Anybody Have Success Running 64 Bit Adobe CS6 Creative Suite on Mojave

[Sossity]

Yes they are, or at least most of them are. In detail, we have:

3 Mac minis (Intel, 2018) - APFS - macOS 10.14.6 / Mojave - Adobe Creative Cloud 2021

1 Mac mini (Intel, 2018) - APFS - macOS 10.14.6 / Mojave - Adobe CS6 (Design Standard)

1 Mac mini (Intel, 2018) - APFS - macOS 10.14.6 / Mojave - Adobe Acrobat Reader only

3 iMacs (Intel, 2017) - APFS - macOS 10.14.6 / Mojave - Adobe Creative Cloud 2021

3 iMacs (Intel, 2011) - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - macOS 10.13.6 / High Sierra - Adobe CS6 (Design Standard)

1 iMac (Intel, 2011) - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - macOS 10.13.6 / High Sierra - No Adobe software

Then there's also my own, personal Mac I have at home:

1 Mac mini (Intel, 2018) - APFS - macOS 10.14.6 / Mojave - Adobe CS6 (Master Collection)

[I also have the Mac Pro mentioned in my signature, which I no longer use but this ran the exact same combination of software as my home Mac mini - i.e. Mojave (legitimate install due to the Metal-compatible graphics card) on APFS, plus Adobe CS6 (Master Collection).]

The 2011 iMacs can't go beyond High Sierra, and have traditional hard disk drives, as opposed to SSDs, which all the other Macs have / had, including the Mac Pro.

From what I've read - although I have no direct experience of this - APFS tends to suit SSDs, whereas Mac OS Extended (Journaled or otherwise) tends to suit HDDs.

So that's how things sit with the Macs I'm responsible for. The SSD Macs use APFS, and the HDD Macs use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That's down to how the Macs originally shipped though, and not any decision or action on my part.

What's crucial in your case is precisely what sort of Mac you have, what range of OSs it's capable of running, what precise applications within CS6 you'll wholly (or mostly) be using, and how hard you think you'll "push" those applications.

For example setting type in InDesign or Illustrator is a whole different ball game to compositing complex projects in After Effects.

It's very difficult to help you in a specific way because you've not volunteered several key bits of information that anyone reading this - no matter how expert they are - needs to know. Which comes back to my initial point in my first post about poor calibre posts, unfortunately.



Yes they can run hot. The 2 Macs I use at home for example - both are Mac minis (Intel, 2018) - can get quite warm, and because the exhaust vents are right below the ports, the plugs on everything I have connected (e.g. webcam, headset, etc) can be hot to the touch at the end of the day when I shut down & then disconnect them (because I'm taking that Mac into work the next day). None of this is a concern though. These Macs are designed that way. The entire aluminium case is one big heat sink.

Mind you I do very little video work at home these days. Running Premiere / After Effects / Media Encoder will tax the system far more than Illustrator will tend to.



The fact that Adobe has dropped support for CS6 years ago has no bearing whatsoever on how many computers you can install / activate / run CS6 on. Instead it's entirely down to the licence you own.

In our own case, at work we have a 9 user licence (or more accurately a 5 user one and another 4 user one). Each install required a unique serial number. These numbers were provided by our reseller when we bought the software.

As we now only use CS6 on 4 Macs at work, and will be getting rid of it entirely in the next few months, licensing isn't a concern.

With Creative Cloud it's entirely different. For any given single user licence, you can install on unlimited computers, activate on 2 (at the most), and run on one at a time.

As I said previously, letting us know the precise model of Mac, how much RAM it has, whether the boot drive is an HDD or an SSD, which applications you plan to run, and how hard you plan to push them, would help us help you enormously.

My desktop macs;

Mac Mini 2018, 6 core 3.2 GHz Intel i7, 64 GB RAM, Mojave, 2 TB SSD, with Mojave, with the new Studio Display 27 in.

cMP 5,1, Quad core 2.8 GHz Intel Xenon, 48 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, with High Sierra, and virtual machines, with Apple Cinema display 21 in.

Laptop; Late 2014 Retina MacBook Pro, Intel i7, 16 GB RAM, Mojave 500 GB SSD.

Do take any measures to cool the mac mini? how long have you had it? I will probably be doing mostly Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat X, and maybe a little video editing with a virtual machine with some windows only software. I may also be running virtual machines via Parallels desktop, using MS office 365 (free from my college, for a class, but I have to use the 2019/365 Windows version), and maybe autoCAD.

I may do a little video editing, mostly conversions, and audio conversions.

I am also a heavy user of Google Chrome, I have multiple Google accounts I toggle between, and I use Google drive along with Docs and Sheets, and Gmail.

 

[Sossity]

It's really interesting that Adobe CS6 is performing fine for you on APFS. Did you make any modifications to those installs and what's the version of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign you're running?
On a MacBook Pro 2019 I had much problems saving files from Photoshop or using file dialogs in InDesign. I just could get rid of them by using HFS+. After reverting the file system Adobe CS6 ran quite stable. The MacBook Pro still has kernel panics with black screen of death from time to time during certain actions (sometimes opening a .psd file by double clicking on it, if Photoshop is closed). Acrobat Pro XI couldn't save files, even on APFS so that I had to upgrade to Acrobat Pro DC 2017 TLP.

