Hi everybody!
This post is my way to repay to the community.
I'll show you how I solved most of the problems with installing CS5 on a Clean Install of El Capitan 11.3 on a MacBook Pro Retina 2012. Suggested methods and tips have been collected not only from this thread, but also from other treads in forum.adobe and from elsewhere. That is why I think some of you may find this very long post worthwhile reading.
I didn't install all of CS5, but the following: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and (unwillingly) Bridge.
In addition to that, I installed Acrobat XI and Lightroom.
I also have FrameMaker in Parallels virtual machine with Windows XP. (This is for full-on professional technical writers.)
It is very hard to do away with any of these programs unless there are alternatives that are compatible with them. The only program (of these) I am somewhat "in love with" is Lightroom.
My procedure
The installers I have for CS5 are base versions, i.e "dot zero" versions that preferably need to be updated after install.
I did read up on recommended solutions to problems before I installed CS5!
Due to the requirement for either Java 6 or a modified Java 8, I started downloading and installing Java 8 JRE (i.e the runtime version), being careful to untick the stupid ad-ware box that wanted to pollute Safari with Yahoo stuff. (As it turns out, JRE is not useful for the purpose of making CS5 work, it has to be JDK, but more on that below here.)
According to https://forums.adobe.com/message/7167153#7167153 I was supposed to modify files in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/, but it turns out that the JRE 8 never installs anything in that directory, so I could not follow the instruction!
I installed CS5, being careful to uncheck everything except the three apps mentioned. Specifically, uncheck fonts since you do not want /Library/Fonts/ filled with everything between heaven and earth! (I already have those fonts elsewhere.)
Despite I unchecked all fonts, it did anyway thrown 41 fonts into /Library/Fonts/ whether I wanted or not! It also installs Growl without telling me anything about it!
As expected, starting Photoshop says it requires Java 6 (since my attempt with Java 8 was unsuccessful, see above). It appears that Java 8 has to be the JDK, otherwise it will not install anything into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/, which is necessary to do the "hack". But since Java 8 JDK is a whopping 227 MB, I opted to install Java 6 anyway from Apple's Site: javaforosx.dmg at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572.
This made it possible to start Photoshop, entering license etc. All three apps started fine, but they all crashed on quit as expected (as has been reported in these threads).
Now I followed the procedure in https://forums.adobe.com/message/8343617#8343617. I.e rename both versions of CS5.5ServiceManager to CS5.5ServiceManager.bak. That fixed the crash on quit, and also made startup of apps faster. (It will not, however, fix the crash in Illustrator when using the Eye dropper on images.)
I have also verified that in Illustrator I can Save As and chose any location I want, regardless if the location is chosen in List view or Column view, except that I cannot go up in hierarchy by clicking the popup menu and chose an enclosing folder (which makes it crash)! Crashing in this case has been reported as a big problem with Illustrator CS5. The workaround is to chose a higher folder in the list to the left and then navigate down to where you want, or use Column view.
Since I installed Java 6 JRE, which is a security threat, I now installed Java 8 JRE again, which installs the latest browser plugins. This will at least make java "browsers safe".
(I am not sure, however, if I should do away with the Java 6 plugin that remains in the directory /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ – it appears not to be used at all for browsers (which instead use /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/), but perhaps the old one is used by certain local software? Is it still needed by the installed CS5? At least Photoshop is said not to use it at all except on first run. Is there a risk here? If you know anything about this, please respond.
Now I updated the apps:
I downloaded the updaters for these three apps to make them Photoshop 12.04, Illustrator 15.0.2, InDesign 7.0.4. They are from 2010 and 2011. When attempting to run any of them, however, I get: "“AdobePatchInstaller” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should eject the disk image.".
I then tried updating from inside the apps, but I got: "There was an error downloading this update. Please quit and try again later." and also at the end "Some updates failed to install".
I now discovered that if I change Security & Privacy in System Preferences to "Anywhere", then those stand-alone updaters I had dowloaded earlier worked without claiming to be damaged! For Illustrator it worked perfectly, but for Photoshop and InDesign it says in the end "Done with Errors". That error message appears to be relatively harmless, since all three apps run well and are updated to the version claimed they should be.
These updaters, however, dumped 87 MB worth of junk into "Adobe/AdobePatchFiles/"! Why? I really doubt they can ever be useful for anything, so I simply deleted them all including the folder! I really hate when bastards are just filling my computer with junk and debris! Would they behave like that if I invited them to my home?!
AdobeAAMDetect.plugin is also installed in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. According to http://superuser.com/questions/964449/what-is-the-adobeaamdetect-plugin-and-how-can-i-uninstall-it it only checks for the existence of Adobe Application Manager, and it is necessary to have there, unfortunately. So one should NOT delete that one I think, but I am still a bit uncertain what will be broken if I do delete it. We all know that there will never be any more updates to CS5, so one can speculate in if this dirt is still needed in order to run these three CS5 apps. If you know anything about this, please respond.
Well, that's it! These apps appear to work fine, and I can Save As Illustrator to wherever I want (with some care). The eye-dropper crash, however, is a different animal, and people have said that if you avoid links and gradual fillings there will be no problem. For me, Illustrator is primarily used to be able to edit legacy files.
What remains were installation of Acrobat XI and Lightroom. Acrobat went fairly ok (a whole gigabyte!), but it does install two plugins into /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/: AdobePDFViewer.plugin and AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin. Many people report trouble with these, and Apples own pdf renderer is very much faster. I moved both to Disabled Plug-Ins.
Epolog
I could, in theory, get hold of CS6, but from what I have read, it is almost as troublesome as CS5. (The Cloud is not even an option.) CS 5 does what I need, but it is unfortunately not retina. On the other hand, when I use these CS apps I often use an external big monitor that is not retina, so it is not such a big deal. Lightroom, however, is retina and I often use that on my MacBook Pro without en external monitor.
Lightroom is the only Adobe app that is a breeze to install, and with a friendly attitude that lets me remain the master, and not the slave! This is in stark contrast to the incredibly invasive CS and Acrobat that dumps inordinate and exorbitant amounts of preposterous fat junk and debris scattered throughout the whole computer, often with the result of huge gnarly problems, bugs, and/or snail slow performance, at absolutely no benefit to most pro users!
The same can be said about Microsoft, which has no respect whatsoever for the owner of the computer! To Adobe's defense, however, I can say that when the app actually does work well, it is usually a pleasure to use (although with an exorbitant hunger for CPU cycles). Using Microsoft software, however, is never a pleasure — especially with Word, it is a recipe for a nervous breakdown that can drive any serious person into a psychological wreck!
It is therefore nice to hear that there actually are a few rare companies that actually dare to compete with the big sharks and bulls — I am here thinking of Affinity Photo. What I would love to see is a competitor to both FrameMaker and Word, but with the nicety of Apple's Pages!
As for Apple pro apps, or close-to-pro, I never trust them because after a few years Apple will usually decide that it is not in their "core business", and therefore they dump them. Users are suddenly left with a huge pile of documents that are incompatible with everything between heaven and earth!
Enough of bashing the big companies for now. Let's hope for improvements!
Perhaps, someday, even Linux gets nice pro-software...
Harald
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