

Why I Hate Adobe - marcamillion
http://marcgayle.com/2010/04/21/why-i-hate-adobe/

======
raganwald
The title is linkbait (Capt. Obvious, at your service), but the post itself
was a worthwhile read. Two paragraphs stood out for me:

 _...I have to restart Firefox, which then loads Adobe Download Manager, which
then hits me with a ton of banner ads that slide from side to side (that I
can’t close or block) and, while downloading Acrobat – which I then have to
install. On top of that, once acrobat is installed, they also installed ‘Adobe
Air’. It could have been that they gave me the option to opt-out, but I was so
pissed by this install process that I glossed over it, but it just made the
entire process even worse... Is Adobe joking? This reminds me of some shady
‘third-party’ app site._

And:

 _Adobe…stop worrying about Apple’s 3.3.1 change in their iPhone TOS and start
focusing on your own customers and improving their experiences and lives.
Maybe if you did that, and made Flash better people wouldn’t allow Apple to
get away with the shafting they are now giving you and many other developers._

~~~
krainboltgreene
Dude, half this site is link bait or reads like some car salesman.

------
machrider
It's weird that he recommends Foxit at the end of the article, which is also
bundled with a ton of crap these days. (I was shocked the last time I
installed it.) Then I found Sumatra -- open source FTW.

~~~
hazzen
Old versions of Foxit were ad-free. Only the newer versions have turned into
some kind of crapware mess. The same thing happened to BSPlayer (VLC-like
media player). None of these programs force updates, so someone who hasn't
updated their program for years will blindly reconmend them to friends, only
to get laughed at for proposing such crapware.

~~~
gxs
wow I learned something today. I've been using foxit forever and you just made
me feel like a douchebag because when people ask, I always recommend it.

Indeed, I've been using the same old version for a long time.

------
Tichy
Things like that suck, and Adobe is not alone with it. Almost all noob PCs I
have seen in recent time had the Yahoo toolbar installed, for example. They
push it with a lot of downloads apparently (maybe even Mozilla?). That is
close to criminal in my opinion.

Another reason why I love Linux with a good package manager and reliable
repository. Open Source apps usually don't try to slip crap onto your PC.

~~~
rm-rf
"Open Source apps usually don't try to slip crap onto your PC"

Unless you blindly run CPAN.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Care to clarify?

------
protomyth
It is starting to scare me that Adobe is acting more and more like Real every
day.

------
guelo
The question is who doesn't do crap like this with popular consumer downloads.
Apple does it with itunes+quicktime, last time I had to download Java there
were toolbars, WinAmp ditto. Maybe Google and Microsoft are the only ones that
don't, though they don't really have super popular consumer downloads besides
maybe Gtalk and some of Microsoft's document viewers.

~~~
ugh
No, Apple doesn’t. You click a link and the file downloads. You can enter your
email address but you don’t have to. You can download a standalone version of
QuickTime if you really want to [1] and it’s pretty obvious that iTunes won’t
work without QuickTime.

[1] <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/>

~~~
armandososa
But they install Safari for windows whenever you update iTunes. You can opt-
out (just with the adobe download manager) but it's not obvious for the common
user.

I've heard both from my dad and my sister say 'Hey! what's this Safari thing?'
because they don't remember installing it.

~~~
ugh
Admittedly, their Windows software sucks :)

~~~
mishmash
And I've never understood that.

------
DrSprout
I only use Foxit for filling out forms from trusted sources now. Now that
Evince has been ported we're in really good shape (also Sumatra, but its
implementation is minimal - which can be a good thing when you find security
vulnerabilities in the spec.)

~~~
Terretta
Until a couple weeks ago, FoxIt Reader automatically ran executable programs
embedded within a PDF document without asking for a user's permission. It was
actually worse than Adobe Reader:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174612/Adobe_Foxit_e...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174612/Adobe_Foxit_examine_new_no_bug_needed_PDF_hack)

[http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/31/using-foxit-
because-...](http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/31/using-foxit-because-you-
think-its-safer-than-adobe-reader-thin/)

Make sure you're on 3.2.1.0401 or newer. Or, as you mention, switch to
Sumatra:

<http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html>

On the Mac, help friends switch back to Preview as their default PDF reader
after Adobe Reader hijacks doc mappings.

------
mey
Other Adobe fun <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/>

~~~
matrix
Another good one is: <http://dearadobe.com/>

PS: Adobe people: please read that site. Especially the bits about your
updater.

