Neil HughesJohn Nack, the principal product manager for Photoshop at Adobe, announced on his official blog that CS3 and earlier have not been tested on Snow Leopard. He provided a link to a compatibility document from Adobe that went even further.
"While older Adobe and Macromedia applications may install and run on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6), they were designed, tested and released to the public several years before this new operating system became available," the document states. "You may therefore experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues for which there is no resolution. Older versions of our creative software will not be updated to support Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6)."
General support for CS3 applications, the company notes, exists through Adobe's paid support program.
Adobe released Creative Suite 4 in 2008, effectively replacing CS3. Clearly this latest move is designed to encourage users to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe's software. The Mac upgrade retails for $699.99.
Nack said that there are a few minor problems with CS4 in Snow Leopard, though most of the suite works fine under Apple's new operating system. He said that problems remain in Flash panels and Adobe Drive/Version Cue.
The company's support document states it will support and upgrade CS4 within Snow Leopard. Currently, none of the applications in the CS4 suite require an upgrade to work within the new operating system, to be released Friday.
"Adobe will support Creative Suite 4 software running with Snow Leopard according to its standard customer support policies," Adobe said. "Older versions of Adobe Creative Suite software were not designed to run on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6), so you may experience issues installing and using the software for which there are no solutions."
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191 Comments
Considering how frequently Adobe refreshes their Creative Suite line (they're on an 18 month update cycle) and how much it costs for the upgrades, Adobe is doing their customers a great injustice by not supporting even one generation old software.
Sorry, but I don't have the kind of cash Adobe expects me to shell out for their products every time they want to go to the well for an upgrade. (Was CS4 that markedly different from CS3 that it deserved its own version?)
I use Adobe's products because there's very little else out there that competes with it, but my disappointment with Adobe as a company grows stronger with every announcement they make.
Ouch! The installed base of CS3 is HUGE.
That is a real jackass move by Adobe... I have CS4, but for people still running CS3, I can see why it is hard to justify an upgrade of a perfectly good program like CS3 - especially when it will cost a couple of thousand dollars. Then they wonder why people torrent pirated copies of their software.
Apple is also not faultless... users should expect a degree of legacy compatibility with a new OS and somewhat older version of software, especially something as fundamental as Creative Suite.
They shouldn't be surprised if people obtain illegal copies of their latest CS4. Somehow the "evil" factor is still very predominant with old companies. When does the greed end?
This is just pure greed. CS3 wasn't replaced until last year, that's a really short support timeframe for such expensive software.
Certainly I won't be buying any software from that company if I can help it.