back to article Adobe releases lengthy list of Apple Lion woes

One day after Apple's Mac OS X Lion was released into the wild, Steve Jobs' bête noire, Adobe, has released an extensive list of wounds that the big cat has clawed into its products. The appropriately titled "Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion" is a 1,500-word litany of woe, listing Lion-caused problems in 19 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    And they come out with this only now?

    How long were beta versions of Lion Available for download?

    I'm sure that if they have tried hard enough Adobe could have sorted out at least some of the fixes by release date. As for the absence of Rosetta, when did Apple tell the world that it was going away?

    Pah.

    Adobe must still be miffed at Apple for not inclusing Flash in the fondleslab.

    Fail. Purely for Adobe.

    1. Oninoshiko
      FAIL

      re: when did Apple tell the world that it (rosetta) was going away?

      After CS4 was released.

      CS5 is the current version, which is supported. The fix is to upgrade to current. If CS4 users on OSX want to upgrade to "Lion" they need to upgrade to CS5. Win for Adobe.

      If Apple didn't want to break software, I'm sure they had plenty of time to continue support for Rosetta.

      Fail. Purely for Apple.

      1. Ian McNee
        FAIL

        Or a big fat fail for BOTH Apple & Adobe...

        Both have been arrogant and treated their users as if they are cannon fodder with which to fight their pathetic corporate squabbles.

        Adobe expected its various semi-monopoly apps like Flash and Photoshop to last forever regardless of their willingness to ditch/piss off chunks of their user base on a whim. Likewise Apple will brook no criticism, however constructive, of its products' failings or its arbitrary attitude towards other vendors that its user base find valuable.

        A plague on both their houses.

        1. Lexicon

          Maybe different plagues???

          Quote "Likewise Apple will brook no criticism, however constructive, of its products' failings or its arbitrary attitude towards other vendors that its user base find valuable."

          I think you will find that a vast chunk of Lion new features came from constructive criticism of Snow Leopard, and forum posts from Mac users.

          So I would put apple slightly ahead of Adobe - and no I haven't noticed the absence of flash on my phone either.

        2. Gil Grissum
          Thumb Down

          Works in Windows

          While Apple and Adobe bitch slap each other, my Windows versions of Adobe products work just fine without any problems. Have fun with that bitch fest, Adobe and Apple. The little nitch market you're fighting over really isn't worth it.

          1. asdf
            Thumb Down

            umm is that you Steve Ballmer?

            Yeah I guess the PC market being down year over year and 40+ million IPad and however million Iphones are a niche market. I think Apple's market cap is already greater than Microsofts and unlike M$, Apple is growing, not shrinking along with a much better profit margin. That said Steve Jobs is still a douche.

            1. DavCrav

              Still a bit of a niche market

              "I think Apple's market cap is already greater than Microsoft[']s and unlike M$, Apple is growing, not shrinking along with a much better profit margin."

              While this may be true, Microsoft make an OS, Apple make the software, hardware, the dominant music player, the iPad, and the iPhone. So comparing Apple's and Microsoft's market capitalization is like comparing, well, Apples and oranges.

              If you want to compare the size of markets, compare Apple with Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP, RIM, HTC, etc., combined.

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      I'm in the "fail Adobe" camp..

      .. but mainly because the installation of Adobe products on my Mac immediately returned the Windows problem of at-least-one-patch-a-day-because-we-can't -be-arsed-to-write-decent-software. Normally, weekly updating on a Mac is more than enough, but Adobe couldn't possible integrate with Apple's updater, so instead they have this uncontrollable* process that checks without even asking. All you need is Adobe Reader or Adobe Air and the problem starts.

      (*) that is, until I revoked its network access through a HandsOff security rule - silence returned. Must ask them if there is a way I set up a timed rule..

  2. j2-core

    Wouldn't it be nice

    Wouldn't it be nice if Apple would play nice with Adobe and find a fix for these problems. I have been dealing with them since Leopard. Apple has not supported the mac as a work horse since the iPod. They are just interested in their iGimmicks not their customers. I guess only Apple products can run on macs, too bad most of them are children's toys.

    1. LaeMing

      Look at it from Apple's side

      You have a moderate-run product with moderate mark-ups, or a big-run product with huge mark-ups. Where do you put most of your development effort? The users of the iGimmicks /are/ their big customers now.

    2. jubtastic1
      WTF?

      Re: Wouldn't it be nice

      If Adobe used standard OS windows and controls etc like *every* single other mac app on the platform so these problems, which are so common there's a website dedicated to pointing them out, didn't occur in the first place.

      Fixing this is non trivial, seeing as it involves rebuilding the entire UI of the CS Suite, but then rolling their own UI was Adobe's choice, as was sitting on a Carbon codebase for a decade after it was depreciated. Numpties.

      To the point, wouldn't it be nice if Adobe hired some engineers that can code worth a damn.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @shit adobe

        EXACTLY. Completely agree.

        Adobe software has never supported the standard Apple install process either.

        ie drop into Applications. They have always hidden away all sorts of crap all over the place.

        If you have any trouble with an install - then you're shit out of luck trying to find every last little piece before you can try to install from scratch. Especially since the uninstall option *doesn't*.

        Fecking stupid Adobe. They have had plenty of time to make their software play ball.

        1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

          Agree about Adobe

          I'm a recent convert to Mac, and mainly because of how badly Adobe plays on Windows (believe me; it's orders of magnitude worse than on OSX). Apart from learning how OSX is different to windows, I also have to learn how Adobe is different to OSX (and it's also different to how different it is in windows)

        2. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

          Short memory...

          Photoshop is a large codebase and is considerably older than MacOS X. The current version works, and software that works is not usually changed just to conform with "the new cool". Indie developers do this because it's fun, and it's their own company; but in a large organisation, answerable to shareholders, that kind of activity looks suspiciously like wasted R&D spending. As a developer, I often find this infuriating, but that's the way business works, and overall it's the right thing - users install once, but they use the software every day; better to spend the money on the "every day" bit.

          As for not playing ball with standards, earlier versions of Photoshop heavily used Apple's MacApp C++ development framework to implement its UI. Naturally, Apple dumped MacApp in the Copland fallout of the late 1990s, leaving several customers in the lurch - Adobe included. Not for the first time, Adobe had been slapped by Apple despite providing one of the two reasons there was still a Mac market (the other was Quark XPress). Personally, I can understand their reluctance to jump onto another Apple-only technology. Far better to port to Windows, which is what they did.

          Photoshop was, and is, a C/C++ application, running (via Adobe's private UI framework) on the MacOS HI Toolbox. When OS X came along, it introduced a completely incompatible UI toolbox, based on NeXTStep; this is Cocoa. But this was not only a new framework, it also needed you to write in a new language: Objective-C - a much larger investment in training.

          When OS X arrived, in order to allow big-name applications (like Quark, MS Office, Filemaker, and ... Photoshop) to work, Apple preserved the old MacOS Toolbox, both as the "Classic" virtual machine, and as the "Carbon" API in OS X userland. Classic was dumped once everyone got their code running under OSX, but Carbon is still with us. However, it has always been the neglected child in the often-neglected family that is OS X, and as new OS X features became available, they were added to Cocoa first, or eventually to Cocoa only.

