InDesign CS6 + native 64-bit

Question

Hi,
I hope you don´t mind my bad english ...
Does anybody know if InDesign CS6 will have native 64-bit-support? In CS5.5 there are only Photoshop, After Effects and I think another one with native 64-bit-support, but not InDesign. I have CS5 (Design Premium) and there is already a native 64-bit-version of Photoshop - and so Photoshop is rather fast on my 64-bit System (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit; 8GB SSD-3 RAM). But InDesign is rather slow.    So I hope a native 64-bit-version will be much faster.
Thanks and Greetings
Florian

Answer 1

Err.
But InDesign is rather slow.    So I hope a native 64-bit-version will be much faster.
I don't think there's good reason to believe that a 64-bit version of InDesign will actually be faster. In fact it might be slower.
64-bit programs can address much larger areas of memory. So if you work with really large files, that can be very helpful. But pointers are larger and take up more space. "I think it depends." See the two links at the end of this post for more detail.
I think you'd be better off figuring out what part of InDesign is slow for you and why, because it ought not be. Perhaps there are bugs to be discovered and filed. Or perhaps something else is deeply wrong. Perhaps the files you are working on are corrupt. In what way does the slowness manifest?
I don't think Peter is spot-on about forward-looking statement concerns.Software companies make statements about future roadmaps and plans all the time, and Adobe is no exception. Yes, there is the possibility for that interpretation, but I don't think there has been any case law of a company being pursued by the SEC for disclosing this kind of information (OK, now, prove me wrong!). We even have Adobe employees making statements like "fixed in next major release" about InDesign.I think really the reason behind the silence is less serious and more realistic: nobody wants to make predictions that are wrong and upset users, and the marketing people want to be able to disclose information in a controlled fashion, and they own that kind of disclosure.
64-bit isn't all ponies and kittens, either. Take a look at http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2011/03/getting-photoshop-cs5-to-64-bit-on-macintosh.htm l. Don't ignore the section about the extra beta testing required. If a 64-bit InDesign doesn't give me performance benefits, I think I'd rather have the limited Adobe engineers working on making InDesign work better and more reliably (and perhaps a few new features) than on make-work.
You may also find these posts about the lead-up to a 64-bit Photoshop to be useful context. They show you the weaknesses of the case for 64-bit Photoshop a few years ago (though it's gotten stronger). If there were holes in the case for Photoshop, an app that deals with really big files that are ever-growing, rest assured that the holes in InDesign's case are the kind you can drive a starship through.
http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/12/64_bitswhen.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lightroom_and_adobes_64-bit_road.html