The beginning of the end for PPC? (The Soundbooth saga)

[Swad]

Adobe announced last week the beta of Soundbooth, an audio editing app from the company who seems to have its hand in every media-related cookie jar. Mac fans, however, weren't too happy with a little caveat to the application: it will only run on Intel Macs. PowerPC support, it seems, is slowly going the way of the buffalo.

 

Macintouch (a site to which I would normally link at this point if it didn't have the worst web-based interface on the planet) seemed to lead the charge against Adobe, claiming that they had abandoned the PPC users.

 

John Nack, Adobe's Photoshop product manager, had this to say:

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??

 

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.

The man has a point.

 

I doubt that this would be much of an issue had Adobe been responsible, over the past year, in getting Intel versions of their apps out the door. I've heard their excuses and, although reasonable, they're still lacking. If Adobe wants to be choosy with their architecture support, that's fine... just find a position and stick with it. Snubbing both Intel and PPC users is never good for customer relations.

 

The true question, though, is this: are we seeing the beginning of a trend?

[bofors]

I've heard their excuses and, although reasonable, they're still lacking.

 

This is just another example of how screwed-up Adobe really is. It should be trivial for them to support PPC and x86. If it is not, they are doing something fundamentally very wrong.

[toddicus]

I'm not a programmer myself, but it seems this is just a bit early to drop PPC support. I know it is more work but hasn't apple made it 'fairly' simple with Xcode? to create a universal binary. It's going to happen eventually, but think of all the people who bought a G5 Quad 14 months ago and now will never be able to run this app, it's just too early to drop PPC.

[kevin_4e]

That's very interesting. I never thought PPC was going to be gone and done with so fast. I'm sure we'll be seeing other companys follow this path which is unfortunate in my opinion. It makes couple year old products very worthless in some aspects.

[invisibl]

What i don't get is this:

 

As soon as the PPC paltform was dropped by mac in favour of Intel wasnt the writing on the wall at that point?

 

While its nice to think all apps can be made backwards compatible, realistically, resources should be better spent on getting a stable and bug free app made, Not making that app compatible with obselete chips regardless of how difficult or easy it is to port it.

 

Within the audio industry, Digidesign are famous for releasing new hardware that effectively makes their previous releases redundant and they ignore any and all investments the end user makes in doing so. Their rationale is simply to ignore the howl of protest and enjoy the early adopters and pro's who just shrug, bite the bullet and re purchase.

 

At what point does PPC support end? The intel chip has superceded it for the Mac platform... So at what point does it become polite/ethical etc to drop it?

[Urbz]

On one hand I understand why they wouldn't want to do it: they're gonna have to make the decision in two or three years anyway and PPC will be dropped, so why spend the extra effort to tweak it for that architecture?

Getting it fully universal is harder than it seems because there is still a lot of sorting-out bugs that has to be done on the code and this really does require a lot of time and effort. I'm talking, of course, about implementing Altivec instructions, etc.

 

But on the other hand, it would only take a few hours to have the computer spit out rudimentry PPC instructions as a patch for the program. I mean like barely optimized code that's been auto-compiled and works but may be slightly buggy.

 

So why can't they say, "Upgrade to Intel, because that's where our effort is going, but in case you're not upgrading right NOW, here's an 'in the meantime' solution."?

 

Adobe, it seems, has gotten lazier and lazier over the years because they are slowly owning every bit of the markets they're in. They own desktop publishing and web-design, and IMO have this attitude that says that they couldn't give a {censored} about their users because they're glued to them no matter what.

 

GO QUARK GO!

And GO APPLE GO (do you really think Apple will let Adobe gain marketshare in audio editing? Not with Logic Pro they wont!).

[aberracus]

Thats absolutely true Urby they could have done a half effort for practicaly not money involved, and keep the old macs running, right now they are Microsoftzing, wich means they are now THE software company for multimedia development...

 

Let hope then Apple starts its own Photoshop, illustrator and Flash, dreamweaver is good but really isnt important there are others like that.

 

Apple uses their software to sell their hardware and one of teh main principles of apple software is tight integration between tem and the OS, nowdays rasonable cost and very good quality (after the 1st release anyway).

 

Apperture is the first salvo, the first salvo from Adobe was not creating updates in binary code for their apps until CS3, now Adobe fires again, no ppc support.

 

Iwould love to se some iPhotoshop :pirate2:

[Darwinian Dude]

I'm not a programmer myself, but it seems this is just a bit early to drop PPC support. I know it is more work but hasn't apple made it 'fairly' simple with Xcode? to create a universal binary. It's going to happen eventually, but think of all the people who bought a G5 Quad 14 months ago and now will never be able to run this app, it's just too early to drop PPC.

 

I'm not a programmer either, but I do believe that Xcode is only one of the ways to develop and compile applications. It's my guess Adobe may use something else, which doesn't make it as easy to write universal binaries. This could be a part of the reason.

 

Also, some audio software manufactures have bucked the trend with Universal, claiming they've seen performance losses for PPC users with Universal Binary apps, so they have two programs availible, one for PPC and one for Intel. Both are included when you purchase the software of course. I'm thinking of Propellerheads Reason here by the way, one of the first audio apps ever to support OS X.