          Photoshop is sold on Windows too, so rewriting every bit of UI code in Objective-C++ (yes, there is such a thing) is not an option for the core product, and it doesn't make financial sense for the (lower selling) Mac version either, until it becomes a matter of losing sales if you don't do it. And until now, the use of Carbon or Cocoa code would go unnoticed by the user, except for that slightly "safety-scissors" feel to Cocoa apps (I can't describe it better, but long-time Mac users will know what I mean).

          Give Apple credit - they've managed to move their OS across three processor architectures (680x0, PowerPC, now Intel) and two kernels (OS8/NuKernel and BSD/Unix) without breaking API compatibility. But maintaining a legacy codebase forever and ever while it provides less and less of the core OS's functions makes no sense either. Test cycles are long enough as it is. As fewer applications use Carbon, it will get less and less test coverage. Sometimes stuff breaks, or sometimes it's removed completely (Rosetta).

          Carbon is still in Lion, but the long-held consensus among developers is that its days are numbered. The inevitable fusing of the iOS Cocoa Touch and OSX Cocoa frameworks, both of which use Objective-C, makes its death a matter of "when", not "if"

          1. Zot
            WTF?

            Carbon is not available in 64 bit programs at all.

            ...so if you want your users to access a 64 bit address space, you'll have to ditch Carbon completely.

            And, if for example you want to run Apple's Logic music workstation in 64 bits, you'll not have access to the huge library of plug-ins you've collected over the years, because Apple have decided to drop the 32 bit bridge from Lion.

            I think they've taken this ditching backward compatibility thing a little too far this time, that's all.

            But then they never really cared for any software that wasn't written by themselves.

        3. Jolyon

          Adobe is key for Apple

          Or used to be at any rate.

          If Adobe doesn't put the effort in to meet Apple's standards then it is in Apple's interests to smooth things over as far as possible - or could Apple now afford for users of Adobe's products to change their opinion on the most suitable platform for their use?

          It's not exactly fair on Apple but short of providing a superior alternative themselves this is what they have to deal with.

  3. Ilsa Loving
    FAIL

    Laughable

    I would love to know Adobe's excuse for not having identified and fixed all these problems long in advance of Lion's release. It's not as if Adobe couldn't have gotten a pre-release version to test against. For things like Photoshop, I can understand the testing difficulty of re-testing such a monolithic application, but the flash browser runtime? C'mon...

    For the amount of money that they charge for their products, their level of support is embarrassing. The fact that they are still using PPC-only code in something as recent as CS5 is flat out incompetence.

    1. Archivist

      It's obvious

      They want to make it as painful as possible for Apple users. It's the twist of the knife after the Flash affair...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Boohoo

    Oh, boohoo, this article should be called: "Adobe lengthly list of future woes". This is the very reason why Apple chose to introduce the App Store, so companies like Adobe would get with the program instead of dragging their heals for decades. I mean, come on, droplets are still written in Carbon? In 2011? Maybe you guys should spend a little less time in trying to get Flash to work on mobile (it'lll never happen), and focus more on producing something state of the art rather than carrying over your old code base for as long as you can get away with it. I say, let them rot in 32 bit hell for all I care, Pixelmator does all I need of a DP program, and it's much cheaper.

    1. bazza Silver badge

      @Buck Futter: Point missed

      Looks like Adobe have done some pretty comprehensive regression testing on their major applications going back years and have produced an honest report on how well they work on Apple's latest and greatest. That's the kind of thing that you'd expect a company with a good long term view of customer support to do; look after users of older products long after those products were superceded.

      Whereas Apple seem to do very little regression testing, indeed they seem to actively trash older stuff. It's a reasonable commercial strategy - it forces committed customers to spend to upgrade. And I can understand why Apple might think that the purity of the OS's design shouldn't be polluted by crufty code from the past; it should be clean, perfectly formed and 'Apple' in every way...

      However, that doesn't do actual users (both developers and end users) any favours at all. It won't be just Adobe users who'll be stung by this; other older applications using deprecated APIs will presumably broken too. It doesnt convey a message from Apple of long term stability, which is something that is actually quite important to a lot of people.

      Perhaps that's why boring old Microsoft have done quite well. I can still run a quite useful CASE tool from 1993 on a modern Win7 machine without any difficulty.

      Apple can't afford to piss off the developer community too much. Where would Mac be without Office, Adobe, and a few other key apps? Pretty much no where. Apple can't do these things on their own, they have to support the developer community in doing it for them to keep the Mac platform attractive.Shiny boxes that don't actually do anything are no use to man nor shareholder.

      1. John Bailey
        Thumb Up

        Sensible, rational, you must be new here..

        You misunderstand the tone of the preceding comments. You are supposed to hate Adobe, because they said non enthusiastic things about the precious.

        It is apparently everybody's job to accommodate Apple, not the other way round. You are supposed to sit in front of a Mac, look at the OS, and with a single tear rolling from your left eye, whisper "beautiful"... Before turning it off so you can get on with some work.

        Obviously it is far better to handle things like Apple did with that video editor update a few weeks ago, that removed major functionality for the parishioner's own good, and meant that that they had to either downgrade, or redo lots of work.. I mean, who doesn't like surprises.

        Seriously though..

        Adobe's actions are SOP... New update to OS, publish a list of problems and fixes where possible. Nothing new, nothing unique to shinyland. Honestly, why is it even news? Every responsible vendor takes measures to accommodate a major OS update, and they do tend to cause problems. Windows service packs even merit advisory notes sometimes.

        Update where possible, advise newer versions where needed, and publish a list of potential problems, so two days before a deadline, when some designer is pouting because his Mac is not running the very latest bestest shiny from the one true OS.. The IT department can grab him by the scruff of the neck, and get him to read out loud, the reasons why the software he needs to do his job will not work if he does the upgrade. And re read it until he stops demanding that he have the most up to date iCrap possible.

        Personally, I don't see why Adobe bother. An option to switch licenses for free, an announcement of pulling out of Apple's playground, and job done. It's not as if there are any credible competitors to Photoshop.. And somehow, I get the feeling OSX's days are numbered. Two platforms, I'm sure is a world of hurt.

        1. SharkNose

          Two platforms?

          >I get the feeling OSX's days are numbered. Two platforms, I'm sure is a world of hurt.

          Really? I thought iOS was derived from OS/X anyway. Surely it's just a matter of convergence, and that seems to be a big theme of Lion anyway, making it look and feel more like iOS...

      2. trstooge

        The key app is the browser

        "Where would Mac be without Office, Adobe, and a few other key apps?" you ask? Well, I happen to own two Macs and have none of these "key apps".

        Maybe that Apple would be exactly where all those iPhone / iPad / Android / and Internet users are?

