What a struggle!
Yesterday (Sunday, February 5, 2012, my 68th birthday) I had the distinct pleasure of downloading and installing a new version of Photoshop-Elements.
This was because my ancient version of Photoshop-Elements, 4.0, which I was happy with, no longer worked with Snow-Leopard, the OS-X operating-system on my Apple Macintosh laptop computer (a MacBook Pro).
Apple, in its infinite wisdom, had snuck an alteration into a security-update, deleting or breaking the Rosetta-code that made 4.0 work, among other ancient applications.
My wife, having been a software developer herself, thinks this was inadvertent — that Apple inadvertently broke the Rosetta-code, and failed to see that in testing.
And now that it doesn’t work, they decided “who cares?”
Which is why I think it was intentional.
Apple did this before.
They dumped “Classic-Mode” (an OS-9 buried in OS-X), which operated OS-9 compliant applications that OS-X wouldn’t operate.
We all knew “Classic-Mode” was doomed, but when I installed Apple’s OS-X Leopard, which no longer had Classic-Mode, I had to dump Leopard and reinstall OS-X Tiger to operate my Classic-Mode apps.
“Tiger” had Classic-Mode.
It was sort of a fast-one, except we all knew Classic-Mode would go away.
So here I am with a non-functional Photoshop-Elements, and I use it a lot.
I decided to purchase the download Photoshop-Elements 10 from Amazon. They wanted $74.99 compared to $79.99 at Adobe®, the actual developer of Photoshop-Elements.
Plus at Amazon I had a $10 gift-coupon.
There it was at Amazon, so I clicked download, but nothing seemed to be happening.
It just set up a place in my download-folder, but no download progress-bar.
Finally I happened to click the place in my download folder, and suddenly a progress-bar appeared; Photoshop-Elements 10 was downloading.
Silly me; I thought the download-folder indicated completed downloads — it had before.
So there it was after an hour or so, ready to install, a .dmg.
I’ve done this before, except a surfeit of time-consuming insanity appeared.
They wanted registration, a customer ID, a password, and who knows what else.
They also needed a serial-number.
Damned if I knew that!
Not on Amazon’s billing e-mail.
We e-mailed Amazon: “Where is the serial-number?”
They immediately called back. A very nice gentleman, who sounded American instead of Indian, produced a number after minutes of poking around.
But it wasn’t the serial-number.
He deferred to someone else, and put me on hold.
After minutes of strange music, another guy patched in and rattled his name so fast I had to slow him down.
“I’m a stroke-survivor,” I told him. “If you talk that fast I can’t comprehend.”
Taken aback, he slowed down.
We then accessed my Amazon account information, and after various steps I could never repeat, there was the serial-number.
How does a granny access that? It was buried.
You gotta be hip to all this folderol just to access the serial-number of a downloaded software application?
I entered the serial-number incorrectly at first, so it didn’t crunch.
Everything had to be perfect. Prior numbers which didn’t erase remained in the serial-number boxes.
Corrected, it crunched, and the install began.
Finally installed, I put the new application-icon in my dock, and poofed my 4.0 icon.
I fired up Photoshop-Elements 10 for the first time.
“First you must log-in, or create an account.”
I created an account, but “you already have one.”
“I sure hope I don’t have to do all this just to fire it up,” I said.
Logged-in “do you want to receive e-mail notifications?”
“No.”
“Help us improve Photoshop-Elements?”
“Enough already, I just wanna use it!”
I clicked “edit.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I cried.
Familiar things were happening.
The Photoshop-Elements 10 interface was different than Photoshop-Elements 4.0, but not much.
I tried “Command-O.” It opened a picture just like my 4.0 of old.
Great, but it took well over an hour of confused fiddling.
I quit Photoshop-Elements 10.
I fired it up again.
No folderol, just Command-O.
Another picture opened.
We’re in business again, although it cost me slightly over 70 buckaroos.
