[easterisle]

Many people here are talking about how iOS works vs a desktop OS and that's the big difference - but its not about the SSD. If you have a high powered computer then its no problem to leave the adobe suite running and then just grab it from the task bar and get to work. The issue is that most people don't have high powered computers, at least powerful enough to run photoshop constantly while doing other things (HD videos, netflix, chrome+firefox, etc…. non work things). Adobe and other big software companies are going to continue to push the envelope no matter how fast our computers get in terms of resource use.

Has photoshop gotten faster in our lifetimes? No! It just wants more and more resources with every release. So what is the difference between how apps behave on iOS and how they behave on the desktop? Backgrounding. Very very few apps (ableton live is one that has some "freeze" type features) don't have any way for you to shut down portions of the app or put the app to sleep so that you can start it up quickly. On iOS this is how apps are expected to behave, and it shows.

But, even if Apple did bring backgrounding to the desktop, I imagine Adobe would be one of the last to support it - and I only say this because of my previous personal experience with Adobe products like Flex, LCCS, etc…

I just thank code I'm not a designer...

[jiggy2011]

I would say that overall modern versions of photoshop do feel faster than older ones.

Of course photoshop is intended for professional designers with reasonably high end computers, it was never intended for the use case of somebody using a netbook to touch up a few photos as there are other programs for that.

As technology has improved people will expect more from designers so they need more powerful tools optimised for working with large file sizes etc so Adobe are going to expend more effort maximising performance on higher end modern workstations then they are making sure it loads quickly on a five year old netbook.

Just because every teenager wants to use pirate CS4 to tack together a logo for their band does not mean that is what adobe should optimise for.