Today saw the launch of Adobe’s new Photoshop iPad apps – yup, not one, but three new programs that harness the power of a multitouch screen along with your existing PC’s processing horsepower. While each is worthy of note on its own, taken as a whole they serve to underline an even bigger shift in computing: tablets aren’t going to kill your PC, they’re going to kill your mouse.
The three new Photoshop iPad apps, due out next month alongside a 5.5 update to Adobe’s Creative Suite on desktop computers on 3 May, are actually being branded as ‘companion apps’. With Photoshop on your computer and iPad in hand, you can use them to draw with up to five fingers at a time (The Eazel app), extend your screen and tools onto the iPad ( Adobe Nav) and mix up colours (Adobe Color Lava).
You can check out the apps in action here . They’re not minor upgrades on the feature-lacking Photoshop Express apps for iOS, they’re a new category of apps entirely. And they spell doom for your mouse: what’s the point of dragging and clicking, when you can use an input that’s wireless, fast, and lets you click two places at once?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview in June 2010 that PCs ‘are going to be like trucks’, suggesting that they’re still necessary, but that most people will get around in cars – which he sees being iPads, or modern consumer tablets.
What he didn’t envision – or at least articulate at the time – is that the cars and the lorries would be combining to create something more powerful. A Megazord, if you’ll excuse the Power Rangers analogy.
This trio are just the start. Adobe has also rolled out an software development kit so that users can develop similar applications and more for iOS, Android tablets and the BlackBerry PlayBook too.
With third party developers able to join in and flex their coding muscles and creativity, how long before every other big creative software suite opts for this route? How long before Apple itself releases similar apps for Final Cut Studio, iMovie, Aperture and Logic Studio? No time at all, we suspect.
