News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 30, 2007

software

Why I can’t upgrade to Leopard

Posted Oct. 30, ’07, 11:18 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | Software

digidesign.jpgSo when I’m not blogging here and writing there, I’m also a radio guy in other places.

Sadly, in my field, the audio editing software of choice is Digidesign’s ProTools. For whatever reason, Digidesign doesn’t have their act together and hasn’t made ProTools usable with Leopard. So I’ll have to wait until January, when version 7.4 comes out.

Unfortunately, ProTools is but one of a growing number of applications that won’t run under Leopard, the most notable among them being Adobe Photoshop 7, CS1, and FileMaker.

I’m sure software development is hard, but isn’t the whole point of having a developer copy of an OS upgrade so that you can make sure your software is compliant sooner rather than later?


2 Comments

Ken said:

Typically, developers can use the seeds to keep on track for being compatible but Leopard was a different story. The original Alpha was released to developers at WWDC 2006, more than a year ago, and they changed it frequently over that time that it was a fool's errand to keep up with it.

Additionally, large companies like Adobe and DigiDesign have long release cycles, and don't/can't plan them around OS X releases, especially when the OS X release schedule keeps changing.

-Ken

October 30, 2007 12:13 PM
divigation said:

Seriously, Photoshop 7 and CS1 are notable? How so? They are outdated software that don't even run native on current Macs with Tiger. You forgot about Final Cut 3, it's not Leopard compatible and there is no word from Apple that they will be updating the software, how can they snub their users like this?

ProTools is a shame, as is half of the CS3 lineup that isn't running Leopard. Fortunately, you can dual boot OSX and have the new fancy OS X as well as the software you need. The problem with Protools and the like is that the amount of code in that software is so massive that it is a time consuming endeavor. Look how long it took Adobe to get Universal Binaries, as well as their own design schedule as Ken pointed out. You should be thankful that you need ProTools, which will be out in new form in less than three months as opposed to the half of CS3 that isn't compatible and will probably be out next summer if we're lucky.

October 30, 2007 1:18 PM

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