My pals over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog decided to poke some fun at the fake Feb. 22nd Apple Invites (which sparked some unfounded rumors as of late), and are holding their own "Create a Feb. 22nd Apple Invite" contest. To get up to speed on what went down, check out their posts on the original invite and a couple follow-ups, which amusingly come complete with spelling errors.

To be crowned champion of fake Apple invites, you will need every ounce of wit, skill and Apple geek knowledge to create a clever, convincing and plausable invite by (you guessed it) February 22nd. To enter, head over to TUAW's contest post and link to an image or site with your invite - doesn't matter where it is; personal/business sites or Flickr accounts are just fine. On Feb. 23rd TUAW will announce the winner who, aside from fame and fortune*, will win a coveted Apple Logo Travel Cup, obtainable only at the Mothership Apple Store in Cupertino, CA (Yes, Apple actually calls that store the Mothership; check out TUAW's Mothership Flickr set for proof).

So get crackin' boys and girls, and make Apple rumor sites everywhere proud.



*Neither TUAW nor TUPW make any guarantees of ensuing fame or fortune - especially the fortune. Whether or not something like this will even look good on a resume is questionable.

John Nack has answered the burning question of OS X Adobe app users everywhere on his blog yesterday: when will we see native Intel OS X versions for all the shiny new Macs Apple is rolling out this year? Unfortunately, the response is less than ideal. In fact, I think it belies something fishy is up either with Adobe, Apple or both.

John Nack's answer is basically that they have no plans to update the current CS2 or Studio 8 suites to run natively on Intel OS X, which means anyone buying a new Intel Mac this year will have to deal with running these apps in the Rosetta emulation layer. While it seems like this might be at least workable for some users, it is by no means ideal. The only way to get an Intel version of either suite, as of Adobe's current plans, is to purchase a new/upgrade suite sometime in 2007. Let's also not forget the just-released After Effects 7.0 - who knows when an Intel OS X copy of that will appear, but according to Adobe's FAQ (pdf link) on the matter, it sounds like purchasers of even that brand new app won't get an Intel version without buying an upgrade/new version.

Now I am not a software engineer, nor do I have a clue as to what goes on inside the walls at Adobe. Still, this less than ideal situation smells rotten to me, and I don't mean just Adobe. Ever since Apple's Intel announcement last summer, they've told the industry (at least the consumer side) that Intel Macs would appear by summer 2006. Yet they released two, one being a pro machine, last month, and they won't have even their own pro apps ready until sometime in March. I don't know about you, but the phrase "rushed to market" comes to mind.

Adding to the pile, I'm starting to believe that John Gruber (of Daring Fireball fame) might have something with a post last April, worrying about Adobe's move away from being a great software company to just a company with a product to sell and revenues to bolster. The fact that there won't be any updates or even a retail upgrade for previous versions of CS or Studio to run on Intel Macs is quite a slap in the face to consumers. Apple, by contrast, is at least allowing Final Cut Studio owners to trade their PowerPC discs in for Intel copies at the mere cost of $50. While some are complaining about even that $50 charge, it's still a lot better than the price of a full upgrade or an entirely new copy.

My gripes aside however, what do you TUPW readers think? Is 2007 far too long to wait? Is Adobe milking their customers for every dime they can? Or is this just another growing pain due to a processor switch by Apple? Let's hear your thoughts.

If the ambiguity of running CS2 on an Intel-based Mac caused you to cancel or hold off ordering a new iMac or MacBook Pro, why not try winning one from Layers Magazine? They've launched a sweepstakes to win one of Apple's zippy "4x faster" Intel Dual Core-based MacBook Pro machines, which aren't even available until around mid-February. The machine up for grabs is on the higher-end of the two models available, with a 1.83 Intel Dual Core CPU with 2 MB of L2 cache, 1 GB (on a single stick) of 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, a 100 GB hard drive, slot-loading SuperDrive and a smoking ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256 MB video card - can anyone say: "burnin' down the house?".

The sweepstakes runs through 11:55 pm, February 28th, and is open to residents of the US and Canada who are 18 or older, and only one entry per person is allowed.

[via Photoshop Support blog]

During Steve Jobs' keynote at yesterday's Macworld 06 event, a new version of iPhoto was introduced that offers some more flexible and powerful editing options. While it obviously isn't anything that could threaten the core user base of Photoshop per se, these new tools and abilities look like they could be a handy Bridge-like addition to some editor's workflows, especially when you consider the OS X Tiger automation abilities of Automator (disclaimer: I've never used a copy of Elements so I don't know if a comparison can be made there). But some of these new (and not-quite-new) features are admittedly slick: full-screen editing, one-click effects, image tagging and even smart albums.

While I'm not trying to push for one product over another, it's simply nice to see new ideas and innovation from every corner of the court, enabling us to get our work done better and faster (just don't mention that "faster" bit to your boss).