        *The* key app on my Macs is the browser. My document editing suite is Google Apps: I can edit and share my documents and spreadsheets between Windows, OS X and Linux as long as I've got a browser.

        To keep on with your example, should Apple and Google have decided that old MS-DOS application from 1993 had been crucial we'd never have got the iPhone / iPad / Android devices.

        I, for one, much prefer Apple's approach than MS's approach.

        If Adobe doesn't like the userbase that Apple is providing them, they can focus on Windows-only but don't get mistaken: there are a *lot* of app developers willing to fill the Photoshop gap.

        1. bazza Silver badge

          @trstooge, Good for you

          "*The* key app on my Macs is the browser."

          Is there an app for that? ;-) I hope your internet connection stays up. Also, if the only application you use is the browser, why have a Mac at all? Sounds like all that expensive OS-X shininess is being hidden by crappy Javascript apps...

          Fair play to you though, if it's working for you that's great. But not everyone can work (or even play) just in a browser. Personally speaking I would not like to depend on the reliability of an ISP or Google or any other online app provider in order to carry out my profession.

          It's actually an old Windows application that I use (called Select Yourdon), not an MS-DOS programme. Though there is an old Burr-Brown filter design DOS programme that's occassionally useful to dig out and run now and then. For some of us there really are old applications that are necessary. It's nice not to have to keep antique hardware going just because it's the only thing that runs a vital and irreplaceable antique application.

          Adobe are merely pointing out that old programmes that were written around APIs that were current at the time are now broken. This is because those APIs are now missing from the new OS X. I was merely pointing out that MS seems to have a better track record when it comes to keeping old APIs available. If long term stability is important, then perhaps MS are a better bet.

        2. teknopaul

          iPad?

          if the only app you use is a browser why not just use an iPad, do you need flash? or perhaps you occasionally need to use more than one finger?

    2. Greg J Preece

      You've got an iPhone, haven't you?

      "trying to get Flash to work on mobile (it'lll never happen)"

      Been using it on mobile for years. Where the feck have you been?

      Oh, right...on iOS...

  5. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Pint

    Can only speak for CS5

    Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Bridge have caused no problems for me over the last couple of weeks, been slightly better behaved than normal. I use CS5 with a couple of Nik software plugins, they have been quite unsteady at times but after quite a number of hours of photo editing, had no issues at all with Adobe kit.

    The biggest pain I've had with Lion has been Preview, the Apple document viewer, it crashes faster than a Windows 98 box trying to connect to the internet! It used to be rock solid but under Lion is absolutely diabolical now.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Who cares?

    It's Adobe. Avoid their products like the plague.

    1. Daniel 1
      Joke

      Absolutely

      Why support Apple users, in the middle of a recession? I mean, it's like - they're always saying Apple users have "more money than sense", right? Who wants to sell stuff to rich people, who never question their purchasing habits?

      "Hey! Hey! Mr Person-With-No-Money-At-All-But-Lots-Of-sense... Can I interest you in Dreamweaver? It's like proper coding - only with crayons... What? Of course it isn't available on 'apt-get'! What is that? Is that like 'Freecycle', or something?"

  7. VeganVegan

    Plain lazy

    (or maybe incompetent?)

    Took them too many years just to get their products adapted to OSX.

    To make money on any platform, do the work. Everybody else does.

    Whining about OS changes, be it Win 7 or OS X doesn't win any friends.

    1. ThomH

      InDesign being the exception to the rule?

      The reason InDesign took so much market share from Quark Express, even before the Creative Suite, was that it worked on OS X a lot earlier. It's a shame Adobe didn't seem to learn very much from that early embrace of a new technology.

  8. Michael Shelby

    The Raymond Chen vs. Jonathan Ive Scenario

    The classic OS upgrade philosophical battle... Would you rather have an OS with shiny new features that broke all your old apps? Or would you rather have all your old apps work forever at the cost of a bloated OS full of compatibility hacks?

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Chen versus Ive

      It's not a philosophical battle. It's an economic one. It is, however, "classic" since the results have been in for some decades now.

      The prime exponent of what you call the Raymond Chen approach is in fact IBM's mainframe division, which will still happily load object code (source lost several decades ago) from the 1960s (when addressing was 24-bit) into processes running on their z-Series.

      Between them, IBM and Microsoft have proven beyond reasonable doubt that you make more money by selling upgrades that don't break the customer's existing application base. The reason is perfectly simple. Nearly everyone has spent more on their apps than on their OS and hardware combined.

      To take an earlier commenter's example: if I'd spent good money on CS4, I'd be a bit miffed to discover that I lose functionality when I upgrade the OS. I may not know who to blame, but I'd be miffed.

  9. Mage Silver badge
    Coat

    Simple

    use a PC with XP

    no big deal

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      RE: simple

      or better yet, run XP on that iMac :-)

    2. LaeMing
      Unhappy

      Um :-)

      CS5 requires a 64-bit OS (XP-64 is as flakey as a certain yellow-wrappered chocolate bar).

      I know your comment was in jest (and it made me snigger). I am just bitter at having to manage two labs of PCs running ancient Adobe software until the IT department convinces itself Win7 is not going to go all Vista on them.

      1. Greg J Preece

        No it's not

        "(XP-64 is as flakey as a certain yellow-wrappered chocolate bar)."

        Can't agree. I ran XP x64 for years until Windows 7 came out on my desktop at home. I don't think it ever crashed, not once.

      2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: LaeMing

        "CS5 requires a 64-bit OS (XP-64 is as flakey as a certain yellow-wrappered chocolate bar)."

        ...what?

    3. Maliciously Crafted Packet
      Gimp

      Adobe are Microsoft's Bitch

      They have been trying to kill the Mac since Windows 95.

      The Only reason for continued Mac development was down to the refusal of graphic designers to use the horrendous Windows OS and to keep more nimble and innovative software houses filling any vacuum that a Windows only strategy would create.

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. LaeMing
      Boffin

      Yes and no

      Yes, it is an emulation layer.

      No, Apple gave lots and lots of warning it was depreciated.

    2. Ivan Headache

      How did it work before Lion?

      You didn't read the article did you? It says in black and white that Rosetta (a very clever on-the-fly PPC to Intel code translation app) is no-longer supported in Lion.

      In fact this lack of Rosetta is the one reason I will not be updating my work systems to Lion.

    3. Gritzwally Philbin

      Rosetta..

      PPC code ran on Intel CPU's with a translation framework called 'Rosetta', now gone in Lion - and probably the reason why I won't budge from Snow Leopard - that is, until some bright mind figures out a hack to get it working again.

      1. Volker Hett

        Rosetta..

        Or one day you won't need PPC translation anymore.

        The last PPC application I had was the Rosetta (sic) Stone portuguese course.

    4. Hugh McIntyre

      Re: Sad Sad Sad

      Droplets are apparently a form of automation script that end users can create and save on disk. They are called Droplets because, once created, you drag file(s)/image(s) onto the droplet at which point the actions are applied to the image.