Yes you're right, APFS was made for SSDs. Fortunately HFS+ also works good enough on SSD. Swapping the HDDs with SSDs would give the iMacs 2011 a big performance boost. I took a 27"-inch iMac 2011 to an Apple Certified tech for that, because of the high risk breaking the screen or encapsulating dust behind the glass during a self-repair. The upgrade resulted in a much better disk speed thanks to the 6.0 Gbps Serial ATA connections with the same good system stability.

You know, I have had some odd things happen while using Adobe CS6 Photoshop on my late 2014 Retina MacBook Pro with Mojave on it. When I tried to save a file in a location I wanted, there would be kind of an odd greyed out line, and I would not be able to save it where I want, I would have to just save the file in documents.

Also, I notice the Acrobat Pro X is a lower resolution, and also maybe InDesign was lower resolution too. I do recall getting odd error messages too sometimes.

That is why I am torn between installing my CS6 on a virtual machine on my mac mini, or trying to install it right on the internal hard drive on the native OS.

 

[organicCPU]

You know, I have had some odd things happen while using Adobe CS6 Photoshop on my late 2014 Retina MacBook Pro with Mojave on it. When I tried to save a file in a location I wanted, there would be kind of an odd greyed out line, and I would not be able to save it where I want, I would have to just save the file in documents.

Also, I notice the Acrobat Pro X is a lower resolution, and also maybe InDesign was lower resolution too. I do recall getting odd error messages too sometimes.

You're describing it very well, what happened, before I was switching from APFS to HFS+. With HFS+ saving files went back to normal. Adobe InDesign CS6 was never optimized for retina displays. It works, but has a bit blurry UI. Acrobat Pro X was running on macOS Mojave, but for me, it was never usable while saving files.

At least in VirtualBox you'd barely get the needed graphics performance for Adobe CS6 apps. Running them in a fast VM on a fast host system could work, but I haven't heard of anyone succeeded in this. Maybe it's different with Parallels or VMware Fusion, so give it a try.

 

[Sossity]

You're describing it very well, what happened, before I was switching from APFS to HFS+. With HFS+ saving files went back to normal. Adobe InDesign CS6 was never optimized for retina displays. It works, but has a bit blurry UI. Acrobat Pro X was running on macOS Mojave, but for me, it was never usable while saving files.

At least in VirtualBox you'd barely get the needed graphics performance for Adobe CS6 apps. Running them in a fast VM on a fast host system could work, but I haven't heard of anyone succeeded in this. Maybe it's different with Parallels or VMware Fusion, so give it a try.

So would I be better installing my CS6 Design suite on a virtual machine as opposed to the main internal hard drive? Maybe it was you or someone else suggested a installing mountain lion as a virtual machine, and installing my Adobe CS6 design suite on that.

 

[Diamond Dave]

Yes, that error report was already there in back in 2019. That was the moment I contacted Adobe Support. They sent me the main installers they had, but told me they have no update patches. It should likely be a DMG file, something like "AdobeInDesign8-1-mul-AdobeUpdate.dmg" would follow their naming conventions.

That's my experience too. If you badger them, you'll get temporary links to the "base" / unpatched installers, but they refuse to let you have the patches themselves. Whether CS or CC 2021 (as per a recent online chat with them that I had).

My desktop macs;

Mac Mini 2018, 6 core 3.2 GHz Intel i7, 64 GB RAM, Mojave, 2 TB SSD, with Mojave, with the new Studio Display 27 in.

cMP 5,1, Quad core 2.8 GHz Intel Xenon, 48 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, with High Sierra, and virtual machines, with Apple Cinema display 21 in.

Laptop; Late 2014 Retina MacBook Pro, Intel i7, 16 GB RAM, Mojave 500 GB SSD.

Do take any measures to cool the mac mini? how long have you had it? I will probably be doing mostly Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat X, and maybe a little video editing with a virtual machine with some windows only software. I may also be running virtual machines via Parallels desktop, using MS office 365 (free from my college, for a class, but I have to use the 2019/365 Windows version), and maybe autoCAD.

I may do a little video editing, mostly conversions, and audio conversions.

I am also a heavy user of Google Chrome, I have multiple Google accounts I toggle between, and I use Google drive along with Docs and Sheets, and Gmail.

Thanks for the info. Very useful. You have a very similar setup to myself.

I take no measures whatsoever to cool any of the Mac minis, other than not stacking them on top of each other, and not putting anything on top of them. There's a slight (couple of cm) gap between them on my desk.

Just to explain, one of them is my own personal one which never moves, and the one next to it is my work one, which I disconnect once a week, take into work for a couple of days mid-week, then bring home again & reconnect later in the week.

As I said before, the entire aluminium case is designed to be a heatsink. I really feel you're over-worrying about heat. The Intel Mac mini getting hot, and the fan kicking in when worked hard, is completely normal & within the expected design of the machine. They're not going to burst into flames. The same as if you've run 10K and you're very hot & sweaty afterwards - it's unlikely that you'll burst into flames or die of a heart attack (assuming you're heart is healthy in the first place).

