> In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs

It's the license that counts.

> Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system

No, I don't think that.

Apple doesn't have good backward compatibility, especially compared to Windows.

That is my point.

But of course they are free to not support what they think it's not worth it.

It's not a something against Apple.

> the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue

True, but why is it a problem?

Does the software need to be new to work?

I think that if something still works after 20 years the authors did a great job.

We need to start thinking of software like infrastructure.

We don't rebuild a bridge after 6 months because a new material or technique has been invented.

Or at least as tools, considering them something that lasts, potentially forever.

Most of the problem we'll be facing in the future will be about digital rot, we'll deal with data that we cannot read in any way.

Apple, Adobe, and their idea of disposable working tools are helping it, nor prevent it.

Of course one cannot support everything forever, Windows lost the ability to run DOS binaries years ago and virtualization can help, the problem is companies like Adobe not selling their licenses anymore.

Recently I had to work on a SOAP client after almost 15 years from the last one.

I remembered there was a good XML editor at the time, that did a good job.

One caveat is that it is Windows only and I run Linux, so I checked on WineHQ and found out that the version 2003 works perfectly.

I go to the software's web site, there is a "download older versions" button, I think "great!" and proceed to the download.

The software installs perfectly on Wine but when I launch it there is no option to start it in trial mode, you have to either use a pre-existing license or ask for a trial one.

I clicked the second and soon after an email warns me that that product is not supported anymore and even if I had a regular license, the servers that check the licenses are not online anymore.

So why put a download button there then?

These are the kind of things that software should avoid at any cost, in my opinion.

They've lost a customer, I would have bought an old license at the price of a new one if I could chck that everything that I needed to do worked as intended, instead I downloaded SopaUI which is inferior, but free and functioning.

In this case, the solution could have been virtualization, but you have to pay for a Windows license as well, which was not necessary in the first place.

In the case of macOS virtualization is not even an option, because you can't legally run it on a VM outside of Apple HW.

For some people, that is a big problem, not because they think Apple is bad, but because they don't care who supplies the infrastructure as long as it works.

There are people installing XP on new HW to keep using their old software.

It is doable, but on macOS you can't count on it, every time they change architecture something gets lost forever.

As I said before, nobody value backward compatibility until they need it.

And when you need it and it works it's much more satisfying than when you need it and you are asked to upgrade or be on your own.