by Veit on November 11, 2009
After I rebuilt my Mac using the Migration Assistant, everything worked – with the exception of Adobe’s Creative Suite, CS3. Getting CS3 (and also CS4!) to work turned out to be a much bigger issue than thought, with many hours spent digging through Adobe’s knowledgebase, their forums and on the phone.
In general, the problem is as follows: If you use the MacOSX Migration Assistant to migrate to a new Mac or to rebuild an existing Mac, chances are very high that you will run into the dreaded Adobe Creative Suite “Licensing for this product has stopped” issue. Even if you do not migrate your applications (as I did), the Migration Assistant migrates some of its settings, which renders the Creative Suite product unable to start. To analyze my CS3 problems, I went as far as installing a trial copy of Photoshop CS4, which would not work either. That alerted me to the fact that this was not a licensing issue for a particular CS component, but for all of Adobe’s creative suite products.
There are only two ways how to fix this issue:
- Reinstall your Mac without the use of the Migration Assistant (only to be used as a last resort, if everything else fails)
- Do some open-heart surgery (don’t worry – if it fails, your only alternative would have been a complete reinstall anyway)
Following are step-by-step instructions of how to get Adoce Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 to work again:
- Make sure you have copies of your Adobe products handy, since you will need to reinstall them. Don’t start this without having the disks or files you need for reinstallation.
- You will also need your admin/super-user password.
- Download a copy of the Adobe Flash player, since you will lose Flash in the process. Don’t install it yet.
- Download a copy of the Adobe CS3 clean script (there’s also one for CS4). Run it to uninstall CS3. It will delete the entire CS3 installation plus Flash.
- Uninstall any other Adobe software – better safe than sorry.
- Go to the following folders one at a time and delete anything that starts with “Adobe”, “Macromedia” and “FlexNet” or has it somewhere in its name:
- /Library/Application Support
- /Library/Preferences
- /Applications
- /Applications/Utilities
- ~/Library/Application Support
- Use the finder to search for Adobe, Macromedia or FlexNet. Examine every file or folder – if in doubt throw it away
- Empty your recycling bin, so all the files are gone for sure!
- Reboot.
- Reinstall the Flash Player that you downloaded in Step 3.
- Install CS3 from your install disks. Bingo, it works!
- Install any other Adobe product that you removed.
Done! Now my Mac is fully restored!
by Veit on September 10, 2009
Yesterday, Steve Jobs re-introduced the new Apple handheld equation:
Microphone + WiFi = iPhone Killer
With a microphone and WiFi, you have access to Google Voice in a browser, thus a potential phone. Add to that a Verizon MiFi and you have a de-facto cell phone.
That, and not Steve Jobs’ bogus answer to David Pogue on how Apple did not understand how to market an iPod Touch, is the reason we did not see a camera and video in the iPod Touch. And why the Nano does not include WiFi.
That is also why we we will not see an iPod camera, as Joe thinks we will. And why the iPad could have both WiFi and a microphone – it’s not a hand-held (or at least what a consumer understands a handheld to be).
Expect future Apple handhelds to follow this formula – Apple needs to protect its iPhone franchise
by Veit on September 9, 2009
Apple’s Music event today was interesting as much for what was said as for what was left out. But after a few hours of reflection, here’s my initial take on the impact of Apple’s announcements.
1. Apple will protect the iPhone franchise at all cost
Well, we did not get the most important announcement – the microphone in the new iPod Touch. Thus no video. But no camera at all? Unless Apple will release an out-of-cycle iPod Touch update due to the rumored manufacturing issues, the de-featuring of the new iPod Touch is a clear indication that Apple wants to protect its iPhone franchise at all cost. Apple was aware that a microphone would make it much easier for digeratis to use the iPod Touch as an “Ersatz” phone. Obviously, they were not willing to take the risk. And with no video, why incur the extra charge for a camera? Thanks, but we’d rather keep the money.
In fact, by looking at the OS 3.1 update, especially the peer-to-peer gaming feature, Apple seems to be positioning the iPod Touch more and more in the gaming space. Not surprising, but not totally understandable, either.
