Photoshop Project Manager Clarifies Position on Creative Suite 3 Compatibility With Snow Leopard

[bretm]

I wonder pending CS clarification would people wait on SL....my guess is not.

If you make a living with your computer, you do. And with the price of Apple, and it's lack of gaming cred, I figure that is a huge portion of Apple's user base.

Here's my thoughts. If an app was designed correctly as to Apple's standards and developer kit, etc. Then there is no reason it shouldn't work across an OS update or two. But if your app is utilizing non standard practice of some sort that utilize an undocumented detail in the system then you can't expect it to work as the OS upgrades.

There's no reason that I can see that SL should break any software. We'll see.

 

[AidenShaw]

.sig:

Think different? At this point I'd be happy if people would just think.

So sad, but so true.

All these "I haven't paid Adobe for an upgrade in three years, why doesn't my old Adobe software work on the Apple OS that's actually not even out yet?" whines are evidence of people who are trying to share a brain cell.

And failing....

 

[breeze]

This is ridiculous. Basically they are saying the +$1000 software package you bought from them only has a shelf life of less than 1 year (considering that they were still selling CS3 a year ago). Sadly there is no true competitor to photoshop so they can pull crap like this.

Yes it's even more ridiculous how this company that used to be a class act now has become the worst in the industry in the strong arming of it's captive client base into forced upgrades while not responding to any complaints, requests or feedback. Basically - They don't give a ****.

For Example:

They charge for every Tech support call if it's not within the 1st days of the $1000+ product and before you have this privilege of paying, they rout you through about 2 or 3 tech support bureaucrats in India...

When you do get the privilege of talking to an Adobe tech support person, they aren't knowledgeable to the extent they need to be for a paid call and are arrogant rude and obnoxious. Try escalating a matter or trying to make a complaint and healthcare HMO's seem like a breeze in comparison.

Many people were forced into CS4 just for the sole reason of that RAW photography is not supported in CS3 and hence CS3 was rendered useless ( EOL'd) if you needed RAW within about a year. Then they have the audacity of not providing RAW profiles for some of the most popular and widely acclaimed pro cameras in the industry, such as the Panasonic DMX-LX3.

Adobe for some years now has been giving less and taking more in general but even more so with the Mac community pros which are the ones that made Adobe the industry standard. We are always second to windows and with that market Adobe the whore goes there first. Without Apple there would hardly be an Adobe, Apple put Adobe on the map, but since they started coveting the Windows crowd they decided to join that whole mentality and started raping everyone they can and charging top dollar - Their users that is . For a company that markets the finest graphic design tools, their vanilla - packaging and bare bones manuals, are disgraceful and evidence of their detachment greed and lack of any connection or care.

We won't even get into how Flash screws Macs and Adobe doesn't know how to be compatible...

They are not a class act any more and may well end up on the short end of a class boycott or revolt one day if not a class action.

Here's urging all Adobe users everywhere: Boycott Adobe if you can and if you can't, be creative...

 

[Midlantica]

And what about Fireworks?

And what about Fireworks?

 

[akac]

It's hard to believe if the applications won't work on Snow Leopard if they are flawlessly works on Leopard. In plain english SL is just the improved version of Leopard. They just tweak some codes to perform better and faster and more reliable and secure. This is not a major revision of the OS basically it's
the same just improved.

You don't know much about SL then. SL is not just some tweaks. Your entire under-the hood has changed. Its not minor. They've kept the body and seats and upholstery the same and changed the entire drivetrain. GCD completely replaces the old way Leopard handled threading workloads. This is like changing the transmission on a car. Then many of the frameworks have had many more changes. All apps are 64-bit - that means they all had to go through up to 15 years of cruft, clean up all the old code. THis isn't easy as pie stuff.

They changed the entire under-the-hood on you and you don't notice. That's magic. True software magic. Of course there are things broken on SL, though not much.

 

[Digitalclips]

Who cares? If you're using CS3 for paying work and you can't afford CS4, why are you getting Snow Leopard? Don't break your workflow. That's "Pro Use 101."

I agree never change in mid job but a pro should keep up. If I am mid job I just work on a cloned drive made prior to updates for that job.

