Mixed Marriage – PC and Mac

<p>Hi All,</p>

<p>I have a desktop Windows PC with Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 installed on it. I also have the installation files for Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3 for Windows stored on my hard drive because I paid for those programs and then paid for the upgrade to the newer versions. I’m sure most of you have done the exact same thing.</p>

<p>My question is, if I purchase a MacBook Pro laptop computer, how can I get these programs to run on it as well, both physically and legally? Ideally I would like to run both Lr 3 and Ps CS5 on both machines, but I doubt the Windows installation files will run on the Mac and Adobe might disapprove, although I’m sure an awful lot of people run these programs on both their desktops and laptops, just with the same operating system. How about a way to run Lr 2 on the Mac and Lr 3 on the PC? I paid for both programs so that should be legal, right? Anyway, I’m sure you can see my dilemma and appreciate the challenges. Any help would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>Many thanks,<br />Dave</p>

<p>For Photoshop, you’ll need a Mac serial number (or you can get a sidegrade if you go all Mac). I think the same is true for LR (platform specific serials). </p>

<p>You could install Bootcamp and run Windows on the Mac, then with the two machines per license, you could run LR and PS but under Windows of course. </p>

<p>do-able but keep all these points in mind.....</p>

<p>You can load LR and/or PS on 2 machines as long as you dont use both simultaneously.<br /> The above statement does NOT hold true in a mixed Mac/PC environment for PS (ie. you legally can load PS on 2 Win or 2 Mac but not 1 of each). You could *probably* get past this problem if you ran some virtualization program on the Mac to make it run a PC program but thats a PITA.</p>

<p>So LR3 is not a problem.</p>

<p>Adobe will let you migrate your PS CS5 license from Win to Mac for only a few pennies so you could run CS5 on the Mac (the migration legally forces you to remove any PC installation). I believe also that a CS3->5 upgrade also legally binds you so that you can't run CS3 on the PC and the upgrade CS5 on the Mac (again, this is a cross-platform situation and that trips you up legally speaking)</p>

<p>Basically, you end up w/ LR running anywhere you want and PS running on *one* of them.</p>

<p>Edit (based and Andrew's response): As I recall, I think the LR serial #'s are platform agnostic as I *think* I was able to install & run LR (v2 or was it v1) on both PC and Mac w/o having to get/use a 2nd serial #. Taht is certainly easy enough to test.</p>

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<p>Adobe will let you migrate your PS CS5 license from Win to Mac for only a few pennies </p>

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<p><br />They charged me $25, which I don't regard as pennies, given that the only thing they did was change one field in their database. However, the LR migration was free and, from what I could tell, was able to run on two different platforms as Howard says.</p>

<p>As I thought I wrote clearly <g> you can sidegrade from Win to Mac but you now forgo your Windows license. Sounds like the OP wants to run Windows and Mac Photoshop, the only way to do so is to purchase a license (serial) for Mac. Now the OP could in theory run Photoshop on two windows and two Mac systems at the same time. But it will cost big $$. </p>

<p>I was being euphemistic when I said pennies but considering how many $$$ I've dumped into this hobby on junk that didn't perform etc etc, I put $25 into the pennies category ;)</p>

<p>Thanks, guys.</p>

<p>If I understand what you're saying, I can keep Lr 3 on my PC, download the Mac version to the new MacBook from the Adobe website, and then use my existing Lr 3 license to activate it at no extra cost. I would then have Lr 3 on both computers and be legal as long as I wasn't running both computers at the same time. Is that correct?</p>

<p>Photoshop would be more problematic. I would have to either run Parallels on the Mac or purchase another Ps license for the Mac in order to have it on both machines. Is that also correct?</p>

<p>If the above is true, I would be happy with just Lr on both the PC and the new Mac and then do any heavy lifting in Photoshop only on the PC.</p>

<p>Thanks again.<br />Cheers.</p>

 

<p>After some checking, indeed LR serials are platform agnostic so you could run LR on Mac and Windows with the same serial number. If you wanted to go strictly by the EULA, you’d only have one copy running on one machine per platform. </p>

<p>For Photoshop, yup, you have to either buy another serial just for Mac or run boot camp or similar on the Mac and use your 2nd Windows serial number. </p>

<p>I am running exactly what you are asking about. I have had no problems installing LR3 on 1 PC desktop and 1 Mac PowerBook via the same serial number. As you mentioned, you just download the .dmg file from the Adobe website and install it. PS is indeed more complicated.</p>

