So I downloaded beta 3 for Windows, and installed it on my work machine. In the readme I see:
Lightroom Windows beta 3 is feature compatible with Mac beta 3. However, there are some exceptions:
* No Web module
* No Identity Plates
* No Lights Out functionality
* No automatic detection of cameras and memory cards for import
* No Music for Slideshows
* Printing color management is not optimized yet. While your images will print reasonably well, the color may be off
* High ASCII and Double Byte support is not fully enabled
General
* Lightroom for Windows currently needs to be run from inside an English language environment.
* Thumbnail building uses all available processor capacity.
* Cannot shift-tab backwards through fields.
* Edit Capture Time does not display the date.
* Time on files created for Edit in Photoshop is off by 7 hours.
* Edit in Photoshop from Lightroom does not show an error dialog if a file cannot be opened. This is caused by having an older version of the Camera Raw plug-in (i.e. Version 3.0×113). Please visit the following link to update the Camera Raw plug-in: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
* If you have images in a read-only location, Lightroom will not inform you of a failure to write out sidecar files.
* Updating of the main window, especially when dragging another window on top of Lightroom, doesn’t happen immediately.
Import
* To Import PSD files you need to save the file in Photoshop with “Maximize Compatibility” turned on.
* Text is cut off on the Shoot popup menu.
* 8 bit TIFF files with JPEG compression may appear pixilated in Lightroom.
* “Progressive” format JPEG files have a black line along the bottom of image.
* TIFF files saved as “Packbits” are not supported in Lightroom.
* Some layered TIFF files with a top adjustment layer show incorrectly (gray stripes).
* CMYK files will not import into Lightroom at this time.
Export
* Using a very long filename (i.e., greater than 200 or so characters) in the Export Rename dialog may cause the “overwrite” dialog to come up
Library
* There are cases of excessive redrawing of the UI
* Images may not be in correct time-lapse order in Library.
Slideshow
* Exporting a Slideshow to PDF can take a long time, especially if more than 50 images are selected. Don’t attempt to use the exported PDF file until the Activity Window is empty. The progress bar on the task erroneously shows 100% complete, instead of progressing while the task is working.
* Printing using the Managed by Printer setting can produce incorrect colors at this time.
To me, that’s a lot of stuff. Even after the long delay between the Windows and Mac betas, seems like the windows side is still quite a bit behind. Makes you wonder if it’s because the OSX API’s are much nicer to work with compared to the Windows APIs.
Also, is Adobe inventing another cross platform toolkit for this? I mean it doesn’t look anything like their older programs, and the app looks almost identical across platforms.
Maybe as the Mac gets more momentum.. the leading edge Pro apps will really start coming out on the mac first? who knows. Just another thing to consider in my desktop purchasing considerations.