Apple's switch to Intel CPUs has had a lot of benefits, including significantly increased sales, but the move also has downsides, as the company will have realised yesterday after Adobe announced that its pro video editor Premiere will return to the Mac platform in summer after a four-year absence, accompanied by two new-to-Mac apps, Soundbooth and Encore DVD.
The initial pull-out happened back in July 2003 when Adobe unveiled V7 of Premiere, letting it be known that this would be the first Windows-only version and, in effect, conceding defeat to Apple's Mac editor Final Cut Pro, V4 of which had been launched a couple of months before.
Premiere's comeback is promised for mid-year but all three new Mac apps will get a first public showing well before then - in San Franciso at next week's Macworld Expo. A UK debut is also promised for the VideoForum exhibition being held 6-8 February in Earls Court.
The company's 2003 turn-around wasn't a wholesale pull-out. Adobe had - and still has - Mac versions of virtually all of its other apps, including the video special-effects program After Effects and image-manipulation products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
Since 2003, Adobe has acquired a number of companies, notably Syntrillium and Macromedia, and now pushes the sale of suites of programs, rather than individual apps - something that Apple itself also likes to do.
And so it will be with the new Mac software bundle, which will include a lot more than just Premiere and make a whole lot of new Mac-based suite sales possible.
Those two new-to-Mac programs are important. One, the audio editor Soundbooth will compete against Apple's Soundtrack Pro. Soundbooth will be a Mac'd version of Audition, the Adobe-branded app that grew out of Syntrillium's Windows' program Cool Edit and which is also now set to carry the Soundbooth name under Windows.
The other, the DVD authoring app Encore DVD, will go head-to-head with Apple's own DVD Studio Pro. Encore has also never been offered for Mac before, the Windows version having arrived only after Adobe pulled Premiere from the Mac.
All three new Intel-Mac apps will be bundled up as the Production Studio - a package that will also include existing Mac versions of After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator - with all programs said to work interactively courtesy of Adobe Dynamic Link.
Unfortunately, for Apple, there's even more to it.
Since Adobe bought Macromedia, it has enjoyed significant sales of the products that grew out of the acquisition.
Among these are Flash Media Server, for streaming interactive media applications, Flash Video for video playback across the Internet, and Dreamweaver and Fireworks - products that are already available on the Mac platform alone and in a range of bundles that will only get wider with this summer's arrival of Production Studio.
Yesterday's news is certainly food for thought for Apple but what about you? Check out Adobe's press release then tell us in this thread in the HEXUS.community what you hope and expect from Adobe's promised summer arrivals.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community :: discussion thread about this articleHEXUS.lifestyle.press.releases :: Adobe Production Studio to be available for Mac, as well as Windows
HEXUS.lifestyle.press.releases :: Adobe completes acquisition of Macromedia
HEXUS.lifestyle.headline :: VideoForum 2006 - get Adobe software on the cheap
HEXUS.lifestyle.headline :: Adobe still ripping off EU buyers?
HEXUS.lifestyle.reviews :: Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio preview
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