I feel like Adobe has slammed the door in my face and left me out in the cold, snowy cold. I hate to have to write an article like this criticizing software that is usually a joy to use and has served my wife and I well over the years, but I am not happy with Adobe’s decision not to support CS3 on Snow Leopard and I want them to know it so they can reverse their decision and make their customers happy to be their customers again. Contrary to what they are saying, there is at least one known problem – see my YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1amkkbgpmmk

All I wanted to do is to change a font and Photoshop crashes. Is that too much to ask for? I know that CS3 isn’t “officially” supported on Snow Leopard, and I know they “tested” it anyway, but come on, didn’t they try changing the fonts? I have posted a video on YouTube demonstrating my problem, as well as submitting a crash report.

I am currently laying the groundwork to support my friends’ band, Baltic Avenue (balticavenue.net, the outstanding Raleigh, NC fusion band), so the first thing I am doing is redesigning their website. I just wanted to come up with a better logo than the one they have now, so I thought I’d fire up CS3 to do it, ripping off the iAirGuitar logo style somewhat that my wife’s relative helped us with. After having it repeatedly crash while changing fonts, I finally got upset enough about it to post a YouTube video, hoping that it will “go viral” and somebody at Adobe will take notice and reverse their decision not to support CS3 on Snow Leopard. I do get tired of spending hundreds of dollars for upgrades every couple of years on my software, honestly, but I haven’t had enough success in my career yet to afford me the time to contribute to free software efforts like GIMP, nor the patience and time to spend the extra time learning how to use free software, which in many cases have steeper learning curves. I haven’t used GIMP in a while, but it used to crash on me constantly. But it may be time to install the latest version to see how much I can bear it, rather than fork over any more money to Adobe?

I do depend on high quality software to get my work done quickly and effectively and I do pay through the nose for it most of the time (though I refuse to buy some software, like Microsoft Office, for example, opting for the free Neo Office instead.) So please, Adobe (and others), spend the extra money to support your recent software on newer OS versions. If not to make us existing customers happy, then do it to improve your branding experience so you will continue to win new customers. Otherwise, perhaps there is a business model here for a company that trains existing Adobe customers on free software like GIMP and Inkscape?

Please digg this article so we can all convince Adobe (and others) how important it is to support their recently released software to keep their existing customers happy!