What Adobe Software for Intel MBP ????

mghaner · November 2, 2006

OK, I am getting pretty close to getting the Macbook Pro with the 2.33 Intel Chip and 120 ghd. I am not a Mac guy yet so much does not make sense to me. I have recieved much help from you folks that I am very thankful for.

My big ? now is on the software side. Seems that this intel deal is so new that there is not much software that will run on it. Most all the Adobe stuff like PSCS2 and Elements 4 all states the power pc, not the intel chip.

I think that there is some way to make the other work but is that optimal? I would think that adobe will come out with all the popular programs that are setup to run on the intel setup sometime in the future. I dont want to buy the ones now that are for the power pc chip only to have the ones for the intel chip to come out later and end up having to buy it twice. This is based on my thinking that if the current programs can run on the new chip that they would not run as fast or work as well as programs made for the new intel setup.

Is my understanding wrong about all of this........I think the imac has a similar chip so I am sure that some of you are in this same situation right now. How are you dealing with it at this time and what do you plan on doing in the future.

Thanks again for any help you can provide me on this issue.

***mike***

colourbox · November 2, 2006

Most of the answers are known. You can buy Photoshop CS2 (or any software in Creative Suite 2) and it will run on an Intel Mac. However, it will run under Rosetta so it will not be optimally fast and Rosetta requires a bit more RAM. But fast is relative. If you were using an 800MHz CPU before and you upgraded to a 2.33GHz dual-core Intel Mac, Photoshop will probably still be faster on the new machine even with the Rosetta slowdown.

Second, Adobe announced a few months ago that Creative Suite 3 will arrive in Q2 of 2007. That would be an upgrade from CS2. That should mean that we will pay an upgrade fee, not "buy it twice" at full retail. Whether you want to wait until 2007 to avoid the upgrade fee depends on whether you run a business that would easily make back the upgrade fee well before the Intel versions come out. The Mac has been through a few major CPU and OS changes over the years and Adobe has never charged more than the normal upgrade fee for the ensuing version.

Third, if you are coming from Windows, this is kind of sneaky but because Photoshop currently runs at full speed under Windows, you could use your existing Photoshop Windows license and run Photoshop under Windows on your Mac using BootCamp or Parallels Desktop, until the version for Intel Macs comes out.

If/when you want to switch all your Adobe software from Windows to Mac, I have heard that you can call Adobe customer service and ask for a "cross-grade" license switch so that once again you can avoid paying full price for a second time.

mghaner · November 2, 2006

Along the lines of getting as much ram as I can.......if I was to get the unit with the 2gb from the factory can I then just add this chip http://tinyurl.com/yckvb5
to get to the 3 g of RAM that is listed as the max ram. Apple wants $575 to add the extra 1 gb of ram or is it that there is only one slot so you have to pick the size chip 1 - 2 or 3. I have never added ram to a notebook before so maybe that is the case anywhere....

NHBubba · November 2, 2006

I shopped macs a while back, I didn't end up buying one, but I did visit several mac stores and used/abused PSCS2 a fair amount on a couple Intel based iMacs. My perception was that the Rosetta emulation business did not result in as much of a slow-down as I had expected. In fact, the Intel iMac compared favorably to a decked out dual-G5 PowerMac! My theory is either Rosetta does not introduce as much of a slow-down as people had expected or the Intel chips are just that much faster than the G5s. ... Another posibility is that my 'testing' was not all that scientific.

I'd slap PSCS2 on there and treat it just as you would any other PC.

Although I was turned away at one mac store. They told me that they did not load PS on any of their intel based macs because the "performance is so poor because Adobe won't support the new Intel processors". They went on to tell me that if I was serious about doing photo-editing I should either buy the Apple photo editing software or stick to the G5 offerings. This strikes me as a massive load of poo, but it was interesting. :crazy

DavidTO · November 2, 2006

mghaner wrote:

Along the lines of getting as much ram as I can.......if I was to get the unit with the 2gb from the factory can I then just add this chip http://tinyurl.com/yckvb5
to get to the 3 g of RAM that is listed as the max ram. Apple wants $575 to add the extra 1 gb of ram or is it that there is only one slot so you have to pick the size chip 1 - 2 or 3. I have never added ram to a notebook before so maybe that is the case anywhere....

I was amazed at that cost as well, but yes, there are only two slots, and one of the chips needs to be a 2GB chip. I checked crucial.com, they want $900 for that chip, and macsales.com wants over $600. It's an expensive chip, for whatever reason, and getting it from Apple may be the cheapest way to go.

EDIT: the site you listed has the memory you would need for $742.16.

mghaner · November 2, 2006

So......what the deal is with the MBP is that to get to the 3gb of ram (max they can take) I have to really have 4gb of ram in there???? I would have to have two sticks of 2gb each as they have to be the same? To top it off that means by getting the 2gb model it would come with two 1gb sticks (one in each slot) so if I wanted max I would need to buy two 2gb sticks??? that really sucks IMO !!! Not that they would care much about MO anyway.... So my next question would be just how bad would running with 2 gb really be. Right now I am running 1.5gb on my P4 2.8ghz HP desktop. Again my being a computer idiot......is the 233ghz intel faster then the intel P4 2.8ghz? I thought the higher the ghz the faster it would go. I am not sure why I want this MBP so much but if I would have to use bootcamp with XP to run PSCS2 on the MBP in windows what is the point??? I can get apature (which I know most of you think is not so good) for $180 (education discount with MBP purchase) but saving $120 on a program that many feel is just like Lightroom (which is free right now but I am sure will sell for the same as apature) which I love BTW.

Come on folks.....I REALLY NEED SOME HELP IS JUSTIFING MY REASON FOR MAKING THE CHANGE....PLEASE, you mac guys, give me some real good reasons as to why this change is something that is good for me to do. I really want to do it. I now have a nice Viewsonic 21" LCD to use with the MBP, I am using it VGA now but it has DVI hookups on it as well so when I am home I can have a nice big display.

Help, Help Help,,give me some great reasons on how much better my life will be as a mac guy vs. a PC guy.

DavidTO · November 2, 2006

The 3GB configuration would be 1GB stick and a 2GB stick. They don't need to match, as in the Mac Pro.

Check the cost of RAM on a comparable PC. It's just the market supply/demand for that particular chip. You'd be fine with 2GB, IMO. If you want 3, then the most economical way to do it happens to be through Apple.

The MBP is competitively priced. It's not as cheap as some PCs, but it's also made better. For what you get, it's a good deal. And you'll be really happy that you embraced OSX, I would think.

DavidTO · November 2, 2006

You do not have to use BootCamp to run CS2, and unless you NEED to install Windows, you really should do everything you can to avoid it. It'll just eat up disk space and your time, maintaining it. Everything that you can do in OSX you should just do in OSX.

CS2 will run fine with 2GB RAM on an Intel processor. It'll run faster when you upgrade to CS3, the Universal Binary version, but you'll be fine for now. I've got a friend with a new MBP with 2GB RAM, and I'm asking him to run the speed tests that we've been running lately. I'll post the results there, and link it here when I get them.

DavidTO · November 2, 2006

OK, so I've posted the results of the speed test. You can find the two tests in the first post in that thread. Run them and you can see for yourself how much of a performance hit you'll take running CS2 under Rosetta. Let us know. The whole Rosetta thing--it's quite a bit overblown, IMO.

What Adobe Software for Intel MBP ????

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