Help with G4

[bob carnie]

I want to take a Mac G4 home to use for personal study.
I am being told by my retailer that CS4 will not work on a G4 and that CS3 which I use daily at work
cannot be bought.
Am I being hosed ?
He has offered be a G5 box for about $700 and then I could buy the CS4, is this some mad plot by Adobe?
any help would be appreciated.

[Joanna Carter]

You can buy a Mac Mini for as little as $599, brand new. I would have thought it better to buy an Intel Mac so that you will be able to run the newer Intel only software as it comes along.

[bob carnie]

I am interested over time to have my home workstation match my work system, so I need to be able to run current PS and Lightroom software and any future upgrades, I have a couple of G4's sitting at work as well as monitors that I thought I could work with.


You can buy a Mac Mini for as little as $599, brand new. I would have thought it better to buy an Intel Mac so that you will be able to run the newer Intel only software as it comes along.

[Gene McCluney]

I have used ebay to find and purchase older versions of CS (Photoshop Creative Suite) for both Mac and PC platforms. These generally are factory sealed, with serial numbers that work just fine. In other words official product, that just didn't sell.

[Marko]

I want to take a Mac G4 home to use for personal study.
I am being told by my retailer that CS4 will not work on a G4 and that CS3 which I use daily at work
cannot be bought.
Am I being hosed ?
He has offered be a G5 box for about $700 and then I could buy the CS4, is this some mad plot by Adobe?
any help would be appreciated.

It isn't a mad plot and you aren't being hosed. It's just that G4 was based around Motorola CPU, the G5 around IBM PowerPC and the newest Macs are all Intel-based. We are talking about three generations behind and it is simply not feasible nor practical to build new software packages to support that old of a platform.

As for which software will work with which architecture, CS4 was built as x86 application only, if I am not mistaken, while CS3 was built as a Universal Binary and should work on both platforms. That would be the simplest explanation of what you were told.

But I agree with Joanna - why spend money on an obsolete architecture (in the sense that it won't be upgradeable) when you can have current one for not too much of an outlay?

[bob carnie]

Marko
thanks for your explanation on the different platforms.

regarding the cost.
I already have the g4, I only want at this point to use it at home for training,ie watching the video's from groups like LL, Kelby Training, Lynda and a host of others not forgetting Adobes own training and following with our own images.

Currently I have at work a fully loaded Mac Pro system, currently running CS3.
My aim is over time buy a complimentary system to what I currently have at work.
therefore from my vantage point all I need to do is get a copy of CS3 photoshop and put it on the g4 and not buy another computer .

We are now in the middle of considering the complete CS4 package for work, but I am quite happy currently with CS3 platform for home.
therefore
I am trying to use what I already have without paying too much at this time.







It isn't a mad plot and you aren't being hosed. It's just that G4 was based around Motorola CPU, the G5 around IBM PowerPC and the newest Macs are all Intel-based. We are talking about three generations behind and it is simply not feasible nor practical to build new software packages to support that old of a platform.

As for which software will work with which architecture, CS4 was built as x86 application only, if I am not mistaken, while CS3 was built as a Universal Binary and should work on both platforms. That would be the simplest explanation of what you were told.

But I agree with Joanna - why spend money on an obsolete architecture (in the sense that it won't be upgradeable) when you can have current one for not too much of an outlay?

[Gene McCluney]

So really, you just need someone to sell you a copy of CS3 for Mac. That would be the least expensive way to go.

[bob carnie]

Gene ,
I think that is what it boils down too, but my guy told me that he couldn't do this and his shop is where we bought most of our gear over the years.
All our copies are registered to specific computers within our lab and all I want is a legit CS3 PS specific package to load onto an old box I have here.

This digital market is fast and furious, Today I am printing on an 11x14 devere that was purchased in 1982 and it is working like a charm. Funny to me how we are improving over these years.

Fortunately an angel on this forum is sending me a CS3 package. thank you and we will put it to good use at home.


So really, you just need someone to sell you a copy of CS3 for Mac. That would be the least expensive way to go.

[Peter Mounier]

Apparently you can run it on a G4, but it will run slower and perhaps the Flash element won't load.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1772108

Peter

[Gordon Moat]

CS4 on a G4 desktop is barely possible, and probably not a good choice in a work environment. I recently got a MacBook Pro just so I could load CS4, though I still have my older PowerBook G4 as back-up.

I think your best bet is to find a copy of CS3 (or even CS2) and put it on your older G4 platform. While you cannot buy that directly from Adobe, I would bet there are a few boxes of CS3 still out there. Hardware support has always been an issue with Adobe software, though in this case the move seems faster than in the past.

After over 14 years of using PhotoShop, I can honestly state there are damn few improvements. Mostly it is productivity enhancements. I thought CS3 interface was a mess compared to prior versions, and seems slightly better with CS4, but the reality is that most changes are productivity oriented. You could do nearly everything in older versions of PhotoShop that you can do in CS4, though with CS4 you can now do certain things faster or easier. My harsh personal feeling is that CS4 is a clusterf*(% of an interface that has been too dumbed down so it can be sold to more people.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Marko]

My harsh personal feeling is that CS4 is a clusterf*(% of an interface that has been too dumbed down so it can be sold to more people.

You know, you are actually being kind compared to what I and some photoshop-heads I know think about it. Suffice it to say that I've been using Photoshop professionally since version 4 and this is the first upgrade I actually want to skip.

But I have a bit different explanation - Adobe's been following this new trend with both marketing and design ever since they bought Macromedia. Feels like they are for some reason loath to dispense with some practices that came over with the purchase... ;) I certainly hope it does not cost them everything in the long run, like it did Quark and, well, Macromedia itself.