About not being First: Adobe on the Mac

June 12, 2012 in Miscellaneous

There was a time that Apple Users swear on Adobe Software. Being on the Mac using Adobe products meant being First.

In my last German Olaf Bathke Talk we were discussing the performance issues of Lightroom 4. To be correct the Mac Users were complaining about the lack of performance after switching from Lightroom 3 to Lightroom 4 on the same Mac. I am running a one year old MacBookPro from last year. It was state of the art three days ago. Using Lightroom4 on this machine is a nightmare. The adjustment brush isn’t working fluently. Switching modules takes several seconds. The preview and the zoom functions are turtle slow.

There are more and more Mac users complaining.

So why is Adobe not able to make great software for Mac Users anymore? I think it is not only a question of horsepower. I asked some photography friends: PC Users with comparable hardware aren’t complaining.

Why?

Maybe it is because Adobe sees Apple more and more as a dangerous competitor. It is not only about Flash. It is about marketplaces, software and owning our new home: The Cloud. If competition and influence will grow, support gets harder.

This is not the first time, that Apple Users aren’t First. Think about the iPad. It is the far most common Pad in the world. But it is not the first Pad that runs an app called Photoshop.

What do you think about Adobes future on the Mac?

4 Comments

June 12, 2012 at 21:06

Sam

Reply

LR4 ain’t very fast on a brand new Windows PC, so I don’t think this problem is not only present on Apple PCs.

Adobe was sitting on the new routines for ages now, maybe they released PV2012 too early for the currently available computing power?
June 12, 2012 at 18:32

Ralf Gosch

Reply

You are totally right. LR 4 is very slow on my one year old mac pro two. I use PS Elements 9 and have the same problems with this application. But what is the alternative for mac users? I have more than 40 k pictures to handle. Is Aperture the better choice?
1. June 12, 2012 at 20:02
  
  Olaf Bathke
  
  Reply
  
  In terms of speed LR3 is the alternative. But compared to the quality of highlights and shadows LR3 is nothing compared to aperture. Aperture has only one problem: It has a very complicated interface and it is not so easy to use for huge series.
  1. June 12, 2012 at 21:16
    
    Bernd Limbach
    
    Reply
    
    I do not know LR3 or 4, so I cannot argue about workflow. I use Aperture and in fact it was the reason to by a Mac (beside having a *nix based OS). My workflow does not exist virtually, I guess, but I like the way how I can approach my images. To be honest, I do not tweak them very much and probably I use <10% of Aperture's possibilities. At this time I do not need more.
    Why do you think it's complicated and not so easy for huge series, Olaf?
    Just curious.