      The Droplet files on disk apparently contain machine code, so Windows Droplets don't work on MacOS and vice versa. It also means various end users may have their own PPC Droplets on disk from earlier versions of Photoshop which Adobe has no control over. All the release note says is that you use the same mechanism as you would have used to convert a Windows Droplet to MacOS to convert PowerPC to x86, assuming you're running >=CS5.

      It's true that older versions are out of luck, but this is not totally unusual.

  11. Stupidscript

    Times Are A-Changin'

    I can remember when the only reason to use a Mac was because of Adobe products that were optimized for its architecture. Graphics and other display production professionals proved repeatedly that working Adobe programs was much smoother and faster on Macs.

    These days, Apple and Adobe aren't even speaking to each other. Do they not recognize what once made them special?

    Without a special relationship with Apple, Adobe products are ... meh ... one can get virtually all of their functionality for less cost (even free), and their performance is average on any system. The alternatives' performance on the same machines is typically stellar.

    Without a special relationship with Adobe, Apple computer products are ... meh ... shiny and expensive, sure, but if one wishes to find better, more capable systems, they are easy to locate and typically orders of magnitude less expensive. (Of course, brain-deads need not apply ... sorry, but you're stuck with what Brother Jobs and Preacher Ballmer allocate to you. We welcome you, when you decide to take your fate into your own hands!)

    It's sad when once-friendly entities get too big for their britches, and start slashing at each others' throats.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      RE: Times Are A-Changin'

      If Apple looses adobe as a (their last) prime reason to buy (any) Apple computers then this will be the end of OSX as a computing platform. I predict that over time Apple will degrade into a manufacturor of shiny MP3-players and phone-toys for the rich kitch (no pun intended).

      In fact I predict ALL big names to dissapear within the next decade, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.

      All eaten up by each other and the last one died of starvation (read: lack of companies to sue).

      Watch my words.

      1. mrh2

        really?

        I suspect the number of people who use Adobe design software on their macs is dwarfed by the number who don't.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        RE: RE: Times Are A-Changin'

        1997 called, they want their meme back.

  12. Peter Kay

    No sympathy

    One day companies will actually test whilst the operating system or service pack is in beta, instead of sticking their head in the sand and waiting till release. Some companies manage, but far too few frankly..

    The only sympathy I'd have is when there's a sizable change between the last release and GA, although the one notable instance I can remember of that happening (Enforcing per thread initialisation between OS/2 Warp 4 Gamma to GA) was something developers should have been doing as per the years old clearly indicated documentation..

  13. ThomH

    Adobe are so infuriating

    They've gone the same route as Opera and a hundred other under-staffed open source projects previously; their version of supporting OS X is not to use the normal system APIs to achieve normal system integration, but to attempt to mimic it by other means. Adobe's mimicry is a lot better than most, but suffers the same problems: it's built on a series of empirical observations and assumptions, and is prone to sticking out like a sore thumb as soon as extra or changed built-in functionality is provided by the OS.

    In the case of Opera/etc you usually end up at the conclusion that the software producer doesn't really care but with Adobe I tend to get the impression that they spend most of their days layering hack upon hack upon hack to try to keep a twenty-year-old code base from falling apart. That may well be the most profitable thing to do, but it's not exactly surprising that they seem to stumble from technical issue to technical issue.

    1. J 3
      Trollface

      Oh, well

      I don't think they will care, until their "monopoly" fades away, or is at least seriously challenged. Sure, there is other software out there that does pretty much the same thing, even if not as well sometimes. People are just too lazy to spend a little time learning a different program, and end up pirat^Hcopyi^H spending a lot of money on Photoshop, even if they could do the same with cheaper, or even free, programs. Some of the more pro stuff PS does is probably only doable, or at least easier, with PS, sure. But for the vast majority of people, they only use it because that's what they heard of or were exposed to.

      But as long as the verb "to photoshop" is around, I don't think Adobe will really care. They will continue charging an obscene amount of money for a lot of old code, and people will keep paying.

  14. Peter Labrow

    Oh come on

    Nearly every other software company has got Lion-compatible software out. Sure, Adobe's products are far more complex, but they charge WAY more and have greater resources. Could they not afford to be on the Apple developer programme? Have they only just seen Lion? Pathetic. What's worse is that they are looking at compatibility "in future versions of their products". WTF? Any chance of supporting your customers here? I have CS5. CS5.5 is a rip-off, and it's a rip-off that doesn't even give me any promise of compatibility. So you're telling me I have to wait for CS6? Look at the smaller software companies running rings around you - and learn something.

  15. deegee

    Same old Adobe

    Adobe products are just as bad on the PC. They do too much non-standard/non-API/screwed-UI coding in their software and I detest software and developers that do that. I always cringe whenever I have to install or update any of my Adobe products on my PC. If I didn't have to use Adobe I wouldn't.

    I don't have the Adobe problem on my G5 PPC because Apple wants about $3000 from me just to upgrade OSX*... :p

    @MichaelShelby

    "Or would you rather have all your old apps work forever at the cost of a bloated OS full of compatibility hacks?"

    That is an uninformed comment. There would be no OS bloat or hacks if software devs followed guidelines and developed according to the platform APIs and UI guidelines. Microsoft (and Apple) spend a lot of time in creating and documenting proper procedures and guides for developers to follow. Unfortunately, some app software devs choose to try to hack around the API or write "their own" bad code, at times because they don't realize that the actual proper API they require is already there, and imho they deserve to get their software broken by future OS updates. Just do a search on Google Groups if you need proof. I am the lead programmer for a company in the game industry, and I see too many "professionals" who don't know what the heck they are doing and write complete crap.

    Personally I give kudos to MS for their wide and lengthy hardware and software support. They have a considerably larger market to please. As a software developer, the only thing I really wish MS would enforce from today forward is the death of DLL hell. In today's world of quad+ 8GB+ there is no/none/nada/zero reason to EVER use DLLs on current software.

    *A new Mac Pro starts at $2600, just so that I can "upgrade" to the new 'Intel' OSX.

    1. colbygk

      Get used...

      You can easily find a Lion capable Mac Pro that is from the 2008 era for $900-$1000 on ebay. Since you seem to find it okay to be using a G5 (your computer could be anywhere from 6-9 years old at this point), I would imagine using one that is ~2-3 years old would be just fine and a decent step up from your G5.

      I have direct experience with this, having used a G5 from 2005 right up until 6 months ago, along side a 2006 Mac Pro (1,1). That Mac Pro has a significant boost in performance over the 2005 G5.

      It seems kind of pointless to remark on MS's wide hardware support if it turns out you don't use/can't stand their decisions when it applies to your particular use case as an individual. It's stunning how often this canard is used to help support why using MS's OS's, it's like saying, "Denny's is the best restaurant because so many people go there for a meal."

      1. deegee

        @colbygk

        If I used the G5 (PPC DP 2.3) more I might be inclined to get a newer model. However most of my systems are Wintel and I would probably put the $1000 into that instead. We are looking into possible future support for OSX on our software (game dev tools), so perhaps one day in the future I'll get some Pros.

        No canards here...

