Adobe misses its first Leopard compatibility deadline
“We expect to publish free Leopard compatibility updates for the video applications in December 2007” – Adobe
Remember back right around the time when Leopard was due to be released, Adobe put out this PDF meant to scare educate potential Leopard buyers as to possible incompatibilities between Apple’s new OS and Adobe’s CS3 Suite of apps? In it, Adobe assured us that “Thanks to close collaboration between Adobe and Apple, most of the CS3 applications and associated technologies, such as Adobe Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, and Device Central CS3, are compatible with Mac OS X Leopard without requiring additional updates.” Great. Because I can’t live without Version CueCS3.
But what about those OTHER apps, you know, the ones people BUY? Well, Adobe put out a timeline for when we could expect to receive full Leopard compatibility, and unfortunately, unless we see a couple releases in the next 7 hours, it looks like they missed their first self-imposed deadline. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional was slated to be released in late January 2008, so we’ll assume Adobe’s still good to go on that front. However, Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3 were all supposed to receive updates in “December 2007”.
So how’d they do?
Well, I suppose 2 out of 4 ain’t bad, assuming you are a user of the 2 apps that got updated (Premiere and Soundbooth). Unfortunately, as an After Effects user, I’m SOL.
Now, I don’t want to sound like an After Effects elitist here (although After Effects is the best app Adobe makes, and I am the best AE user ever born) but what’s the hold up? Why is Adobe dragging its feet on After Effects, and at the same time putting even an ounce of effort into Premiere and Soundbooth, 2 apps no one has ever used?
OK, obviously I am just venting, I am sure some Mac user has used those apps and prefers to use them their Apple equivalents (cough). However, the latest mention of a Leopard update for AE (the fabled 8.02) on the AE beta forums is dated November 27th. How about keeping us in the loop, Adobe?
Here’s what Adobe said earlier this month about After Effects:
P2 and Leopard update
In order to give the After Effects team some time make additional quality improvements, we’ve decided to release the 8.0.2 update until mid-January 2008. We know that many of you are looking forward to the P2 and Leopard compatibility in this release, so we’ll have it to you as soon as as it’s ready!
Perhaps it has to do with testing against OS X 10.5.2, too, who knows.
Here’s a new update from the source regarding the status of After Effects:
After Effects 8.0.2 almost ready
The big news on this release is the implementation of MXF in After Effects. This is huge for people that are using P2 footage and doing some compositing. […] So be patient a little longer and soon After Effects CS3 will have native support for Panasonic’s P2/MXF format!