<p>When I purchased my Mac, I was apprehensive and really wanted to maintain all the functionality of having a PC desktop and laptop combo. I tried running PSCS3 through Parallels 4 for a while, but didn't really like taking a hit in performance on the Mac. In the end I reassesed my personal needs and realized that with the functionality of LR3, I didn't need to waste the disk space for the HDD partition required for Parallels or the performance hit I took when running Parallels 4. (I think they are up to 6 now, so there may have been improvements on that front.) Also, I'm not a pro, so I realized that even when travelling for extended periods (2 months) I could always wait until I got home to use PS. YMMV.</p>

<p>The other option you have is to just install Windows via BootCamp and run your Mac as a PC. Of course this works best if what you are really interested in is Mac hardware with PC functionality. Again, it comes down to your personal needs. It seems that you have already considered most of these options.</p>

<p>Thanks again. This opens up a new option for a laptop now. </p>

<p><em>You could *probably* get past this problem if you ran some virtualization program on the Mac to make it run a PC program but thats a PITA.</em></p>

<p>It's not a PITA at all. I have a MacBook with VMWare Fusion and I work about 50/50 on each side. Fusion literally cloned my old desktop PC HD to the Mac, and it runs as if it never left the PC case.</p>

<p>I'm sure there is a performance hit if you perform some side by side tests, but as long as you have enough RAM installed in your Mac (6 GB in mine) and give enough to Fusion (2 GB in my case) it should not feel sluggish at all. Admittedly I do my own photography work on the Mac side, but I have PS installed on the Windows side as well because I have written software for a client which automates PS and I need to test it there. It runs pretty well.</p>

<p>The only thing VMs are not good for are games. Games really need direct access to the GPU and VMs can't provide that (yet). If you want to play games, use Boot Camp.</p>

<p>I've wondered for years why LR can be used on either platform but CS can't. I'm like you, Dave, with a PC power house workstation but would love a Mac laptop.</p>

<p>For me it was a simple case of not really finding a PC harware configuration that I liked when my last laptop died. Netbooks didn't have the power (this was several years ago) and the multimedia PCs were big and heavy. In the end, the Mac PowerBook was the right fit of portability and performance. Sadly, I also priced a Mac desktop configuration that would match my PC at that time and wasn't quite able to crack $10,000 dollars, but only just!</p>

<p>Does anybody have the Mac installation file for Lr 2 they could send me? I have the license key so I can legally install it, but I don't see the Lr 2 file for Macs on the Adobe website anymore.</p>

<p>Many thanks,<br />Dave<br /><a href="mailto:vance8005@yahoo.com">vance8005@yahoo.com</a></p>

<p>PS I think yahoo can accept attachments that large. If not, we'll figure something else out.</p>

<p>Never mind. I found it.</p>

<p>Someone has to say it. It seems silly to operate on two platforms. It is just as silly to pay the big bucks for the MAC and then run it as a windows platform. The OS is the only real difference between the two now that MAC no longer uses their own processors. </p>

<p>From bestbuy the Macbook pro core I5 with a 15" monitor costs two thousand dollars. This machine has 256 mb of video ram. For $700.00 less you can get a Sony, with more ram, a larger screen, 4 times the video ram and a much faster Core I7 processor. Sonys are very reliable. I have had two of them and both are running very strong. Sony displays are every bit as good as the MAC. Your photoshop will become a non problem and run faster on the Sony.</p>

<p>With the $700.00 you can by a little apple sticker and put it on your Sony if it will help you self esteem;)</p>

 

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<p>With the $700.00 you can by a little apple sticker and put it on your Sony if it will help you self esteem;)</p>

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<p>Yes but you’ll not have OS X which is the reason why so many use Mac’s in the first place (it has zero to do with self esteem). The Sony only runs Windows, the Mac runs OS X and Windows. Use both, use one, but you have that option. </p>

<p>I’d agree that in the grand scheme of things, better to run Photoshop as an OS X app, so spend the money for that. But for app’s that are Windows only, sure, no problem running them on that Mac. </p>

 

<p><em>Someone has to say it. It seems silly to operate on two platforms. </em></p>

