This request is being submitted at the suggestion of Adobe Support which was unable to provide effective support for Case Nº 0189220198. Of the 252 applications currently installed on our macOS Sierra system, only Acrobat Pro XI cannot be reinstalled or upgraded because the storage volumes are formatted as case-sensitive. The previously case-insensitive system volume on which Acrobat Pro XI version 11.0.20 had previously been installed was converted to a case-sensitive format. This was done by imaging the volume as a DMG file using Disk Utility, and then after reformatting as case-sensitive, the volume was restored using the ditto command in the Terminal. Acrobat Pro XI still runs exactly as it did when the system volume was case-insensitive. Notifications have now been displayed that Acrobat Pro XI should be updated to version 11.0.21 and then to version 11.0.22. Neither the stand-alone updaters nor the automatic updates will complete. Although the error dialogs are misleading, we have confirmed that these update failures occur because the installation scripts detect that the volume format is case-sensitive which causes script execution to terminate. The updaters do not include complete copies of the applications and resources to be updated, so manual update would be very difficult and error prone.

Adobe should do better. It is clear that Acrobat Pro XI is compatible with case-sensitive volumes, as is Adobe Acrobat Reader 2017 which installs and updates without problems. It is obvious that Apple is now focusing upon case-sensitive formats. All iOS devices are case-sensitive, and the new Apple File System was exclusively case-sensitive until late in the beta cycle. The new iOS 11 will include a standard file manager for the first time, so files will be moved between iOS and macOS systems far more often than with earlier system versions. That makes parity of case-sensitivity highly desirable to avoid artificial pathname conflicts. Currently, Adobe is the only known impediment to such parity. Adobe should comprehensively support case-sensitive macOS volume formats as soon as possible. Continued failure to do so will be viewed as inadequate support of the macOS platform.