Adobe CS4 Still Does Not Work On Case-Sensitive File Systems
Last December, I blogged about the lengths my roommates and I had to go through to get Adobe Photoshop CS3 to install on Leopard formatted with a case-sensitive filesystem. In the end we got it to work. The problem seemed to just be laziness on Adobe’s part and an oversight by their QA team. Since we were able to get Photoshop CS3 to work without modifying source code, just renaming a batch of files, I fully expected Adobe to be quick to make CS4 work on a case-sensitive Leopard install. Unfortunately, I assumed incorrectly. I got this error message when I tried to install my copy of Photoshop CS4.
What the hell!? Adobe, as a professional software company you should be able to do make your software installable on a case-sensitive file system. It’s really not a lot to ask and every other Mac software developer is able to do it. Honestly, it is assumed that software written for a Unix-based OS will run on a case-sensitive file system so much that it does not even occur to people that there is a possibility that it won’t work.
The grammar of the error message is also eye catching. I know we can’t be perfect but I set the bar higher for companies like Adobe who charge a lot of money for their software. So Adobe, in case you didn’t notice your comma is hanging out between two spaces and there should be an “a” between have and non.
I cut Adobe some slack last year when they dropped the ball on CS3. Leopard is the first release of OS X to support a case-sensitive file systems and the release date of CS3 was close to the release date of Leopard. However, a year later with the release of CS4 you opted to add in an error message instead of just fixing the problem? Even after tons of people complained on the Adobe blog about it? Unbelievable.
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10 Responses to “Adobe CS4 Still Does Not Work On Case-Sensitive File Systems”
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Amen! I wonder if they have an excuse.
Horrible! I hacked up CS3 to work on my case-sensitive system also, and it sucks that they just don’t care about this sloppiness at all. Fixing this is almost zero work for them, and can even be done in a simple patch, for all that matter. It is for this reason that I have to use my last-gen iMac G5 for Illustrator, as I just can’t get it to work on my Macbook Pro.
Is there any chance that you’re going to try to hack this one up to work on your Mac, too?
Charging $2500 for a software package is already pushing it, but charging this much for a software package that is built so sloppy (and with them seemingly not even caring all that much about their customers) makes you wonder how they can get away with this. Well, I know, there’s simply no good alternative. Yet.
Blegh.
@Dave- I will not be hacking CS4 to work with my Mac. Last time I was able to do it because I had a non case-sensitive OS X install on another computer that I was able to use to install Photoshop CS3 on and then bring it over to my laptop and fix the file names. Right now I only have the 1 Mac so I can’t do that. I am going to continue using Photoshop CS3 and ignore CS4. At least until Adobe does something about it.
I no longer care about Adobe. I go out of my way to avoid Adobe products. I’m still waiting on my refund for Photoshop… though I’m not holding my breath.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Its true that HFSX isn’t the default filesystem option to format a drive on a Mac OS X install, but it is supported by Apple. I can’t believe that fixing this limitation is that hard, expensive, or time-consuming for Adobe.
As far as I know, this is the first time Adobe says clearly on the System Requirements that you “cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system”. But, the “[...]or on flash-based storage devices” part made me laugh. Apple is shipping the new MacBook(/Pro) with a SSD (flash based!) option and Adobe is just not caring about it.
C’mon Adobe. A lot of creative users are using Mac OS X (and it’s user base is growing really FAST) and they doesn’t even got support for 64-bit on Mac.
They should be really ashamed.
I was very excited to acquire Adobe CS4 Web Premium to begin learning web some development. And then I hit the error message displayed above in the body of the blog. I’ve attempted to perform time-machine kung-fu to backup my data and then restore it to a non-case-sensitive filesystem, but TM errors and automatically aborts. I’ve tried a couple of times.
So I started a place to gripe about this over at Get Satisfaction. Come gripe with me.
http://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/make_cs4_case_sensitive_installable
Just got CS4 Design Premium for Mac (was previously using Windows) and reformatted my new Macbook Pro with case-sensitive file system (Mac is UNIX after all) and when I went to install it, I got this f’ing error.
Lastest Adobe on the Latest Mac and still an issue. What a joke.
I know this might not be best solution for everyone but for many of us who are already running Fusion (http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/) on our Macs, using the Windows version of the CS products will solve this problem. The Unity feature in Fusion makes it an easy integration with the OS X desktop. It is still terribly frustrating that Adobe has not fixed this problem.
no excuse whatsoever. their development team is and has been out of touch for a long time. too bad a good version of corel draw still is not available for a mac…
Absolutely absurd. How can this possibly be the case? Completely unforgivable. I need a case sensitive volume to do most things, why does it even matter for crissakes.