<p>Windows is both more stable and secure in a VM. VM snapshots actually work (as opposed to similar functionality in the Windows OS), and backing up/restoring a Windows VM consists of copying a folder. You can isolate your Windows VM by doing most of your Internet related work on the Mac side and by downloading/testing questionable Windows material in a separate Windows VM test environment that you don't mind dumping and restoring once it has been exposed to malware. I've also noticed that Windows in a VM has no trouble with sleep, something I've never had great luck with when it comes to real PCs.</p>

<p><em>From bestbuy the Macbook pro core I5 with a 15" monitor costs two thousand dollars. This machine has 256 mb of video ram. For $700.00 less you can get a Sony, with more ram, a larger screen, 4 times the video ram and a much faster Core I7 processor. </em></p>

<p>The "much faster" Core i7 processor is only faster for tasks which can take advantage of all four cores. For any software limited to a single or dual cores it is not (the MacBook's i5 is clocked much higher). Granted major portions of Photoshop and many plugins can take advantage of four cores. The 15" MacBook with an i7 that is faster than the Sony's is $200 more than the i5 version.</p>

<p>Also keep in mind that focusing on benchmarks sometimes misses the forest for the trees. Mac OS X is considerably faster and more memory efficient than Windows 7. All software rests on these OSes so this is not limited to the time you spend finding and opening files. (I often see this in specific tasks when testing cross platform software I write for clients.) And Windows eats up a lot of end user time with maintenance, troubleshooting, and anti-malware activities. It boggles my mind just how long a simple application install or uninstall can sometimes take on Windows. One malware cleanup will offset any time you gained over the life of the notebook with a CPU that was a few seconds faster at a few tasks. And malware is to the point on Windows that no single AV product can actually keep you safe. It's ridiculous to the point that I think governments should ban Windows from being involved in any task that is critical to military or civil services such as power and water. I'm serious. I cannot believe just how bad the security model is on Windows.</p>

<p>The RAM is a wash because of how much more efficient OS X is with memory, unless of course you're running Windows in a VM. In that case I would upgrade the Mac to 8 GB with 3rd party RAM.</p>

<p>The MacBook has an 8 hour battery while the Sony has a 2.5 hour battery (ouch!)</p>

<p>The MacBook is over a pound thinner and 2/3rds the weight with an aluminum case, glass multitouch trackpad, and LED backlight.</p>

<p>The Sony does have the faster GPU, built in WiMAX, and Blu-ray. And, of course, is $700 cheaper.</p>

<p>I can see why someone who is not a Mac fan would look at the Sony and say "why Mac?" I've spent my life in IT working on both and I would grab the MacBook without question. That said, Apple's MacBooks fair better in a spec/price match right after Apple has refreshed them. Within that first couple months they often beat comparable name brand competitor's notebooks.</p>

<p>One more note: the first thing I would do with either notebook is strip out the 5400 rpm drive and put in a 7200 rpm one.</p>

 

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<p>Yes but you’ll not have OS X which is the reason why so many use Mac’s in the first place (it has zero to do with self esteem).</p>

 

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<p>Marketing, not the OS, is the "reason why so many use Mac’s".</p>

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<p>The Sony does have the faster GPU, built in WiMAX, and Blu-ray. And, of course, is $700 cheaper.</p>

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<p>And hdmi port, usb3 and probably esata.</p>

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<p>The MacBook has an 8 hour battery while the Sony has a 2.5 hour battery (ouch!)</p>

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<p>User reports on the Mac state other than this marketing hype. Most that are only surfing and doing email are getting 4 hours. Producers are getting way less.</p>

 

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<p>And Windows eats up a lot of end user time with maintenance, troubleshooting, and anti-malware activities.</p>

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<p>Oh brother. Windows users spend more time cutting their hair than dealing with their OS's.</p>

<p>I don't get the fanboy's. If Mac is so wonderful, how come after all these decades, more people don't gladly cough up an extra 30% fro something that is supposedly more superior?</p>

<p>I have a MAC I5 at work and the old 9505 at home running WIN 7-64. I disagree that the operating system of the MAC is much faster. That is just silly. My 9505 desktop at home is as fast as the MAC at work and my Sony I5 laptop is perhaps a bit faster. </p>

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<p>One malware cleanup will offset any time you gained over the life of the notebook with a CPU that was a few seconds faster at a few tasks.</p>

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<p>Here we go again. Another falacy. I spend all day on the net. I run McAfee antivirus and periodically run Windows defender. I do not get viruses and in 15 years have never had to do significant work to my computer due to malware. And yes I am all over the place on the net. </p>

 

