The way we see it, you can choose to interpret relations between Apple and Adobe in one of two ways. The first is that we're talking about two large and mature corporations who always behave rationally and in the best interests of their respective shareholders; in that scenario, Adobe's decision to skip the last Macworld Expo was purely a financial choice and its visible lack of Mac OS X-native applications is due entirely to porting difficulties and the need to allocate resources to more pressing projects. The other possibility is that Apple and Adobe are experiencing some sort of rift ranging anywhere from a mild chilliness to an outright feud, which is primarily responsible for the Expo snub and the sorry state of Carbonization in Adobe's product stable, but which is hidden from public view as much as possible. Gee, guess which scenario we prefer to believe?

We've heard lots of reasons why relations between the two companies might be strained right now, but the biggest may be Apple's plan to jump into the image-editing software business. Faithful viewer The M@d H@tter pointed out that Think Secret now claims that Apple's upcoming "iPhoto" application is the wedge currently driving the two companies apart. At first we figured that any consumer image-editing package that Apple might produce shouldn't put any strain on Adobe, since Photoshop is very much aimed at professional users.

There are two reasons, though, why the prospect of iPhoto may indeed be leaving a sour taste in Adobe's mouth: the first is that Adobe apparently does have a consumer-grade version of its imaging powerhouse, and we don't mean PhotoDeluxe; "Photoshop Elements" is apparently shipping now and costs $99. If Apple ships iPhoto for free on all Macs and makes it available for download à la iTunes, then Adobe may well suffer lost Mac sales of its product. The second possibility is that Apple may actually be considering a professional complement to iPhoto; after all, since iMovie has Final Cut Pro and iDVD has DVD Studio Pro, Apple may actually be considering going after Photoshop full-force with "Photo Studio Pro." Granted, such a move would be tantamount to suicide, but we are talking about Apple, here.

We're far more likely to believe that potential lost sales of Photoshop Elements is why Adobe is allegedly so bummed about iPhoto, and while we don't have any evidence that this is the case, it fits nicely with a lot of little facts that just never really sat quite right in our heads. For instance, is it really just a coincidence that when Adobe was highlighting its first three major Carbon applications a couple of weeks ago, Photoshop was nowhere to be seen-- when the company had demonstrated a quick-and-dirty Carbonized version of that application over three years ago? And given how obviously "iPhoto" fits into Apple's digital hub strategy, isn't it strange that iMovie debuted nearly two years ago, but we still don't have an Apple-branded image editor? It's almost as if Apple's been holding out on us because releasing such an animal might tick off an important industry partner, or something. Hmmm...

In any case, we're guessing we may know more by the end of next month. If the current projections are correct and new Mac OS X 10.1-loaded, LCD-sporting iMacs are due to surface at the upcoming Apple Expo, what better venue also to introduce a nifty new application called iPhoto? If that happens, and Adobe immediately updates its Mac OS X release scheduled listing Photoshop X for shipment in June of 2006, we'll know something was up.