> He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
Sounds like the friend has a need to upgrade, and that upgrade is going to require new software.
I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
> I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
Old stuff stops working due to deliberate design choices made on both Apple and Adobe's parts. Apple deliberately stripped Rosetta and 32-bit support from macOS, and Adobe is deliberately making it nearly impossible to use older versions of the CS suite on their end.
Meanwhile, I can run Photoshop 6 on Windows or WINE, and I can still run binaries that were statically compiled for Linux 20 years ago today.
You can probably run Photoshop 6 under SheepShaver. I can (and have) run DOS programs from the 1990s in DOSBox on my Mac.
I appreciate backwards compatibility, but I'm not convinced drawing lines in the sand every once so often is a terrible idea. Revisiting old software is fun for nostalgic reasons and, sure, there are sometimes edge cases where you have to use something that hasn't been updated in years, but in general I'd rather be using software that exhibits at least minimal signs of being an ongoing concern.
The hardware, which is not the main tool in his craft
He draws by hand on paper and the final preparation on Photoshop is for printing
After almost 10 years he needed a new laptop (things wear out with time and he could not install more RAM) but not a new Photoshop version with a different and more costly license
The need to upgrade software is an artificial one and it's only needed because some platforms don't have a good backwards compatibility
Windows does
For many people the OS doesn't make any difference, as long as they can keep using the tools they already know
There is a limit on the improvements a new software will provide if your workflow is already good as it is and you already paid for the version that works for you
I know many small businesses that still use Office 2003
They can install it on new hardware on new Windows versions, it's simply not possible to do the same on Mac
It's not better or worse, backwards compatibility it's a feature and as any other feature some people value it a lot, some don't care at all
Sounds like the friend has a need to upgrade, and that upgrade is going to require new software. I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.