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PolTrePen Author

Level 1

8 points

So upset after updating to Catalina...

Hi, this may be just a moan but if anyone has a positive solution, I'd be really glad to hear! I retired about 5 years ago, bought a fairly top of the range MacBook Pro. I had it running PhotoShop, MS Office, AutoCad, etc. Last year my email and Safari kept crashing and it seemed the only way to resolve it was to update to Catalina. I did and now PhotoShop, MS Office and AutoCad don't work any more. I've managed to buy the last MS Office standalone release and got that going but there is no way, as an occasional user, I can afford the subscriptions for PhotoShop or AutoCad (thousands a year). I'm only an occasional user but I need these programmes. I am not at all techy, so the disk partition solutions, etc. are well beyond my capabilities. I am wondering whether i need to just buy an older MacBook or go back to an older Windows machine and install the old programmes there. My laptop would then become a very expensive email reader and browser. I am just so upset that Apple, MS, Autodesk, Adobe, etc. have put me in this position and, it feels like deliberately, stopped my 5 year old machine and software from working.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 23, 2020 11:58 PM

Top-ranking reply

David McKinlay

Level 7

22,900 points

Posted on Dec 24, 2020 2:05 AM

You might want to point a finger at the software vendors failing to keep up to date, specifically with the move in Catalina from 32 Bit to 64 Bit software.

Adobe hasn’t troubled itself to make PhotoShop Catalina-capable, over a year after its release. On this page they have this to say, “Photoshop 21.0 & Photoshop 20.0.7 work with macOS 10.15 (Catalina) but have these known compatibility issues. You may want to remain on your current version of macOS until these issues have been resolved” and "...legacy/perpetual versions of Photoshop were not designed or tested to work on macOS 10.15 (Catalina). They are not supported in any way for use on macOS Catalina. Adobe does not recommend that customers using old versions of Photoshop upgrade to macOS Catalina.”

Autodesk says here about AutoCAD:

"AutoCAD for Mac and AutoCAD LT for Mac 2017 and earlier are not compatible with macOS 10.15.x (Catalina). AutoCAD Versions 2018 and later are, although the latest updates for the products need to be applied." (This seems to be Update 2018.3)

Is AutoCAD 2018 (or later) the version you own and can update? AutoCAD 2015 seems to be the first version which is 64 Bit compatible.

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Top-ranking reply

David McKinlay

Level 7

22,900 points

Dec 24, 2020 2:05 AM in response to PolTrePen

You might want to point a finger at the software vendors failing to keep up to date, specifically with the move in Catalina from 32 Bit to 64 Bit software.

Autodesk says here about AutoCAD:

Is AutoCAD 2018 (or later) the version you own and can update? AutoCAD 2015 seems to be the first version which is 64 Bit compatible.

PolTrePen Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 24, 2020 2:30 AM in response to David McKinlay

Thank you David. It's a financial problem for me, as a pensioner on less than 10k a year. My PhotoShop is ancient and the AutoCad is 2015, both of which did much more than I ever needed. I can't afford to update them as they are now subscription, AutoCad about 2k a year (GBP) and PhotoShop about 240, or 600 with the add ons that I had. AutoDesk say that I need 2018 or later to run on Catalina. I'm afraid I don't even know what 32 and 64 bit mean, and I don't suppose it'd help me to find out now... So... even if the vendors' software was compatible, I couldn't afford it!

So upset after updating to Catalina...