During a March 22 conference call discussing Q1 2006 earnings, Adobe executives confirmed that there won't be Universal versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or GoLive until Creative Suite 3. (The suite is currently at version 2.) Company officials said they don't expect to release CS3 until spring 2007.

This is unwelcome news for creative professionals interested in Apple's new computers, which use Intel processors faster than those in previous Macs. Software that runs natively on those machines is termed Universal. If software can't run natively, it operates under the Rosetta translator. While CS2 apps do function this way, Adobe doesn't recommend that creative pros rely on Rosetta for high-volume production environments.

Bruce Chizen, Adobe's Chief Executive Officer, said, "We have heard from some of our larger customers that their transition to new CPUs that are MacTel based will be a similar transition that they experienced going from OS 9 to OS X. They will get there, but they won't get there on Mac for a while, and we think by the time they get there, we'll be ready with our Creative Suite 3 products."

You can see a transcript of the entire conference call on the Seeking Alpha Web site.