John Nack on future Photoshop UI changes
1:45 am, June 6th, 2008, Craig Grannell
Recently, I posted here about Adobe Fireworks CS4 Mac OS X beta’s UI, which I rather unsubtly subtitled ‘UI hell’. Clearly, lots of other people felt the same, and now John Nack has responded to the sometimes scathing criticisms on his insightful blog.
I admire Nack’s openness and the way in which he’s clearly not in agreement with every Adobe decision.
However, it’s strange to see some of his explanations for the CS4 changes, with comparisons to a disparate selection of software that’s not in the same space as the likes of Photoshop.
That said, I don’t recall any other software worth a bean that stuffs the title bar full of buttons.
Still, for any regular Photoshop user, Future Photoshop UI changes is essential reading, and Nack often responds inline to comments, trying to address concerns.
Who knows? Maybe Adobe might have a slight change of heart before Photoshop CS4 yomps on in.
If not, I already know a dozen designers who aren’t upgrading from CS3 and who are already looking for alternatives, often for specific tasks, rather than weighty behemoths that suck RAM and processor cycles like a greedy digital vampire bat.
Posted by Craig Grannell in Software | Comment on this article
stupid decisions are always ruining good products. flash became so code and component heavy that i became a dinosaur overnight and now this.
screw adobe and their idiot designers who dont give a crap about their users.
adobe is the new quark.
the truth, on June 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
[...] we have other yucky stuff in Photoshop CS4, such as buttons in the title bar (yuck) and non-standard window control buttons [...]
Does Adobe hate the Mac? -- Reality Distortion: Macs, Mac OS X, and Apple stuff, on June 25th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Attention savvy developers! Adobe Alternatives, alternatives, alternatives! There now exists great business opportunity for developers that are skilled enough with Mac technologies to create and sell great design and development tools to replace Adobe’s petrified product line. There are MANY, MANY, MANY Mac-based artists and developers that are crying out for someone to leverage the killer core technologies, etc, that are unique to Mac OS X to create top-shelf, professional tools for those of us desperate to evolve beyond the lowest common denominator, visionless, paleolithic committee-ware Adobe somehow is the only one producing.
Our studio has been showing Adobe solutions out the door for two years now, on both the design and development sides. The only thing hindering us from getting the rest of the Adobe slag out of our pipelines forever is the lack of professional alternatives-and we sincerely believe that Apple’s API’s have evolved to a point where other outfits (including small developers) have the opportunity to outshine and in turn outbid Adobe’s business. We even steer our clients away from Adobe solutions as we feel to do otherwise is to lowball the customer as well as reflect poorly on us–it’s the same reason Apple refuses to allow Adobe’s shoddy Mac-version Flash Player/FPLite onto the iPhone (and here’s hoping they never do!).
Adobe has been short changing Mac users for years now, from late Mac versions to half-assed Mac versions to no Mac versions at all. Is it a surprise to anyone that not long after Adobe began pandering to nothing other than their bottom line (i.e., Windows-base) that soon after their products and services took a very noticeable downturn that continues to this day. Funny how what you put your mind on most tends to manifest your reality-hence Adobe’s ever-bloating, feature-creeping marketware. I would urge more Mac users that are sick and tired of Adobe BS to use their money to demand more from their production tools. At the current rate, Adobe will never see another dime from us, ever.
Ellen Meers, on July 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm