Adobe CS3 ‘Not Tested’ on Snow Leopard; Many Industry Pros Could Halt Snow Leopard Upgrades
6:32 pm, August 26th, 2009, Craig Grannell
Adobe CS3 + Snow Leopard = many sad Mac users
UPDATE: Nack provides further insight, backtracks, stating “It turns out that the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, PS CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard.” Hmm. This flatly contradicts what I’ve heard from jobbing designers who’ve worked with CS3 on very late Snow Leopard builds. I guess we’ll discover the real truth over the coming week or so.
Adobe’s rolling out its Snow Leopard FAQ, and John Nack’s post offers a doozy:
Apple and Adobe have worked closely together (as always with new OS releases) to test compatibility. As for CS4, everything is good with the exception of auto-updates to Flash panels (which I guarantee you’re not using*) and Adobe Drive/Version Cue (which doesn’t work at the moment on 10.6). CS3 & earlier haven’t been tested. Please see the FAQ for additional info.
(My emphasis.)
Back in the day, I used to love Adobe software. Hell, I still want to love Adobe software and I use Photoshop almost every day, but the company’s making it real hard. It seems that CS has become more about sticking to turnaround schedules than innovation, and there’s a horrible tendency to use the next release to fix major problems, rather than fix them here and now.
From what I’ve heard, both on forums and directly from professionals running 10.6 betas, there are some major problems with CS3 and Snow Leopard, such that Apple’s update simply isn’t safe in Adobe-reliant mission-critical environments. This means a whole lot of industry professionals won’t be flinging 30 bucks in Apple’s direction and won’t be upgrading their Macs to the new OS. But surely this is only temporary? Presumably, Adobe won’t leave everyone high and dry?
Nack again:
No one said anything about CS3 being “not supported” on Snow Leopard. The plan, however, is not to take resources away from other efforts (e.g. porting Photoshop to Cocoa) in order to modify 2.5-year-old software in response to changes Apple makes in the OS foundation.
Nice. A 2.5-year-old piece of shareware being mothballed to concentrate on the current version, fine. But a hugely expensive suite that people use in a pro capacity, that cost hundreds (or thousands, depending on the option you picked) of bucks in the first place?
And you’ve got to love the dangled carrot—CS3 probably won’t be fixed, due to Photoshop being ported to Cocoa. (Out of curiosity, Adobe, are you going to get rid of your broken and proprietary windowing system, or will that stay in place?) I know the world’s finances are screwed, but surely looking after your existing customers is important? I guess it doesn’t matter if you have a near-monopoly on creative apps.
Gah.
Like I said, I used to love Adobe, and I really want that feeling of excitement and passion regarding its apps to return, but this kind of thing just pisses me right off. Nack’s comments come across like people are asking for something insanely stupid—support for antiquated wares. But it’s not like people are getting all angry because some ancient piece of software has been killed—they’re annoyed because a massively expensive suite that was still on sale recently and replaced well under a year ago is going to have major problems on Apple’s new system.
Is this entirely Adobe’s fault? No. (In fact, if Nack’s “in response to changes Apple makes in the OS foundation” comment is indicative of Adobe’s attitude in general, ‘not at all’ is presumably the company’s thinking.) But could Adobe be doing more to help this situation, other than telling us to stop whining, open our wallets once again, cause our credit cards to cry out in pain, and eat baked beans for the coming months? You tell me.
Posted by Craig Grannell in News, Opinions, Top stories | Comment on this article
So you forget about the Leopard fiasco and CS3, just upgrade to CS4 and get on with it.
http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf
Rob, on August 26th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I understand that there may be some bugs with CS3 and SL together. I understand they may not be the top priority of the company. But I find it insulting to the dollars I’ve spent with Adobe that they would say they “don’t know” how it will respond.
That’s B.S. Run the software through its paces for your millions of customers in this position and then give us a rundown of the potential problems so we can all decide our best course of action. How hard is that?
That’s basic customer service. I can’t afford to buy CS4 for four computers right now. The least they could do is tell me if I can upgrade my OS or not.
Jason in Nebraska, on August 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
So Adobe’s plan is quite transparently to get everyone to upgrade to CS4 now, and then again to CS5 when they rewrite everything in Cocoa. Nice. Thanks a lot guys.
Richard, on August 26th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I believe the answer is simply: “You need to amortize the cost of CS over a 2 year span.” Admittedly that makes the software a bit more pricey, but Adobe never said they were going to consider your costs when they do business.
OTOH, I suspect that this attitude on the part of Adobe is in large part why Apple has tried to put some distance between itself and Adobe.
Just my opinions – ss
skips, on August 26th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
If the appliction is mission critical, you would have to be a complete idiot to upgrade the OS without either a solid backup or testing it first.
For me I just need to know eye tv will work properly or my wife will kill me if I miss her recordings. That is mission critical to me
Don’t be an early adopter unless you can live with the chance of .0 bugs on the initial release.
John, on August 26th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
So maybe Adobe has legitimate reasons for “moving forward” rather than looking back. Well it may end up that a lot of long time users (literally) won’t buy into that future. I’m hoping the controversy heats up enough for them to at least try to minimize problems in CS3. But I really don’t have much confidence given their marketing/roadmap attitude.
And it seems to create more tension in the relationship with Apple. Hey users, “YOU choose old Adobe AND old Apple or the new versions”. It’s the arrogance of market dominance. Maybe it will help encourage more competition, like Aperture.
No matter what I will not be upgrading to CS4 & I get a full education discount…
cottonm, on August 26th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
It’s too bad Corel still seems to have its head stuck in an uncomfortable place. They’ve already blown at least 3 opportunities to make WordPerfect the de facto standard for the Mac platform, and now they’ll probably blow this chance at making Paint a serious alternative to Photoshop. One thing more frustrating than a company abusing a near monopoly is when that monopoly is perpetuated by rivals constantly screwing up.
imajoebob, on August 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
It’s Apple’s job to make Snow Leopard as compatible as possible to previous versions as possible. If CS3 would have problems under Windows 7, everybody would blame Microsoft. On the Mac? People blame Adobe.
It’s pretty silly anyway to update on day 1, regardless which OS it is. If you go to Nack’s blog, he says it has not been extensively tested under Snow Leo.
matt, on August 27th, 2009 at 1:12 am
We’ll be sticking with leopard and CS3. We do own CS4 but don’t run it as it junk. Far to many stability problems and when we contacted adobe support to find at least some solutions we were told this is our vista moment!
Its time adobe took a leaf out of apples book and stated the next version will have no new features but we are going to fix the software once and for all. In fact myself and a great deal of the design industry in London would be more than happy to see the feature count reduced. The suite is an ageing war horse that’s put on to much weight in resent years.
The fundamental issue is there is no competition for either photoshop or illustrator. Indesign still has Quark but that is becoming an endangered species. Unfortunately it’s hard to see where that competition will come from, unless a small group from adobe leave to set up a new company like the lightwave team that went off to set up luxology.
Mike, on August 27th, 2009 at 2:35 am
@John – I agree that people certainly shouldn’t upgrade on day one, but the problem here is that, in all likelihood, a sizeable portion of Apple’s pro users won’t be able to upgrade at all, due to CS3 having bugs.
@Matt – I’m not suggesting Apple is blameless in this, but Adobe’s posture sucks. As someone else here says, it’s pretty much ‘just upgrade’, and this is for a suite that was sold AS NEW last Autumn/Fall. I hope this is just bluster and that Adobe will in fact direct resources to CS3 if major problems become commonplace. It’s not like anyone’s crying out for CS5 yet anyway, after the disappointment that was CS4 (except, perhaps, the shareholders).
As for competition, it would be wonderful to see, if only to keep Adobe on its toes. Look at the turnaround in Quark with XPress after InDesign appeared. XPress is now really damn good. Ultimately, we need competition for Photoshop and Illustrator, but on the Mac there’s currently nothing at all at the pro-end for Photoshop and very little for Illustrator.
Craig Grannell, on August 27th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Sadly, Adobe – a company I used to love – has turned in the 21st Century version of Quark as it was back in the 90’s: arrogant; secure in the knowledge that it has an effective monopoly in pro publishing; and determined to squeeze its customers for every penny they have.
I only wish that it would learn the same lesson it actually taught Quark when it released InDesign. If you have a set of customers who hate you but have to buy your product because there’s no alternative, when a competitor finally arrives every will jump as fast as possible.
Ian Betteridge, on August 27th, 2009 at 5:14 am
@Ian – I agree 100%. Thing is, for Adobe to be taught a lesson, someone needs to come up with a viable alternative to Photoshop and perhaps also Illustrator that’s cross-platform. On the Mac, there’s just nothing out there. (There are some reasonable stabs at niche vector drawing, but in the bitmap space nothing comes close.)
Craig Grannell, on August 27th, 2009 at 5:20 am
As someone who’s actually worked A LOT on CS3 within the latter Snow Leopard builds, I can report that it works… sort of.
I haven’t had any major trouble with Photoshop and no trouble at all with Dreamweaver or Illustrator. But, oh boy, InDesign is another story. It runs – some times without a hitch for longer periods – then it crashes. Hard. Once it starts crashing it keeps doing it. I counted a grand total of 8 crashes within 15 minutes at one point.
So yes, if CS3 is your Adobe Suite of choice, you might wanna stick to Leopard for now.
Peter Too, on August 27th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
My attitude toward these stories about incompatibilities is generally “eh – an OLD version of software that’s already been superceded is not working with a NEW system that came out today? Big deal. Get current.”
In this case, I tend to be less dismissive because Adobe releases new versions with hardly compelling reasons to update, then charges exorbitant prices. A single CS upgrade can take up to 25% of my annual freelance income, and I don’t want to have to fork out that kind of cash every year.
Even Apple’s highly-priced Final Cut suite features more compelling feature upgrades than CS (which is not saying much) but can be upgraded cheaply.
I can’t find any real reason to upgrade to CS4, especially considering that I’ll likely have to wait until CS5 to get a 64-bit Photoshop.
Meanwhile, in theory, I haven’t had any trouble with CS3 under Snow Leopard for the last ::cough:: couple of weeks. Theoretically. And I use InDesign daily.
Gene, on August 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Oddly enough, reports suggest InDesign CS3 is one of the most problematic apps. Maybe you’ve been fortunate, Gene.
As for the old version, it’s not just the price for me—it’s the fact it was on sale as new under a year ago. I have no sympathy for CS2 users moaning (and they are out there), but CS3 is an entirely different matter.
Craig Grannell, on August 28th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Adobe is simply encouraging more and more people to steal their software. I use the Adobe Suite aggressively on a daily basis, but I simply cannot stomach the thought of paying $1500 every year or two for the new Adobe software.
Adobe: it is essential for your future as a company to bring your prices down to a realistic level, understanding that a large percentage of professional designers (myself included) don’t have the financial support of a big league marketing agency behind them. Your insane prices aren’t simply something I can get my company to pay for with a quick P.O. This comes out of my pocket, and I’d much rather pay my rent.
FlyCasual, on August 31st, 2009 at 10:34 am
I agree that Adobe has changed in many ways – and not all for the better. I also miss that sense of excitement and I too feel suspicious that Adobe is more about turnaround than true innovation. I didn’t upgrade from CS1 to CS2 because it wasn’t worthwhile. Adobe wanted to keep selling new product. When I bought my first Intel Mac, I pretty much had to upgrade to CS3.