I've had my own personal one (an Apple refurb) since mid-2020, although I only opened the box & set it up a few months ago. The ones at work - both the 2018 Mac minis & the 2017 iMacs were bought & set up in early 2019.

It sounds from your workflow that it's very like my own. In other words not a lot of heavy / taxing video work. Again this is another reason not to worry unduly about heat.

You know, I have had some odd things happen while using Adobe CS6 Photoshop on my late 2014 Retina MacBook Pro with Mojave on it. When I tried to save a file in a location I wanted, there would be kind of an odd greyed out line, and I would not be able to save it where I want, I would have to just save the file in documents.

Also, I notice the Acrobat Pro X is a lower resolution, and also maybe InDesign was lower resolution too. I do recall getting odd error messages too sometimes.

This is the key to your issue, I feel. Using Retina displays. Out of all the Macs I've mentioned, only one has a Retina display - one of the 2017 iMacs. It's one of the 4K models. The other 2 are the base models. (All are 21").

All the Mac minis use 27" 2560 x 1440 BenQ displays, so Retina issues don't apply. With Mojave altering support for sub-pixel anti-aliasing (or dropping it entirely, depending on your point of view - there are dozens of threads about this on macrumors) then it doesn't surprise me that people run into issues.

You're using modern display technology (Retina), a modern OS (Mojave) but with 10 year old design software (CS6). And in the case of InDesign CS6, the codebase is clearly far older than the Illustrator & Photoshop ones. (InDesign is 32-bit, has no built in dark mode options, etc).

It might be worth you investigating the many threads on the Mojave sub-pixel anti-aliasing issues (and the workarounds).

In our case, no-one has any problems at all. And crucially, my Line Manager, who the 4K 2017 iMac belongs to, used CS6 all the time, including InDesign, without once mentioning any display issues. And believe me, if he'd had any, I would have known about them! He'd have shouted across the room at me straight away - he's just that sort of guy! He's been running CC instead for about a year though now.

One crucial thing you've not said (apologies if I've missed this) is what OS your Mac mini is running at the moment? What's puzzling me is that the 2018 Mac mini was released in November 2018:

Mac Mini - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and Mojave was released about 6 weeks prior:

macOS Mojave - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

so it's impossible - or at least the 28 years of Mac hardware & software maintenance experience that I have tells me that it's impossible - that your 2018 Mac mini can have any OS installed that's any older than Mojave. Which then begs the question - if it already has Mojave (or a newer OS) installed then why are you asking whether it's a good idea to install Mojave on it or not?!

My own Mac mini came with Catalina installed, but I wiped the SSD and installed Mojave, partly so I could run 32-bit software, including InDesign CS6.

A crucial point, you CAN downgrade a Mac's OS to an older one than it came with - AS LONG AS THAT OLDER ONE IS ONE THAT THAT PRECISE MODEL ORIGINALLY SHIPPED WITH WHEN THAT MODEL WAS RELEASED (and as long as the installation of the newer OS, whether at the factory or by the user, didn't update the firmware in such a way that breaks the downgrade path).

So in the case of the 2018 Mac mini, if it shipped with Catalina, you CAN downgrade it to Mojave. It did it myself, and it works PERFECTLY. Don't let anyone tell you any different.

Now whether you can downgrade a 2018 Mac mini from Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura to Mojave I don't know, since one or more of those OSs may update the Mac's firmware in a permanent non-reversible way which would make a wipe & Mojave install impossible.

That is why I am torn between installing my CS6 on a virtual machine on my mac mini, or trying to install it right on the internal hard drive on the native OS.

I really don't get your fixation with Virtual Machines. What I would do is install Mojave & CS6 on an external SSD then boot the Mac off that. Test everything for days or weeks or until you're happy, then you can upgrade your internal SSD the same way once you know things work ok. That way there's no performance penalty or extra layer of complication.

You're describing it very well, what happened, before I was switching from APFS to HFS+. With HFS+ saving files went back to normal. Adobe InDesign CS6 was never optimized for retina displays. It works, but has a bit blurry UI. Acrobat Pro X was running on macOS Mojave, but for me, it was never usable while saving files.

There's 2 separate issues here, and it's helpful not to conflate them.

Running Mojave on APFS with CS6 worked fine for us at work - and still does perfectly well for me at home - albeit from an SSD, not an HDD. So in my experience at least, it's a viable setup.

The Retina display issue with CS6, particularly with InDesign, is a different kettle of fish, and problems with this don't surprise me (in theory at least). All I know of this combination is that my Line Manager never once had any issues.

So would I be better installing my CS6 Design suite on a virtual machine as opposed to the main internal hard drive? Maybe it was you or someone else suggested a installing mountain lion as a virtual machine, and installing my Adobe CS6 design suite on that.

Mountain Lion is the OS that will - in theory at least - give you the least issues, but I go back to what I said when I first posted in this thread. My strong advice to you is to forget about Virtual Machines & Mountain Lion.

Back everything up first, and make sure you can restore from that back so you can put everything back to exactly how it was before you changed anything.

