Following Apple"s lead of dropping the ageing PowerPC architecture for Snow Leopard, Adobe have outlined its plans for a PPC-free future in a recent blog entry. The next iteration of its Creative Suite, popular among designers and the like, will not only be going Intel-only, but will also be rewritten in Cocoa for 64-bit native support, a requirement for Adobe after Apple previously revealed they had scrapped plans for a 64-bit Carbon.
John Nack is keen to point out that "the very youngest PPC-based Macs will be roughly four years old" by the time the software is released, giving us a timeframe of either late this year or early next year. With certain PowerPCs still competitively performing up against today"s tech, is this all far too soon? Maybe, but Adobe"s (and most likely Apple"s) rationale is that "if you haven"t upgraded your workstation in four years, you"re probably not in a rush to upgrade your software, either". While support for PowerPC would be nice for those without the funds to upgrade their hardware, costs and benefits have to be factored into development, and it appears Adobe have decided the market simply isn"t big enough to warrant continued development for the platform.
Adobe also hints towards more information regarding its other apps, such as Flash Player and Adobe Reader, in the near future. Hopefully the next iteration of Flash Player will be more optimised for the Mac platform, as the current content player has a reputation for high CPU usage among Mac users.