After we kicked over the burning trash can about Leopard running Windows code natively, many spread the fire stating it was the end of OS X. Yesterday SvenOnTech played devils advocate and agreed that like OS/2, OS X was going to die. One of the examples was that no software maker would waste the resources for two different code sets when one would run on both.

One such developer, Adobe, was a prime example in many of your comments as well as our little post. But guess what? The man that heads Adobe himself has chimed in and says, ‘Nope, we’re sticking around on this Mac OS X stuff.’ Adobe’s CEO, Bruce Chizen, told ars straight up that it had no plans to rely on Boot Camp or virtualization. He told ars:

“For the majority of our products, writing directly to the Macintosh operating system is an advantage to the customers and you will see us continue to do so and not work through Boot Camp or the Windows emulator because we think that will not be good for the majority of our customers.”

Now do note the majority part. Yes, this means there could be some software that won’t see Universal binaries (Premiere?) but it sounds like favorites like Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign are safe and will find native OS X Universal binaries.

With this statement of commitment, it now adds more fuel to the fire of what will happen to OS X if Leopard does do Windows and OS X applications. If Adobe will still do native Mac code, won’t everyone else? Microsoft seems to even be still committed to Universal as some sources in the Mac Business Unit have said that there is a Universal Office underway. If Adobe and Microsoft go Universal, it’s safe to say that others will, too, and all these visions of OS/2 are just that: visions.

2 Responses to “Adobe: We Are Committed to OS X and Not Virtualization”

1. Johnny Appleseed Says:
   April 26th, 2006 at 17:12

   Mac users will keep buying the OS X versions, so developers will keep making them. Remember that most small-time Mac developers – who create most of the cool stuff – are Mac enthusiasts themselves and would never consider moving to Windows. For the bigger apps Apple might even release its Yellow Box developer tools to enable the creation of cross-platform apps without any extra effort.

2. Tim Says:
   April 26th, 2006 at 19:24

   Of course using those methods is not good for the majority of Mac users… that’s because the majority are still using PowerPC. When that shifts to Intel, it won’t matter.

   Also, is it significant that he said ‘emulator?’ Everything I’ve heard and read makes very clear note this new stuff is not emulation but virtualization. Emulation is the old VirtualPC for PowerPC, and I doubt many Mac users would ever run Photoshop in that.