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<p>One more note: the first thing I would do with either notebook is strip out the 5400 rpm drive and put in a 7200 rpm one.</p>

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<p>You wouldn't if you had ever used a SSD. Look at the specs on the Sony Z series. I have an SSD in my desktop for workspace. The computer boots in about 30 seconds including the splash screen and shuts down in less than 10 seconds. </p>

 

<p><em>Marketing, not the OS, is the "reason why so many use Mac’s".</em></p>

<p>I doubt you would have the same opinion after spending a week with me supporting and trouble shooting a client's network of PCs.</p>

<p><em>User reports on the Mac state other than this marketing hype. Most that are only surfing and doing email are getting 4 hours. Producers are getting way less.</em></p>

<p>I'm not sure where you're getting your false information. I get 5-6 hours surfing off an older MacBook Pro which was advertised as having a 6 hour battery, and 3-4 doing real work with Windows running in a VM next to OS X.</p>

<p><em>Oh brother. Windows users spend more time cutting their hair than dealing with their OS's.</em></p>

<p>Which is why Geek Squad is so popular and profitable? BTW, I can actually go back over my billing to clients for the past decade and compare PC support with Mac support. Flat out, over the long run, PC's are more expensive in a corporate environment. Do you have comparable, direct, business experience over a comparable time frame which you can draw upon to tell me I'm wrong?</p>

<p><em>I don't get the fanboy's. If Mac is so wonderful, how come after all these decades, more people don't gladly cough up an extra 30% fro something that is supposedly more superior?</em></p>

<p>For the same reason everyone is not driving a Porsche - not everyone has the money.</p>

<p><em>I have a MAC I5 at work and the old 9505 at home running WIN 7-64. I disagree that the operating system of the MAC is much faster. That is just silly. My 9505 desktop at home is as fast as the MAC at work and my Sony I5 laptop is perhaps a bit faster.</em><br /><br />Shall I list the OS APIs where functions in OS X execute faster than their counterparts in Win7? Or do we just keep it on the user level with comparisons of things like startup, shutdown, OS updates, and app install/uninstall?<br /><br />Let me ask this first: have you ever actually taken a stopwatch and timed any of these things?<br>

<br /> <em>Here we go again. Another falacy. I spend all day on the net. I run McAfee antivirus and periodically run Windows defender. I do not get viruses and in 15 years have never had to do significant work to my computer due to malware. And yes I am all over the place on the net.</em><br /><br />The fallacy here is your attempt to paint your experience as typical and to negate the cost and experience of others. I am constantly being called to clean the PCs of small business clients. My corporate clients generally have staff which can do this while I focus on their databases and custom software. But that staff is busy enough and occasionally has to turn to me to deal with some piece of malware that their standard AV tools are struggling with. One of the reasons I love having Windows VMs is so that I can test and learn about the latest threats.<br /><br />If the malware threat to PC's is a fallacy, then explain the profitability of services like Geek Squad; the growing number of AV software providers; and weekly Microsoft security updates.<br /><br />I program these things for a living. And I'm not some cubie dweller creating simple web pages. My clients pay me good money to architect and develop software their staff can't produce. I'm intimately familiar with the underpinnings of these OSes and I'm telling you straight out that Windows security is a joke.<br>

<br /> <em>You wouldn't if you had ever used a SSD.</em><br /><br />I have and would because SSD is still prohibitive in terms of cost/space. If your storage requirements aren't as great and you feel the speed boost is worth the cost, then SSDs make great upgrades.<br /><br /><em>Look at the specs on the Sony Z series. I have an SSD in my desktop for workspace. The computer boots in about 30 seconds including the splash screen and shuts down in less than 10 seconds.</em><br /><br />MacBooks with SSDs tend to turn in times half that.</p>

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<p>Marketing, not the OS, is the "reason why so many use Mac’s".</p>

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<p>Nonsense. Complete and unsupported crap-o-la, but at least your consistent!</p>

 

<p>I guess it was that wonderful OS that drove them nearly to bankruptcy, twice?</p>

<p>Or maybe it was that wonderful OS that saved them from bankruptcy?</p>

 

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<p>I'm not sure where you're getting your false information.</p>

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<p>From the Mac forums. I guess you're suggesting there's a forum full of fan-boys and zealots that just make things up about their purchases? Perhaps you should hang out there before coming here and assuming the PN readers don't get out much. I'll gladly give you the head start and you can post links proving me wrong.</p>

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