Adobe canceled the development of Premiere for Mac in 2003 citing the difficulties of competing with Apple’s increasingly popular Final Cut. Nonetheless, Adobe kept its popular application for creating animations and special effects, After Effects, on the Mac.
However, things have changed a lot due to the great popularity of the Mac in the field of video editing and the change to Intel processors. In recent months, several Adobe officials have hinted that the developer could bring its video editing applications back to the Mac and today the news is finally confirmed.
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“If you look at the industry as a whole, you realize that Mac users are very important to us,” said Simon Hayhurst, product manager for video and dynamic media (dyinamic media) at Adobe. “Withdrawing the Mac version of Premiere was probably the hardest decision we’ve ever made. It’s always been our intention to get it back and Apple’s move to Intel has made it easier for us.”
Specifically, as explained by Simon Hayhurst, this decision to use Intel chips in its hardware has given Adobe the opportunity to start from scratch. The company has thus been able to create the application it wanted instead of porting the old code to the Mac platform. The result, according to Hayhurst, is a faster application. I think we can help Apple sell a lot of Intel Macs, “he also said.
Although Adobe executives have not commented on the specific features that the application will have, they have explained that they will be the same as those of the Windows version, including powerful integration with the rest of their creative applications. However, don’t expect many similarities to the old Mac version of the product. “They both have chassis and wheels, but that’s where the resemblance ends, this is a completely different animal,” Hayhurst said. “The team has done an exceptional job.”
Another reason that has led Apple to bring the Mac back to Premiere has been the interest of many Final Cut users. Adobe believes that the integration between applications it can offer is second to none.
“What makes the difference is who has the best integration and it is what we are seeing over and over again. Half of the news in each update cycle has to do with this integration,” Hayhurst concluded.
Premiere and the Adobe Production Studio package for Mac will be released in mid-2007. There have been no statements on whether there will be a beta version, but Adobe will begin showing the application at the Macworld Expo which begins next week in San Francisco.