------
dgallagher
Adobe, fix you Mac Flash client. The horror, my god, the horror:
<http://daved.posterous.com/12301965>

FYI, ClickToFlash (<http://clicktoflash.com/>) is a lifesaver/CPU-saver if you
use Safari on the Mac.

------
FluidDjango
Plus: _my_ reason to hate adobe...

I use DreamWeaver (relax: mostly for file management), and got a chance to
upgrade to CS4 inexpensively (ed. discount package) and to check out adobe
Contribute. Result: now DW creates a new directory (_notes) in _each_ of my
30+ sites' directories, subdirectories, etc.

Last time I searched for help (goog, etc.), I found _no_ way to disable the
Contribute "features". Adobe wouldn't want to make it _convenient_ for me to
disengage from any of their products, now, would they? (expletives deleted)
[/rant]

~~~
jules
Maybe this is a strange question, but _why are you using Dreamweaver for file
management?!_

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I understand Dreamweaver does a good job of managing _projects_ \- if not of
managing actual, you know, HTML.

------
shrikant
I know it's ugly, and you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get ONLY
what you wanted, but...

You don't HAVE to install Adobe DLM - you can choose to cancel the Adobe DLM
plugin install, and click on the "start download now" to get the Adobe Reader
installer alone.

~~~
marcamillion
I never noticed that. Maybe I was shell-shocked.

Truth is, when I am doing these fresh installs, I usually am multi-tasking and
not paying much attention because they usually are routine. This time was no
different, so I very well could have missed it.

But still.

~~~
fnid2
Stuff like this often happens to people who don't pay attention.

------
sohooo
Hating Adobe can be fun too; just look at some of those hilarious crash
reports :) <http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cs4cr>

------
Silhouette
I don't hate Adobe, but I really wish they would stop insisting on invasive
copy protection technology. I have nothing against paying a fair price for
high quality work, and indeed I have paid quite a bit to Adobe themselves for
fonts over the years. Several of their applications are clearly better than
anything else in the market for professional work, and I would gladly pay the
price they ask for those as well. However, I don't install software on
machines used for professional work if that software messes around with parts
of the system, like the operating system directories or boot sector, where it
has no right to be.

~~~
derefr
I believe their point of view is that, if you really are using, say, Photoshop
professionally, then the machine you use it on is likely just a "Photoshop
box," and they can thus take as much control of it as they wished. (I can
imagine that, if they didn't want to avoid dealing with drivers et al, they
would just make "Graphics Studio OS" as a drop-in replacement for Windows and
OSX.)

~~~
Silhouette
Have you ever met anyone who bought a dedicated computer just to use Adobe
Creative Suite? I surely haven't, and that includes several guys I'm working
with fairly frequently who specialise in the kinds of work where Adobe's
software is dominant.

I think Adobe's basic problem is corporate arrogance. Because they have -- for
now -- the only top-class graphics software in town, they don't really care if
people are upset about their DRM and so on. Either they're in denial about
lost sales opportunities like me, or we're just not significant enough as a
group for them to worry about us because they think (rightly or wrongly) that
they get more money out of preventing people ripping their stuff illegally.

One of these days, someone is going to show up with a serious competitor,
whether it be a commercial organisation that sees an opportunity in the market
or some of the community-driven stuff getting some serious support behind it
and stepping up to Creative Suite's level. At that point, Adobe may come to
regret alienating so many paying customers (or would-be customers). But
unfortunately, until then they have a _de facto_ monopoly, so those of us who
don't absolutely have to use their stuff even if it means setting up a
separate machine for it will just have to accept their terms or not. I figure
if we at least shout about it for a while each new release of CS, maybe
someone senior at Adobe will get the point eventually, though.

~~~
derefr
> Have you ever met anyone who bought a dedicated computer just to use Adobe
> Creative Suite?

