Is Apple Working on rivals to Photoshop and Illustrator?

Mike Rankin

You’d think that Apple might have enough on their plate with the debuts of iPhone 5, iOS6, and the iPad mini this season. But there are also rumblings that somewhere deep in the bowels of the Cupertino campus, a rival to Adobe’s Creative Suite may be taking shape.
Over the summer, sites like Macworld and Patentlyapple reported that Apple was working on “something really great” for the professional market in 2013, and that in fact, they’d secured patents for an advanced graphics application that would work on both Macs and iPads.
The drawings that accompany the Patentlyapple article show a user interface with contextual tools, rather than traditional menus and a system for managing graphic objects in layers.

Of course, what will finally take shape is a matter of pure speculation at this point in time. Apple may just be working on a new consumer-level (or prosumer-level) app. Given that Apple has clearly favored consumers and not pros in their recent releases, the possibility that they’d want to dive in the deep end and take on Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign head on seems to run counter to a very successful recent business model. Still, the patents are Apple’s, as are additional patents on new user interface elements like radial menus. So it sure looks like they’re working on something in the direction of a pro-level graphics application. Whether it’s just a souped up version of iPhoto, or Apple’s answer to Photoshop remains to be seen. Stay tuned.