster on Windows than on MacOS. And adobe could not do anything about it, even if it wanted to, Macs were just slower (whatever Apple advertisement at the time wanted you to beleive, apple is the king of spin, for sure). Apple had no choice but to switch to Intel, it was getting more and more behind performance wise, and even some of it’s most loyal customers were begining to realize it despite Apple’s spin.
Only CS3 (first native version for intel chips on Macs) brings the OSX version back on par with the Windows version.

So I don’t know where you get the impression MacOS (osx) had an advantage over windows running Adobe software until now.
It it is true that at the beginning of photoshop, until version ver 5.5 (which is coincidental with windows 2000 quickly followed by XP, and approximatley the same time when Intel chips started to inexorably pull ahead), photoshop was probably “better” on MacOS than on Windows, and by all accounts. But from then on the windows version has always had an edge on the MacOS version until CS3 (which is ver. 10), which has put them on par again, in my humble opinion of course.

As you probably know Adobe has discontinued Golive and replaced it with Dreamweaver in their lineup.
Your vision of the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia as being Flash only and the rest to the bin is a little extreme.
Adobe wanted flash badly, that’s for sure, but there were many things in macromedia that were appealing to Adobe. And we will still see the offsprings of that for some time to come, mostly in new programs, covering new needsn that macromedia was more advanced in than adobe.
Sure, some programs that were obvious “double usage” are being discontinued, they had to choose which ones to keep between the adobe and macromedia programs, but it’s not always the “originaly macromedia” version of the app that is being discontinued as Dreamweaver shows us. When they thought the Adobe app was better they kept it, when they thought the Macromedia app was better they kept it.
Adobe is intrested in making good apps for it’s customers, because good aps sell (and are rewarding for the ego), it’s as simple as that. Do you really think Adobe would have chosen to discontinu a Macromedia app it thought was superior to and Adobe app for some kind of “sentimental” reason ?
Once they bought them, all Macromedia apps became instantaneously Adobe apps, so they could keep whichever they wanted, they would be Adobe apps anyway.

And that’s quite natural.
Does anyone refer to Final Cut Pro as not being an apple app ? No.
And do you know who developped Final Cut Pro originaly ? Macromedia !
Where it get’s funny is that the team that developped it at Macromedia, was the same team that had developped Premiere at Adobe ! (you can’t invent stuff like this :-))
Macromedia, deciding to concentrate on web content developpement, sold it to Apple before it was released.

This fun story links Macromedia, Adobe, and Apple in ways that are related to what you say in your article I think.

Anyway it’s not like Adobe is not supporting MacOS anymore. It’s just that apparently their timeframe for cs4 doesn’t allow for a 64 bit version of photoshop (at least) for osx on cocoa. We can debte endlesly as who is to blame ( in my opinion apple is a little too unpredicatble, and I don’t know of any developper who likes last minute surprises). No big deal, cs5 “should” have 64 bit for osx. Yes, until cs5 the 64 bit windows version will obviously be “faster”, and better suited for large files, so…? It’s just temporary.

Besides, if you have a mac you’re probably not obsesed with “raw performance” anyways (macpros are “fast”, no problem, but there are always many “faster” configs available for the windows crowd at any given time).
Macs have other things going for them, use what you like/can, MacOS and Windows are both great, stable, modern OSes.

Just so you know I run Vista 64 bit (the “real” vista version i beleive), well installed and configured (which you have to do yourself under windows, essentialy the update drivers part, apple will always have an advantage concerning that) and it works like a charm, a big step forward from XP and especialy for any big Graphic/3DCAD app, and even more under load, no question about that (are the apps that I use). Benhcmarks don’t really “benchmark” that i guess, but when you work all day with such apps, you sure realize it. And with native 64bit apps (severalCAD apps I use), there’s an impresive difference, can’t wait for all apps to be 64 bit. The problem with Vista (and especially the x64 version), is the driver model changed radicaly (as much as from MacOs classic to MacOsx), and up to date drivers were slow to come by, whereas all the whining.

