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Yesterday, Adobe announced that they are updating most of their existing Android apps with Chromebooks in mind.
According to Adobe:
We’ve made some optimizations to these apps to take advantage of Chromebooks’ unique benefits, including: faster load time, optimizing the apps for Chromebook screen size, enabling the Escape key and the Back button, Chromebook camera support, and adding selected keyboard shortcuts.
We will be testing these apps over the next few weeks and will report back with how well they work on different Chromebooks, but that really isn’t the most exciting part here.
Why This Is Exciting
A company like Adobe holds certain keys, as it were. When people deride Chromebooks, the lack of Photoshop is a point often cited as a weak point for the platform.
While we aren’t fully sure what the changes and updates are behind the scenes, it is clear that Adobe is taking Chrome OS and Android seriously now. Updating their apps to take advantage of Chromebooks specifically points to the fact that Adobe sees promise and worth in creating a great suite of apps for Chromebooks.
Sure, for now it isn’t exactly full-blown Photoshop or Illustrator, but the fact that Adobe is taking this step and publicly announcing it is fantastic. Up until now, they’ve had little reason to make this move.
With Android on Chromebooks, they now have the needed delivery motivation and delivery method.
What becomes even more encouraging when you stop and think about it is the fact that, before they are fully available, we are seeing a major developer begin to take notice and make adjustments to their apps BECAUSE of the Playstore’s arrival.
We’ve talked ad nauseum about this being the tipping point to Chromebooks really exploding in the consumer market, and to see this shift already begin is beyond exciting.
As we said, we will spend some time with these apps and let you know how things work out on a few different Chromebooks in the coming weeks.
Until then, be excited that developers are taking note. Chromebooks are here to play ball!
