You may have heard that Adobe are set to release Soundbooth - seemingly a cutdown version of their Audition multitrack audio editor. Nothing particularly blog-worthy in that, you might think, but the interesting thing about Soundbooth is that it will be the first 'major' piece of music software to support just the Intel Macs. It'll run on the PC as well, but PowerPC owners won't get a look in.
You can sort of see why this makes sense from Adobe's point of view - having to develop and support just the one Mac edition will surely make life easier for them - but I can't help thinking that they're being a little premature. There are still loads of G4 and G5 machines in circulation and many of them are being used for music making and creative audio work. Adobe have obviously decided that the cost of building a PowerPC version of Soundbooth won't be offset by the extra revenue that such a version would generate, but I'm not convinced.
Of course, the decision not to support the older Macs is entirely Abobe's to make, but I hope they haven't set a precedent that other companies will follow. There will come a time when new software won't run on the PowerPC machines, obviously, but that time should not be now.
If you want to try the beta of Soundbooth, click here.
What do you think? Are Adobe right not to develop for the non-Intel Macs or are they making a mistake?
Soundbooth closed to PowerPC users
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