And that backwards compatibility may not even be necessary, given Rosetta's performance. Sure Apple is using lots of tricks, but if Microsoft or any Linux project could get even somewhat close...
Just as testimony, it probably doesn't mean much, but bakcwards compatibility you either have it or you don't, there's no middle ground
Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
The story is this: a friend of mine is a well respected illustrator and he has been a long time Mac user (at least since I remember)
Few days ago he asked me advices about a new laptop and he asked for a PC because "new Mac OS will not work with my Photoshop version"
He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
MacOS Sierra doesn't even work with Photoshop CS6
The only option he had to keep using something he owned was to switch platform (Adobe allows platform change upon request)
End of story.
Backwards compatibility has no value until you need it.
Uh, I'm guessing you mean CS6 rather than Photoshop 6, the program that came out in 2000.
In any case, Adobe's help page[1] currently reads, "As Creative Suite 6 is no longer sold or supported, platform or language exchanges are not available for it." Since they're certainly not selling or supporting versions older than CS6, it's unlikely your friend is going be able to keep Photoshop CS6 by buying a new PC laptop. (And he sure as hell ain't gonna be able to get a copy of Photoshop 6 to run on Windows 10.)
> Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
That's not wrong, but s/Apple/Adobe and the sentiment is still true. I suppose he'll save money if he gets a cheaper-than-Apple PC laptop, but I don't think he's gonna avoid paying for Creative Cloud.
CS6 runs just fine on Windows 10. Of course it's not supported by Adobe as they were pretty aggressive in canceling CS6 licenses if one mistakenly accepted CC with the same account before in order to put everybody onto their extortion scheme, but I use CS6 as before just fine on PC, not on Mac.
That's why I said "MacOS Sierra can't even run CS6"
Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
As long as you have the original license.
That's the same reason why you can listen to mp3s if you own the original record, you have the right to keep a copy and the right to use it even if the manufacturer stop supporting it, because you bought it in perpetuity when you bought the product
That's why I stay away from the new licenses that give you none of those rights
And that's why backwards compatibility sometimes is what drives people choices
I'll take your word for it, but it kind of changes the picture here. Photoshop 6 was released in 2000. That version wasn't released for OS X. In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs. The thing wasn't even fully "carbonized" until version 7, so it would have had to run in the "Classic" environment -- which hasn't been supported on Macs since OS X 10.4.
Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system they haven't shipped a new version in 18 years for a CPU they haven't shipped in a computer for 15 years. I'm not sure I agree.
> Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
The legality isn't the issue, the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue. :) It may be possible to run the Windows version on Windows 10, but I can almost guarantee there will be strange, quirky issues that neither Microsoft nor Adobe will be interested in helping with.
> In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs
It's the license that counts.
> Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system
No, I don't think that.
Apple doesn't have good backward compatibility, especially compared to Windows.
That is my point.
But of course they are free to not support what they think it's not worth it.
It's not a something against Apple.
> the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue
True, but why is it a problem?
Does the software need to be new to work?
I think that if something still works after 20 years the authors did a great job.
We need to start thinking of software like infrastructure.
We don't rebuild a bridge after 6 months because a new material or technique has been invented.
Or at least as tools, considering them something that lasts, potentially forever.
Most of the problem we'll be facing in the future will be about digital rot, we'll deal with data that we cannot read in any way.
Apple, Adobe, and their idea of disposable working tools are helping it, nor prevent it.
Of course one cannot support everything forever, Windows lost the ability to run DOS binaries years ago and virtualization can help, the problem is companies like Adobe not selling their licenses anymore.
Recently I had to work on a SOAP client after almost 15 years from the last one.
I remembered there was a good XML editor at the time, that did a good job.
One caveat is that it is Windows only and I run Linux, so I checked on WineHQ and found out that the version 2003 works perfectly.
I go to the software's web site, there is a "download older versions" button, I think "great!" and proceed to the download.
The software installs perfectly on Wine but when I launch it there is no option to start it in trial mode, you have to either use a pre-existing license or ask for a trial one.
I clicked the second and soon after an email warns me that that product is not supported anymore and even if I had a regular license, the servers that check the licenses are not online anymore.
So why put a download button there then?
These are the kind of things that software should avoid at any cost, in my opinion.
They've lost a customer, I would have bought an old license at the price of a new one if I could chck that everything that I needed to do worked as intended, instead I downloaded SopaUI which is inferior, but free and functioning.
In this case, the solution could have been virtualization, but you have to pay for a Windows license as well, which was not necessary in the first place.
In the case of macOS virtualization is not even an option, because you can't legally run it on a VM outside of Apple HW.
