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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

This comment is a perfect illustration of the bizarre irrationality people have when discussing Apple.

You’re stuck on a 6+ year old piece of software because Adobe moved to a higher priced cloud-based model...maybe you should be mad at Adobe...6 years ago...not Apple?

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There is room in my heart to be furious at both.

Adobe's cloud pricing model is abhorrent to me, and Apple forcing the hand of everyone that didn't want to jump on board with it is also shitty.

But I've had a long time to come to grips with my hatred for Adobe. Apple has only recently started making choices that carry serious negative consequences for me.

I feel the same way about their dropping of OpenGL, for what it's worth.

If you could run an old Adobe offering for 6 years, why do you feel forced by Apple right now to upgrade your OS (and hence SW)? Couldn’t you easily stick to Mojave for two more years - or run Mojave and your old SW in a VM? I don‘t see how Apple is forcing you in October 2019 to do anything that costs money. 2021 perhaps, but that’s a long way until then.

It is very much worth looking at Photoshop alternatives every so often. Pixelmator Pro is very good.

Why though? He literally chose to stick with the old software, protesting with his money. Seriously though, what's the problem with expecting 32bit software to keep working?

The same problem with expecting 8-bit software to keep working.

All organizations have limited resources. Each hour spent supporting 32 bit is an hour that could’ve been spent on more important things.

8 bit software still works.

8 bit software still works on OS X Catalina?

Last I checked just as this guy is nursing his old ass pre CC adobe software along nothing is stopping them from continuing with an older OS X.

So which platform supports 8 bit software?

Emulators support nearly everything. I can even run a TI994a program on a PC, Mac, or Linux. If you can't run emulators on Mac that is sad news to me. Maybe bad example, it was technically 16 bit, but it was well over 30 years old. Here is a pet emulator: https://www.masswerk.at/pet/

Just the other day my brother told me he met a really talented graphics designer that still primarily uses some 25 year old sign design software. Never heard of it before, and don't remember the name.

We balk at having to pay monthly for software we bought over 10 years ago and even today we'd not miss any new features offered. Great artists (I'm not one of them) can produce great visuals. Limitation can be better for creativity than no restrictions for some anyway.

Of course you can run emulators. But that has nothing to do with OS vendors maintaining backwards compatibility.

Are you really arguing that Windows is compatibility with the Super Nintendo because you can run an emulator?

Yes, and this is how powerpc applications were supported for years.

Or, he chose to go with the software he had bought instead of moving to Adobe's new model of software as a service, where you pay a subscription fee plus an up front cost to use their software. It isn't so easy as "choosing not to upgrade to 64 bit" when the production company makes untenable demands. At this point, it's almost better struggling through with GIMP and Inkscape (almost) than dealing with the corporate hellscape that Adobe has become.

That's kind of the point, isn't it? Instead of directing one's ire at Apple or any other OS vendor for dropping 32-bit support, why not get upset at Adobe for creating a SaaS hellscape in the first place?

In the Adobe case, fine. What if people have 32 bit software where the vendor has gone out of business?

Perhaps it's time for them to invest in alternative software, or change to a legacy OS, or just simply not update to Catalina.

Or stop buying Apple products, which is my end-goal after all of this. Their stuff costs too much money to have them undermining my workflow at their whim.

Apple used to about things that "just work", now they're about things that "don't work anymore".

Microsoft doesn't seem to have trouble with 32-bit. Apple's market cap is roughly the same.

Market cap doesn’t say anything about fundamentals. That’s what profits are for. If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft is de-emphasizing Windows as a profit center.

Both companies have plenty of profits and the resources needed to maintain 32-bit compatibility indefinitely.

So I guess Apple should also have maintained support for 68K Macs indefinitely? Microsoft should have maintained support for 16 bit apps on 64 bit Windows? Should MS have also maintained support for running real mode 286 apps forever?

This is a bit different. Catalina is a casual upgrade. There is no warning during the install process. They'll see that something worked yesterday, same OS, same computer, and now it doesn't.

Yes there is.

https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/macos-c...

If the app isn't "recently" used, it doesn't warn you. I ran into this myself.

You said “They'll see that something worked yesterday, same OS, same computer, and now it doesn't.“

So “yesterday” doesn’t count as “recently”?

It was a poor choice of works. I didn't run Word 2011 yesterday - more like several months ago - but it would've worked yesterday before the upgrade.

The point remains: this will still bite people.

I can still use 32bit software under Windows, Linux and BSD. Seems everyone else has managed to keep this running, even when they have _much_ fewer resources than Apple.

You should expect it to work, naturally. But if you make an environment change (eg upgrade) well, the softwares expectations have changed so your expectations should change too.

Why is he upgrading his OS? Just dual boot or keep it as is.

It's a perfectly reasonable thing to be mad about, since wanting to use an older version of software is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. 6 years isn't even that long of a time either.

In that situation I'd be mad at both. But primarily Apple.

Apple broke my working software. Emphasis on the working part. Upgrading even with one time payment software would still mean hundreds of dollars forked out because Apple broke it. If it wasn't broken I wouldn't upgrade.

Am I the only one who sees the absurdity of this?

If you’re cool using 6+ year old, blurry non-retina software...why do you need to upgrade to Catalina? Just stay on Mojave and you’ll be fine.

Did you really plan on using that 2012 edition of Photoshop until 2035?

There's nothing absurd about it. CS6 has retina support, and I use it too.

It has all the features I need - nothing added in the last 6 years has been worth switching to the subscription model.

What in Catalina is worth upgrading to? I don’t see much.