        DLL hell (distributing DLLs instead of statically linking all code/libraries into the executable) is neither a hardware or software reliant issue, at least not since the 1980's when 640k memory was typical. MS wants to get rid of this practice but too many developers are still stuck on it and won't change their ways, but imho should be force to (like Apple did to Adobe). DLL hell is responsible for a lot of the app woes on Windows. It is my only real complaint with Windows and MS.

        MS's wide support imho is a good feature, not only for home owners who rarely upgrade, but also for corporations who only replace their network every 5-10 years, and for those industries using vertical market applications. And Windows app support will only go back so far, the people on these forums who make it sound like MS has bloated Windows 7 all the way back to support for 3.1 are completely wrong. Windows 7 basically goes back 2 versions (Vista and 95% XP) with minimal 95/98/ME/2000 support , imho there is nothing wrong with that. Windows 7 supports running older Windows OS versions via VM for those requiring far-back compatibility.

        But we are moving OT now...

    2. M Gale

      "...there is no/none/nada/zero reason to EVER use DLLs on current software."

      A full installation of DirectX, for every single application that uses it?

      A full installation of .Net, for every single application that uses it?

      Maybe I misunderstand you, but you seem to be calling for the death of shared code libraries. I would like to see how long a terabyte lasts you with a system like that!

      1. deegee

        @MGale: misunderstood

        OS files would of course not be included in this cleaning sweep, which DX and .NET are. MFC and MS C++ libraries would also not be included. Those are MS OS and library files, and should be managed by Microsoft for reasons of security updates, etc.

        I am also not referring to objects such as plugins that you would find in photo software, or effects/instruments plugins that are in music apps. Those are typically third party and designed to be shared among applications.

        Many application developers tend to currently use DLLs for such items as their own custom UI controls, file import/export filters, etc. If you take a look at sites such as CodeProject, a lot of the contributors supply their library as DLLs, and for objects as simple as a slightly modified textbox or button control that is essentially half-a-dozen lines of subclassing code. I have seen companies deploy applications that include twenty or more DLLs, all for minor application functionality, and that should by rights have been statically linked.

        The downsides of this are that they typically install them into the Windows System folder, which is completely unnecessary and has numerous implications, and typically they will not be uninstalled if you remove the application, leaving a mess behind of orphaned files and dead registry entries. Or if they chose the same name as an existing DLL from another vendor then stomping will occur. And bad programming practices can result in app failures if the DLL versions are not compatible if the libraries are shared among multiple apps.

        Some programmers still (incorrectly) believe that by partitioning the app into multiple libraries, then their application updates can simply replace only those DLLs that have been updated. This is incorrect as almost always the exe will have to be patched anyway. And we are no longer using floppy disks, so an app update of a few MBs is no big deal now.

        This same false notion exists if they are using third-party library DLLs, if they assume that the third-party can provide software updates to their own DLLs, well, in almost all cases the company has to re-test their software against the new third-party library, and re-issue a new executable anyway.

        Static linking also typically provides faster application execution.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Lets be fair here

    Let's be fair here. Many of the problems in that document are tiny, For example in Premiere (a new app with no PPC code) the only issue is the numbers missing from the universal counter leader. That's just a countdown template (and a fairly naff one at that). Big deal.

    Install Java? Had to do that enough time on various boxes. Annoying but not critical.

    Can't access the library (where plug-ins etc are stored)? Well address your complaints to Apple because they seem to think their users are so stupid they shouldn't be able to see it.

    There are more serious errors. The Photoshop and Flash Catalyst problems are of particular concern. But all in all many of the issues are very small and easily patched.

    And Flash Player not working well and using excessive CPU. Well that's business as usual isn't it? :-)

  17. ZenCoder

    @deegee

    Have you ever considered the possibility that software development is very difficult and there there is only an exceptional few who have the skill and intelligence to program at your level?

    I used to feel that to be a "real" programmer you must at minimum

    -be competent in more than one language

    -be comfortable working with pointers

    -be comfortable working with a language that requires them to do their own memory management

    -make proper use of version control

    -make proper use of their IDE's debugger

    -have a basic understanding of design patterns

    -have a frim grasp of algorithmic complexity

    -have a basic understanding of assembly language/compilers

    The I realized that by that definition at least 85% of programmers are not "real" programmers, which doesn't make much sense.

    1. Someone has used "a handle is required"
      Facepalm

      As is a title, apparently

      Most of what you post I agree with having spent 24 years successfully writing good code, but, seriously, in this day of *stupid* amounts of processing power and memory you expect me to give a toss about memory management. Really?

      I'm guessing you're writing XCode. Leave the crap to the mechanical machine and worry about the interface you've rushed out as a final thought. Stop making excuses for that horror that is Objective-C, it's not even funny. Unless, of course, you're writing real-time software for that ever-so-common embedded platform that is the Mac. (Having spent more time than I care programming resource-restricted machines - and, no, iPhone/Pad/Touch are what I consider resource-restricted - *I'll*ever go back to that shite.)

      Much more of a spam than I first intended but I've had a few beers and am attempting to use an iPad to post this message. Hateful ****ing machine. I can't even preview this post because Jobs thinks it's uncool to be able to scroll a <div> tag. Cock.

      1. ThomH

        @ Someone has used "a handle is required"

        If your only complaint against Objective-C is the manual memory management (which is reference counted so as to keep all management decisions local, but that's about the only positive thing you can think of to say about it), then you're behind the times. A garbage collector was added in 10.6, albeit that it was a hassle to write suitable code, and automatic reference counting is added in the new compiler and 10.7, which does it all for you at runtime via [a limited form of] static analysis. It's so easy to use and so trusted that it's enabled by default for new projects. You can even enable or disable it file-by-file so as to migrate existing projects and to continue to interface with standard C and C++ code without problems.

        Of course, most people's complaints against Objective-C go a lot deeper so you probably have other concerns, but that's the only complaint I've ever agreed with and now seems to be solved.

    2. deegee

      @ZenCoder

      I feel that your yardstick is the proper length. It also applies equally to the current music industry, where current "artists" are all autotuned and can't even play an instrument or read sheet music, and look at the quality of "music" that we are getting. The same applies to the downward spiral we see in the film industry with almost everything released being a rehashed prequel/sequel with no redeeming quality.

      I do realize that software dev is difficult. It takes many man-years and millions of lines of code to produce a typical good full-featured application. Hardware systems are also considerably more complex than they were in the 80's, requiring a step-up in knowledge.

      I also completely agree with your list of "requirements". However, I do not believe that those requirements are beyond the capabilities of anyone who has a desire to be the best programmer that they can be. There is also a lot more schooling available now for programming, and massive numbers of books and online repositories of information and examples. Plus most projects these days have a programming team because of the manpower required, so imho it is the responsibility of lead programmers to help and guide those under them.

      Imho it typically requires 2 to 3 years of hard work to begin to get fluent in any programming language.