Install Mojave on your internal SSD - if it doesn't run it already. Or install it on an external SSD if you have one, then boot from that.

Install your CS6 and try it out. No Virtual Machines, no Mountain Lion. Just CS6 on Mojave. It works (or worked until we upgraded to CC) on at least 4 Macs at work, and still does perfectly well for me at home. BUT (with one exception) we weren't using any Retina displays, so that could be what trips you up.

If things don't work out, revert via your backup. Then you could try your Virtual Machines, Mountain Lion, etc if you want.

 

[Sossity]

That's my experience too. If you badger them, you'll get temporary links to the "base" / unpatched installers, but they refuse to let you have the patches themselves. Whether CS or CC 2021 (as per a recent online chat with them that I had.


Thanks for the info. Very useful. You have a very similar setup to myself.

I take no measures whatsoever to cool any of the Mac minis, other than not stacking them on top of each other, and not putting anything on top of them. There's a slight (couple of cm) gap between them on my desk.

Just to explain, one of them is my own personal one which never moves, and the one next to it is my work one, which I disconnect once a week, take into work for a couple of days mid-week, then bring home again & reconnect later in the week.

As I said before, the entire aluminium case is designed to be a heatsink. I really feel you're over-worrying about heat. The Intel Mac mini getting hot, and the fan kicking in when worked hard, is completely normal & within the expected design of the machine. They're not going to burst into flames. The same as if you've run 10K and you're very hot & sweaty afterwards - it's unlikely that you'll burst into flames or die of a heart attack (assuming you're heart is healthy in the first place).

I've had my own personal one (an Apple refurb) since mid-2020, although I only opened the box & set it up a few months ago. The ones at work - both the 2018 Mac minis & the 2017 iMacs were bought & set up in early 2019.

It sounds from your workflow that it's very like my own. In other words not a lot of heavy / taxing video work. Again this is another reason not to worry unduly about heat.



This is the key to your issue, I feel. Using Retina displays. Out of all the Macs I've mentioned, only one has a Retina display - one of the 2017 iMacs. It's one of the 4K models. The other 2 are the base models. (All are 21").

All the Mac minis use 27" 2560 x 1440 BenQ displays, so Retina issues don't apply. With Mojave altering support for sub-pixel anti-aliasing (or dropping it entirely, depending on your point of view - there are dozens of threads about this on macrumors) then it doesn't surprise me that people run into issues.

You're using modern display technology (Retina), a modern OS (Mojave) but with 10 year old design software (CS6). And in the case of InDesign CS6, the codebase is clearly far older than the Illustrator & Photoshop ones. (InDesign is 32-bit, has no built in dark mode options, etc).

It might be worth you investigating the many threads on the Mojave sub-pixel anti-aliasing issues (and the workarounds).

In our case, no-one has any problems at all. And crucially, my Line Manager, who the 4K 2017 iMac belongs to, used CS6 all the time, including InDesign, without once mentioning any display issues. And believe me, if he'd had any, I would have known about them! He'd have shouted across the room at me straight away - he's just that sort of guy! He's been running CC instead for about a year though now.

One crucial thing you've not said (apologies if I've missed this) is what OS your Mac mini is running at the moment? What's puzzling me is that the 2018 Mac mini was released in November 2018:

Mac Mini - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and Mojave was released about 6 weeks prior:

macOS Mojave - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

so it's impossible - or at least the 28 years of Mac hardware & software maintenance experience that I have tells me that it's impossible - that your 2018 Mac mini can have any OS installed that's any older than Mojave. Which then begs the question - if it already has Mojave (or a newer OS) installed then why are you asking whether it's a good idea to install Mojave on it or not?!

My own Mac mini came with Catalina installed, but I wiped the SSD and installed Mojave, partly so I could run 32-bit software, including InDesign CS6.

A crucial point, you CAN downgrade a Mac's OS to an older one than it came with - AS LONG AS THAT OLDER ONE IS ONE THAT THAT PRECISE MODEL ORIGINALLY SHIPPED WITH WHEN THAT MODEL WAS RELEASED (and as long as the installation of the newer OS, whether at the factory or by the user, didn't update the firmware in such a way that breaks the downgrade path).

So in the case of the 2018 Mac mini, if it shipped with Catalina, you CAN downgrade it to Mojave. It did it myself, and it works PERFECTLY. Don't let anyone tell you any different.

Now whether you can downgrade a 2018 Mac mini from Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura to Mojave I don't know, since one or more of those OSs may update the Mac's firmware in a permanent non-reversible way which would make a wipe & Mojave install impossible.



I really don't get your fixation with Virtual Machines. What I would do is install Mojave & CS6 on an external SSD then boot the Mac off that. Test everything for days or weeks or until you're happy, then you can upgrade your internal SSD the same way once you know things work ok. That way there's no performance penalty or extra layer of complication.



There's 2 separate issues here, and it's helpful not to conflate them.

Running Mojave on APFS with CS6 worked fine for us at work - and still does perfectly well for me at home - albeit from an SSD, not an HDD. So in my experience at least, it's a viable setup.

