It has been announced today that Adobe will no longer be supporting the aging Windows XP operating system after the company’s latest version of Photoshop – CS6.
Windows XP was released back in 2001 and is arguably the most popular Windows operating system to date. At one point it had a market share of 76.1% back in January 2007, and even today the operating system is still widely used on ultra-portable netbooks and also in various corporations around the world.
But even though it is still a popular choice amongst general users and big businesses, the Photoshop team has said in a blog post that it’s now time for the relationship to end.
In the blog post, the team says that all subsequent updates which apply specifically to Creative Cloud members will not support Windows XP. Adobe says that the move to stop supporting the OS was made in order for the company to further develop the CS suite and leverage advantages of the new Microsoft operating systems and also hardware to give better performance.
Even in Photoshop CS6, the program demonstrates that utilising a more modern OS along with graphics cards and relevant GPU drivers can give big improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and also Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP users.
Therefore, Adobe has said that by announcing the company’s intentions now, it will give end users enough time to make the required steps to update their systems in order to take full advantage of what future versions of Photoshop will have to offer.
Personally, I was a big fan of Windows XP and it definitely took time for me to take the jump and upgrade my system to a later operating system, so I can totally understand why this announcement today will be frustrating for some users – and also quite possibly for businesses too, seeing as it can be quite an expense upgrading computer systems; and let’s face it, Photoshop is not exactly cheap either. But on the other hand, why spend all that money on an advanced photo editing application if it’s going to be held back by a dated operating system?
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