Mac OS10.5.6 CS2 printing problems

Question

I cannot get my documnet to print correctly( alignment on the page) using CS2 on a Mac 10.5.6. I read several posts that this is a compatibility issue between  InDesign CS and Leopard. And that there is not a fix? Is this true? And why in the world would the biggest design application company not be compatible with the latest Apple OS? It's not like Leopard came out last month? Any insight?

Answer 1

OK, let me try this again.
In terms of MacOS X 10.5 and all the 10.5.# double dot releases, I am sure that the compatibility problems are frustrating to you. They are just as frustrating to us. Don't you think that many of our internal +users are on Macintoshes? But even Apple admits (at least to us if not publicly), that operating system bugs were the cause of these myriads of problems that plagued not only the CS2 applications, but the CS3 applications as well. There were also issues with printer drivers and their interactions with both the application programs and the operating system. Thus, the problems had nothing to do with Apple "updating and improving" as much as Apple attempting to update and improve without quite enough concern for the ability of existing applications to continue to run unimpeded. (Years ago, I actually ran an operating system development group for a major computer company. The most important criteria ranking above that of new features was the cardinal rule that we not do any harm to existing applications or system programs. The application program vendor should not need to modify the applications to run on the new OS release. And likewise, a user should not need to buy a new application version simply to take advantage of a dot release or even a major release of an operating system.)
Quite frankly, I am actually glad that no one at Adobe promised you anything with regards to a combination of a particular printer, its driver, MacOS X 10.5.6, CS4, and particular printing settings. The combinations and permutations are mind boggling and believe it or not, we as well as our network of beta testers can only test a small subset of said combinations and permutations. If you find a problem with a current release of an Adobe application and you report it, we will attempt to track down the problem with the combination of OS vendor (Apple in this case) and printer vendor if necessary to find the cause, a temporary workaround, and hopefully a more permanent fix. Unfortunately, Adobe does not have engineers doing compatibility fixes for software that is no longer being licensed. Thus, we have some engineers working on patches and workarounds for CS4 at this time (and as necessary, collaborating with the OS vendor and printer vendors), but not CS3 or CS2. The majority of our engineers are working on the next major release of our software.Can that be that complex a fix? In terms of the misaligned page and your question "can that be that complex a fix," the answer is "yes, it could require an OS fix, a driver fix, and/or some application workaround which in total is indeed complex" requiring coordination between two or three companies and multiple development, support, and test organizations. Oh, by the way, exactly what printer were you having problems with. I checked this thread and I haven't seen you reveal that interesting little piece of information! 
Going back to the Lightroom question, no, Adobe doesn't expect "everyone to fall in line with" the DNG format. But if Canon and Nikon, to mention only two of the camera manufacturers, make unannounced and/or undocumented changes to their proprietary RAW formats as part of their release of new camera models, it is very unreasonable to expect that Adobe or any other software vendor will magically have a means of decoding such formats the day such cameras are released. We deliver updates as best we can with or without the assistance of the camera companies. And if you must be the very first on your block to take delivery of a Nikon D3x or a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, you'd better expect that it may be a month or two or more before either Adobe or other vendors providing RAW format support will be able to support the new cameras. If the vendors were willing to publicly define and stick to a common RAW format, this class of problems would effectively go away. (Note that Adobe has been posting beta/pre-release versions of both Lightroom and Camera RAW Photoshop plug-ins on the AdobeLabs site to help minimize the pain to such early camera adopters using our current software versions!)
        - Dov