The beginning of the end? Adobe drops PowerPC in Soundbooth

Adobe today announced a new Sound editing application beta, "Soundwave".

Try Adobe® Soundbooth™. Soundbooth is a brand new application built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit that provides the tools video editors, designers, and others who do not specialize in audio need to accomplish their everyday work such as:

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But, if you read the fine print:

Will there be a PowerPC version?
No. Apple is quickly moving its focus towards Intel Macs, and no longer sells Power PC systems in many places. By focusing on Apple's future, we have been able to bring this powerful application to the Mac platform much more rapidly, and with a stronger feature set.

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So it appears that at least this new app will not be available as a universal binary.

This does raise the question - how long will companies continue to support the PowerPC platform? I'd always assumed universal binaries are just a click away for developers, but it would seem that maintaining 2 binaries for complex apps isn't quite that simple.


I'd assume that Adobe's other apps will still be UB releases for some time to come (Creative Suite, Acrobat, Flash) since there is a large installed professional user base.

But for new releases, do you think companies will still make the effort? How long until 3rd party developers pull the plug? What about Apple?

A bit dissapointing to see such a large company neglect a large part of its previous customers!

Business wise, it's madness to produce two versions of the same program. If it was easy to do, we'd have Universal Adobe CS apps by now, but it seems you do have to produce 2 programs in effect. PC & Mac x86 code are pretty much the same thing, so PowerPCs are the odd ones out now.
If Intel Macs are selling well, CS 3, Office 07 and Quark 7 could be the last Universal apps.

It's not just a question of building the universal binary, it's the question of then supporting the application on that build for years afterwards. People who are willing to pay $500 for an application such as this, will expect support for 3 or 4 years as a minimum.

It'll be interesting to see if Intel dedicated software is actually quicker than Universal binaries (i.e. software built from the ground up to run on OS X Intel).

Wow, that stinks - there are millions upon millions of PowerPC machines out there.

Yeah it's not profitable... wait and see, 10.6 won't be PPC compatible anymore.

Sad, but somewhere Apple needs incentive for customers to buy new computers.

do you think someone will make a backwards version of Rossetta?

Adam said:

do you think someone will make a backwards version of Rossetta?

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i would bet on it.

That seems wong to me, but i guess thats life. I just think its a bit quick toend support for powerPC

Well, that is something that it was going to happen sooner or later. It seems it is going to be sooner rather than later.

mr g5 said:

i would bet on it.

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I wouldn't.

That fact that Rosetta works as well as it does is pretty amazing to me, especially considering how slow other processor emulation software has been (Virtual PC I'm looking at you).

So whatever Transitive's secret behind Rosetta's performance is, I'm sure it's not that easy to recreate in reverse...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_Corporation

This is very upsetting news.

I can't believe Adobe would turn up it's nose at such a large portion of it's user base. I'm sure that there are more creative profetionals out there running PowerPC Macs than Intel Macs.

First it's new software like Soundbooth...what's next? Will CS3 be Intel-only? I wouldn't surprise me.

I don't care how difficult it is to make the software work with PowerPC Macs, they should do it anyway. Apple should put the pressure on these companies to still offer PowerPC software for a while longer. These Intel machines haven't even been out for a full year, and already they're trying to make our older Macs obsolete. I think that it would be in both Apple's and Adobe's better interest to keep it's loyal user base happy.

I still think a company will make a reverse rossetta. I'm sure it will be hard work but I'm also sure its possible. It might be expensive though.

the only computers that it would make scence to use it on would be a powermac. anything else would be too slow running an emulator + a demanding program like soundbooth.

Cool edit always simply just ran on windows. The fact that its just a variation and runs on intel osx is probably a heck of alot easier to port over rather converting it to powerPC

But, im irate. I spent 2k$ on my dual G5, and what, i only get a few years out of it when everyone else got near many more out of their G4?

Heck ive got a G3 that still runs. they JUST stopped supporting it with tiger. Wasnt too upset, the machine if roughly 10 years old

This comes as neither a surprise nor a shock to me. Technology advances. Hardware and software get upgraded and replaced. Support for older hardware and software eventually ceases. If your machine doesn't support the latest software, then there are plenty of already existing alternatives that will do more or less the same exact thing... and will still work on your hardware and remain supported. "Latest" does not equate to "Best".

There are still people grumbling about the change from OS 9 to OS X. There are still people upset about losing the floppy drive on Macs in 1998.
There are even people still irate about losing SCSI interface in favor of USB and FireWire.
Plenty of people are extremely upset by the still recent decision of Microsoft to end support for Windows 98.
These things have to start at some point with every company. The software developers look to the future and try to keep up with the ever evolving, changing world of technology. It is almost a race between upgrading and updating hardware and the advancements with software. One of the two has to keep abreast of things and take a step towards innovation.

This isn't anyone shooting themselves in the foot, or 'forgetting about' people still using older hardware/software... it isn't about companies working hard to 'make' or 'force' a person into upgrading their machines... it is simply... progress.