 

Also, the G5's are quick enough so these would be worth supporting, but the G4 (in my opinion) is well past it's prime, they are very slow by today's standards which is why i didn't run a mac till the intel switch. The only reason a G4 (and a G3) are quick enough for every day use is because of how well OS X runs on slow hardware provided you have enough ram. Apple are geniuses in this regard compared to Microsoft. (Tiger runs suprisingly well, including spotlight, on my Beiege G3 300mhz

 

Rowan

[rollcage]

while i realize that ppc had to be phased out eventually, i didn't think it would be starting this soon. the great engineering on apple's part with osx, as stated by Darwinain Dude (i do find it amazing they are able to do that), should keep ppc's in the game for at least another year. i could see in about another year some companies moving away from universal apps, but so soon? doesn't affect me though as the only macs i currently and have ever owned have been intel macs.

[Lostgame]

It's my guess Adobe may use something else, which doesn't make it as easy to write universal binaries.

 

Bingo.

 

They use a peice of software called "metroworks", which is actually fairly decent, but is not Intel, so it's not easy to recompile. Only things written in xCode can be recompiled to UB without any issue.

[EPDM]

Bingo.

 

They use a peice of software called "metroworks", which is actually fairly decent, but is not Intel, so it's not easy to recompile. Only things written in xCode can be recompiled to UB without any issue.

 

AFAIK Adobe uses PC's as development platform nowadays. While it used to be the other way around. So their delays for Intel-versions of their mainstraim apps is ridiculous. This move to make a new app not PPC-compatible is yet another side of how narrow minded Adobe has become. Because once you have an Intel-codebase for an app, it's indeed easier to re-build that same app for another GUI-api. So I doubt that they still uses metroworks today because, as you said, it's PPC-only yet the problem here is that they abondoned PPC-apps altogether for new projects. And while Apple does make it easier to build universal apps. You can't expect Apple to hold your hand and do ALL the work for you (while you reap the profit of it). What does Adobe think. That they can have a suit push a button and hey presto their old stuff would work as UB. If that's the case then they had better build X-apps. Which they could have done once they bought that Unix app Framework ages ago (when they were still innovative). Which they also had to turn around, recode, rip appart and what else, as this formed the basis for Pagemaker and the later inDesign.

 

It's no secret that once a company is too big all creativity and innovation vanish and gets replaced by greed and laziness. It's clear that the shareholders run that company. I remember when the computer market was much more diversified with all those innovative systems while totalling less computers than even Apple is selling today when it was NO problem to find an Amiga app or some piece of hardware for that strange Acorn Archimedes. Now it's all those bloody suits running companies, orchestrating mergers instead dealing with the core business of what once was. It's time that Adobe gets sacked by users. So I would simply NOT buy any adobe products anymore and urge everyone else to do the same. That should wake them up if its not too late already.

 

In fact this can be done fairly easy. As for PDF-viewing we already have an Apple app and for Windows there are alternative apps like foxit-pdfreader(which also happen to be less bloathed and hence faster). Or why don't we just ditch PDF altogether and use real open-standards like SVG or something else; XML-based. There are probably similar alternatives for content creation (Apple goes a long way with iLife).

 

So if Adobe boycots us, why not return the favour, boycot them!

[A Nonny Moose]

Bingo.

 

They use a peice of software called "metroworks", which is actually fairly decent, but is not Intel, so it's not easy to recompile. Only things written in xCode can be recompiled to UB without any issue.

 

They used CodeWarrior, even though Apple kept saying for years that "you'll be really sorry if you're not using XCode."

[XStylus]

I can't exactly say I'm all that worried. If Adobe wants to limit their market, no problem.

 

Pro Tools is still the de-facto audio editing standard, and it works fine and dandy on G5 Macs. There's also Soundtrack Pro which is part of the Final Cut Studio package.

 

So long as Adobe doesn't abandon support on their other programs, no biggie. I seriously doubt Photoshop CS3 will be Intel only. That'd be a stupid move of legendary proportions. CS4 (or whatever it's called by then) perhaps will though.

[unixguru]

As a Mac developer, I can say that Adobe is full of {censored}. If you're going to build your app on Intel OS X you have to use GCC. Well actually you can use Intel compilers, but they don't do Objective-C which means you can't do a Cocoa app with the Intel stuff. So Adobe is most likely using XCode and GCC. As long as you know what you're doing, it's very easy build your app for both architectures. Now optimizing is a different story... but compiling, really easy. Unless you explicitly use SSE or VMX instruction sets. Apple provides a vector acceleration framework though, so I can't see 90% of applications needing to call these instruction sets themselves. The only other place you could get into trouble is if you know nothing about processor architectures and start making assumptions about things like endianness and word size.

[jtwh20]

just my 2 cents

 

if adobe had not released anything for x86, their story might hold water

 

also, they should have been far enough into the "apple loop" that they could've (should've) been way ahead of the curve -

 

NDA's are created so everyone who needs to know ( big payday $$$$) will know ahead of everyone else

[Lostgame]

Mac fans, however, weren't too happy with a little caveat to the application: it will only run on Intel Macs.

