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Dear Adobe: What the hell happened to you?
Adobe has slowly been adding to that chip on many people's shoulders for some time now, and lately they seem to be upping their game. Certainly, comments from their CEO like "our customer is not typically price sensitive" don't help matters, but it seems that even the very software their company is so well known for is beginning to suffer from poor, nay - dreadful - design and management.
Shouldn't all this software already be at their latest latest versions? Do we really need to download something that downloads something that downloads something just to check if it has to download something? Who manages this software, and what did they do with our dear friend, sensibility?
Please Adobe - this needs to stop.
Comments
48
Subscribe to commentsjames 42May 23rd 2007 11:13AM
You think that's bad, how about how CS3 is disabling firewalls in OS X and not bothering to re-enable them on completion: GracefulFavor
As for Reader, who uses that anymore? Foxit runs a lot faster without all the crashing and annoyance.
And then there's the whole "Adobe is ripping off European customers" thing.
Nice work Adobe, you have turned a once loyal fan into someone seriously considering moving away from your products, entirely. I'm not sure it's realistically possible for me to do that, but I am looking into it.
james 42May 23rd 2007 11:14AM
Ah, no links, well here you go:
http://gracefulflavor.net/2007/05/22/adobe-cs3-installer-disables-osx-firewall-and-doesnt-feel-like-re-enabling-it-when-its-done/
http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html
Gardiner WestboundMay 23rd 2007 11:18AM
I love Adobe Acrobat, but it's becoming a real pain in the ass. As soon as I find an alternate that can scan files to a .pdf document I'm gone.
JamesMay 23rd 2007 11:19AM
Adobe isn't the only one guilty of mangling their download/install process (though it applies to a lot of their products, not just reader -- try to find an offline installer for Flash Player, I dare you). Hell, look at the Blizzard Starcraft 2 announcement -- they distributed not the video, but a downloader for the video that uses the same peer-to-peer/server hybrid that they use to distribute their WoW updates. Ick. Sun does it for Java, too. It's an epidemic that I see from all sorts of companies now, and I can't even figure out the business logic behind it.
asurrocaMay 23rd 2007 11:26AM
Adobe is an absolute mess, and I wouldn't be surprised (read: I hope) if they find themselves in trouble with the Feds soon. Ever notice how now that Adobe bought out their only major competitor, Macromedia, their suite's prices suddenly shot into the stratosphere? Adobe is a monopoly that's ripping off its customers.
Let's not forget that the original PDF program handles the format far worse than the free alternatives. And that GIMP does 90% of what Photoshop does, for free. And that despite forcing Vista users to upgrade to CS3 if they want support, I installed the CS3 trial on my Vista machine, and it runs far less stably and slower than CS2. I could go on and on.
I know it's hard, but we've got to admit this to ourselves: Adobe sucks.
emor8tMay 23rd 2007 12:15PM
Im so not price sensitive to Adobe Product it's not even funny.
How do I manage to stay non-price sensitive? I don't buy.
And there it is Adobe. When I have to choose between a Canon Rebel XT at the end of the month, and Photoshop, what do you think Im picking? Guarantee is isnt a piece of software.
iamhoffMay 23rd 2007 12:31PM
Amen. Adobe annoys the living hell out of me, and the whole AutoUpdater thing makes me want to chuck the laptop out the window.
Dave ChartierMay 23rd 2007 12:50PM
One of my latest beefs that I should have included in the post is their destruction of the UI for the Mac OS X version. All the buttons on panels and widgets are now on the right, as they are in Windows - no longer on the left, as in every other Mac OS X app.
Now this isn't a Windows/Mac beef, it's a usability beef. John Nack from Adobe said they're trying to create a standard experience across platforms - but you can't do that with these very fundamental UI elements. I would honestly be griping just as much if they had switched all the Windows UI widgets on the left side of the window, as they are on Mac OS X, because they would then be destroying the Windows experience just like they've done with CS3 on the Mac.
When in Rome, you do as the Romans do. You put Windows UI widgets on the right, and Mac OS X UI widgets on the left. Period.
KarimMay 23rd 2007 2:21PM
My favorite is how Adobe Reader hangs the whole computer during shutdown because it (MISTAKENLY) thinks you have a PDF open in a browser window and this is reason enough to abort shutting down the computer.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=331506
The *FIRST* solution Adobe suggests is to close all browser windows, then WAIT, quote, "5 to 7 minutes" before shutting down. I supposed Adobe wants you to go have a cigarette or a make a nice cup of tea or something.
