Angry Adobe users rant about Snow Leopard support

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Computerworld - After users fumed over news that Adobe Systems Inc. wouldn't support its Creative Suite 3 (CS3) applications on Apple Inc.'s new Snow Leopard operating system, the company backtracked a step yesterday.

"It turns out that the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, Photoshop CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard," said John Nack, principal product manager of Adobe Photoshop, in a blog post late Wednesday. "The Photoshop team reported a couple of dozen problems to Apple, and I'm happy to say that Apple has fixed all the significant issues we found."

The brouhaha began Tuesday, when Adobe published an FAQ (download PDF) about Creative Suite 4 (CS4) compatibility with Snow Leopard, also known as Mac OS 10.6. In the FAQ, Adobe said it had not tested old versions, such as CS3, under Snow Leopard, and more to the point, didn't intend to.

"While older Adobe 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," said Adobe. "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."

Nack explained that the decision came down to a matter of resources. "It has always been Adobe's policy not to go backwards and do 'dot' releases on software that is no longer shipping," he said. "This isn't some kind of ploy to force people to upgrade; rather, it's a recognition that resources are not infinite, and we need to focus our efforts on current and future technology."

That didn't sit well with users running the suite, which debuted in 2007 and was only supplanted by CS4 last October.

"That Adobe would drop support for a 2.5-year-old software suite -- which cost far more than $600 -- leaves me frustrated and angry," said Gerry Manacsa in a comment to Nack's post Tuesday highlighting the FAQ.

"Adobe is sending a terrible message with this decision -- especially in this economy," added a user identified only as "Benton" in another comment to Nack's post. "Many people spent a lot of money on CS3 little more than a year ago."

"When Adobe is not willing to take a little time and effort to check compatibility of products which customers see as new (2.5 years is not that long to us), it smells of corporate greed," said Shawn Wright.

Nack wasn't the only Adobe manager who stepped in to try to calm down angry users. David Howe, who said he was the quality assurance manager in charge of testing Photoshop and Adobe Bridge, acknowledged that the FAQ wasn't perfect. "I can certainly understand the frustration that's been unleashed here over the past day," Howe said. "The FAQ in my opinion did not do a good job representing what the Photoshop team did, nor our stance on Snow Leopard compatibility."