2. The iPad will not have a camera, either
While the iPad was neither announced (not surprisingly) nor mentioned, the continued de-featuring of the iPod Touch is a clear indication what not to expect in the iPad. For the same reasons as with the Touch, the iPad will not feature a microphone, either. No mic, no video and now we know, no camera. Frankly, I’m not sure, we would need a camera in the iPad, but we can now be sure we will not get one.
3. Developers scratching their heads
What’s this new iTunes feature allowing homes to share apps? I have not seen data indicating how many copies of an app a household buys on average, but if it is only 1.1, that is a 10% sales cut the developers just incurred. Thank you, Apple – first the approval mess and now you cost me sales as well? Even although the impact will probably be minimal, I’m sure developers are not happy about Home Sharing. But there’s some compensation for that, in the form of App Genius.
4. App Genius is genius – for Apple
Genius for Apps looks interesting, although I have not spent a lot of time with the new OS 3.1. Of course, it is Apple’s blatant attempt to get more cash from us through additional and better merchandizing. This must have developers smiling. We will see how good this will work, how much sales will increase and whether it will make up for lost sales due to home sharing. But it will boost the number of apps downloaded and also the number of apps sold – both important numbers to Apple’s Marketing machine. Not to mention additional revenue which they will gladly take.
What else do you think was really important in today’s event?
by Veit on August 13, 2007
While most of Steve Jobs’ presentation during last week’s press event in Cupertino was focused on the new iMac and iLife’08, I found iWork’08 to be the real gem. Just contrast iWork with iLife and you’ll quickly understand why iWork is where you should put your money first.
iLife is a true consumer application suite that I see many consumers growing out of quickly. It is very easy to get started with any of the iLife application and get some initial gratification in getting photos organized, a small song composed or a movie rendered. However, as you get hooked and want to go deeper, you’ll sooner or later switch to a prosumer application. I never even adopted iPhoto, Garageband did not prove to be sticky and iWeb locks me into .Mac and does not allow me to grow. The only application I still use occasionally is iMovie.
Contrary to iLife, iWork is not a suite of “starter apps”. There are easier ways to write some text, calculate some numbers or manage a list. Fortunately, iWork has enough functionality to not having to abandon it as my requirements become more sophisticated. Plus, Apple targeting iWork at the prosumer rather than the business person (like MS Office) provides for a welcome balance of ease-of-use with functionality. Indeed, I was most sceptical about its functionality, so I converted some of my advanced Excel (complex multi-sheet calculations with graphs) and Powerpoint (multi-build slides, heavy animations, images and clips) files to iWork. The result was much better than expected — basically, it converted all of them without barely a hitch, leaving me with 98+ percent of the files intact, working, functional and ready to expand. In Numbers, even the most complex formulas were preserved. Only macros would not run, since Visual Basic for Applications is not supported. My multi-build slides worked perfectly and my “foils” looked and behaved the way they were supposed to be.
Since some iWork users complained about its performance: All three iWork applications seemed zippy and performance was good overall on my MacBook Pro (2GB of memory).
There are three things that you should be aware of before adopting iWork — none are showstoppers, though:
- While iWork can import MS-Office files, including Office 2007, not surprisingly, it cannot write back to Office files. If your clients want to see Excel sheets and Powerpoint slides from you, you might have to stay on Office or find a 3rd party converter (not sure one exists, though).[Editor: One kind reader responded - iWork contains an Export function that can be used]
- Interestingly, iWork stores its output as a folder, rather than a file. E.g., a complex presentation shows up as a folder called XYZ.key, with all the individual elements comprising the presentation stored in the folder. This makes emailing a presentation harder. I don’t know whether you can email a folder in iMail, but for Thunderbird, I had to go into the Finder and zip the folder before being able to email it.
- When converting Excel spreadsheets, Numbers looses all conditional formatting information, since it does not support that feature. This might not be a big deal, but it is for me, since I’m a heavy user of conditional formatting.
Overall, at $79 for each iLife’08 and iWork’08, there’s no question to me what I’ll spend my money on. I’ll spend only $79 — on iWork’08.
