Mac OS 10.15 -- Will Adobe Acrobat Pro, either 2017 or DC function?

[scottweible@gmail.com]

I have been on 'chat' with the (un)helpful people at Adobe for about 30 minutes, trying to get them to tell me if Adobe Acrobat Pro 2017 will work in the upcoming 64bit-only Mac OS 10.15.

Incredulously, they tell me that they "have not tested it" in that environment.  Without coming out and calling them bald faced fibbers, I find that 99.99999% hard to believe, given that Mac OS 10.15 is going to be released in a month or so.

I own 10-12 licenses for Adobe Acrobat Pro XI, and paid a great deal of money for them.  Nevertheless, the money I paid is still less than what I would have paid if Adobe had begun (back when I bought them) trying to coerce its customers into buying an expensive "subscription" plan. In fact, if I had bought a subscription for each of these licenses, by now, I would have paid 2-3 times what I originally paid.  Good for Adobe.  Bad for me.

So, my question, to which I'd love a straight answer if Adobe is listening, is whether Adobe Acrobat Pro 2017  ... WILL ... function correctly in Mac OS 10.15?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Let's separate two issues here.

What is currently downloadable from Adobe as Acrobat Pro 2017 (or Acrobat Pro DC) will not properly install and run on the unrelease MacOS 10.15. That having been said, there will be an update to both Acrobat Pro DC (subscription) and Acrobat Pro 2017 (perpetual license) within the coming week or two that will fully be compliant with MacOS 10.15 (unless Apple breaks something between its current “beta” releases and what actually ships in a month or two). The support folks you spoke to may not have been briefed on this yet.

I am not going to argue subscriptions versus so-called perpetual licenses other than to note that it has been many years since the OS vendors, especially but not limited to Apple, guaranteed or even pretended to maintain operating system compatibility with existing application versions. That has caused a tremendous amount of grief for all software developers, Adobe included, since you can no longer have application versions that support a wide range of OS versions. Often, dramatic changes must be made to application programs to account for architecture changes (32-bit versus 64-bit), “deprecated” OS functions and capabilities replaced by new highly incompatible functions and capabilities, and total new OS features to support new hardware (including base computer as well as peripherals). Unfortunately, under the perpetual license licensing model, there isn't much we can do to help you with 10 to 12 licenses you own for Acrobat Pro 11 other than to provide a means of either moving to the Acrobat Pro 2017 version or the Acrobat Pro DC subscription.

            - Dov

[scottweible@gmail.com]

The principal issue is that Adobe does not SAY what you said below.

It is their, primary, responsibility — even greater than creating valuable and stable products — to be clear, explicitly and open in their statements so that we can choose.

Adobe’s website, and their incompetent sales people, could not be worse at explaining what you said.

It took me 45 minutes with some Adobe sort to get absolutely no information. When I asked Apple, in 5 minutes I got what was the equivalent of the first part of your answer. No one, not Adobe, not Apple, not anyone would tell me that 2017 would be updated to work with Mac OS 10..15, and in fact, one bone-head at Adobe suggested that I download Mac OS 10.15 Beta and install it on my main production machine and see if 2017 was compatible with it.

And, while I realize that ‘the world is changing’ quickly, I’m old enough to have seen what the world was like before Jobs met Wozniak (they were a year behind me at Homestead High School in Sunnyvale, California), I do not feel sorry for Adobe or the other software vendors. If it is too hard for them, they can close their companies and let someone else take their market share.

My main, and really only, complaint is that Adobe is remarkably either dishonest or simply withholding in its information and its website is so confusing that it must be intentional, because no entity which was trying to help its public understand what it was selling would create a website like that.

In the end, I bought Adobe Acrobat Pro DC based, not on Adobe’s recommendation, but Apple’s statement that even if there were bugs when 10.15 comes out, they’d see to it that Adobe’s product worked. Why couldn’t Adobe tell me the same thing?

Sent from my iPad

[Dov Isaacs]

I understand you are upset. But I just gave you the answer and I am representing Adobe.

And yes, if anyone at Adobe told you to install a beta version of MacOS or any operating system on a production system – forget about installing any applications thereupon – they were not properly representing our company and advice that we should be giving.

And with regards to Apple telling you anything about what Adobe would do, they do not speak for Adobe.

That having been said, the commitment that Adobe has made with the subscription products is to release updates to match operating system incompatibilities as soon as reasonably possible after such new, incompatible operating systems are released. That having been said, it is highly imprudent to install any new OS version on a production system the day the new OS version is released; wait for the OS to stabilize and for the application updates to come out.

In the case of MacOS 10.15, as previously mentioned, expect an update to Acrobat Pro 2017 and Acrobat Pro DC within the next week or two that we believe will address the MacOS 10.15 incompatibilities (we don't get the final released version of the OS until the Mac customers do).

          - Dov