Adobe Drops 32-bit Mac Support with Photoshop CS6

While past versions of Adobe's products have offered a decent spectrum of support for existing operating system and computing environments, new features and development directions in the program suite have had Adobe making some adjustments to the platforms that will support the new software.

To make the most of these features, Adobe built them using 64-bit code optimized for multicore systems, which therefore means the suite will run best on a fully 64-bit native Intel and AMD systems however, Adobe is making Photoshop CS6 available in 32-bit versions for Windows XP machines, though some features will be limited on these systems. While these options are available for Windows systems, on Mac OS X Adobe is dropping 32-bit support altogether, and is opting to only make 64-bit code available to Mac users.

This means that even though the Windows version will run on older Core Duo processors that were available in the first Intel-based Mac systems, the OS X version will not. In addition, any 32-bit plug-ins and other compatibility options for the program will no longer work, and will require updating to run properly with the software.

The drop in support for 32-bit systems accompanies a requirement for systems to be running OS X 10.6.8 or later. However, even though Adobe is supporting older 32-bit code on Windows XP, Adobe is splitting the Windows system requirements by dropping official support for Windows Vista.