At last, we’ve reached the episode that fufills the prophecy begun when we chose to add two leading zeroes to the number of our first show, the now classic “Martini Hour 001, In Which Colleen Spills Her Drink.” Normal podcasts would probably be celebrating the big 100th episode, but since this is our penultimate episode, we’re feeling more sentimental than celebratory. Appropriately, our last guests, the Bette Midler and Robin Williams of Martini Hour, if you will, are our old friends Adobe’s John Nack and Bryan O’Neil Hughes. (You’ll have to decide which is Bette and which is Robin.) Having these guys in the lounge one more time provided an opportunity to reflect on their favorite moments and milestones in their experience of creating the mysterious, complicated, fabulous pixel manipulating juggernaut, Photoshop.

Here is the obligatory partially complete bulleted list of the sentimental and insightful (as well as the ridiculous) things that made up our last guest infused episode:

• We begin with Deke trying to extract salacious stories from the trenches of software publication about a particular feature they fought for (with the exception that John isn’t allowed to discuss configurator.)
• John tells a delightful story of Russell Brown offering a 2MP digital camera as a reward for getting a small navigational feature request in. Bribery, that’s how you create simple genius.
• Bryan regales us with the fact that although he and John can’t really take credit for creating things, they will put your best interest at heart when the genius engineer tries to name a wholly useful feature something completely unrecognizably obscure.
• John manages to tell a story that involves saying the words “Scott Kelby” and “Flash panels” (and tequila). Which means we all had to drink twice.
• Deke explains his very existence, and pushes a little harder to get the “good dirt.”
• Bryan tells the story of the Adjustment Panel, but still manages to say “configurator” so we all had to drink again.
• And no Martini Hour with John Nack would be complete without a slew of poignant cliches that actually point to a meaningful point. (We should drink to that!)
• Next we discuss the semantics of the use of the word “Smart” and “Quick” in features that may or may not be smarter or quicker than you expect.
• Want to know the extent to which developing something like Smart Object can make your head want to explode? John tempts you, and then points to this article for your further consideration of why creating something as obvious as dynamic filters isn’t as “easy” as it sounds. And if you think it sounds even remotely easy, please let me know what John was talking about there in the middle.
• Plus a consideration of how things we distractedly expect shortcuts, hand gestures, and help balloons to work in real life.

Please join us for this last visit and rousing conversation with two of our favorite visitors, won’t you? Just one heart-breakingly poignant show to go. Here’s the regular-quality audio file. You can stream, or for best results, right-click and choose Download or Save. Here’s the high-res version; you’ll want to download rather than stream. And don’t forget our usual plea to subscribe via iTunes.

Thanks, John and Bryan for all the good times (and for all you and your engineers do to make Photoshop the beloved beast that it is). Cheers!