Adobe unveils Flex Builder 2 for Mac beta and Soundbooth beta

There are a few new things from Adobe Labs this week at the Adobe MAX show in Las Vegas. Yesterday they announced Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh which "allows developers to productively build and test Flex 2 applications on the Macintosh platform using either the PowerPC or Intel chip." I've never coded in Flex and honestly wouldn't even know it if I saw it, but if it's your area of expertise, this sounds like it might be a Good Thing™.

Today they are touting Soundbooth which is "a brand new application built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit that provides the tools video editors, designers, and others who do not specialize in audio need to accomplish their everyday work." Soundbooth is designed to compliment your existing workflows in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash and other creative tools. So far it sounds very Garageband-ish but I'm having trouble downloading it right now to check it out.

Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh will be available for purchase in early 2007 and Soundbooth is shotting for the middle of 2007.

Here's the catch with Soundbooth - it's Intel-only (Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later) and won't run on PowerPC. C'mon Adobe... why is this Universal Binary thing so hard for you? Also, Adobe says that "due to licensing restrictions the beta does not support all of the formats that the final release will, including MP3, MPEG-2, H.264, and FLV."

If you happen to be in Vegas today, stop by The Venetian Hotel to check these and other Adobe products out in person.