Daily Archives: Thursday, 3rd April 2008
Photoshop, Lightroom, and 64-bitness
Following yesterday’s Lightroom excitement, Adobe’s John Nack has revealed some interesting details about the future of Photoshop:
John Nack on Adobe: Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe’s 64-bit roadmap
In summary: Photoshop CS4 is going to be available in 32-bit form on both Mac and Windows, but the 64-bit version will be Windows-only. Adobe’s reason for the apparent neglect of Mac users is that the weird complicated programming stuff[1] that Apple provide comes in two flavours: Cocoa and Carbon. Photoshop has been around a while, and the Mac version is based on the older (but fully functional[2]) Carbon rather than the newer and apparently fancier Cocoa. The plan was for the Mac version of Photoshop CS4 to be based on the promised 64-bit version of Carbon. Unfortunately for Adobe, Apple decided that the 64-bit version of Carbon was not going to happen, and the only way to make 64-bit applications for Mac OS X was going to be Cocoa.
Now if you’re starting from scratch, as Adobe were with Lightroom, then using the newer libraries (? stuff? thingies?) would be an easy decision.[3] If you had a moderately small application, then changing it might be moderately simple and not too painless. But if you have something as big and complex as Photoshop, then major changes take a lot of time and effort. So much, in fact, that the conversion isn’t going to happen until Photoshop CS5, which is probably three years away, if not longer.
For most users, the whole 64-bit thing isn’t really much of an issue – unless you have over 4GB of RAM, and you deal with huge image files or stacks or sets of very large files, you probably wouldn’t benefit that much anyway. But for those serious professional users, it is going to be frustrating. Will they all be booting their fully-stacked Mac Pros into 64-bit Windows to run Photoshop CS4 as a 64-bit application? And will their frustration reach bursting point if Adobe haven’t managed to bring in proper cross-platform licences for Photoshop by then?
In the usual way, you’ll find lots of heated arguments on the net as people blame either Apple or Adobe for the situation. Either Apple shouldn’t have changed their minds, or Adobe should have got off their bums and rewritten most of Photoshop already, or at least been paying more attention. Or some combination of all that, and more. For what I use the software for, it really won’t matter, and I suspect the same is true for at least some of the people making a lot of fuss. Could it be that there are some Mac users who just hate the idea that there might be a “better” version of their software of choice on Windows than on Mac OS X?
It all gets very sill, really…
[1] Look, I am so not a coder, OK? 
[2] Various bits of Mac OS X are still written using Carbon…
[3] Which is why Lightroom is indeed 64-bit on the Mac as well as on Windows
Britain’s new coinage revealed
The designs on British coins have remained largely unchanged since decimalisation back in 1971, when I was quite young[1]. Apart from a growing number of commemorative issues, the shrinking of the 5p and the 10p, and the introduction of the 20p and £1 coin, nothing has really changed. This is partly due to the long reign of Elizabeth II[2], and partly, no doubt to a bit of good old fashioned inertia.
Anyway, a while back (must be a couple of years now), a competition was announced for a redesign of the coinage. The only guideline that seemed to apply was that some sort of heraldic theme would be a Good Thing, and that the designs should go well together. Nothing much was heard in public after that, but I did see a mention in a Royal Mint newsletter that designs had been chosen, and that the new coins would be introduced this year.
And today, we can finally see what’s going to be filling our pockets for the next however many years:
The idea is that each coin below the £1 has part of the Royal coat of arms thingy on it, so if you arranged them as shown on the Royal Mint page, you get an impression of the whole design, which appears in complete, if smaller, form on the £1. My first reaction was “eh?? what???!”, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I’ll probably buy one of the commemorative sets so I can see them properly.
[1] I was !! I was!!!
[2] A new monarch has historically been an excuse for changing the designs
Related posts
Weight Report – 3 April 2008
That’s a bit better! That’s a fall of well over a pound today, which is definitely a Good Thing. I’m still two pounds heavier than I was a week ago, which is less of a Good Thing, but at least I am heading in the right direction at present.
Not only that, but I managed to walk both to and from work today, which is an even Better Thing.
