Technology is going to keep marching on – that's never going to change. And Adobe moves ahead the OS version requirements in order to take advantage of the latest available capabilities in their newest Creative Cloud releases. But since the very beginning of Creative Cloud, Adobe has said they would not force customers to upgrade, and by implication, to have to buy new computers. To make good on this promise, subscribers need to be able to access prior releases for older systems (especially Macs) which cannot support the newest CC versions.   In recent years, Adobe has limited this access to only the current release and the one prior. This is called their "N-1" Policy. Now, today, this means that macOS Big Sur (version 11.0) or later is required, since it's the minimum for both CC 2024 and CC 2023. This rules out everybody who, for whatever reason, is running macOS 10.15 Catalina and earlier.   As others have commented above, some older Creative Cloud releases are still available for direct download, but the choice is limited and it is unclear if those links will be available indefinitely.   I think it's not enough to say that folks can keep their old systems and versions in a frozen, isolated bubble, without ever needing to reinstall their apps... "Things happen," components fail, products can need reinstalling. If paying customers do not have ready access to those prior CC releases for their otherwise-perfectly-adequate machines, they are out of luck.   And since Adobe generally does not make complete standalone installers available anymore for CC users (unless you ask), then people aren't aware they need to have in hand the installers that they can no longer get, until it's too late.   I think Adobe urgently needs to do something about this, lest they continue to lose paying customers who can no longer access a Creative Cloud version that will run on their systems. "N-1" should be expanded to a wider window of previous releases (as it used to be), while disavowing all official support on anything older than N-1 and simply asking that any subscribers who need support for those prior releases just come here to the Forums instead.   Adobe of course still has all those older installers, should they decide to make them available – so it's just a policy change, really. I sincerely hope they do something about this soon. ... View more

Readers have reported that Error Code 41 "Sorry, installation failed – Installer was unable to access a critical file/directory" a handful of times with CC 2019 over the past couple of years...   Here are the current suggestions to try in order to solve it, though for some reason, people have had varying success.   CC 2018 can be used as an alternative and doesn't seem to run into that error. ... View more

  Using Creative Cloud Libraries is a good alternative for sharing assets online across different apps, users, or systems, and is widely supported throughout Creative Cloud...   From the FAQ:   Is there an alternative to Creative Cloud Synced files, which is being discontinued?   For Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fresco users, cloud documents are the solution for saving, sharing, and collaborating on creative work in progress. Creative Cloud Libraries are the best way to save and share design elements across applications and users.       ... View more

Hi Wobbly,   The last available release was Contribute CS5 (which was Contribute version 6.0) and it can still be downloaded here:   https://prodesigntools.com/adobe-cs5-5-direct-download-links.html   It's old software though and won't install on macOS Catalina or newer, due to changes that Apple made to remove all 32-bit support. It may still install on Windows, possibly using Compatibility Mode. Being legacy software though, there are no guarantees on working 100% after installation. ... View more

Hi Reginald,   Looking closer at the screenshots you posted, it appears that "IT-Direct deals" was not an actual authorized reseller of Adobe software. Per the Internet Archive, that site was taken down within a few months of your purchase... Reviews from that time period corroborate this:   https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/itdirectdeals.com#1 https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/itdirectdeals.com#2 https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/itdirectdeals.com#3   The $389 price you paid in 2013 was too low to be genuine anyway, and no legitimate vendor was/is allowed to sell digital downloads of CS6 (sending you a serial number), per the email you posted. This is why it's so important to only buy software from a company whose name is familiar and who you already trust, and avoid "deals" which sound too good to be true or come from untrusted sources.   So it seems Adobe was within their rights to flag the license as invalid, although this process does sometimes take some time or happens after a reactivation. You were probably lucky to be able to use it for as long as you did (illegally, as it turns out), and hopefully your system did not contract a virus or trojan from the counterfeit, which is all too common.   Sorry the news isn't better in this case, but Adobe does not appear to be in error here. ... View more