No, I've never heard of someone buying _themselves_ a computer purely for
Adobe-ware—but I've definitely heard of someone's _boss_ buying _them_ a
desktop workstation and restricting it so that it only _runs_ Adobe-ware.

~~~
Silhouette
But this is my point: for a lot of professionals who probably rely on Creative
Suite, there is no difference, because they work freelance. For people in that
position, buying a whole extra workstation just to run some drawing software
is a significant expense. So the point of view you suggested on Adobe's behalf
in your earlier post still doesn't really make sense, because all of those
freelancers would potentially switch to a competitor product of sufficient
quality and save hundreds/thousands in hardware costs regardless of the price
of the software.

------
RyanMcGreal
>I needed something to read PDFs and that’s the first thing that comes to
mind.

Unless you're looking for advanced Adobe stuff like annotations, FoxIt and
sumatraPDF are just fine. (Note: the former only lets you select a page at a
time whereas the latter doesn't appear to let you select content at all.)

------
apphacker
Adobe is a great software company. They are a corporate software company and
they do things that software companies do because they have investors to care
for. Microsoft, Google, Apple (more of a software company than a hardware
wouldn't you agree), Sun, Oracle, etc are the same way. Maybe there's a better
way to govern a software company, not sure, but the ones that work that way
have made it to the top and stuck around. By "that way" I mean obvious self-
interest, it's what investors want.

Having said that, Adobe has done a great many good things for developers, and
part of that is the Macromedia legacy they inherited (bought).

\- Adobe has some of the best developer support in the industry. Their
documentation, training and support has always been excellent. They have given
developers and designers a lot of power through their tools. They have given
developers the power to do a great deal with the web, and this is evident in
the desire many of us have to get HTML5 to do what Flash can already do. We
want the web Macromedia and Adobe envisioned, but we don't want it to be in
their clutches, which is understandable, but I would be amiss if I didn't
credit Adobe with that vision and the vision of those they've enabled.

\- Adobe has supported open source, and open protocols and standards. They
pursued ECMA4 through a standards body (and lost that fight), but still. They
have a decent proprietary flash player for Linux which they didn't have to do,
I doubt they did that for any other reason other than for developers. Their
Flex SDK is open source. There's a whole list here of open source projects
they have:

<http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home>

\- Adobe AIR has a bad rep for no good reason. I also thought negatively of
Adobe AIR until I started developing with it. It's fun to work with, I made a
desktop app in JavaScript quickly (an IRC Client), and it works on three
different platforms without any real effort to make that happen. I hope Adobe
AIR is successful, because I think it is a promising runtime, that can only
get better.

Anyway, I think I'm a better software developer today because of Adobe. One of
the first client side apps I've produced was a Flash color picker. It was fun
and easy to build and it put me on a path to be a software engineer. Sure this
download manager thing is annoying, but you know Sun had the exact same thing
when you downloaded the Java Runtime, which by the way also installs the Yahoo
Toolbar last time I checked. Microsoft installs the MSN Toolbar, Google puts
their toolbar on PCs from various manufacturers.

If you are RMS or a die hard GPL proponent, you are probably not going to
agree with me, but that's ok. I also want HTML5 to supplant Flash wherever it
can, but if Adobe gets around to making their Flash player work better on
Macs, I don't really want to see Flash go away.

So you had to deal with a download manager, so what. I don't hate Adobe for
that. I think they're a great company. If I ever started a software company
I'd hope to become a smidgeon of what Adobe is.

~~~
Locke1689
Sorry, but Flash is poorly written software on everything but Windows and
Adobe Acrobat is just poorly written. It actually took less CPU time to
_virtualize Windows in VMWare_ and run an HD Flash video than it did to simply
play that video in Linux or OS X. You have to _try_ to write software that
bad.

~~~
uriel
Flash is a horrible nightmare on Windows too, it just is even worse on Linux
and OS X.

------
barnaby
I hate Adobe flash and all, but does the author know that if he installed
Ubuntu instead of XP then he wouldn't be having these problems? The install
process there is very quick and ad free.

It's 2010 for Pete's sake! Friends don't let friends suffer with Adobe's crap
on XP.

~~~
marcamillion
Funny story barnaby...the machine I was installing XP on...actually had a
flavor of Ubuntu. These people are not fully tech savvy and they begged me to
re-install their original XP back to it - because of software compatibility
problems - driver problems for some obscure webcam, etc.

So yes, for some people Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux run nicely. But for
others, it can be just as much of a pain as Adobe in this case.

Just my $0.02 :)