Oh and this brings to my mind another little catfight that is happening right now concerning widely used, but proprietary file formats.
Kind of like the one you brought up about flash.
Apple is refusing to release a 64 bit quicktime, so all the 3D, CAD, and Video editing software that are native 64 bit cannot directly export their stuff in quicktime format (for previews or render, etc..).
Of course this bothers many App developpers (and soon Adobe i guess if they release a 64 bit premiere with cs4, doubt it though).
And i’m sure Apple has a 64 bit version ready, but since there are no CAD/video editing apps for OSX ready yet (can OSX run native 64 software by the way ? OSX and 64 bit support is not very clear for me), it’s witholding it to bother the competition. The day Apple has native 64 bit apps that need quicktime, 64 bit quicktime will be released.

Maybe this is lined with Adobe difficulty to make 64 bit versions of it’s software on OSX too ? Apple’s position on 64 bit is very murky I find, they sometimes claim things to be 64 bit that aren’t (typical apple spin, i’m not saying this meanly, it’s just a reality), and have no real clear position I know of on the 32bit/64bit transition. If anyone can explain how the 32/64 bit thing works out in OSX i’d be glad.
Microfost’s position is much clearer (not giving them roses, just pointing out the obvious). You choose between a 32 bit OS version that can’t run 64 bit programs, or a 64bit OS version that can run 32 bit programs through an “emulation” layer (as fast or faster than on the native 32 bit version of the OS, which tends to show how much performance 64 bit ads ).

They all play this borderline game with their formats, and of course, whatever our OS, we end up paying the price in frustration, exasperation, and lost time.

Anyway, have fun with your computers, whatever you use.

You hit on the two things I thought my rant was too bloated to cover: That there are now many alternatives to Photoshop on every platform (Pixelmator, Imagewell, Gimp) and that Vista is no speedy beast. It will be able to handle 64-bit but I slightly doubt that this will give a true advantage in any reasonable way.

Personally I can see hitting the 2GB mark fairly quickly when working in high-res print files. But I will agree that I’m a special case. Even 50% of Photoshop users have little to no need for this boost (outside if Bridge maybe which is simply a nightmare to use due to slow image loading).

And to your point, I kind of agree that this is Apple’s doing. They push on vendors and don’t care about the result. Adobe has only had a year to get fully comfortable with Intel. I hope they take the stock and treat Adobe as a preferred vendor, otherwise I do believe this could become something bigger.

Had no clue that NeXT and WebObjects were related, or what they did compared to.Net. That rocks. Thanks for the great info! (Both Flex and Air feel like the hip new place to code, like Ruby on Rails was, but I’m waiting for the heavy backlash on why coding for either is awful. This is the internet and it is coming. Many devs rant about why they hate Flash so snazzy Flex sites should drive them up a wall.)

Incidentally, I can’t *entirely* fault Adobe for this split (it’s due to Apple abandoning Carbon entirely - which is IMO a good idea; Cocoa is a much cleaner and more elegant way of building apps), and I also don’t really think the split is that big of a deal (I can’t say I’ve ever seen Photoshop approach the 2GB address space limit). Also, right now consumer uptake of Vista-64 is abysmal, and so I seriously doubt that a lot of people will even be running the 64-bit version on Windows in the near future to begin with.

I don’t think Flex or AIR will really last for the long term, and even if they do, they’re not really that innovative a concept. Strictly-speaking, Apple (well, NeXT) started that with WebObjects, which Microsoft then kinda-sorta pretended to rip off with .NET. The only real advantage of Adobe’s solution is that they are ostensibly platform-neutral, but then again, so is WebObjects (or at least it was when NeXT was still just running on fumes before Apple bought them out.) WebObjects (which is basically HTTP bindings for Cocoa objects, to oversimplify to a ridiculous degree) doesn’t look as sexy, but you did touch on one place where people use it a hell of a lot without even realizing it - the iTunes Music Store. The online Apple Store is built in WebObjects as well.