You may remember that Adobe had promised a public beta of Flash CS5 for December 2009 but they changed their mind, leaving everyone to guess when the new suite will come out and what new features it will have.
After a long wait, hints are being dropped left and right for an imminent release of their next Creative Suite.
Just this morning, John Nack hinted that CS5 will be released within the next 30 days:
If you own a product from the first generation of the Creative Suite (e.g. Photoshop CS, released in 2003) and want to be able to upgrade it to a more recent version, now’s a good time to pull the trigger. Adobe introduced a “three versions back” policy a couple of years ago. That means that you can upgrade from CS, CS2, or CS3 to the current version (CS4). When the current version goes up by one, so will the cutoff for upgrades. Therefore if you’re holding onto a copy of CS and may want to upgrade it at some point, well, you shouldn’t wait too long.
The Wall Street Journal also writes, quoting Adobe CEO:
CS5 is slated for release in April, though Narayen wouldn’t comment on a release time frame at the conference. Narayen said Adobe will ship its new version of Flash around the same time as CS5, in the first half of this year. ‘Data points and reviews point to a really solid release’ of CS5, he said.
Moreover, another Adobe designer, Shawn Cheris, writes about the new CS5 icon design.
So what does all this means?
It means that Adobe is building up anticipation for the new suite. Start saving your hard-earned pennies – I know I will.
Usually Adobe makes an announcement a few weeks ahead of time to let everyone know when they will have Create Suite press launch, where they reveal the pricing structure, features and provide lots of demos. Then the actual product will ship a week or two after this big press launch. The whole thing from when they announce the press launch to actually shipping the product usually takes about a month. So if it’s an April launch we should hear something before the end of March. Otherwise it might push the release date into May.