Adobe Premiere Rush is the dangling carrot that has been just out of reach for Chromebook users everywhere for well over a year at this point. To be fair, Adobe only previewed the cross-platform application when it debuted in June of 2018, but the path from that debut took nearly a year for Premeire Rush to actually land on devices. When it did arrive in May of 2019, again Chromebook users were told it was “coming soon” only to sit around and wait for months on end for Adobe to actually deliver on its promises.
Nearly six months since that actual product debut, we’ve heard next to nothing from Adobe on the Chromebook front, but if a thumbnail image in the Google Store is any indicator, we could be seeing Premiere Rush on Chromebooks in the very near future. Take a look at the listing for the Core i7 variant of the new Pixelbook Go below:
There is no doubt that the app being displayed on the Pixelbook Go on the right is Adobe Premiere Rush. Clearly, Google decided what image they wanted to accompany each different model in the Pixelbook Go lineup. All the other versions have screens displaying apps that already exist on Chromebooks and each one increases in complexity as the models go up in price. The entry level Core m3 model displays a generic website, the upgraded Core i5 model has YouTube TV, the Core i5 with 16GB of RAM displays G Suite apps, and the final i7 model is shown with Adobe Premiere Rush.
This choice in screens would make sense as Google is likely trying to convey the higher end models having more processing power for more intense tasks. The question is, why would they use Premiere Rush if they didn’t think this app was going to be a part of the Chromebook experience very soon?
In short, I don’t think they would. There are literally millions of apps and billions of websites they could have chosen for this photo, yet they chose to go with Adobe Premiere Rush. If I were betting on it, I’d say we’ll hear something about Rush landing on Chrome OS around October 28th when the Pixelbook Go is expected to start shipping out. I could see this being a Pixelbook Go exclusive for a month or so, but I hope that isn’t the case. There are countless Chromebooks up to the task of running this app, and I really think it has the ability to fundamentally change the audience Chromebooks can be geared towards.
Will Premiere Rush make Chromebooks the ultimate video editing machines? No way. But the addition of this capability on the type of scale promised by Adobe Premiere Rush is basically unheard of right now on Chromebooks. With a video editor that already has a massive user base and desktop versions in play, legit video editing on a Chromebook never looked so close.