Current State of Adobe Suite of Apps on Chromebooks
Chromebooks have come a long way since their early inception. Announced during Google’s 2009 hardware event and publically released two years later after a few delays via the Samsung Series 5 and Google’s Cr-48
Chromebooks have slowly built up their reputation as a conveniently functional platform popular with students and they’re now vying for recognition from the wider populace of PC consumers.
It’s Google’s aim to put Chromebooks in the same footing as systems running Windows or Mac OS but due to practical limitations with the platform, legacy programs are unable to run natively (without some core code modification) within Chrome.
In Google’s quest to remedy such an issue did they pave the way for Android Apps on Chrome OS. But quite understandably, legacy programs like Photoshop and Lightroom don’t really feel the same/or represent the standard they are popular for on Android.
The trouble here is that the effort on Adobe’s side is minimal at best and even if they were able to prioritize their Android apps, there’s undoubtedly be a lot of groundwork they’d need to do. This is particularly true because full-fledged programs running on Windows or Mac OS are still too far ahead as they’ve been around a lot longer, they incorporate a lot of features as well as support for third-party plugins. Particularly more impressive is their plethora of features and the amount of heavy work they can handle.
Asides Adobe, Google has been working on ways to incorporate big-name programs like Snapchat – progress of which has basically been unremarkable. Despite finding common ground with some of these partners, others were never heard from again since the announcement was first made.
Adobe, on the other hand, created a portal for Chromebooks to gain access to some of its offerings through the Creative Cloud service. This method is expected to bring the full version of Adobe’s most powerful creative tools to Chrome OS via streaming.
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Adobe in its current form on the Play Store doesn’t completely disappoint but leaves a lot to be desired in the form of absent features and sophistication. The overall experience after spending several months with some of the Adobe Creative Suite of apps in Play Store is great but they are obviously inferior to the versions found on other platforms. I’ll be writing a review of each app later on the future and you can keep an eye out for those.
