It had to happen sooner or later. Whispers of an Apple-Adobe rift have been circulating for years now, and while lots of people think that the trouble only started once Apple started working on iPhoto (which allegedly was originally going to come in consumer and pro flavors, thereby competing with Photoshop), prickly feelings go back at least as far as Apple's release of Final Cut Pro. Apparently Adobe wasn't overly thrilled with Apple suddenly shipping a serious competitor to its own Premiere software.

Now, assuming that the first shoe dropped four years ago when Final Cut Pro first shipped, Shoe Number Two has finally hit the floor with a resounding thud: according to CNET, Adobe has just introduced Premiere Pro, and there's nary a Mac version in sight; it's Windows XP-only from here on in. According to Adobe's David Trescot, the company was "rewriting Premiere from scratch, and it would have taken a lot of work to have cross-platform support." And since the Mac already has Final Cut Pro, well, it wouldn't have made good business sense, in part because (and keep in mind that we can only judge by the majority of the mail we've gotten on the subject, because we're strictly iMovie-level video people) Final Cut Pro knocks Premiere flat on its kiester six ways from Sunday.

According to Apple, this is "old news" and Adobe "talked about this months ago," which is entirely possible, since we haven't exactly had our finger on the pulse of the industry for the last year or so. Still, given the company's history of providing Mac versions of its applications, Adobe's Windows-only Premiere came to us as at least a mild surprise, if not actually a shock. And while this could be in part a consequence of a long-standing rift between the two companies (which would be much more in line with AtAT's usual brand of melodrama), we can't help but think that Adobe's words ring true: "if Apple's in a software market, third-party vendors are going to skip it."

Hmmm, so let's see... Microsoft claims it dropped the Mac version of IE because of Safari, Adobe dropped Premiere because of Final Cut Pro. What's next? Here's a guess: Microsoft drops Office because it claims it just can't compete with the powerhouse known as AppleWorks. Yessirree, any day now...