I now have a variety of applications that are incompatible with Mac OS X because I chose to install a case-sensitive filesystem 3 years ago when I got my Mac. Yes. THREE YEARS AGO. It has been possible to have a case sensitive filesystem (i.e., where files named READme, ReAdMe, and readme are all different files) for many years. Several major software vendors have been completely caught by this and failed to (a) account for it during development, (b) account for it in testing, or (c) provide any kind of solution.
The vendors that give me grief right now are:
- Logitech (Harmony Remote manager)
- Red Marble Games (Democracy 2)
- Adobe (Acrobat 9)
Now what really burns me up is that I just upgraded to Acrobat 9 from Acrobat 7 on Mac OS, and Acrobat 7 WORKED on a case-sensitive filesystem. It’s a regression!
To add insult to injury, Adobe’s remedy for their screw-up is for me to reformat my hard drive. I see: you can’t program or test correctly, so you’ll just ask thousands of people each to donate many hours charitably (for free!) backing up, reformatting, and restoring so that they can have the pleasure of running your software (that they had to pay for).
If you look at their recommended solution, that is EXACTLY what they expect. I’m flabbergasted.