408066 - adobe.com - Refuses to allow Mac Shockwave download on Intel unless browser is in Rosetta mode

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Howard Bailey]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9b1) Gecko/2007110903 Firefox/3.0b1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9b1) Gecko/2007110903 Firefox/3.0b1

Rosetta not running properly under Mac OS 10.5.1

MacBook 2.16 GHz white
1 Gb RAM

I upgraded my OS from 10.4.11 to 10.5.1 last night.
Now Adobe's web site does not recognize that Firefox 2.0.0.11 and 3.0b1 (2007110903) are configured to use Rosetta.

When I click on the download Shockwave link
http://www.adobe.com/go/BONRO

at www.adobe.com,

I am redirected to
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=82216d24&sliceId=1
Using Shockwave Player on an Intel-based Macintosh

I verified that both versions were set to run in Rosetta mode.
I downloaded a fresh copy of Firefox 2.0.0.1
The problem persists.

This worked fine before I updated from OS 10.4.11 to 10.5.1

Howard

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to www.adobe.com
2. Click on "download Shockwave" link [http://www.adobe.com/go/BONRO]
Actual Results:  
Redirected to
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=82216d24&sliceId=1

Using Shockwave Player on an Intel-based Macintosh

Shockwave Player has not yet been ported to run natively on the new Intel-based Macintosh computers and currently only runs in Rosetta emulation mode. To install and use Shockwave Player on an Intel-based Macintosh, you will need to run the browser in Rosetta emulation mode. Follow the instructions below to launch your browser in Rosetta emulation mode.

Expected Results:  
Should be prompted to click on "Save" to download Shockwave

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

Sounds like a bug in Adobe's browser/platform detection code.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

I'm not sure there *is* a way to detect (via any means available to a Web server) that a browser is running in Rosetta. If that's indeed the case, then Adobe should certainly not be assuming that anyone with a UA containing "Intel Mac OS X" is running native, especially since they give explicit instructions for how to run under Rosetta.

Comment 3

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

There's no way they can detect you're on Intel running under Rosetta; when under Rosetta, we report the standard PPC UA.

This WFM with both recent CaminoTrunk and Minefield nightlies on 10.5.1 (where "works" means "get a page labeled "Mac OS X download" that provided binary downloads for Windows :P but that's what I see PPC native).

Comment 4

[Howard Bailey]

When running 10.4.11, using Firefox 2.0.0.11, when I tried to download Shockwave from Adobe's web site, I was presented with the message informing me that I needed to run Ffox in Rosetta mode in order to download and install Flash.

Once I set Ffox to run in Rosetta mode, I was able to download and install Flash.

Howard

Comment 5

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

So the bug isn't really that they aren't recognised; it's that Adobe is refusing to allow you to download it unless you can prove that you're smart enough to put the browser into Rosetta mode.

That seems a little silly too. They should allow you to download it regardless.

Someone should do a little investigation with browser UA spoofing and see whether Adobe is sniffing for the absence of "Intel Mac OS X" or if they're sniffing for the presence of "PPC Mac OS X" (or some subset thereof), because therein lies a fairly obvious workaround.

Comment 6

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Howard: are you saying this is *only* broken for you on 10.5.x? Maybe Adobe's sniffing is broken in a marginally more sophisticated manner :-p

Comment 7

[Raymie Humbert]

Shockwave Player 11 is available, but Adobe hasn't changed the redirect yet.

Check TUAW for the link to it. I have it working on 3.0b4, thankfully.

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/28/after-years-of-waiting-shockwave-player-plugin-finally-goes-uni/

Comment 9

[Frankie]

http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/ properly allows both PPC and Intel Macs to download shockwave.