The Retina display issue with CS6, particularly with InDesign, is a different kettle of fish, and problems with this don't surprise me (in theory at least). All I know of this combination is that my Line Manager never once had any issues.



Mountain Lion is the OS that will - in theory at least - give you the least issues, but I go back to what I said when I first posted in this thread. My strong advice to you is to forget about Virtual Machines & Mountain Lion.

Back everything up first, and make sure you can restore from that back so you can put everything back to exactly how it was before you changed anything.

Install Mojave on your internal SSD - if it doesn't run it already. Or install it on an external SSD if you have one, then boot from that.

Install your CS6 and try it out. No Virtual Machines, no Mountain Lion. Just CS6 on Mojave. It works (or worked until we upgraded to CC) on at least 4 Macs at work, and still does perfectly well for me at home. BUT (with one exception) we weren't using any Retina displays, so that could be what trips you up.

If things don't work out, revert via your backup. Then you could try your Virtual Machines, Mountain Lion, etc if you want.

Wow, thanks for the detailed breakdown.

To clarify, the mac mini 2018 came with Mojave installed on it, not any older OS, and I have not been asking of it is ok to install Mojave on it? why would I ask that when it came with it installed on it?

What I was asking about is if it is ok to install an older OS on it via a virtual machine? I am not fixated on them just for the sake of it. In my case it was so I could run the Adobe CS6 in Mountain Lion, since I was told in this thread by another poster, if you look back, that it does not run well on APFS drives, of which Mojave is, and Mountain Lion is HFS which I was told that CS6 runs better on. That is why I am asking about virtual machines.

Also, I ask about heating is because, I had a 2011 mac mini a while back, and after a few months, I began to have problems with it; it would shut down randomly, and then it would not boot up. So I am a little weary of them based on that past experience, but I am willing to try again.

Good idea on the backup, I will do a time machine backup of the mini before I even install anything of mine yet, just as it came out of the box.

 

[Diamond Dave]

What I was asking about is if it is ok to install an older OS on it via a virtual machine? I am not fixated on them just for the sake of it. In my case it was so I could run the Adobe CS6 in Mountain Lion, since I was told in this thread by another poster, if you look back, that it does not run well on APFS drives, of which Mojave is, and Mountain Lion is HFS which I was told that CS6 runs better on. That is why I am asking about virtual machines.

If you feel safer going down the Virtual Machine and Mountain Lion route, go ahead by all means. I've only used VMs to run Windows, so I can't help or advise there.

As for CS6 not running well on APFS drives, you have to be careful that the issues people have experienced aren't due to something else. For example, if someone has had issues with CS6 on an APFS drive attached to a Mac with a Retina display, then it might be the case that it's the Retina display that's causing the issues. Or it's a combination of the APFS format AND the Retina display that's causing them - assuming that it's display / text rendering issues that we're talking about.

I know a couple of contributors have said that switching from APFS back to MacOS Extended solved their issues, so I understand your caution. All I can tell you is my own experience. At work we ran (and I still do run) CS6 on Mojave from APFS drives with no issues whatsoever.

All we can conclude from this is that it IS possible to do so without problems at least in some cases. At setup like this won't NECESSARILY not work. It merely MIGHT not work. And what causes it not to work sometimes seems to be something to do with APFS - at least some of the time.

Also, I ask about heating is because, I had a 2011 mac mini a while back, and after a few months, I began to have problems with it; it would shut down randomly, and then it would not boot up. So I am a little weary of them based on that past experience, but I am willing to try again.

I can't speak to the 2011 Mac mini, but we have ten 2011 iMacs at work. Only 2 are still in regular use though, and I'll be retiring them next year. I'm not aware of people complaining about random shutdowns etc or any overheating issues. Only 5 or 6 of them at most regularly ran CS6 though, including the one I used for the first 18 months at my job. The only issue I had with it was it running out of RAM when dealing with massive Photoshop files, some of which had more than 250 layers (supplied by a customer).

Good idea on the backup, I will do a time machine backup of the mini before I even install anything of mine yet, just as it came out of the box.

Yes - make sure your backup boots the mini ok before you do anything else (you'll likely need to change the secure boot settings by booting from the Recovery partition first in order to do that).

I'd also recommend Carbon Copy Cloner (v 5.1.28 for Mojave) to clone your internal SSD as WELL as having a Time Machine backup:

https://bombich.com/software/download_ccc.php?v=ccc5

or "SuperDuper!" as an alternative:

SuperDuper!

If your CS6 installation gives you problems that you can't live with, you can always uninstall it, then set up your VM with Mountain Lion and try things that way. Hopefully though it won't come to that, and your CS6 will run natively on Mojave just fine.

 

[organicCPU]

What I was asking about is if it is ok to install an older OS on it via a virtual machine? I am not fixated on them just for the sake of it.

Install your CS6 and try it out. No Virtual Machines, no Mountain Lion. Just CS6 on Mojave. It works (or worked until we upgraded to CC) on at least 4 Macs at work, and still does perfectly well for me at home. BUT (with one exception) we weren't using any Retina displays, so that could be what trips you up.

I second this. Use a native macOS, if possible.

