If you're a graphics professional and a Mac user, chances are you've expended a lot of aggravation and tears during the long wait for a Mac OS X-native version of Photoshop. Statistically speaking, these days you probably spend 1.28 hours each and every day praying to the gods of Gaussian blurs, begging for divine intervention to give Adobe's developers a proverbial kick in the pants so you can finally upgrade to Apple's next-generation operating system and still get some work done. (By the way, if you're a graphics professional but not a Mac user, chances are you're not a very good one. May we suggest a daring career move into the fast-paced world of Fried Foods Preparation? It's a real growth market.)

Well, recent rumors hint that the wait is drawing to a close, and that Photoshop for Mac OS X may finally surface in January, which has some pixel-pushers doing Snoopy-style happy dances in anticipation. On the other hand, Adobe has officially classified those rumors as "completely inaccurate," so there's still a possibility that a Carbonized Photoshop won't see the light of day until, say, March of 2007. We don't mean to poke holes in anyone's inflated sense of optimism or anything, but given how long it's taken Adobe thus far, our brains just naturally and irrationally reject the possibility of the product shipping in as little as two months' time. Call it a mental defense mechanism to ward off potential disappointment.

So how can we get Adobe to ship Photoshop X? Funny you should ask. Faithful viewer CodeBitch took time out from her busy schedule over at MacEdition to inform us that the Naked Mole Rat has once again regained semi-consciousness. We can hear some of you wondering, "Gee, has it been six months already?" No, you didn't sleep through New Year's; it's still November, and the Rat is just being uncharacteristically lucid lately, what with two updates in a month and everything. Consider it an early Christmas gift.

Anyway, the Rat seems to feel that Adobe's recent financial woes have left the company akin to being covered in A-1 steak sauce and tossed into the desert with hungry buzzards flying overhead-- and one of those buzzards is Apple. Unlikely as it might seem, the Rat claims that Uncle Steve might be looking to swallow Adobe whole as a way to "shore up Apple's reputation as a mecca of desktop graphics and multimedia." Well, that's certainly one way to get Photoshop ported to Mac OS X. Er, on second thought, given the Carbonized Final Cut Pro's continued no-show status, maybe not...

And before you get all giddy about the prospect of Apple buying Adobe, there are a couple of other factors to consider. The first is that Adobe's current market cap is nearly twice as much as Apple's got in the bank, so we're not exactly sure where Steve would get the cash-- unless he's got $3.5 billion in change under the cushions in his couch. The second (and potentially more devastating) issue is that two other companies are rumored to be sniffing around Adobe as well-- Disney and Microsoft. Microsoft? Maybe it's just us, but the notion of the Redmond Homogenizer getting its mitts on Photoshop fills us with a level of dread we typically don't experience outside of a dentist's chair. Quick, more Novocaine!