But that had more to do with buying a new Mac than personal preference. Otherwise, I would have stuck with CS1 and ignored the comments of how “uncool” I was. The only real advantage to CS3 was Dreamweaver and Flash were part of the package – not really worth $600.
Now I run CS3 with Leopard on two Macs (Adobe won’t let me run on more than that) and no hassles. CS4 was released not long after I upgraded to CS3 and my immediate reaction was to wait for CS5. Now Apple has decided to release a new version of Leopard for a low price with lots of cool new features. But are they essential?
Adobe’s tone hasn’t been all that gracious, but CS3 did come before Snow Leopard. If Apple wanted professionals to buy Snow Leopard, they could make sure it runs CS3. Apple might be doing Adobe a favor by making people think they need CS4, but not if it comes across as “this $30 upgrade will do wonders … if you spend an additional $500 …. again”.
Heck Snow Leopard won’t even work on my G5 but why complain? We have to keep moving forward right?
Personally, if Snow Leopard doesn’t work with CS3, I’ll skip it and wait for Freezing Cold Ice Leopard and then maybe upgrade to CS5. If I buy CS4 now, it’s bound to be replaced within six months. I think any true professional would already know this. Why would a professional designer really care about a few new bells and whistles?
Apple is targeting consumers (and some developers) more than professionals with Snow Leopard. They’ve been doing that in general, as a means of survival, since the iPod was invented. They need to bring more consumer-level Windows users to the table. They won’t survive by catering to professionals only. It’s because of this that “older” software won’t always perform on newer systems.
Either way, Adobe should stop releasing overpriced upgrades every year with incremental improvements at best.
Kevin Cassidy, on September 1st, 2009 at 4:45 am
[...] as well as some Apple software (Keynote 2.0.2 and earlier and Aperture 2.1.1 and earlier). Also, Cult of Mac reports that Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 (CS3) might have some problems with Macs running Snow [...]
Bites from the Apple: Snow Leopard in the Wild « What I Would Buy, on September 1st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Small businesses, like myself, just can’t afford to keep buying new software. I love Adobe also but how can I keep up with the new iMac, CS4 and now ProLogic has been enhanced. Show me the money.
Cindy Hunt, on September 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
[...] you, it would prevent you from working? Think I’m kidding? Adobe CS3 application users have already expressed concerns, and you would think CS4 users are safer. Maybe [...]
Dr. Snow Leopard or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Upgrade | PShizzy: The Blog, on September 4th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
I’m having horrible problems with Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 with my recent SL upgrade. I’m not really a pro, just a business owner trying to manage my own website, and it’s a real disaster. It ruined the layout and look of my website. everything was fine before. Frustrating! Similar problems with my Quickbooks printing from Fusion installation of XP since SL upgrade. fixed that, but it took me two days! shame on me for upgrading so quickly. as an optimist, i always assume the latest and *great*est will solve my problems, not cause them. live and learn…
george
seabreezfarm.net (check out how dreamweaver screwed up my homepage now.)
GAP, on September 11th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Having had CS3 InDesign crash on me several times a day for the last couple of weeks since installing SL, as I get close to press day, can I dump SL and go back to Leopard again? (SL has also turned off Time Machine and the Xerox 8400 printer unexpectedly restarts itself?
Roger Ogle, on September 17th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
So I just bought my new iMac OSX 10.6.1 and I tried to install CS2…. It installed Rosetta but didn’t give me the activation number I needed at the end of the adobe installation process. Therefore I was unable to do the online installation and it directed me to call in. I called and the lady wasn’t able to help me. The lady told me to install incorrectly then directed me to the tech. support when it didn’t work. Tech support got really angry with me when I told them the version of OSX I was working with. I mean angry, he was yelling… CS2 HAS NOT BEEN TESTED WITH THAT OPERATING SYSTEM! So needless to say I’m upset and he wouldn’t even start to help me figure out how to UNinstall the programs. Sadness
ashleigh, on October 29th, 2009 at 4:07 pm