The 15+ security issues come to mind...

Apple supports the previous version of OSX with security updates for some time.

If the Catalina fixes have already been back-ported to Mojave, please link to the Apple security announcement.

Where are the Mojave fixes for CVE-2019-8745 and CVE-2019-8769 for example? If they're not available, my point stands.

The SwiftUI development tools (live preview) are only available in Catalina, and iTunes has had a minor rewrite I believe. Otherwise, I think it’s the same.

How would I stay on Mojave when my laptop breaks? Do you expect people to keep buying old hardware forever?

Why not? What's the alternative, that Apple has to support all of your old software forever in the free software updates that they provide?

Yep, Apple should spend some of that massive pile of cash they have. It's the least they can do.

Run your old apps in a VM.

That can result in anything between "works with some inconvenience" and "does not work at all".

If it continues to work, why not? I have Windows audio apps from the 90s and they still run fine.

I know many, many working artists and illustrators that plan to do exactly that. Artists generally revile Adobe for their move to subscription pricing.

This idea that "6+" years old is particularly old really irks me, because it's not. Most other things in my life that I rely on last longer than that. I also occasionally need to run software that's older than that.

6 years isn't nearly long enough to even consider dropping support on the OS level. Try twice that.

Apple is not looking at 6 year old applications and saying “It’s been long enough, time to drop support for this app”. They are looking at the 30+ year old architecture that is 32-bit x86.

Who cares? At the end of the day, what matters is people’s stuff that they paid for is broken.

That’s a rather simplistic view of things. The long and the short of it is this; it’s not Apple’s responsibility to to ensure Adobe’s software runs on their platform, it’s Adobe’s and Adobe no longer support CS6.

What is a computer if not a place for software to run on? Is it not part of the producer's responsibility to make sure software runs fine on their platform? The bond goes both ways.

Simply put, no! Certainly not if the developer of the non-functioning software no-longer supports it.

Look, everyone knows how Apple rolls when it comes to operating systems--they kill old APIs, frameworks, and even entire classes of apps on a pretty regular basis.

No mainstream operating system that ran on 68000 processors in the 80's, PowerPC in the 90's and Intel since 2006 is even around today.

Y’all must have forgot how NeXTStep, which later became Mac OS X and now macOS ran on 68000, Sparc and MIPS back in the day.

The same way Apple was running Mac OS X on Intel hardware long before the first Intel Macs were released, there's got to be Arm-based MacBooks or Mac minis running macOS right now.

So it makes sense for Apple to get rid of as much technical debt as they can before making that jump.

And because of Catalyst, which enables iPad apps to be ported to macOS, there will be more apps for the Mac.

Some of the Catalyst apps have some rough edges and not all of the frameworks are available yet, but things look promising: https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/07/macos-catalina-catalyst-apps/.

Finally, Apple has been telling developers since Snow Leopard was released in 2009 about transitioning to 64-bit.

> Look, everyone knows how Apple rolls when it comes to operating systems--they kill old APIs, frameworks, and even entire classes of apps on a pretty regular basis.

Every platform has to balance the developer experience with the user experience. Microsoft, with their incredible backwards compatibility support, has one approach, whereas Apple has a very different one.

There is no right or wrong way.

It’s more the 20-year old Carbon API set (parts of which are 30+ years old like QuickDraw) than x86 itself. Apple doesn’t get to drop x86 support from Intel’s silicon (like they did with 32-bit ARM on iOS).

adobe has essentially added nothing in cc that makes it worthwhile to switch over from cs6, and certainly not for rental software. if anything performance has gotten considerably worse with the addition of creative cloud bloatware

Apple did not break your working software. It still runs on older versions of the OS.

Let's face it you are cheap, you weren't willing to keep up with the Adobe products you purchased and now you want to blame someone, instead of blaming yourself, you've decided it's someone else's fault.

I have pre-CC version of the Adobe products, and I run the an older version of OSX on my Mac Pro. I'm not willing to pay the price for Adobe, but I'm also willing to take responsibility for my cheapness.

> Let's face it you are cheap,

Or, hear me out here, some people can’t afford to buy new Adobe software because it’s ridiculously expensive. They’re not wealthy enough to call themselves cheap.

Again, being angry at an OS vendor because Adobe overprices their software doesn't make sense.

Or you can treat both as part of the same engine of unrestrained, destructive capitalism that destroys people's livelihoods when they no longer align with business interests.

Apple can spend some of that massive cash reserve it has actually acting like a grown-up platform holder with responsibilities to its users.

When an OS vendor breaks something that works perfect for me before, I think I have a right to be at least 70% angry at them.

I can still run programs from the XP era on my Windows PC.

You can just stay on Mojave. You don't have to update.

Calling someone cheap is not helpful in discussions like this, and really undermine your arguments.

This comment is a perfect illustration of the bizarre irrationality people have when discussing Apple.

Yes. I've been involved with the Mac user group community for many years; this is the kind of logic I've heard many times.

Apple broke it, but you can’t bring yourself to criticize your beloved?

Would you also be mad when Apple dropped support for classic Mac OS and Word 4.0 didn’t work?

No but I am mad at Microsoft for Word 6.0

I just want Word 5.1 back. Is that too much to ask?

You should be mad at the company with the bigger market cap, which isn't Adobe.

that's a weird criterion. market cap has little to nothing to do with it. I don't think it's reasonable to be mad at anyone in this particular situation - we all knew that 32-bit was going away - but there are certainly other reasons to be disappointed by both Apple and Adobe separately.

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