Chosen Solution
Although this is not a repair question I feel it is very germane to what we do here. I have a customer that I’m upgrading to a new 24” iMac. He had purchased Adobe InDesign CS II. At the time he was running 10.3 with 9.06 in classic. When I went to install it on his new computer it told me that there was not a classic system to install it to. I didn’t even know there was a version of CS II for system 9. The disk did not have both the 9 and 10 versions, just 9. So I called Adobe support (In India) ~~~~ to ask how he could get the system 10 version of CS II. I was told that they no longer support that and that I needed to buy the upgrade to CS IV for just $199. My opinion was that he should get what he paid for. Any suggestions? Same thing on Norton Anti-virus 10. It has errors when you upgrade to system 10.6 from 10.5 and they tell me I have to buy the version 11.
I hear ya. It’s a frustrating situation. The fact is, he still owns the licenses…he just can’t use them unless he is willing to stay with the hardware/OS that those license numbers work on. Adobe is unfortunately being a stickler and treating 9 and 10 as if they were completely different platforms. Things like that are basically the way software companies make most of their money. In Corporate America this is a constant struggle, because any given software company will “end of life” a certain version on a certain platform, and in order to keep the company on a supported version (often for no other reason that to be able to say you are running current software, so that no one will accuse legacy products of causing issues in the environment), you just have to jump through hoops and pay the upgrade fee occasionally, which may amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the Windows world, often a jump to the next OS means you’ll also have to pay for new licensing for a pile of other programs you or your whole company are using. On a side note, is there really a reason to run Norton on a Mac? I haven’t put virus software on a Mac in 10 years. I don’t want to actively encourage anyone to go unprotected, but in my experience there just aren’t a lot of viruses out there, and Norton clutters the situation.
Ideally, I agree with you. Practically, I don’t think you’re going to have any luck. If he bought the OS 9 version of the software, he’s not going to be able to use it with OSX, similar to how buying the software for windows doesn’t mean you’ll get the mac version if you switch later. Sometimes you do, but it would be at the discretion of the publisher. The software specifies what operating systems it will work with, and while it’s nice when things are forward compatible, a lot of things aren’t. Re: InDesign, you might be able to find a used copy on ebay or craigslist. Re: Norton, you could call them up and yell at them if the requirements say something like 10.5 or above. They might send you the new version, or they might give you a discount. If it makes you feel any better, I had a few problems with the upgrade to 10.6, as well. Luckily, all the third-party software I use that broke has released free fixes.
I agree, it is a frustrating situation, however, the simple issue of performance could be it, the fact of the matter is, running an old version of software can cause performance issues. One thing you may want to try is contacting the manufacturer (going to a store actually yields best results) and seeing if you can get a bargain for an update, maybe you could get a deal of CS IV for only $99.