For some people, that is a big problem, not because they think Apple is bad, but because they don't care who supplies the infrastructure as long as it works.
There are people installing XP on new HW to keep using their old software.
It is doable, but on macOS you can't count on it, every time they change architecture something gets lost forever.
As I said before, nobody value backward compatibility until they need it.
And when you need it and it works it's much more satisfying than when you need it and you are asked to upgrade or be on your own.
> He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
Sounds like the friend has a need to upgrade, and that upgrade is going to require new software.
I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
> I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
Old stuff stops working due to deliberate design choices made on both Apple and Adobe's parts. Apple deliberately stripped Rosetta and 32-bit support from macOS, and Adobe is deliberately making it nearly impossible to use older versions of the CS suite on their end.
Meanwhile, I can run Photoshop 6 on Windows or WINE, and I can still run binaries that were statically compiled for Linux 20 years ago today.
You can probably run Photoshop 6 under SheepShaver. I can (and have) run DOS programs from the 1990s in DOSBox on my Mac.
I appreciate backwards compatibility, but I'm not convinced drawing lines in the sand every once so often is a terrible idea. Revisiting old software is fun for nostalgic reasons and, sure, there are sometimes edge cases where you have to use something that hasn't been updated in years, but in general I'd rather be using software that exhibits at least minimal signs of being an ongoing concern.
The hardware, which is not the main tool in his craft
He draws by hand on paper and the final preparation on Photoshop is for printing
After almost 10 years he needed a new laptop (things wear out with time and he could not install more RAM) but not a new Photoshop version with a different and more costly license
The need to upgrade software is an artificial one and it's only needed because some platforms don't have a good backwards compatibility
Windows does
For many people the OS doesn't make any difference, as long as they can keep using the tools they already know
There is a limit on the improvements a new software will provide if your workflow is already good as it is and you already paid for the version that works for you
I know many small businesses that still use Office 2003
They can install it on new hardware on new Windows versions, it's simply not possible to do the same on Mac
It's not better or worse, backwards compatibility it's a feature and as any other feature some people value it a lot, some don't care at all
I've used Photoshop CS6 on both Sierra and High Sierra. It's ever-so-slightly more crash-prone than on older OS's, but totally usable.
It launches on Mojave as well, so I'm pretty sure it works, but I haven't personally used it for any length of time. Catalina is what killed it.
IMO, backwards compatibility in OSX/macOS was perfectly decent for a long time. Most software compiled for Intel that wasn't doing something weird continued to chug on, frequently with significant glitches but not to the point where the software was unusable. Then in Catalina Apple just gave up or something.
It's odd isn't it because if they invested a little bit in Catalina and Rosetta they could probably have had a great backwards compatibility story even in a few years time - but it's just not in the DNA I guess.
In Catalina, Apple dropped 32 bit support. And in the same process dropped a lot of Frameworks that had been deprecated for ages. 64 bit software that didn't rely on deprecated Frameworks continue to function
> Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7. Adobe Creative Suite 3, 4, 5, CS5.5, and CS6 applications support Mac OS X v10.8 or v10.9 when installed on Intel-based system
They work, maybe, they are not supported though
It means that if it doesn't work, Adobe won't provide any support
I wouldn't expect Adobe to support CS6 in 2020 on my 10.9 system either. What matters is whether the software works or not—which it does on Mojave, and on Windows 10.
you are not wrong, but Photoshop 5, released in 1998, works on Windows 10 because Microsoft made it possible
CS6 works officially from XP SP3 (2008) to the end of Windows 8 (2015)
It works unofficially on XP pre SP3 (2001) and on windows 10, almost 20 years later and it's guaranteed to work on the LTSC for another 8 years (last LTSC is from 2018)
CS6 on Mac is supported on systems that span from 2011 (OS X 10.6.8) to 2014 (when Yosemite came out)
On May 2020 Adobe updated the release notes on CS6 saying that "If you are running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Photoshop will run in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. However, Adobe does not officially support the 64-bit edition and you may run into problems."
So they are still supporting it on Windows XP on their official channels.
Most of the problems with old applications in Windows come from installers using ancient techniques to detect the OS version
Most of recent Adobe software theoretically could also run on older windows versions (8 or 7 for example), but are not supporting old platforms anymore with the new subscription versions and recebtly dropped support for the LTSC versions of Windows 10, so probably keeping the old versions around is a smart move if they work well enough for you
People who bought licenses for old versions should be in their right to use them as long as they can
Which simply is for longer on Windows than on MacOS
> Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
The more charitable view is that by not being wedded to backwards compatibility they can make their ecosystem stronger, faster.
