Which CS Master Suite Products CS2,3,4,5,5.5,6 work with which Mac OSx 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8?

Question

You have no idea what a journey it has been to try to find the answer to all of this. Here is my stab which is open for input.
Which CS Master Suite Products CS2,3,4,5,5.5,6 work with which Mac OSx 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8?
- When I recently installed 10.6 on a 10.5 Macbook Pro with CS2 Master Suite, I lost all access to CS2. End of story. Unhappy ending at that.
- I have CS4 Master Suite on a MacPro using OS 10.6.8, but my understanding is that if I go to 10.7, I lose all access to CS4. Another bad solution.
- Apparently the same is true of CS5 and 5.5. If one goes to 10.7, you will no longer be able to use those programs.
- The only Master Suite that is 10.8 compatible is CS6. New price $2,599, or $999 upgrade from CS5 or 5.5.
32bit vs 64bit
And to look at 32 bit vs 64 bit briefly. My CS4 Master Suite for Mac has two 64 bit programs, Premiere and After Effects. The Windows version of the same program also included Photoshop as 64bit.
- I assume that as CS Suites went from CS4 to 5 to 5.5 and then to CS6, that more and more programs take advantage of the 64 bit architecture. I don't know the specifics however. Would like to know.
- Also the MacOS has done the same. The newer the operating systems, the more the system takes advantage of mulitple processors, ram, and 64 bit architecture. Again, not sure of the sweet spot here.
And then there was the cloud!
Not sure what to do with that information.
- Great, new products updates all the time
     - downside, what if the updates outgrow my computer? Size and technology?
     - What if the updates outgrow my system software?
     - What if I want to open a cs4 document 5 years from now?
          - do I have to subsribe forever?
          - if I have CS6 on my computer, do some work, and want to open it 10 years from now, I still have the software and a computer.
     - Cost of $30 a month on a special, but $50 a month normally. Sounds cheap month to month, but after two years of $50, I have spent $1,200 on a product that I don't own!
Anyway, all of this comes up because I have multiple versions of Master Suite. I have multiple computers with various versions, and it all goes to crap if I upgrade the system software, or Adobe no longer supports the older versions. This is my contribution to the discussion. Apparently Adobe support had no archived articles to answer any of my questions, they suggested I look online. Great help. As I say, I don't much trust Adobe as my business partner anymore. I think I will work my way towards CS6 and see how long that takes me with Apple system upgrades. I'm not sure what OS 10.9, and beyond may bring as it relates to Adobe products, but I do need to get past my old 32bit applications running on an 8 core machine with 32gig of ram.
Which brings up one final point. I have Imac with 4 gig ram, Macbook pro with 8gig of ram, and MacPro with 32 gig ram. Will 4 gig ram run Cloud CS master suite? Its a worm hole that just keeps getting deeper! I have to find a place on that slope that is cost effective and allows me to hold my position for a few years until I can see how Adobe treats its cloud cutomers, and how well Adobe and Apple play together.
If you have any links to addtional information about various CS programs and which are ported to 64 bit, that would be helpful. I read some things about Rosetta and Java being the culprits in various upgrades to CS programs and the new Mac OS systems.
Also, if you have any work arounds to get CS5.5 to run on OS 10.7 or 10.8, curious to hear about those as well. As I understand it, 10.8 no longer includes the previous Java or Rosetta applications, but I was under the impression that they could be installed after.

Answer 1

Long story short: Simply get CC for teams. At 500 bucks a year it's a steal and those 5 licenses in the base package (or was it 10 even?) cover all your computers, at least the 3 ones you mentioned. For system requirements refer to the individual product pages.
Mylenium