Photoshop CS4 will be 64-bit on Windows ONLY

John Siracusa writes: "Photoshop CS4 will not be 64-bit on the Mac, but will be 64-bit on Windows."

Apparently Apple decided not to continue development of a 64-bit portion of OS X (called Carbon) that Photoshop uses. So Adobe will have to develop 64-bit version in Cocoa, which is expected to take an extremely long time.

"The speed advantage of 64-bit code on Intel's x86_64 processors makes this wait particularly galling. The lack of a 64-bit Photoshop on the Mac doesn't just affect those who work with huge files. It represents a blanket 8-12% speed hit for Mac users when compared with Windows users running Photoshop on the same hardware."

How would your student media organization handle this? I think it makes a good case for virtualization, but a real-word test would determine if performance in a virtualized Windows is acceptable.