I've seen MALWARE that was more well-behaved.
Then of course Microsoft was going to make it easy to save documents as PDFs straight out of Office 2007, then Adobe freaked out and said OH NO NO NO, you can't DO that, we're going to drag you to the DOJ and sue you for ANTITRUST!!!
So Microsoft had to make it an add-in instead of building it into Office 2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en
Unfortunately the add-in doesn't VIEW PDF files, it just creates them.
In Mac OS X, of course, there's the lovely Preview app, which loads PDF files instantly and has a very nice UI. Unlike the bloated Adobe Reader, which takes a long time to load and looks like it was ported from Solaris.
God forbid Microsoft should come out with a PDF viewer like Apple's, because Adobe would drag them into court and accuse Microsoft of crimes against humanity.
I *really* hope the XPS standard takes off, not because I am convinced it is better than PDF, but just because Adobe has pissed me off one too many times. Acrobat is stuck in the Windows 98 era of AppHangs and crashes and vulnerabilities and someone needs to come along and put it out of its misery.
Mike WernerMay 23rd 2007 3:35PM
I'm sooo disappointed in Adobe, I've stopped using all their products. In fact, I stopped at Photoshop 6. Acrobat is already replaced by Foxit.
Their pricing policies remind me of the 60's, before users had internet and could find out who was paying what and where.
Their support is a disaster, 10x worse than Microsoft. You open a support case, and the just close it without doing enything.
Too bad, it used to be a good company.
Racetrack-OwnerMay 23rd 2007 4:21PM
Personally I've always thought Adobe was very overrated. They often do have important and useful products, but the quality, convenience factors, and pricing were always way out of line, and they just seem to be getting worse. But, like Windows, their products are always "good enough" and often just slightly better than what you can get on the cheap (let alone free), so they aren't going anywhere any time soon.
AbscissaMay 23rd 2007 5:48PM
"...seems that even the very software their company is so well known for is beginning to suffer from poor, nay - dreadful - design and management."
Whaddya mean *beginning* to suffer? It's been suffering for a looong time now.
Comment #11 (by Racetrack-Owner) really hit the nail on the head on this. I couldn't have said it better myself.
the foresterMay 23rd 2007 8:03PM
It boggles my mind that Adobe Reader itself takes so long to load. Apple Preview can launch and open a PDF in a matter of seconds ... Adobe Reader takes nearly a full minute. Why such excessive bloat -- just to read a PDF?
daveMay 24th 2007 2:12AM
If you're using a Mac, expect trouble.
Get a PC. Like 95% of the rest of the computing public.
FerMay 24th 2007 1:13AM
Not price sensitive?.....i live in Argentina where Ar$1= 4 Euros (couldnt find the Euro character). The solution....piracy....yeah, i know it´s not right,but i cannot afford a $400 app. If they launched a stripped off-bargain release i would think about it.
widget_13May 23rd 2007 8:25PM
Part of the reason for the bloat in Adobe Reader is the number of plugin features it has in it. PDF has evolved from a simple print document to a method of handling everything, including videos, ebooks, and whackloads of 'security' features.
Yeah I know, videos in PDF? Crazy.
steveMay 23rd 2007 8:34PM
Try PDFCreator. It's not a viewer, but you can easily make PDF's from any program. It installs as another printer.
Pablo MacMay 23rd 2007 8:37PM
I could continue tolerating most of my other beefs if they would act on the multitude of Captivate users who need a Mac OS X version. There's really no competitive product on the Mac.
JoshMay 23rd 2007 8:55PM
Adobe's developer tools, like Flex Builder, aren't as bad as the rest of the Creative Suite. We'll see how long that lasts, though. :/
JimMay 23rd 2007 9:07PM
As an ardent fan of the Corel design suite, I've never had any use for any Adobe product of any kind. Their prices are insane, the user-hostile, non-intuitive software sucks up so much memory it's ridiculous, and Corel does everything they do and more easier, faster, and cheaper. I've been a working web and graphics professional for a decade, and I've done it Adobe-product-free every step of the way. It IS possible, and even preferable to seek out alternatives.