Introduction
This article pertains to any Auto-Update for Jamf and datajar.mobi customers with devices running macOS High Sierra (10.13) with the Adobe Creative Cloud 2020 suite.
It has been brought to our attention that an update to some Adobe 2020 software titles has resulted in those titles being removed from devices running macOS High Sierra (10.13).
The affected titles are currently understood to be:
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe Media Encoder
- Adobe Premiere Rush
- Adobe Character Animator
Analysis
After some investigation, we have found the following:
- It appears that at some point in late 2020, Adobe changed the minimum macOS version for some of their Adobe 2020 titles from macOS High Sierra (10.13) to macOS Mojave (10.14). Historically this has only been a change made between major versions (e.g. from 2020 to 2021 titles) and not between minor versions within the same 'year'.
- It also appears that Adobe are not using a feature within macOS packages to prevent an installation starting on unsupported OS versions (limited to distribution type packages). As a result, the installation process for the update has started, and the Adobe Deployment Manager (the tool Adobe uses to deploy software, wrapped in an MSI or installer package) has partly proceeded with the install. At some point in the process it identifies the OS is unsupported and so fails the install.
- Also unique to Adobe packages, the Adobe Deployment Manager tool will remove any items it has installed to ensure that any damaged components are removed. In this instance, although no new data should be written due to the unsupported OS, this still results in the tool removing the currently installed version of the respective titles.
What to do if you are affected by this issue
If you have been affected by this issue, we have a few options for resolving this:
- Deploying Adobe 2019 versions of the Adobe titles that are removed but required.
- Attempt to use the Creative Cloud Desktop App (CCDA) to install the latest compatible version of the Adobe titles that are removed but required (this may not always be possible).
- Upgrade the macOS version to Mojave or newer (10.14+) and we can redeploy the missing Adobe 2020 titles (or the newer versions that have been released since).
What changes have we made?
In order to mitigate the risk of this happening again, we set the following precautions:
- Manually specified the minimum version of macOS for the Adobe 2020 titles to be macOS Mojave. This will mean that any devices currently working with Adobe 2020 on macOS High Sierra will no longer receive any patches at this time, and any new macOS High Sierra device deployments will not install any Adobe 2020 titles. Adobe no longer support some of their 2020 titles on macOS High Sierra.
- In the longer term, we will look into how feasible it is to pull this information directly from the Adobe packages at ingestion time.
- We are also in discussions with Adobe regarding our findings.
Need further support?
Automate. Simplify. Succeed. If you still require assistance with us or have any further questions, please raise a ticket with our support team.
Alternatively, please see our frequently updated knowledge base articles for reference.