Will the New MacBook Air (Late 2010) Run Adobe CS5? Yes

The fact that Apple’s new MacBook Air (Late 2010) uses flash-based storage, and Adobe’s statement that its CS4 and CS5 Creative Suites (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) “cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices” has sparked some concern from new users that the packages may no install correctly on the new MacBook Air.

However, per an Adobe employee’s post:

“(users) cannot install Adobe software on portable drives such as USB thumb drives and try using such installed software on multiple systems. Adobe software installations include software not only on the designated drive, but also on whatever the “system” disk drive is, and as such, what is installed on such a drive is not the full software installation.

As such, and because the new MacBook Air’s flash memory setup is largely functionally equivalent to the previous MacBook Air’s solid-state drive (which also uses flash memory and runs CS4 and Cs5 well), the new MacBook Air will indeed accept installation of the suites. Note, however, that you will need to use a downloaded installer for the suites, as the MacBook Air does not include an optical drive.