Adobe Systems chief executive Bruce Chizen gave Apple a strong vote of confidence this week, saying his company remained committed to a close relationship with the computer maker. Mr Chizen said some industry observers had interpreted the time it was taking Adobe to launch new versions of software compliant with the Mac OS X as a weakening in the alliance between the two companies. But he said Adobe was taking time to ensure only the best products reached store shelves. 'It took time and energy to make the change over to OS X,' he said. 'Over the past year people have questioned our commitment to Apple and OS X, but I think it is clear that Adobe is going to meet its commitment to port its applications over to the new OS.' Mr Chizen said with so many professional users of Adobe software working on Macs, it was essential that when the new software was issued, it was as bug-free and reliable as possible from the start. Apple, which attracts many of its customers from the publishing and design sectors, is clearly counting on Adobe to get OS X-compliant versions of widely used software such as Photoshop into stores as soon as possible. The new edition of Photoshop is expected in the second quarter. But with the vast majority of Adobe's publishing business depending on the Mac OS, Adobe had little choice. Among Apple's MacWorld announcements was the fact that the Unix-based OS X would now be installed by default on all new Macs. Those machines still running older versions of the operating system quickly would be phased out. During his keynote speech at MacWorld, which Apple says was viewed live over the Web by 160,000 people through streaming video, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs took a good-natured verbal jab at Adobe, musing about how he was waiting patiently for Photoshop to arrive. The comment drew cheering and applause from the audience. Mr Chizen later promised to personally deliver a new copy of Photoshop to Mr Jobs. Adobe executive vice-president Shantanu Narayen was one of several key Apple partners who joined Mr Jobs on stage during the MacWorld keynote. He gave a demonstration of how well the software company's products worked with OS X. Bryan Lamkin, senior vice-president for Adobe's graphics business unit, said although there had been a lag of several months between the release of OS X and the launch of compliant software, Adobe had beaten its major competitors to market. Mr Chizen said Adobe worked closely with companies such as Microsoft as well, but the relationship with Apple was particularly important. 'We tend to have a more co-operative relationship with Apple than we tend to with Microsoft,' he said, adding that he often spoke to Mr Jobs from home. Although there has been some grass-roots debate over the wisdom of moving to the new platform, Apple claims broad support among developers. The company estimates that there are now 2,500 native applications written for OS X. Illustrating this, several major developers and software vendors chose this week's event to demonstrate their support. These included Kodak, Sybase, Hewlett-Packard, Palm, Nikon and Corel. Mr Chizen also said the new flat-screen iMac would be a big hit with consumers.