To find an external display setup that fits best is a good question. Because the Mac mini 2018 likely needs a 4k display, it's important to decide, if just one or 2 or 3 displays should be connected. If just a single display will get used, then a native resolution of 5120 × 2880 (connected through Thunderbolt 3) or a display with native resolution of 4096 × 2160 (connected via HDMI 2.0) should be a viable basis. Those resolutions can also be used for 2 displays connected by Thunderbolt AND HDMI each. If 2 displays should be connected via Thunderbolt, then 4096 × 2304 should be the preferred native display resolution. Not to forget that the cable supports the HDMI 2.0 standard or that the Thunderbolt connection is fast enough to serve 60 Hz.

To clarify, the mac mini 2018 came with Mojave installed on it, not any older OS, and I have not been asking of it is ok to install Mojave on it? why would I ask that when it came with it installed on it?

Which then begs the question - if it already has Mojave (or a newer OS) installed then why are you asking whether it's a good idea to install Mojave on it or not?!

I understood the question directed towards when a VM is used. Then it might be either system requirement or stability performance to use a later OS.

So would I be better installing my CS6 Design suite on a virtual machine as opposed to the main internal hard drive? Maybe it was you or someone else suggested a installing mountain lion as a virtual machine, and installing my Adobe CS6
design suite on that.

If using a VM, then OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion should give you the best performance. I had macOS 10.8. running natively for years until the TLS version was raised by many internet services. Just because of that I upgraded to OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

so it's impossible - or at least the 28 years of Mac hardware & software maintenance experience that I have tells me that it's impossible - that your 2018 Mac mini can have any OS installed that's any older than Mojave.

Mactracker is seconding you

Test everything for days or weeks or until you're happy, then you can upgrade your internal SSD the same way once you know things work ok.

In the Mac mini 2018 is that 8.0 GT/s NVMe PCIe x4 hard drive interface that has onboard PCIe-based SSD storage. Upgrading probably is almost impossible. Even if you could manage to desolder and replace the SSD, I'd expect that the T2 security chip would realize the hardware modification and the Mac mini would refuse to work.

Running Mojave on APFS with CS6 worked fine for us at work - and still does perfectly well for me at home - albeit from an SSD, not an HDD. So in my experience at least, it's a viable setup.

It's the same 8.0 GT/s NVMe PCIe x4 hard drive interface with soldered SSD storage, in my case 4 TB in the MacBook Pro 2019. Maybe that controller is too modern for Adobe's probably low-level programmed I/O functions.

The Retina display issue with CS6, particularly with InDesign, is a different kettle of fish, and problems with this don't surprise me (in theory at least).

The built-in retina displays of MacBook Pros are doing quite good in rendering the InDesign CS6 UI. The icons and some dialogs are a bit blurry compared to retina-ready Photoshop CS6, but in general everything appears sharp enough to work with (or if compared to older pre-retina resolution displays).

 

[Diamond Dave]

I second this. Use a native macOS, if possible.

Absolutely, the KISS principle applies here.

To find an external display setup that fits best is a good question. Because the Mac mini 2018 likely needs a 4k display, it's important to decide, if just one or 2 or 3 displays should be connected. If just a single display will get used, then a native resolution of 5120 × 2880 (connected through Thunderbolt 3) or a display with native resolution of 4096 × 2160 (connected via HDMI 2.0) should be a viable basis. Those resolutions can also be used for 2 displays connected by Thunderbolt AND HDMI each. If 2 displays should be connected via Thunderbolt, then 4096 × 2304 should be the preferred native display resolution. Not to forget that the cable supports the HDMI 2.0 standard or that the Thunderbolt connection is fast enough to serve 60 Hz.

All the Mac minis I'm responsible for (my personal one, my work one, and the 4 other work ones) are connected to single 27" 2560 x 1440 BenQ non-Retina displays, one per Mac. This is sufficient for our workflows. Of course I'd love to have an Eizo ColourEdge instead:

ColorEdge CG319X Hardware Calibration LCD Monitor | EIZO

EIZO is a visual technology company that manufactures high-end monitors and display solutions for business, graphics, home entertainment, healthcare, maritime, security/surveillance, ATC and defense/aerospace.

www.eizoglobal.com

but our company isn't that wealthy. It took months of negotiation to persuade our IT department to let us buy new Macs at all, let alone the monitors we'd have ideally liked. As IT departments typically do, they said "Why don't you all just use proper computers? Not those poncy Apple things?". So I'm grateful for what we got in the end.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that a 4K display is a "nice to have". It's certainly not mandatory.

If using a VM, then OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion should give you the best performance. I had macOS 10.8. running natively for years until the TLS version was raised by many internet services. Just because of that I upgraded to OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Yes I'd agree. Mountain Lion would be the one to try running under a VM.

In the Mac mini 2018 is that 8.0 GT/s NVMe PCIe x4 hard drive interface that has onboard PCIe-based SSD storage. Upgrading probably is almost impossible. Even if you could manage to desolder and replace the SSD, I'd expect that the T2 security chip would realize the hardware modification and the Mac mini would refuse to work.

