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I love this blog. I love FakeSteve. I wish more people would attempt to slay the dragon with their words.

I am still very frustrated to report that problems still persist with Mac laptops running OS 10.4.x-10.5.x and Wifi N routers. I have spent many months looking through countless support sites, forums and blogs to find a solution to this problem. All I have found is a horde of frustrated Mac laptop users who are desperate for a fix from Apple. Check out the view counts on some of these posts.

57,776 views?!?! Come on Apple. Fix this already… Pretty Please?

/begin rant/

I think that Apple needs to do some re-evaluating of their software release schedule/quality control. At this point I would rather wait and have them get it right then put out subpar updates and fall into the downward spiral pattern of “the rest of them”. My confidence has been shaken and I’ve been a mac fan since the beginning. I just want Apple to split off the iPod/Phone/TV etc. into its own division and to get back on track with the Mac line starting now. We need this stuff to work to make a living and this takes a higher priority in my mind than new twiddle apps on the iPhone.

I do own two iPods and an iPhone but would chuck them in a river to get Leopard working solidly with the majors like Adobe, Extensis, Epson, as well as stable networking, syncing and backups. Apple really has their hands full at this point with a large list of bugs. I really wish them well but can’t say I’m in the least bit happy as a consumer at this point. For the first time in a long time I feel sheepish when answering whether or not I’d recommend a Mac, and that hurts me deeply for some reason.

/end rant/

• Apple – Support – Discussions – 10.5.3 Photoshop CS 3 issues …

• Adobe Forums – CS3 and Leopard

• http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf

• Tim Cole’s InDesign BackChannel: Leopard Alert: 10.5.3 contains first Nav Services fix

• Adobe Forums – Leopard 10.5.3 is out

• Adobe Forums – InDesign CS3 Crash: How to Avoid

• Adobe Creative Suite 3 products crash when you save, open, or place a file, after installing the Version Cue CS3 3.1.0 update (Mac OS X v10.4.x – 10.5)

• Adobe Forums – CS2 and Leopard. Place image crashes program

• Adobe Forums – 10.5.3 Update causes problems saving to networked servers

• Adobe Forums – InDesign CS3 & OSX Leopard – cannot type into palettes

I’d hold off on Mac OS 10.5.3 Leopard if you need to use your computer as a production machine. I have had pretty good luck with 10.5.2 and CS3 but there are still some “issues”. (See above)

It appears as though there are some big minds working on things behind the scenes but “man o man” I wish Adobe and Apple would at least adopt an open-source bug-fix timeline scenario. This would help mission critical workflows from being sabotaged. Both Apple and Adobe have put out documents saying they are compliant with each other but alas there are show stopping issues that still need to be ironed out. As always, finger pointing from Adobe and Apple. Who on our end can tell (or care) who is at fault. Just get it done, hit some deadlines and make the grade. You are embarrassing yourselves and us.

David Blatner from IndesignSecrets.com has a great post about a problem that a lot of people are experiencing with Inkjet printers and Adobe Indesign CS3. He writes, “There does appear to be a problem with printing from InDesign CS3 to non-PostScript printers (such as inkjets) on the Mac. This is a significant problem for people using inkjet printers for proofing, and especially for photographers, who often use inkjets for their final output.”

David sources Chris Murhpy a color management expert with the following solution: “The workaround is to enable “Print as Bitmap” in the Advanced pane of the Print dialog in InDesign. This causes IDCS3 to do the conversion and generate a bitmap prior to submitting to the OS (the default behavior with IDCS2), rather than depending on the OS to do color conversion or rasterizing. Thus you can use the same ICC profiles and print driver settings as with all other Adobe applications if you choose this option.”

Make sure to check out their great blog IndesignSecrets.com. Please click through on their ads to help support such a great bunch of folks who have helped me many times.

To avoid stalls and crashes of InDesign and Extensis Suitcase X1 you can use a little font cache cleaning application called FontNuke (google it). This guy saved me when we were stuck in the loop of endless IDCS2-3 shutdowns using the auto-activation plugin. Use this right after and at least once in awhile even if after you turn off the Extensis plugin. It searches out all of the font cache locations deletes the contents and reboots your computer.

We have not used the Auto-Activation Plugin for many months now and the Indesign stability issue has all but gone away completely. I spoke with our regional sales fellow from Extensis and by reading between the lines it SEEMS as though they will be releasing the Universal Type Server at WWDC. Let us hope that they finally resolved the auto-activation issue. Also for some incredibly tedious reading look into the Apple’s ATSServer (serves out font info to applications etc.) which Extensis says is at fault for the instability.

Also, if you use MS Office… Trash the “Do Fonts” devil spawn in the MS Office -> Office folder in your applications folder. You can make and archive out of it and toss the uncompressed original if you are worried. It just disables the automatic propagation of the cursed MS fonts to your fonts folder. This also was a blessing. Trying to reach deadlines and dealing with the above issues was Sisyphean task. What I wouldn’t have done for a few moments with the coders of the involved players.

We can only hope that the major players in this industry start working better together behind the scenes. If Apple, Adobe, Extensis, and Epson etc. had a quarterly BBQ together and actually just communicated about what challenges their users are experiencing we would all be able to actually do our jobs without wasting clients’ time, our collective money and precious years off of our lives from stress. This recent flap of “it wasn’t me” stances that the aforementioned companies have taken is shameful.