If your getting paid to work then CS4 and Snow Leopard seem a sensible way to go. As I say it's easy enough to keep a clone of the previous boot drive and data drives if needed (heck drives are ridiculously cheap now) should you hit a problem or are in mid stream in a particular job. I have several times done work for a client recently when so called professional print houses have returned it because they couldn't open CS4 documents, that's nuts. It's the same with FCPro. I simply don't understand people professing to be professional that don't keep up with hardware and software.

 

[tgildred]

It's not a worthwhile OS upgrade if it breaks your freaking workflow.

If an upgrade to your OS offers some arguably tangible benefits that would enhance your overall experience with your everyday working PC, you shouldn't have to feel shackled to a previous version just because Adobe can't feel bothered to test it out because it's been out an interminable two and a half years---at least to let their users know what to expect.

And this "When we say that we officially support a specific OS, you can trust that we've done very extensive testing on that platform. If we haven't done that level of testing, then we simply won't say that we support it. That's why the FAQ reads as it does" crap doesn't hold water with me. CS4 is seriously buggy on Vista--for me at least. Maybe it's Vista, maybe it's hardware, but in my gut, I doubt it. It really doesn't smack of an upgrade that I can "trust" has had such immaculately high standards of testing. I don't think they have much respect for the OS's they "officially support." (window UI change). Very little of what I've read and experienced about Adobe gives me reason to trust. And don't get me wrong, at the end of the day I love the software, and I use it everyday on a Mac and PC.

Sorry... felt like a rant. I feel better now.

 

[cult hero]

It's about the customers....

Wait... seriously? Have you ever actually heard of Adobe?

 

[nagromme]

"Unofficial" support is good enough for me.

Let's hope CS5 is good enough too C3 and 4 are not...

 

[Pooshka]

Whew! What about CS1? Will that work?

Lucky you! I'm still on CS 0.2.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

In response to:

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.

Who cares - the issue isn't just Photoshop CS2 but the whole Creative Suite which includes Indesign, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Flash etc. etc. Creative Suite is more than just Photoshop - wow weee, Photoshop works, but what about the other dozen other components of the Creative Suite?

A press release that tells end users nothing and makes management at Adobe think that they've lifted a finger - it still doesn't change the fact that Adobe has shafted their user base. Call me back when Adobe start supporting their product for 5 years like Microsoft does - then I might have some interest in what their PR propaganda generators have to say.

 

[*LTD*]

And what about Fireworks?

Cook her a meal, do the dishes, and tell her how great she is with the kids.

Boom. Fireworks.

 

[photimagine]

Unprofessional statements by Adobe

CS3-Snow and Mr Nack's (Adobe) inconsistent statements:

Incredible: Mr Nack (Adobe) says one thing 2 days ago and the contrary today. And he is working with Adobe not knowing that his team had tested CS3-Snow compatibility!!!!
Absolutely unbelievable!!! And totally unacceptable. This amateur, unprofessional procedure reminds me of the worst "services" provided in my country: France.
It confirms what I think about Adobe: fascinating and very useful products but commercial policy and habits below most existing firms in the developed world.

If really CS3 had not been compatible with Snow Leopard:
1° I would not have updated my 3 Macs from 10.5 to 10.6;
2° I would not have bought an Adobe product anymore.

At any rate I will postpone as long as possible buying anything new from Adobe. I don't want to encourage such a firm to pursue its amateur and arrogant marketing policy.

 

[compuwar]

one more point. adobe does in fact still support CS3. i still get updates pushed to it through their updater. so for them to blow off testing it on 10.6 is hypocritical to what theyve been doing for the last 2+ yrs that CS4 has been out anyway

Coding CS5, but Apple pulled the rug out from under them for the Leopard release, and Adobe probably feels that since they did budgets and taskings based upon CS5 having already been released (which would have put CS3 out of the two version thing they tend to do) that it's more pain that its worth to support CS3 on a short cycle given the resources that would go into it.

 

[John.B]

Nack has now posted an update after investigating the CS3 situation in which he reveals that Adobe and Apple actually did do extensive testing of at least Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard and found that it is in fact compatible with the new operating system.

