And thus is fired another fateful volley in the Apple-Adobe Rift Wars (coming soon to a theater near you-- and enjoy an extreme Rift Wars Quesadilla at Taco Bell today!). Remember how Adobe recently announced a brand spankin' new version of its video editing application Premiere, jam-packed with kajillions of great new features? Then you probably also remember that there was one teensy little feature that it lost in the upgrade: Mac support. Yes, folks, Premiere Pro (as it's now apparently calling itself-- you know, kinda like when Peter Brady started calling himself "Scoop") is now "built for the exceptional performance of Microsoft® Windows® XP systems," because everyone knows that Macs are really underpowered and couldn't possibly handle stuff like video editing. Uh-huh.

Apple's response, of course, was basically an unqualified "so what?" After all, four out of five dentists recommend sugarless Final Cut Pro over Premiere for their patients who chew video, and given who makes it, Final Cut Pro isn't about to bail on our beloved platform anytime soon. Still, while Adobe has all sorts of perfectly benign and legitimate reasons why it made the formerly cross-platform Premiere into a Windows-only product (for example, the fact that Final Cut Pro reportedly smacks it twenty yards past silly), the fact is, the move can still be interpreted as a slight. Maybe a slight slight, but a slight nonetheless.

So what did Apple do in response? It invited everybody over to the Final Cut party, of course. Feast your eyes upon this here press release, which announces that orphaned Mac Premiere users can trade in their disks for a completely free copy of Final Cut Express; if they're serious pros and would rather have the whole enchilada, those Premiere disks are good for 50% off a new copy of the $999 Final Cut Pro. Sounds like a good deal to us, since we expect most Mac people who use Premiere are going to be much more willing to switch from Premiere to Final Cut Pro than to toss the Mac for a Wintel box. (Interestingly enough, the offer stands for Windows users, too; how many Windows Premiere users do you suppose will trade up to Final Cut Pro, given that they'll have to switch to a Mac to use it? Here's hoping the answer is "tons.")

If you want to take advantage of this great deal, you've got to move by September 20th; see Apple's offer page for details. Not a former Premiere user? Hey, don't worry-- Apple didn't forget about you. If all you need is Final Cut Express, now you can get a copy for a mere $99 (that's $200 off the already low low price) when you purchase it with any new Mac. Time to add one more thing to your list of rationalizations of why you reallyreallyreallyreally need a G5...