My copy of Adobe Creative Suite CS2 arrived last night (woohoo!), making me a very happy man. This morning, as I perused my feeds, I came across the great news (via John Nack, via JD on EP) that Apple’s release of the 10.4.8 system update includes significant improvements to Rosetta, the software that ensures older applications will continue to run on newer platforms (like my Intel-based notebook). These improvements, according to Macworld’s benchmarks, provide a 34% improvement for the CS2 suite on the MacBook Pro! The tests specifically relate to image manipulation, so that number actually matters. The same improvements had only a minor impact on non-graphics oriented applications like MS Word, which gained a tiny bump of 3%.
While this isn’t quite as good as Intel-native versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, et al, it is a much appreciated and unexpected improvement. Thanks Apple!