      The big problems that I see with the current crop of programmers are mostly laziness: no code commenting, no time spent researching existing and prior work, little time spent learning the OS and graphics APIs, and too much reliance on simply copying someone else's forum posting that typically doesn't include clean-up code or optimal algorithms.

      Some of the fault lies with the company admins as they often push programmers for time, with the end result of unmaintainable code. Some programmers also falsely believe though that if they write uncommented or obfuscated code that it guarantees their job security since they will be unreplaceable. I know of one large engine developer who has thousands of lines of code-rot because employees have been fired or left, and no one else there understands their code -- unacceptable bloat imho.

      My motto -- do it right or don't do it at all.

      FYI: I started out hacking the Apple][+, then programming OS's in assembler for embedded microcontroller systems in the early 90's, moved onto 32/64-bit assembler on PCs, and now program mainly in multiple C variants.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      85% of programmers are not "real" programmers

      and they all work for Adobe Systems, in particular Business Catalyst. That doesn't even need a desktop OS and like all things Adobe, bloated and costs too much. How about making your products better Adobe?

    4. ideapete

      Then again what is usabilty ?

      Its not only the programming its the whole silly idea that software isolated testing of any kind can resolve the real human user needs. Agile my ass , how many usability workflow study patterns do you see in any software meeting about the crucial point of " How people really use or stuff " How many internal feedback studies on user pattern use and problems do you see.

      Its simply screw it we have a EULA and why should we give a dam. Frustration WTF will zap most of the user complaints and help desks staff with Tagalog speakers will zap most of the rest and as introverts we know the extroverted users are full of it and they probably drink wine anyway so up theirs RTFM its based language is Mandarin and perfectly incomprehensible or they post on the Reg totally radical.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Makes a change

    It's usually Adobe Update that dies a horrible painful death rendering all my Adobe apps useless. It's nice to see they've made individual applications flaky this time round.

  19. Planeten Paultje
    FAIL

    Networks?

    "We don't support networks" said the Adobe rep when asked why CS5's Premiere doesn't play ball with Xsan.

  20. Craig Cruden

    Can't use many Adobe products

    They keep on telling me that if I want to use their products I must reformat my hard drive. I format all drives to conform to unix standards which is case sensitive.... and if you do that - many products they sell do not work. Never have with that formatting.... so as far as I can tell Adobe does not really try very hard to make sure their products work correctly - or efficiently.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Small clarification

    'Depreciate' is what accountants do to most of your assets.

    'Deprecate' is what happens when particular software or routines are flagged as soon-to-be removed, and should be no longer used.

    1. Steve Renouf
      WTF?

      WRONG!!!

      Rob you blind is what accountants do!

  22. Adrian Esdaile
    FAIL

    Abode, please hurry up and FOAD

    "Our half-arsed software doesn't work properly on your new system, despite the fact that we had the beta for ages and are a major partner who didn't do our homework properly. Again. Waaaaaaah! It's all THEIR fault! Waaaaaaaah! Dog ate my homework!"

    Do us all a big favour, Adobe, and hire the business consultants Nokia has been using.

    1. Mark Aggleton
      FAIL

      No

      Apple - FOAD as soon as possible

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unless I am reading it incorrectly...

    What they are saying is that the OLDER versions of their software have major problems on the NEW Lion OS.

    Their shiny new ones (Only one $$$ upgrade away) do not have these blocking bugs.

    So yes, they had access to the beta and made sure their latest and greatest stuff worked more or less.

    They then decided not to bother backporting fixes to their older versions.

    Judge them on that by all means; but lets stop the mindless bashing on false information, it is embarrassing to see the lack of reading comprehension (Assuming the release was even read).

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Adobe can responde with Linux

    Yup, the war between Apple and Adobe continues

    Wonder how many people would switch to Linux (from windows) instead of Apple products if Adobe starts to support Linux

    1. M Gale

      Depends which variety of Linux.

      Ubuntu and similar? Quite possibly.

      Backtrack? Slackware? Not so much.

      So long as it supports the common distros and shows the badges for them on the cover, I guess it'd sell to some extent. Whether a single product suite would convince many graphic designers to go with the Toy Unix is another matter.

    2. Matthew Malthouse

      Does no one remember

      Adobe Photoshop 3.0 on Sun Solaris? November 1994.

      We tried it. Main reason for not adopting (good move in hind-sight) was that the wide Sun keyboard made so many key commands two handed that it slowed ops down.

      http://www.erimez.com/misc/Photoshop_Sun_Brochure.pdf

  25. Watashi

    Backwards incompatibility

    Lest face it, if you want backwards compatibility and long-term support you don't buy Apple. Microsoft would never get away with this attitude - Windows 7 is more compatible with most old software than XP was!

    1. paulf
      Thumb Down

      Bollocks!

      I have an old copy of Office 97 that I still use. I don't want the ribbon interface, and its more than sufficient for my needs so lets avoid the "its sooooo old" debate.

      It refused to install on my Win 7 x86_64 machine despite trying all the various Win XP and Win 2k compatibility modes. In the end I finally persuaded the main install to complete, but the two patches refused to install, again despite the compatibility modes. I copied the patched exe files from my Win XP machine and it now runs fine. What a faff!

      It was easier (seamless almost) to install on my MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 i7) using the Crossover Windows adaption layer than on my Win 7 machine.

      I'm not going to debate the Apple backwards compatibility claim you make, but the M$ claim is bollocks!

  26. s. pam Silver badge
    Holmes

    Allow me to introduce Abode's list of Fuck Ups

    Flash

    Acrobat

    Dreamweaver

    Flash Player

    Air (gasping for!)

    Don't forget all the happy fuck swiss cheese security holes Abode's brought to the market either!

  27. Lexicon
    Meh

    Who is fooling who.

    Beta versions of lion have been available to developers, even for Adobe, for a very long time. I think everyone was aware they were taking security seriously and rewriting out bad code and routines.

    To claim Lion broke Adobe's older products is interesting as their support always recommends using the latest versions themselves. Adobe would seem to like high price tags for their products, but not put the development effort into making them good value for money.

    Maybe they haven't yet realised that the rest of us now seek value for money, and not just buy prestige names from the past.

  28. Parax
    Flame

    Adobe

    A mud hut is a very nice house while the sun is shining, but come the rains, your fucked.

    Adobe have grown fat and lazy on a couple of successful products now they lay back with their feet up.

  29. Sarah Davis
    Coat

    No problems here,... we're on PC's

    one of the many nails in the coffin of MAC, for me, was the fact that with each new OS some software would no longer work and I'd be forced to not just buy the new OS but then have to buy new versions of software. This problem almost never occurs on Windows. I'm no fan of MS, but W7 will run software thats 15 years old (if need be).

    Of course back then Macs really were Macs, Motorola cpu and Mac specific hardware, but now that Macs are PC's (which no doubt has halved the manufacturing cost - not that these savings would ever be passed on to the Mac user) you'd think there would be less problems. I think the main problem with Apple is they treat their loyal users as a cash-cow.

