Adobe Creative Suite 5 vs. Mac OS

[Susan6C1C]

Years ago I purchased Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Standard and have been running it on my iMac with no issues. I'm mostly using InDesign and PhotoShop. I need to update my Mac OS from 10.9.5 to Catalina (or something in between if necessary). I need to know if there might be specific issues with certain versions of the Mac OS? In other words, will Catalina be compatible with my Adobe software? If not, which OS would be? I do not want to pay for a subscription to use the software that I already own. Thank you!
~ Susan 

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

You cannot install any Adobe Creative Suite software of any version on MacOS 10.15 or later which requires that all components, including the installers, be fully 64-bit compliant. To specifically answer your question, MacOS 10.15 (and the upcoming MacOS 11) is not compatible with Creative Suite 5 and vice versa. Should you buy a new Macintosh system, you will find that the option for installing older MacOS versions (i.e. prior to 10.15 or in the future, 11) simply doesn't or won't exist.

Also, to be very clear, you don't “own” any software but rather you “own” a license to use the software in question on the platform for which it was originally licensed. Given how operating systems these days increasing deprecate older application software versions with incompabilities introduced by newer OS versions, having a so-called “perpetual license” doesn't buy you very much at all over the longer term.

[Susan6C1C]

Thank you for your most helpful reply. Is it safe to assume then that if I'm using an OS below 10.15 that Creative Suite 5 will be compatible? I get the software licensing issue. I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of my older InDesign and PhotoShop CDs as I've been using them on old Mac computers for at least 13 years.

[Dov Isaacs]

That is not a particularly safe assumption. CS5 was released in April 2010, ten years ago, on a much earlier release of MacOS. One of the main problems with MacOS is that even before the big discontinuity in application support brought about by MacOS 10.15 due to requiring 64-bit everything, Apple has never committed to maintaining full existing application compatibility. It is not a matter of CS5 compatibility with particular MacOS releases, but vice versa, MacOS compatibility with applications developed and released under previous MacOS versions.

Whereas we know that CS5 absolutely won't install and run under MacOS 10.15 and later, in terms of earlier MacOS releases, given that Adobe hasn't supported CS5 for many years, we haven't done any compatibility testing with such MacOS releases. Perhaps others in this community can provide some of their experiences to assist you!  😁