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Is It Safe To Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?

Answered by Jay Nelson, Editor and Publisher, Design Tools Monthly

Question:
We need to buy some new Macs, and they require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Unfortunately, we haven't upgraded from QuarkXPress 6.5 and Adobe Creative Suite 2. Will we have problems?
 
Answer:
I've been asked this question several times in recent weeks, so it must be a common situation. I hate to say it, but yes, you are going to have problems — significant problems. Mac OS X 10.5 was nowhere on the horizon when Quark and Adobe completed and shipped QuarkXPress 6 and Creative Suite 2. In fact QuarkXPress 6 was released almost two full years before Leopard's predecessor, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. And Adobe's CS2 was also developed before 10.4 was released. Apple changed a LOT of basic-level things from 10.3 (which was current at the time) to 10.4, and then again in 10.5.

So what can you do? Obviously, you need to either upgrade to the latest versions of QuarkXPress 8 and Adobe Creative Suite 4, or find a used Mac that can run Mac OS X 10.4. If you don't choose one of those options, here are some of the problems you're likely to see:

  • File corruption, especially when opened across a network.
  • Font confusion in existing documents.
  • Applications not showing all of their menu items, dialog box components, or palettes.
  • Loss of some printing capabilities.
  • Loss of PDF generation.
  • Unexpected quits.

As I said, these are significant problems. So maybe you're thinking you can squeak by with QuarkXPress 7 and Creative Suite 3, the next-to-latest versions. The situation is better with these versions, but still not perfect. Once again, neither of these versions were developed when 10.5 was available. Some patches were made, and they work mostly OK in 10.5, but you'll still experience some issues with printing, color management, file management and hiding applications.

Sadly, we at Design Tools Monthly continue to recommend that design professionals NOT use Leopard unless they can upgrade to QuarkXPress 8 and Adobe Creative Suite 4. That's simply the way it is.


This question was answered by Jay Nelson, Publisher & Editor, Design Tools Monthly. We love DTM's tips and advice and think you will, too. For a free sample PRINTED issue, contact Design Tools Monthly at 303-543-8400, e-mail info@design-tools.com, or go to their website: www.design-tools.com.


 



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