 

I'm happy about it-it means they can focus on one part of the project rather than wasting time supporting old processors-trying to iron out the bugs in a version I'm not going to use, rather than adding features to the version that the vast majority of people who are going to use this software are going to use.

 

We're on an OSx86 forum, for God's sake, why are you complaining?

[Swad]

I'm not complaining... it doesn't matter to me. The folks at Macintouch weren't too happy, though. I suppose it's one of those things that really doesn't matter until it affects you.

[solaar]

It's a lot about maximising margins long-term. I don't believe that supporting potentially obsolete technology and at the same time optimising a new approach can ever be cost-effective. Although I'm not a developer and I can't technically judge it's very hard to believe that universal code can ever be as efficient (technically and cost-wise) as code that is dedicated to a particular architecture.

 

Some may jump off but many others will jump on, exactly how it was when Steinberg announced they would support XP only as for M$.

 

Making business with grandpa IBM has been a dead end for quite a few who are doing much better now without them... (thinking especially of SAP and M$)

 

[bwhsh8r]

It had to happen some time.... better be now, im surprised they legacy'd it for so long, but i guess thats how apple is (thats a good thing....)

[Lostgame]

I don't believe that supporting potentially obsolete technology and at the same time optimising a new approach can ever be cost-effective.

 

That's exactly what I was trying to say. Perfect. I love it.

[A Nonny Moose]

The only thing Adobe will do with this application is ensure the death of Soundbooth, as people are still using PPC and will continue to use it for several years. We have to remember that Intel Macs are a minority within a minority.

[br0adband]

It's basic business common sense, and anyone that's paid attention to this situation since it started - actually, since well before it started - already knew it was going to happen.

 

PowerPC is a dead chip, period. Yes there are still legions of consumers, cultists, Mac-heads, fans, elitists, whatever, call them what you may, but they own Macs based on PowerPC processors. They don't want to be left out in the dark, really, but one word can pretty much provide a decent analogy for this:

 

Beta.

 

VHS wiped it out, totally. Beta was better, anyone with half a brain can and should know this, even now so long after it's consumer demise (it's still used in pro video situations today even with DV taking over more and more all the time - Beta died once, was resurrected a bit in the pro video industry, and now it's being murdered again).

 

I'm not saying PPC is better than Intel; benchmarks prove Intel based Macs simply overwhelm the PPC hardware with pure performance, but such is the nature of the computer industry. Things change, things get faster, and old hardware is simply discarded - yes, even Macs.

 

The point is that PPC had its time in the sun, and it's on permanent vacation now. Well, not right now like as of today but... then again... Soundbooth could have just "sounded the death knell" of PPC coding (pun intended). Go figure... a sound editor sounding the demise... there's a helluva lot of irony in that, I think.

 

Anyway, a company like Adobe, regardless of what people may think of them, has to roll with what the future holds, and that is Intel/x86 code from now on. This wasn't a surprise to me, meaning the whole Apple/Intel marriage because I and so many others who've been in this industry for years knew Motorola was going to pull the plug on Apple sooner or later. It happened a bit later than expected, but Apple handled the drop pretty nicely, I'd say.

 

Adobe simply cannot continue to breathe life into dead platforms. Right now, I doubt seriously there is a company or a single individual out there that uses their Macs for making a living that would look at this as anything other than a business decision that simply has to be made. It's not personal, it's just business. All those that have already "jumped ship" from the PPC platform to Intel are still wondering, "Where the hell are my Photoshop/CS2/etc Unibins? What is taking you so long? You knew this Intel switch was coming, you knew it 4 years ago, what is the problem?"

 

"PowerPC is dead... long live PowerPC..."

 

Or words to that effect.

 

I agree with what one other poster said about not expecting it quite this soon (or that's how I interpreted the statement made in the posting). But it's certainly not the last time this happens, and yes, as Mash questioned, I do believe this is the trend and Soundbooth just got the ball rolling.

 

Now it's just a matter of how much snow is on the ground, and winter is coming on fast...

[BRP]

PPC is dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead.

This is the precise reason it is at the core of Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, AND Nintendo's Wii.

 

I didn't do any math or anything, but I'm sure that most Macs that get used these days are STILL PPC Macs, simply because they were built more carefully from the ground up with quality in mind (this is the software difference between the Windows world and pretty much everything else; the former is based on more rapid development than everything else). Older Macs are still quite usable.

 

Give me the "PPC is dead" BS, and I'll give you a PowerBook G3 to the face.

 

That last sentence is a funny reference to something that doesn't exist anywhere but in my head.

[A Nonny Moose]

AGAIN, we're dealing with a minority within a minority when we're dealing with Intel Mac users. This is called "narrowcasting" in the advertising world. And in case you didn't know, narrowcasting usually means death.

[Lostgame]

I can't wait until you get proven wrong, and almost all the developers follow suit in this.

 

Apple's not going to complain whatsoever, either.