

There’s little doubt Adobe’s creative apps team aspires to be in step with Apple’s hardware product plans.

But it may also have plans for its own fall announcement of new products for the creative markets, such as the heavily hyped M1X MacBook Pro, potentially with the same mini-LED display as found in the latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro. What’s also interesting about Adobe Max this year is the timing: Apple is likely to have introduced new iPhones by the time of the Adobe event. The free event will offer more than 400 sessions and more for creative users and is frequently used as a forum for news announcements from Adobe. The company has announced plans to hold its annual Adobe Max conference online this October. Your business's creative teams will also be interested to track news that emerges from Adobe later in fall. It seems likely just a matter of time before iPads also gain such features. The latest improvements give Macs a powerful Sky Replacement tool a transform warp tool equipped with independent Bezier handles and access to better feature tips tutorials and a new Photoshop beta for all Creative Suite users. Adobe also continues to develop new features that exploit Macs even while it continues to extend the available feature set on iPads. While feature compatible, Photoshop on iPad is not feature complete. The newly promised, but missing in beta, Universal Control feature will bring iPads and Macs even more closely together for creative and enterprise users once it arrives. M1 Macs deliver significant speed increases when running Photoshop, after all, so M1 iPads should also deliver what may feel like incredible performance when compared to traditional expectations of what a tablet can achieve. The decision to put the same M1 processors inside iPad Pros and Macs also shows this. You can use Fresco on the iPad to draw complete pictures and a new projection feature to share your canvas on a larger monitor.

The fact you can run powerful creative applications like Photoshop or Illustrator on Apple’s tablets should be seen as evidence of the journey so far. Apple’s resolute determination to create a new computing category remains undimmed. Think only of the huge investments made to develop processor technologies that work hand in glove with the operating system to enable iPads to engage in this heavy lifting. That’s an evolution that has not been without sweat in Cupertino.