    I moved started migrating to PC's years ago as we were paying through the nose for Mac engineers, but soon realised just that our costs were halved by moving over, and we could customise the PC's hardware to what we needed (as opposed to what we were allowed), we got to be compatable with the rest of the world, and while MS is certainly not problem free, any problems we have had have been easily researched and solutions found without the need for over-priced 'specialists' - I'm quite embarassed to think i used to be quite rude about PC users, giving out about Macs superiority - I really was clueless,.. but that was years ago, and I've had no real problems sice migrating.

    Apple vs Adobe,... lol, whatever !

    1. Cyberspice

      Re: No problems here,... we're on PC's

      Its like DNA's dolphins. I'm not using Windows unless I really have to precisely because it is a 15 year old operating system.

      Adobe isn't the be all or end all. I have their apps installed yes. Hardly use them and will probably remove them when I upgrade to Lion. The Adobe updater is regularly leaking memory and stealing CPU when all its doing is just sitting there waiting for an update. Its just shoddy code.

      As a developer I want a machine I can develop on with easy. My Mac gives me that (with the options to run Windows or Linux in a VM when necessary). I like that OS X evolves with each major release. I like that it isn't slower than the previous version. I like that you don't need the latest hardware to run it. I like that it cost me £20 to upgrade both my machines and not the £70 I paid for one install of W7.

      1. M Gale

        "I like that you don't need the latest hardware to run it."

        No arguments with the rest of the post but this one was really silly.

        Wasn't that long ago that Apple ditched PPC completely when there were plenty of working PPC Macs out there. They've ditched the first couple of generations of iPhone even though that's been out, what, a couple of years now? Now the latest move is to remove even a compatibility layer for legacy software which I'm sure is going to break more than just Adobe's software.

        In comparison, Windows 7 will run on a crappy single-core AMD64. 7 is what Vista was meant to be, and as such has been slimmed enough to run on low-end Atom netbooks. As for Linux, well, I'm pretty sure it'll run on a toaster if you compile it with the right options. OS X on the other hand? Not so much. When you buy Apple gear you buy it in full knowledge that you will have to buy whole new Apple gear and possibly whole new software not so long down the line.

        You pays your money (and with Apple you pays plenty), and you makes your choice, I guess.

        1. RightPaddock
          Angel

          Only if ..

          M Gale wrote "As for Linux, well, I'm pretty sure it'll run on a toaster if you compile it with the right options."

          Only if it's a "pop-up toaster", you can't run Linux on a "flap down toaster", but you can run CP/M.

          1. M Gale

            Linux Toasters

            Oh pish. Of course you can run Linux on the flap-down variety. You just need to make sure you get kernel v2.6-23.423.breville!

        2. Volker Hett

          Things like that happen all the time

          HTC ditched my Desire after one year, Sony Ericsson ditched my SE M600i three month after it was available, I have a quite usable HP NC 6000 Laptop with a 2GHz Pentium M and 2 gigs RAM, Win7 can be installed on it, but it's no fun to use it. So I stick to trusty old XP and Office 2003, suits me.

          A graphics artist friend of mine still uses CS3 on his PowerMac, he feels no need to change that since all the files are easily exchanged with different versions of Adobes CS. Try this with Office 2011 and 2003 :)

          G4 and G5 Macs should run fine with OS X 10.5 and they still get security fixes, like those in Safari 5.0.6.

          One day you'll want or need new functionality in your software and then is the time to change the underlying platform.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why on earth is dropping Rosetta a problem?

    Adobe have only had 6 years since the announcement of Apple's transition to Intel.

    "June 6, 2005: Apple announces its plans to switch to Intel processors at the Worldwide Developer Conference and released a Developer Transition Kit..."

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–Intel_transition#Timeline

    CS3 was released in April 2007. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_history#Version_history

  31. frood
    FAIL

    Adobe software incompatible with a new OS

    Is this even news anymore. Adobe products always seem to fail whatever the platform, whatever the product when the platform is upgraded. That's if they can get the product to work in the first place, look at the 64-bit Flash debacle. And as for GUI incompatibilities due to their own implementation, can I recommend a copy of Object Oriented programming for dummies.

    I'm not happy with Apple dropping Rosetta, but I'm not surprised that Adobe's much vaunted intel native CS3 suite wasn't.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    duh..

    So don't update to Lion if you're not sure it will work with your mission critical applications. Not rocket science is it.

    Designer: "Oh no photoshop doesn't work on my work machine because i upgraded to Lion in the first 48 hrs"

    IT: ** Snork **

  33. Tom 13
    Mushroom

    Well, this is bound to worry MS.

    Adobe and Apple are fighting each other like scorpions locked in a death match. I always saw the computer market for Apple as highly dependent on Adobe, because it was the graphics people buying their overpriced equipment. That might be shifting with the iPhone and the Linux base making it more available for computer gurus. But I don't see it as good for either company in the long run.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You would think....

    ...that with Apple's only "proven" claim to fame being that MACs are so much better for graphic design tasks they would try to play nice with Adobe... you know? Adobe being the maker of the #1 ranked graphic design software

    I, like many other, could find a way to like Apple if they dropped with "I'm better than you and if you don't like us you are an idiot" attitude

    .

  35. Jim O'Reilly

    Adobe needs to join the community

    It's interesting to see Adobe incompatibilities on the Apple. They've appear to have had similar problems with Windows over the years, too. I get the impression that the Adobe worldview is that Adobe has their own excellent standards and MS and Apple need to get on board with them, rather than the other way round.

    This is the ostrich position, and all you get for it is a kick in the rump!

    IMO, Adobe has hurt their business, possibly severely, by being contrarian. That's a pity, because so much of what they do is really good.

  36. ideapete

    Adobes Walls of Crud land like a Thud

    Gotta go with the Jobsians on this one. After watching the other side of our business struggle with every major system upgrade on the windows OS including 7 , Vista etc etc and its Adobe suite . Adobe doesn't play well on any upgrade system Mac or OS whatever . I even watched at Gig and up fixes and patches recommended by barely comprehensible overseas tech support and rolled over laughing when most didn't work, unravel that crap forgetaboutit. Its also fun to see the eager beaver techs find way cheaper smaller faster apps that does the jobs ( pun ) better.

    When the heck are we going to kill the he said she said its the OS no its the App blame game

    Really simple metaphor is that Adobe Suet ( my pun ) Concrete castle is and will always be really cumbersome heavy crud and the world is moving like lightening to small and simple.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Adobe recants knock on Apple's OS X Lion

    Adobe on Thursday backpedalled from a claim that its popular Flash Player did not work with OS X Lion's hardware acceleration, saying that a testing mistake led it to the wrong conclusion ..

    http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218600/Adobe_recants_knock_on_Apple_s_OS_X_Lion

  38. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Various stuff.

    @colbygk: Actually, not really, the first couple years of Intel systems were not really a speed upgrade from the G5s (especially the dual processors.) I'm no Apple fanboi, but those G5s flew.

