Lion Issues - Adobe, Quicken, Microsoft and More

We've received several emails since our recent message to customers suggesting that they don't update to OSX Lion at this time.

Most of you thanked us for the information, two of you blasted us and there was some confusion about the current and future status of our programs on Lion.

CRADOC PROGRAM STATUS
Both fotoQuote Pro 6 and the fotoKeyword Harvester currently run in all versions of OSX, including Lion. FotoQuote Pro 5 and earlier versions do not run in Lion. With fotoQuote Pro 6 you have access to all of the pricing and negotiating information and all parts of the program run as they did before Lion.

When you print a quote in fotoQuote Pro 6, however, there is a scrambling of the date on the quote. We've been promised an update to our programming language next month that will correct this. As soon as we get the fix we'll send a link to registered users of fotoQuote Pro 6 to download the free maintenance update.

FotoBiz will not run in Lion. We have been working on a replacement for previous versions of fotoBiz for most of the last year and it is about 90% done. The last bit of work and the testing take some time, but we expect to have the program out later this year. This program will be worth the wait.

In the meantime if you want to continue to use fotoBiz, either don't upgrade to Lion, or run fotoBiz on a second non-Lion computer. I'm sorry for the hassle, but we didn't create it.

PROBLEMS WITH LION
Now, once again, I'm going to encourage you not to upgrade to Lion right now, there are serious problems with many programs, including Adobe's, as I describe below.
 
If you feel you must upgrade to Lion, please, at least do some research before you do. I'll explain how you can do that below.

I mentioned that we had two customers blast us for the last email we sent about Lion. One of them called me "unprofessional" for suggesting that Lion would create havoc just because our program wouldn't run on it. I don't work that way. If you don't have our latest versions of the programs you may need to upgrade because of Lion. Sales for us, but I hate that. You should upgrade because I've added features to our programs that have value to you, not because of an OS change.

I had actually changed the word to "havoc" from "damage" in my original draft of the email to tone it down a bit. The same day that I received the "unprofessional" email I got one from another customer saying that he wished that he had taken my advice. He said that he had to spend an entire day reinstalling Snow Leopard and software because after installing Lion he no longer had access to Quicken with all of his bookkeeping.

Quicken not running in Lion is widely publicized, but is just the tip of the iceberg. If you use audio programs, I've read that none of your 32 bit plugins will work any more. http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=72462

If you use Final Draft or Final Draft AV for writing film or multimedia scripts you'll be out of luck in Lion. My older Microsoft Office will be useless. I use Apple's iWork most of the time now, but keep my older Office program in case I need to work with other Office users. I don't want to be forced to upgrade.

INFORMATION ON ADOBE PRODUCTS COMPATIBILITY
We just found this link where Adobe has announced big problems with their products and Lion, some of them up to, and including, CS5.

From the article: "Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion" is a 1,500-word litany of woe…

HERE'S HOW TO QUICKLY CHECK TO SEE WHICH OF YOUR PROGRAMS WON'T RUN IN LION
In your Utilities folder (a shortcut is Shft Cmd U from the desktop) run the System Profiler program. In the column on the left select Applications from the Software section. Scroll to the right until you see the column "Kind". Click on the header "Kind" to sort. Anything in the list that is Classic or PowerPC will not run in Lion.

As noted above, even the things that will run may have problems.

I did this on my 11" Macbook Air that is less than a year old and found over 80 applications and code bits that were power PC. Obviously most were not applications but I don't know what the other bits do, and don't want to find out by having programs not work. Among the apps that wouldn't run in Lion were the Microsoft Office programs that I mentioned above and most of my scanning software including OCR and apps that have to do with audio and music.

I haven't even done this on my bigger, older computer that has the bulk of my software on it.

Professionals in the music industry learned long ago not to update to new operating systems until they had to. If you depend on your computer to make a living that is the smart way to go. Let others work out the bugs and upgrade only when you know your workflow won't be compromised.

I saw an article that said "The oldest software on your computer should be the operating system." I agree.

A review of Lion on Macintouch.com makes the point:

"Worse, Apple hasn't breathed a word about any of this to customers other than developers. Not on the marketing website, not in its support pages, not even buried in a tiny footnote somewhere. Any Mac user with older applications who upgrades to Lion may be in for a nasty shock when their tools suddenly stop working. There are many thousands of older, specialized applications which are still critically useful to Mac owners today, even though they have not been converted by their developers to Intel-based code. Similarly, there are untold numbers of Mac documents that are readable only by software incompatible with Lion. While Apple may recognize no duty to support these older Mac technologies, it absolutely has the duty to tell its customers that its removal of an existing Mac technology will suddenly disable their software and documents. Apple's silence on this change is unconscionable."

Use your own judgment when it is best for you to upgrade. I hope that this information will help you make an informed decision.

-Cradoc