Plus well over an hour of confused frustration and calling Amazon.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.
This was because my ancient version of Photoshop-Elements, 4.0, which I was happy with, no longer worked with Snow-Leopard, the OS-X operating-system on my Apple Macintosh laptop computer (a MacBook Pro).
Apple, in its infinite wisdom, had snuck an alteration into a security-update, deleting or breaking the Rosetta-code that made 4.0 work, among other ancient applications.
My wife, having been a software developer herself, thinks this was inadvertent — that Apple inadvertently broke the Rosetta-code, and failed to see that in testing.
And now that it doesn’t work, they decided “who cares?”
Which is why I think it was intentional.
Apple did this before.
They dumped “Classic-Mode” (an OS-9 buried in OS-X), which operated OS-9 compliant applications that OS-X wouldn’t operate.
We all knew “Classic-Mode” was doomed, but when I installed Apple’s OS-X Leopard, which no longer had Classic-Mode, I had to dump Leopard and reinstall OS-X Tiger to operate my Classic-Mode apps.
“Tiger” had Classic-Mode.
It was sort of a fast-one, except we all knew Classic-Mode would go away.
So here I am with a non-functional Photoshop-Elements, and I use it a lot.
I decided to purchase the download Photoshop-Elements 10 from Amazon. They wanted $74.99 compared to $79.99 at Adobe®, the actual developer of Photoshop-Elements.
Plus at Amazon I had a $10 gift-coupon.
There it was at Amazon, so I clicked download, but nothing seemed to be happening.
It just set up a place in my download-folder, but no download progress-bar.
Finally I happened to click the place in my download folder, and suddenly a progress-bar appeared; Photoshop-Elements 10 was downloading.
Silly me; I thought the download-folder indicated completed downloads — it had before.
So there it was after an hour or so, ready to install, a .dmg.
I’ve done this before, except a surfeit of time-consuming insanity appeared.
They wanted registration, a customer ID, a password, and who knows what else.
They also needed a serial-number.
Damned if I knew that!
Not on Amazon’s billing e-mail.
We e-mailed Amazon: “Where is the serial-number?”
They immediately called back. A very nice gentleman, who sounded American instead of Indian, produced a number after minutes of poking around.
But it wasn’t the serial-number.
He deferred to someone else, and put me on hold.
After minutes of strange music, another guy patched in and rattled his name so fast I had to slow him down.
“I’m a stroke-survivor,” I told him. “If you talk that fast I can’t comprehend.”
Taken aback, he slowed down.
We then accessed my Amazon account information, and after various steps I could never repeat, there was the serial-number.
How does a granny access that? It was buried.
You gotta be hip to all this folderol just to access the serial-number of a downloaded software application?
I entered the serial-number incorrectly at first, so it didn’t crunch.
Everything had to be perfect. Prior numbers which didn’t erase remained in the serial-number boxes.
Corrected, it crunched, and the install began.
Finally installed, I put the new application-icon in my dock, and poofed my 4.0 icon.
I fired up Photoshop-Elements 10 for the first time.
“First you must log-in, or create an account.”
I created an account, but “you already have one.”
“I sure hope I don’t have to do all this just to fire it up,” I said.
Logged-in “do you want to receive e-mail notifications?”
“No.”
“Help us improve Photoshop-Elements?”
“Enough already, I just wanna use it!”
I clicked “edit.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I cried.
Familiar things were happening.
The Photoshop-Elements 10 interface was different than Photoshop-Elements 4.0, but not much.
I tried “Command-O.” It opened a picture just like my 4.0 of old.
Great, but it took well over an hour of confused fiddling.
I quit Photoshop-Elements 10.
I fired it up again.
No folderol, just Command-O.
Another picture opened.
We’re in business again, although it cost me slightly over 70 buckaroos.
Plus well over an hour of confused frustration and calling Amazon.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.
Labels: 'pyooter ruminations
posted by BobbaLew at 1:31 PM
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