Ya gotta hand it to Nack, the guy can sure stir up a sh*tstorm...

 

[charlituna]

Actually Adobe is very likely to fix serious problems with CS3/10.6 as are reported by users. This is much more cost effective for a old-generation release than providing the exhaustive, expensive, and time-consuming testing one would normally do for a current or new release.

I'm speaking from 30 years experience in software product management.

and that 30 years of experience takes into account that Adobe has gone public in saying that no they aren't going to go back and fix CS3 to work with SL cause they have CS4 which does work.

 

[mhnajjar]

This guy is trying to gain some publicity!

I contacted Adobe support yesterday around this time and I received an answer from them earlier today. They said only CS4 would be supported and that they would not even bother supporting the CS3 over the phone if I run it under SL!

Give me a break and do not give this guy any kind of publicity that he does NOT deserve. It seems that he spent five minutes of installing and trying PS under SL and then he reported that it works fine!

We should all stop paying loads of $$$ to Adobe until they show some respect and support to their products rather than considering the CS3 is very old to support. I held on buying CS4 till CS5 is out so it is Apple's + Adobe's fault to not cooperate to provide us with the support.

So far, I am not impressed with the release of SL at all knowing that major software like CS3 won't be supported.

 

[charlituna]

when you start needing to spend as much money on a singular piece of software than you did the computer it was put on,

given that you aren't sitting in front of my computer, you don't know what is on it.

as for the customer service comment, excuse me for not wanting a company to spend time and resources on an old version of the software that could be used on the new one. One that maybe I happened to be using.

 

[AidenShaw]

If really CS3 had not been compatible with Snow Leopard:
1° I would not have updated my 3 Macs from 10.5 to 10.6;

What does Adobe's stance on CS3 support have to do with your pirating of the Apple OS and upgrading your Macs with pirated copies of 10.6?

Or are you in ADC and upgrading your work systems with the preview?

Anyway, pros who actually make money from their machines don't upgrade on the day of release (or earlier).

 

[Scottsdale]

Any sorta "rumor" on how long before CS5 is released? I will wait until CS5 and supposed 64-bit code. I don't want to pay $400+ now, and then have CS5 come out in two months...

 

[psingh01]

No, it's not.

It's Adobe saying that we built this, and it works on Apple OS 10.x.

If Apple screws up Apple OS 10.x+1 and that breaks our software, then don't upgrade to 10.x+1!!

[shout]THIS IS APPLE'S FAULT, NOT ADOBE'S[/shout], why can't people see that if 10.5 apps don't run on 10.6 - then Apple screwed up with 10.6?

First of all Apple hasn't broken anything, it was just an example, but the point is ADOBE WON'T SUPPORT IT! You buy something and 1 year later it's basically an as is product. What if Adobe releases a patch to fix bugs on CS3 that happens to then break CS3 installs on 10.6? Adobe tell you too effing bad since we don't support that OS version. Them saying it seems to work now on 10.6 isn't good enough. Knowing their annoying updater program this is more likely how it will happen if it does.

 

[TitoC]

Given that CS3 is only a version old - and that CS4 is less than a year old... and given the price you charged for the CS3 suite... and given the length of time that SL has been in development - and given the availability of SL beta software...

COME ON ADOBE. Test it and let your customers know what to expect. Better yet, if you find issues, maybe go the extra mile and address them.

It's about the customers....

Exactly! I can understand if CS3 came out 4 or 5 years ago, but for a product that can cost over $1,000, it's just a simple task . . . TAKE CARE OF THE CUSTOMER!

It's not like they're selling a cheap $29 utility. Big price tags should come with something besides an SUA, an insufficient user's manual and poor help. They should come with something old school. Service.

P.S. Get rid of that crappy Adobe Updater.

 

[lamina]

I've been using PS CS3 with SL since the early betas. Adobe sure caused a pretty big fuss when commenting on this yesterday. It's not even an issue as far as I'm concerned.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Cook her a meal, do the dishes, and tell her how great she is with the kids.

Boom. Fireworks.

The Sims Reference?

 

[Macminiintel]

well I have the adobe design CS3 Suite never bothered upgrading to CS4, and I have snow leopard on my MacBook and everything just runs fine