Can AI-powered vibe coding challenge established software companies? Photocraft and other Adobe application clones spark a discussion of their capabilities, legal questions, and the possibility of creating customized software. A live download offers a closer look at the applications. The conversation also explores the Swift Angels developer meetup, LinkedIn’s growing importance for professional networking, and generational differences in technology.
Whether Apple Watch can pair with multiple iPhones, the storage demands of Apple Intelligence, and preparing Macs for the end of Rosetta support kick off this discussion. Other topics include whether expensive phones need cases, AI photo editing versus Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro as an Adobe alternative, and what Adobe’s acquisition of Topaz Labs means for users.
From NAB in Las Vegas, Matt Bach, Senior Product Manager at Puget Systems, explains PugetBench, a free benchmarking tool for end users that tests real applications such as Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, and soon Unreal Engine. Matt discusses why real-world benchmarks beat synthetic scores, how software updates can dramatically change performance, and […]
A new brushing engine that has been rewritten using Metal shaders. It includes an option for “velocity thinning”, where the faster you draw your brush strokes, the thinner the lines.
A new acorn shell tool that you can use to send JavaScript to Acorn, as well as start an MCP server. So if you’ve got a favorite LLM you like to use, you can now use it to drive Acorn. The JavaScript section of the release notes are a good read if you’re interested in that. In addition:
The JS API has also been updated with examples for most calls.
The shell tool has a -jsio argument which lets you do things like: echo "acorn.takeLayeredScreenshot();" | acorn -jsio
Big ML models (used for Select Subject and Super Resolution Scaling) are now downloaded on demand. If AI isn’t your thing, they won’t take up any space on your Mac.
Very few software companies outside of Microsoft have the kind of leverage over entire industries. Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom and After Effects are all load bearing to some extent within their respective fields despite the fact that many people I know loathe using them.
I have said it before and I will say it again: if I had known the path Adobe’s software would eventually go down, I might very well have picked a different career.
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