Thanks for the Online Photographer link......

Seeing as how Photoshop is a "professional" application, and Apple doesn't yet offer a "professional" desktop ICBM*, this isn't such a long wait as it sounds.

ICBM = Intel Chip Based Mac. Ha ha ha.

Wallace, that blog looks to be chock full of good info for photographers of all skill levels, without resorting to a lot of baffling technical jargon.

Brian, your point is well taken, although I'm sure Apple will be significantly quicker bringing pro-level ICBMs to market than Adobe will be with its apps. Although, given the importance of Adobe's applications to professional Mac users, one might wonder if that company's timeline might factor into an adjustment in Apple's manufacturing and marketing plans. What's the point in rushing a big-guns Intel Mac if there's no software to run on it? I certainly wouldn't buy one.

What we may see is that G5s stay on the market longer than previously expected. (But, of course, I know nothing!)

And I still favor your "ICBM" appellation...I just keep forgetting to use it! ;-)

Who needs it? Gimp is free and runs screaming fast on my MacIntel.

Great reminder about Gimp. I've never used it (got tied into Photoshop long ago) but have heard similar comments over the years. We may well see many more tech-savvy Macsters make the switch...but I just don't see a mass exodus by design shops and other corporate users...or by the Average Joe who prefers shrink-wrap to open source, without knowing why.

This is not exactly news, as it appears none of the Adobe apps will be coming out on the new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM?) system until the next full version.

One company that has decided to try to take advantage of this is Quark, makers of InDesign's competition - Xpress. Xpress 7 will ship this year under the new universal format (if the Quark sales rep is to be believed).

As for photoshop, Adobe can afford to take their time - there's no serious competition on the horizon, and they just gobbled up Macromedia. The only real "competition" would be apple's "aperture" program, but that seems too high-end to be of use to most folks.

Bryan, Aperture is not a Photoshop competitor; it's not designed for image manipulation except in pretty basic ways. It's essentially an image management tool. However, Adobe's Lightroom is designed to compete with Aperture and has just been released as a free publicly available beta2, and is in Universal Binary format. Both programs target professional photographers (they're like iPhoto on heavy-duty steroids).

I can't help wondering if this is an example of where Apple is starting to compete head-to-head with Adobe and one of the results is the former's foot-dragging on the Intel conversion.

It might also just be Adobe's time schedule for returning costs put into its current application for OS X, which the company had to come up with (first for 7.0) when Apple switched over to the Unix based operating system, especially since Adobe immediately followed it up with the CS version. The fact that there's no serious competition out there makes it easier for the company to try and earn as much of the R&D costs it can from sales of the current CS2 system before they have to retool it for ICBM.

And to be honest, for Mac owners trying to keep up with the latest Photoshop software to match Apple's newest machines, they'll be up in the neighborhood of $2,500 over just the past four or so years, by the time the ICBM-compatable Photoshop finally hits the marketplace. That's a heck of a lot of cash for an application that you can still chug along with v 5.0 for Windows 98 on PC based systems using XP and, presumably, Longhorn. Windows has its flaws, but loving the Mac system and trying to keep it up to date with all the recent changes is a major shot to the checkbook.

...but loving the Mac system and trying to keep it up to date with all the recent changes is a major shot to the checkbook.

Granted, but I've found no compelling reason to try to keep 100% up-to-date. I'm still using Photoshop 7.0 and getting done everything I want to do with no problem. I realize I'm missing out on a few CS bells & whistles but they're nothing I can't live without.

However, when you need a new box -- and you're "loving the Mac system" -- it's harder and more expensive to control the expense of your upgrade path.

I thought Longhorn is now Vista (as in, you can see it, you just never can quite get there... ;)