    Solution? If you like your G5, but find eventually the supported OSX software is too out of date, then run Ubuntu PPC on it. It runs pretty good even on a ~450mhz G4 so I'm sure it's ridiculous on the G5. It's a little hard to find, since the last "officially supported" version is pretty old, but the current 11.04 is still unofficially supported.

    Re:"In today's world of quad+ 8GB+ there is no/none/nada/zero reason to EVER use DLLs on current software." A) Aiming low, trying to make your app just non-bloated enough to barely run by itself on a high-end machine, is pretty much crap. This does happen a lot on Windows, meaning you suddenly need a FAR faster computer to run current Windows software than either mac or Ubuntu/other Linux. B) Still there's a reason to use shared libraries -- security! (and bug fixes) I have had security updates and bug fixes frequently on my Ubuntu systems that involve replacing a library. Not replacing 50 applications, which is what would happen if people did what you want. C) I read your update about this applying to DLLs that only apply to that particular app. I *agree* with that. Although, if they used a proper package manager ala Ubuntu and a bunch of Linux distros, it wouldn't matter since the package manager can cleanly remove or upgrade the app anyway.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    article title s/b "Adobe releases long list of 0 Days"

    Adobe should worry less about pointing fingers at Apple and more about stopping their own flood of vulns.

    Not a rabid fanboi (I'm o/s agnostic since VMS fell out of favor), but gotta say that I haven't spent any time cleaning infections off OS/X boxes recently, and I've sure spent time fixing Windows systems compromised through Adobe flaws.

  40. asdf
    FAIL

    the advantage to Adobe products

    No matter which platform you run Adobe products they give you the windows experience. That is massive security flaws, various malware vectors, and horribly bloated apps that max our cpu for no other reason than Adobe loves outsourcing their software to India.

  41. Alistair Thomas
    FAIL

    Why Apple will never be trusted by enterprise

    If a major partner like Adobe cannot trust Apple to provide backward compatibility for its products then how can enterprise clients whose application development is much slower than Adobe's ever trust Apple as a stable platform.

    Adobe may accept that they have to redesign their product every time Apple has a bright idea. Adobe customers may accept that they have to buy a new version of their Adobe products every time Apple has a bright idea, but enterprise clients that use IT to run their business and not sell it on for profit just want a secure,reliable platform. Microsoft understood this 30 years ago. That's why Microsoft is in the enterprise and Apple is for niche professionals and hobbyists.

    In the medium to long term, a business's investment in applications and staff knowledge about them far outweighs its investment in the supporting platform, or at least it should. Business cannot afford to overhaul its enterprise suite of applications every time the platform changes. That's why so many are still on Win XP.

    1. Matthew Malthouse

      Not quite

      Droplets having PPC code requiring Rosetta Stone will probably be enough to stop an upgrade in our shop in its tracks.

      But Adobe have known for years that this needed fixing and they didn't do it. If fingers are pointed anywhere it will be at them, not Apple.

      The irony is that if we ever migrated away from Adobe software products our reason for keeping Apple hardware would disappear with them.

      1. Hugh McIntyre

        Re: Droplets

        See http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/907/cpsid_90706.html:

        "The 12.0.1 update (of CS5?) creates droplets using native code for Intel processors, and can update previously created droplets to use native code for Intel processors.

        Solution 1: Update Photoshop CS5 with the latest updates. Then drag your old droplets onto the Photoshop application icon. An updated version of the droplet is created in the same folder as the old one, with (CS5).app at the end of the name."

        If you have CS4 or older, you're out of luck.

    2. sleepy

      Apple is quite good at compatibility

      Classic, Rosetta and Carbon are all things Apple did that allowed old Adobe software to run. But Adobe did nothing for ten years to move to OSX's standard APIs. Adobe has hoped for 15 years that Mac would die, all the while getting half their revenue from Mac users. Cynical beancounter logic is what put them in this state, not Apple.

      Look how comparatively ruthless Apple is being with Final Cut Pro in order to keep it at the cutting edge. Unlike Apple, Adobe hasn't been engineering-led for over a decade.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    I forsee some whipping.

    Let the Adobe hating reignite.

    On a side note, complain all you want, if you really hate them, then don't ever use Photoshop or Illustrator.

    Not gonna happen is it (for the majority of you)? Doh.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Name a decent alternative then...

      Go on. You can't. Besides, isn't that tantamount to the "you're doing it wrong" mantra that you and your ilk so relentlessly mock? This isn't, as the title suggests, a "lengthy list of Apple Lion woes", rather an indicator that Adobe are just a bunch of lazy, money grabbing SOB's. They have had access to developer previews (or betas) since at least the very latest March, and it's not a stretch to imagine maybe even before then. Another large software house (I'm under NDA so unable to say who) have managed to get their software up to date, so why not Adobe? I'll tell you why; I'n early April, Adobe release a major update to their CS Suite. They are expecting everyone to upgrade to that. They did it when Microsoft released Vista, and I said exactly the same then. The same software company who I am unable to disclose managed to get their products working on Vista too, with CS3 coming out just after Vista. Adobe are a cluster fuck and someone else needs to take them over. Both Apple and Microsoft have a hole burning in their wallets, and Google would be a better option that the clown-shoes that are Adobe. In fact it could easily be reasoned that Adobe are an abusive monopoly and this is just one aspect of that abuse.

  43. nrundy

    lol

    Adobe makes the crappiest software. Their woes are just proof of this.

    Can't wait to be able to go on the web without needing Flash player.

    1. Manu T

      RE: lol

      Flash and Flash player were originally created and invented by MacroMedia NOT Adobe.

      It seems Apple fanboys have short memories.

      As for alternatives for Adobe's products. There are various alternatives (like Xara's products) especially on Windows (where currently all Adobe development is done). The best known old timer on the DTP scene must be CorelDraw. The program that used to sell new Windows discs like hot cakes. But I seem to remember a similar love-hate relationship with M$ (particularly after M$ decided to undermine Coreldraw's market with their own vector drawing app, Expression Design).

      What Apple don't understand is what Matthew Malthouse on his comment "Not quite #" wrote.

      Adobe made Apple computers what they are today. if it wasn't for Adobe and Quark then Apple would have been vanished years ago.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Corrections...

        "Flash and Flash player were originally created and invented by MacroMedia NOT Adobe."

        It wasn't so much 'created' as bought. It was originally called FutureSplash.

        "It seems Apple fanboys have short memories." It's seem that trolls will troll. Fanboys? What are you if not a Windows/Adobe fanboy? Tit.

        Flannel, flannel, flannel. (CorelDRAW! has always been considered an amateur package outside it's native Canada.)

        "Adobe made Apple computers what they are today. if it wasn't for Adobe and Quark then Apple would have been vanished years ago." Vanished or vanquished? So what you are saying is that Apple now owe Adobe a living? Taking on your logic, were it not for Apple's Macintosh platform, Adobe and Macromind/Macromedia wouldn't have had the platform to establish themselves in the manner that they did. Were it not for Apple going with PostScript (where Adobe really made it's money really came from) then Adobe wouldn't have become the financially abusive, unwieldy mass of lazy and incompetent developers that it has become.

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