Inkscape can't open all .ai files

I love Inkscape, but I have a lot of documents in .ai format from the many years when I used to use Adobe Illustrator. When I decided to convert to Mac I couldn't justify the expense of also getting Illustrator for the Mac.

The only problem is that I now need some of the artwork I did several years ago, which I never expected would happen, in fact I actually thought I'd outgrown my older artwork.

So a couple of days ago I spent the day downloading a trial version of Illustrator so that I can convert all my old .ai art to something that Inkscape can open. You see I made the mistake of thinking that Inkscape can open .ai, and it can, sort of.

I'm not sure what the reason is but it seems that some .ai files can't be opened by Iknscape, while some can. The nearest explanation I can find is that there is a setting in Illustrator where you can add more to the .ai file so it can also be opened by Photoshop.

I never did that, why would I want to open an Illustrator image in Photoshop? Well I'm paying for that mistake now but at least Adobe make a 30 day trial available for download.