Apologies - I didn't mean "upgrade your internal SSD" in a hardware sense. I meant upgrade the software on it. In other words install Mojave (I now know that's already running) and/or install CS6, so that the internal SSD matches the "test" external one.

The built-in retina displays of MacBook Pros are doing quite good in rendering the InDesign CS6 UI. The icons and some dialogs are a bit blurry compared to retina-ready Photoshop CS6, but in general everything appears sharp enough to work with (or if compared to older pre-retina resolution displays).

That's good to know. I have little experience with modern Mac notebooks though, so can't really comment or help.

I think the OP just needs to try things out and see how it goes. If there are issues, then revert back & try the VM route.

 

[organicCPU]

Of course I'd love to have an Eizo ColourEdge instead

Yes, those are great for color corrections. NEC SpectraView displays are a bit cheaper, but are also great for graphic design. Though, I'm asking myself if an Apple Studio Display with nanotextured glass would give a better overall user experience and almost equal color accuracy, if attached to a M2 MacBook Pro 13" compared to an Eizo ColourEdge or a NEC SpectraView.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that a 4K display is a "nice to have". It's certainly not mandatory.

That's good to know that a Quad HD display is still working, too.

I think the OP just needs to try things out and see how it goes. If there are issues, then revert back & try the VM route.

Yes, nothing ever beats personal experience. Trying that VM route sounds tempting to use Adobe CS6 until the end.

 

[Sossity]

If you feel safer going down the Virtual Machine and Mountain Lion route, go ahead by all means. I've only used VMs to run Windows, so I can't help or advise there.

As for CS6 not running well on APFS drives, you have to be careful that the issues people have experienced aren't due to something else. For example, if someone has had issues with CS6 on an APFS drive attached to a Mac with a Retina display, then it might be the case that it's the Retina display that's causing the issues. Or it's a combination of the APFS format AND the Retina display that's causing them - assuming that it's display / text rendering issues that we're talking about.

I know a couple of contributors have said that switching from APFS back to MacOS Extended solved their issues, so I understand your caution. All I can tell you is my own experience. At work we ran (and I still do run) CS6 on Mojave from APFS drives with no issues whatsoever.

All we can conclude from this is that it IS possible to do so without problems at least in some cases. At setup like this won't NECESSARILY not work. It merely MIGHT not work. And what causes it not to work sometimes seems to be something to do with APFS - at least some of the time.



I can't speak to the 2011 Mac mini, but we have ten 2011 iMacs at work. Only 2 are still in regular use though, and I'll be retiring them next year. I'm not aware of people complaining about random shutdowns etc or any overheating issues. Only 5 or 6 of them at most regularly ran CS6 though, including the one I used for the first 18 months at my job. The only issue I had with it was it running out of RAM when dealing with massive Photoshop files, some of which had more than 250 layers (supplied by a customer).



Yes - make sure your backup boots the mini ok before you do anything else (you'll likely need to change the secure boot settings by booting from the Recovery partition first in order to do that).

I'd also recommend Carbon Copy Cloner (v 5.1.28 for Mojave) to clone your internal SSD as WELL as having a Time Machine backup:

https://bombich.com/software/download_ccc.php?v=ccc5

or "SuperDuper!" as an alternative:

SuperDuper!

If your CS6 installation gives you problems that you can't live with, you can always uninstall it, then set up your VM with Mountain Lion and try things that way. Hopefully though it won't come to that, and your CS6 will run natively on Mojave just fine.

Ok, will try the native OS first. I plan on using the mac mini with the newer mac studio display; https://www.apple.com/studio-display/, I got a deal on it bundled with the mac mini. I only really plan on using a single monitor, not multiple ones, since I do not have a lot of desk space.

I am not sure about the type of internal storage yet, whether it is just an SSD, or an NVMe type, does that make any difference?

If i use another app besides time machine to back it up right out of the box without any of my own stuff installed yet, except the alternative backup apps, will I have to use another drive for it? can I use my time machine backup drive? or should that one be just for use with the time machine app?

 

[Diamond Dave]

Yes, those are great for color corrections. NEC SpectraView displays are a bit cheaper, but are also great for graphic design. Though, I'm asking myself if an Apple Studio Display with nanotextured glass would give a better overall user experience and almost equal color accuracy, if attached to a M2 MacBook Pro 13" compared to an Eizo ColourEdge or a NEC SpectraView.

I've never worked properly with any of these displays for any length of time, but my instinct is "probably" to better user experience, and "probably not" to almost equal colour accuracy. At least if NEC's - and especially Eizo's - marketing is to be believed.

I guess the only way to be sure would be to trial the same files in the same lighting conditions on all 3 types of monitor side by side. But who on earth has the budget to even contemplate something like that! Certainly not anyone I know!

I am not sure about the type of internal storage yet, whether it is just an SSD, or an NVMe type, does that make any difference?

Not in the slightest. NVMe was only mentioned by "organicCPU" in the first place because of my clumsy wording. I said "upgrade your internal SSD" when I should have said "upgrade your internal SSD's OS to Mojave and then install CS6 on it". I now know that your Mac mini is already running Mojave, so it's now just "install CS6 on it".

