The Hassles of Supporting Older Products – Adobe vs. Apple
On Friday, Apple released version 10.6 of their Macintosh OS X operating system. “Snow Leopard,” as this new version is called, is an unusual release for Apple. Whereas previous updates of OS X often brought big usability changes, Snow Leopard is all about under the hood improvements. It’s faster and better, but not different.
So it came as a huge surprise last week when John Nack, senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop, announced that Adobe wasn’t supporting the two and half year old CS3 version of their products on Snow Leopard and would instead encourage their customers to upgrade to CS4. Nack later clarified that the CS3 products actually work fine – Adobe just couldn’t allocate resources to fix any undiscovered problems. Despite these assurances, many people were confused and upset, especially because Snow Leopard wasn’t supposed to be a major upgrade for Apple.
My thoughts below the fold.
First, a disclosure: I used to work for Adobe, and I can say without a doubt that John Nack is a great guy. He’s long been a voice “from the inside” about Adobe’s development, and his blog is a must read for any Photoshop fan.
The problem with Photoshop is that it’s one of the most complex commercial software applications available. It literally has over a million of lines of code, and when combined with the rest of the Creative Suite products, the total complexity probably exceeds that of most other software by a long shot. Performing QA on Creative Suite is a huge undertaking. However, as John mentioned in his blog, Adobe did validate CS3 with Snow Leopard. In fact, most of it seems to work!
What Adobe actually can’t do is readily fix problems in CS3 without opening a huge can of worms. With most of their developers focused on writing CS5, the remainder will have to work on making sure CS4 works with Snow Leopard AND the upcoming release of Windows 7. Both of those tasks will be hugely time consuming, leaving no resources for working with the two and a half year old CS3.
Did I mention that Photoshop alone has over a million lines of code? Changing “one little thing” in an application that relies on more math, hand optimization, and black magic than most other products has the potential to upset dozens of other things. Photoshop isn’t some tiny little program – it’s a massive interconnected machine!
So where does that leave the users? To be honest I’m as disappointed as anyone else. I use Photoshop CS3, own a Mac, and will probably upgrade to Snow Leopard in the next week or two. However, there are a few lessons for other companies to learn:
1.) Be open.
John Nack is usually very open about Adobe’s development plans. Sometimes he attracts a lot of criticism in the process, but in the end we’re all substantially more informed because of him. And John listens as well. That’s a small consolation, but a valuable one if you have a concern.
2.) Be concerned.
Many companies live and die by Creative Suite, but in this economy, not everyone can afford to upgrade. By listening to feedback and digging deeper into the testing for Snow Leopard and CS3, John was able to alleviate a lot of people’s concerns that Photoshop CS3 would simply stop working when they upgraded to Snow Leopard.
3.) Even small favors are appreciated.
Without a doubt, issues will arise between CS3 and Snow Leopard. While Adobe can’t possibly commit to fixing those issues, their users would certainly be grateful if they could solve a few of the worst. No pressure or anything.
What are your thoughts? I would be interested to hear if anyone has feedback on how to handle QA on really big applications, especially with situations like this.
[...] The Hassles of Supporting Older Products – Adobe vs. Apple [...]
I think you – and most commentators – tend to forget one thing: users who only recently purchased CS3 were charged the full price (my company paid over 2000 euros less than half a year ago). Then, the “two-year-old”-argument was not used to lower the price. Now, the “two-and-a-half-year-old”-argument is suddenly in effect!
For my company, the software is only six months old! We paid full price, Adobe should deliver full service. It’s as simple as that. All the logic in the world couldn’t change that (other than Adobe’s pockets).
Thijzo,
I agree with you. I paid full price for CS3 and I feel let down as well. If it weren’t for the fact that CS3 supposedly works just fine on Snow Leopard, I would be pretty upset.
But they have one group of developers who must work on CS4 issues and another group who must keep developing CS5. When you look at it this way, a new reality emerges:
Adobe probably stopped fixing CS3 issues the moment CS4 launched.
For that, we have to blame their 18 month release cycle. It’s great for people who always want the latest features, but for businesses and enterprises it’s a serious burden. By the way, another company with an 18 month release cycle is Apple.
The only way to make this stop is if we as customers start demanding long term support agreements. Microsoft offers this – Adobe and Apple should too.
I’ve had big problems with Photoshop CS3 since installing Snow Leopard (I haven’t had cause to test InDesign, Flash or Dreamweaver yet). I’m working on large files at the moment and frequent crashes, many of which require re-starting the computer, have cost me hours. This does NOT make me more inclined to update to CS4; it makes me feel stupid for relying so heavily on Adobe products. I’ll be investing both time and money on alternatives in future.
There are several reasons I’ve lost trust in Adobe recently, this is just the latest.
Adam,
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble. The first thing I would do is contact Adobe’s technical support and make sure they know you’re having trouble. If they ever decide to release a patch (even though they say they won’t), they’ll be aware of your issue.
The second thing – are you using Snow Leopard’s 32 bit or 64 bit kernel? It’s possible that one or the other is a better choice for PS and large files.
The final question – PS has long had some funky issues with large files. Did you have the same problems in Leopard as well? How large are the files?