Lightroom 6 on a new MacBook

jessen40676609 wrote:

Can't be that hard to use an already purchased product on a new laptop?!

Under normal circumstances, no, it isn’t that hard. But…over the last 5 years since the last update to Lightroom 6 was released, Apple has been changing macOS dramatically under the hood. Apple has spent the last few major versions of macOS guiding developers to get their applications ready for the Mac’s future, requiring things like full 64-bit support, adherance to tighter requirements for security and privacy, and following new APIs optimized for future Macs. Lightroom 6 is one of many Mac applications that won’t run on a new Mac, because it was last updated before the big macOS transitions that were required to get to M1.

Apple gave developers several years of notice to get things in order, so Adobe has been making the necessary changes to Lightroom Classic in versions 7 through 10.

In 2019 Apple started closing the gate in macOS 10.15 Catalina, which won’t run any application that does not meet the new requirements. If your new Mac has an Intel processor, the only way to install Lightroom 6 on it is if the Mac can run macOS 10.14 or earlier.

In 2020 was the second big change, away from Intel to Apple Silicon. If your new Mac has an Apple M1 processor, there is no way to install or run Lightroom 6. The current version, Lightroom Classic 10, runs on M1 but is not optimized; Adobe says the M1-optimized version is coming this year.

"IF" the new MacBook is running the Catalina operating system or newer then it won't be possible to install Lightroom 6. Although Lightroom 6 is a 64-bit program, the installer is 32-bit, and Catalina will not run it. Neither will any newer operating system. Additionally, it will be difficult to find updates as the installation disk will only have Lightroom 6.0, then the final update was 6.14.