If i use another app besides time machine to back it up right out of the box without any of my own stuff installed yet, except the alternative backup apps, will I have to use another drive for it? can I use my time machine backup drive? or should that one be just for use with the time machine app?

As far as your external backup drive goes, a belt & braces approach would be ideal. I have a different backup setup for my personal Mac, but for my work one, I have one of those small external USB powered 2.5" HDDs (inherited from my predecessor at work).

The Mac only has a 128GB internal SSD (a bit cramped but we get away with this capacity on our work Mac minis as almost all our work is stored on servers). The external HDD is 500GB, so I have it partitioned in 2. The first partition is just slightly larger than 128GB, and is APFS formatted, allowing me to clone the internal SSD of the Mac to it every evening with Carbon Copy Cloner. The remaining capacity of the HDD is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) meaning it can be used as a Time Machine volume. So my internal SSD is both cloned AND backed up (albeit to the same drive).

Now your Mac mini's SSD is 2TB (the same as my personal Mac mini's one) so it's probably unlikely that you can replicate the sort of setup I have, as you'd need an external drive larger than 2TB, containing a 2TB partition to clone the internal SSD, and the rest of the drive for a Time Machine partition.

Fortunately you don't have anything much on your internal SSD other than what your Mac shipped with, from what I gather.

So, assuming you have or can buy an external drive (ideally an SSD that connects with USB-C) you can use Disk Utility to partition it into one APFS volume that's large enough to clone your internal SSD to (for now, seeing as there's not much data on it) and another partition that you can format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so you can set it as your Time Machine volume.

 

[tshwartz]

I was curious about this, My CS6 is 64 bit. I was told that Hig Sierra was the last most recent os version that could this Adobe CS6 without any issues, or is fully supported.

If High Sierra is the last OS that is fully compatible with Adobe CS6, would I be able to run High Sierra as a virtual machine in Parallels desktop on a newer mac? if not an M1 mac, would a newer intel mac with a newer OS version be able to run High Sierra through Parallels?

I have a 2011 IMac running High Sierra, with an old version of Parallels, running Windows 7, and Adobe CS5. There have been a few disk upgrades with SSD drives on thunderbolt. This has been the most cost effective machine I have ever had.

fyi - it is only used for CS5

i have a more modern laptop for other stuff

ted

 

[RonPNW]

An update re CS6.

It was running perfectly on Catalina on a mid 2015 MBP through a string of simple OS upgrades from about 2016.

I was forced to move to the M series due to one critical piece of software. I luved my 2015 MBP but it is now a music server. I got an M2 MBP. It is as good as the 2015 and much faster.

I used the standard Apple upgrade process to move to the M2 which successfully moved everything and it all worked as expected even Lightroom CS6 ..... until. Once CS6 connected to the Adobe servers it's authorization key was disabled and I was unable to use the ap again. I did go through some effort to fake it out (since I had all the original old authorization files) but it would always de-auth at the first opportunity.

It seems clear to me that Adobe has purposely decided to brick any and all versions of CS6 it can get to.

I finally moved to the latest version that is OK but not really needed for my level of photo work. I may move to another product after one year since the disabled versions of Lightroom will still allow you to export all your previous work with your previous edits.

Ron

 

[davidnayzar]

FYI, I've been running LR CS6 on Catalina for many months with no issues. But you need to install with an older version and upgrade the OS with CS6 already installed.
I would be interested in having a way to run CS6 on an M1 Mac. They are so much faster that even with emulation it might be faster than running on an Intel Mac.
It should be said that CS6 is now very outdated. I'm still using it because it is bought and paid for and most of the new features in LR seem to require more time per image compared to the simpler CS6 (granted with much better results). The new masking features are stellar so I will likely upgrade in the next few months.
Let us know your progress.
Ron

I am wondering about the update on OS. I have the CS6 installed and never updated the OS since Yosemite (I liked the disk utility and some stuffs) but I updated another machine to High Sierra that works well. Now I am going to update to Catalina since there is confirmation. Thank you.

 

[davidnayzar]

An update re CS6.

It was running perfectly on Catalina on a mid 2015 MBP through a string of simple OS upgrades from about 2016.

I was forced to move to the M series due to one critical piece of software. I luved my 2015 MBP but it is now a music server. I got an M2 MBP. It is as good as the 2015 and much faster.

I used the standard Apple upgrade process to move to the M2 which successfully moved everything and it all worked as expected even Lightroom CS6 ..... until. Once CS6 connected to the Adobe servers it's authorization key was disabled and I was unable to use the ap again. I did go through some effort to fake it out (since I had all the original old authorization files) but it would always de-auth at the first opportunity.

It seems clear to me that Adobe has purposely decided to brick any and all versions of CS6 it can get to.

I finally moved to the latest version that is OK but not really needed for my level of photo work. I may move to another product after one year since the disabled versions of Lightroom will still allow you to export all your previous work with your previous edits.

Ron

There is some patch file some where that block Adobe server connection that was used around 203/14 I believe. That may work or not is not sure but give it a shot. I found it in a forum and kept it in case Adobe might make obsolete and unable to use it.