Adobe delays 64-bit CS4

Adobe is already in the middle of developing its Creative Suite 4 series of applications, but Mac users will have to wait behind PC owners in order to take full advantage of their platform, the company has announced. While there is no formal release date planned for any version of CS4, Adobe says that only Windows Vista users will have a completely 64-bit suite at launch, with Mac conversions coming sometime thereafter.

The issue, says Photoshop product manager John Nack, is that many of the programs in the Mac version of CS4 are written with Apple's Carbon code, rather than Cocoa, which is the only option that supports 64-bit processing. "We have to rewrite from scratch," explains Nack. "This makes the cost of the move considerably greater than for Windows. So we will ship 64-bit Windows version first."

It is uncertain which CS4 Mac apps will make the leap to 64-bit at launch, with the exception of Lightroom, which is already written in Cocoa. As such, users can currently download a 64-bit version of the Lightroom 2.0 beta. The main advantage over 32-bit is said to be the ability to address 4GB or more of RAM, which is crucial in programs such as Photoshop and Lightroom, where it can dramatically shrink the time needed to load large image files.

by MacNN Staff