Since the release of the new Mac Book Pro and iMac with Intel I have been considering when to make the
upgrade and move on to a new laptop. A few things are keeping me in check though. First off, this is a first gen or
Alpha product that is going to have bugs (this is jus the nature of technology). Second off there are no 'Universal'
binaries for Studio or any other Adobe products for that matter. But what about Rosetta? Well It doesn't look like
Rosetta is very nice to Flash's new step brother. Photoshop CS2 runs much slower on the new Intel iMacs in speed tests,
according to Ars Technica. Plus, according to
the latest Photoshop TV video podcast, Adobe has a previous history of not release incremental updates, hence they
think Photoshop will not be 'Universal' til CS3 (grab the vodcast yourself and watch
between 16:40 and 18:10 for more info). But Photoshop isn't Studio. Actually, now that Flash and Macromedia are tied to
Adobe, I think Flash and therefore Studio will be tied (at least loosely) to Photoshop. So if you feel the need for
speed, it is probably a good idea to hold off on purchasing the new Mac Intels. At least wait till someone jumps on the
bandwagon with official speed tests for Flash and FLV encoding.
Currently I'm going to consider a semi-update to a 'new' PowerBook instead and pray Flash Player 8.5 includes the first Universal Binary from Adobe, because as of right now Flash Player 8 does npt appeast to work in Safari on Intel without forcing Safari to run under Rosetta.
JD is worrying about this too, but what to do you think?
1. I really think that sticking with PowerPC is just the smart thing to do right now, I will be picking up a MacBook next week to play with but I wont be expecting to do any serious work on it for a few months till the universals come out. As for waiting till they work out the bugs that is true to some extent however the bugs are going to be software based not hardware based, the hardware itself should be solid as x86 architecture isnt exactly new technology.
Ben.
Posted at 12:18PM on Feb 14th 2006 by Ben