4.4 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
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On this episode of Hands-On Tech, Mikah Sargent answers a question from Joe about getting older software, like Adobe Photoshop CS3, to run on his new M4 MacBook Air. Mikah explains why you simply can't, but offers some suggestions that could work, while offering some modern alternatives to the older applications.
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Host: Mikah Sargent
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0:00.0 | Coming up on hands-on tech, let's take a look at how we can run old software on a new machine, |
0:07.5 | especially when we're going from Windows to Mac. Stay tuned. |
0:11.5 | This is Twit. |
0:17.5 | Hello and welcome to Hands on Tech. I am Micah Sargent. And today, as we tend to do here on the show, |
0:26.9 | I am taking your tech questions and answering them. Could you believe? This week's question comes in from |
0:33.8 | Joe, who writes, I just bought a new MacBook Air M4. I have a Lenovo laptop running Windows |
0:40.8 | and have a legitimate copy I paid for of Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS3 installed on the Lenovo. |
0:48.8 | I know these programs are old, but they're still part of my digital workflow for photography. |
0:55.4 | Is there any way I can install Lightroom and Photoshop, the Windows version, on my MacBook Air M4? So Joe, this is a great |
1:00.9 | question. And I understand wanting to be able to, you know, use the software that you've purchased, |
1:09.2 | that you own, that you paid for. |
1:11.9 | And unfortunately, making the switch between one major operating system to another |
1:18.5 | and the hardware changes that come with it makes for a kind of complicated situation. |
1:25.7 | Because you can't directly install, of course, the Windows |
1:29.0 | versions of Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS3 on this MacBook Air, but even more so there are some |
1:34.9 | other issues. We know that because it's Windows only, you can't run them natively on MacOS. But |
1:40.3 | even with virtualization, CS3 and Lightroom 3 are rather old from like 2007 or 2008, |
1:49.5 | and therefore don't have the compatibility that a more modern version of the software would |
1:58.5 | have. It could be that the virtualization software doesn't have the necessary compatibility |
2:03.7 | for the software you're trying to install or right versa, |
2:07.6 | that the software you're trying to install doesn't have the necessary sort of things in |
2:12.2 | place to make it so that it can run with some virtualization software. |
... |
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