
Adobe software shamefully, frustratingly incompetent - mad44
http://radlab.cs.berkeley.edu/people/fox/wp/2008/07/adobe-software-shamefully-frustratingly-incompetent/
======
bonaldi
I'm surprised at the number of Adobe supporters in this thread; it's Stockholm
syndrome-esque.

For those who like the UI: Sure, it's better than the GiMP. But it's still
awful. <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/> has been on HN before. It's a
compendium of more-or-less small things that are just howlingly wrong.

For those suggesting the installers aren't awful, Bynkii has spent plenty of
time destroying that idea (and, yes, he swears):

<http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/dear_adobe.html> (the installer rant
that ultimately led to a meeting with Adobe and the installer team starting a
blog)

[http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/why_wont_they_stop.ht...](http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/why_wont_they_stop.html)
(Why install two out-of-date copies of Opera, Adobe?)

[http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/02/adobe_takes_back_the_...](http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/02/adobe_takes_back_the_crown.html)
(Comedy licensing ineptness)

[http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/11/dont_manage_the_messa...](http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/11/dont_manage_the_message_tell_t.html)
(on John Nack's message-massaging over the installer nightmare)

So, Adobe software "shamefully, frustratingly incompetent"? Seems spot-on to
me. The most frustrating and depressing thing is that it wasn't always this
way. This is the firm that gave us Postscript, Photoshop, usable digital
typography, Illustrator, PDFs and arguably played a large role in the birth of
DTP, FFS. How have they become this marketing-encumbered hell-shop, trying to
ram Flash everywhere and stamping all over their heritage?

~~~
joe_the_user
Part of the reason for both Adobe's awfulness and for it's loyal following is
that it has been the most faithful "paper emulator" of any major software
company. Their software emulates all the awful pen-and-paper techniques that
real artist used before there were computers.

PDF is like having a real piece of paper jammed awkwardly inside the cover of
your laptop and trying to push it around a track ball. And so forth.

The thing is those folks who knew the paper-pencil techniques has generally
been those who had no use for learning anything about computers, including how
to use efficiently or whether there were alternatives. So Adobe's paper
emulation has massive, undeserved loyalty built into it.

~~~
access_denied
Your analyses regarding what Adobe does is spot on. Except your contempt for
the techniques of a whole area of human creativity is below par.

Also you are right in noting that most of "those folks" had no use for
learning anything about computers. But is this necessarily a bad thing?

------
dcurtis
This is not how it has always been. The quality of Adobe products has gone
down over the last few versions. CS4 is the worst.

Photoshop has an incredible number of bugs. So many that it is almost
unusable. It occasionally crashes while trying to save a file, which is the
worst user experience infraction possible.

I hope they fix this crap. It's getting more bloated every revision, and their
UI is becoming more and more bizarre with each revision (why did they hack OS
X to put window resizers on all four sides? It just makes it impossible to
click behind Photoshop).

~~~
joe_the_user
I have always had a serious problem with Adobe's UI style in Adobe app I have
ever tried. Corel graphics applications seem so much intuitive that I feel
they give a measurable increase in productivity. Too bad they are generally
not accepted for professional work.

~~~
access_denied
Yeah, I started out with Corel Draw! 3. What an app! I loved it. Pitty the Mac
versions were crashy beyond insanity. I would have re-switched otherwise.

------
proee
I agree with this article 100%. My latest installs have been on windows and
it's the same story. In order to download a product you need to do the
following:

1.)Register for Trial

2.)Download installer Software

3.)Download Product (Freeaking HUGE Arse Files 1GB)

4.)Run installer (starts to uncompress the download - takes forever)

5.)Run real installer (again, takes forever)

6.)Jump through tons on splash screen startup nags

7.)Finally get software to start - my computer with dual core processor now
crawls to a hault.

8.)Trial expires, but Adobe "auto updater" still thinks I want updates for my
expired trial????

9.)Unistall (get coffee and wait 30 minutes - no joke)

FAIL

~~~
jcromartie
Trust me, deadling with the real discs is just as frustrating. I don't know
where they went wrong along the way, but it's a hopeless mess now.

~~~
katamole
Reminds me of the trouble a large number of users had trying to install CS3 on
Vista. The installer wouldn't initialise properly, and of course it didn't
print any meaningful errors. Eventually I found a fix for this on someone's
blog which suggested changing one of the environment variables.

After searching the Adobe forums and finding many users with the same problem,
it seemed pretty obvious that Adobe just didn't _know_ what the solution was.

Edit: found the relevant paragraph in the below mentioned Adobe blog:

"In CS3, there were some serious problems that customers faced and the time it
took to resolve those issues in customer support made the initial experience
with CS3 painful for some customers."

Painful? Oh yes...

------
callmeed
I've been using Photoshop since version 3 (first version with layers) but I
don't think it's had a "must have" feature since version 7. However, I think
that's just a trait of very mature software. Been using Flash since it was
called FutureSplash. I develop on Flash CS3 almost daily

Is Adobe software _frustrating_? Yes, at times. Is it _incompetent_? No, I
wouldn't say so.

And this line:

>> _Hell, at my consulting rate, it’s already cost 2/3 of that to install the
damn product._

Well, that's just silly.

------
joshwa
An illustrated version of this rant:

<http://www.betalogue.com/2008/11/13/adobe-cs4-installer/>

...and a response from Adobe:

[http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/notes_from_installer_mg...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/notes_from_installer_mgmt.html)

~~~
Maro
Interesting reading!

The response from Adobe can be summed up pretty concisely: their products have
reached such complexity and bloat that they can't do much about it. (Given the
management's hunger for regular releases and spending as little as possible on
development.) I used to work for a company which was in the exact same state,
and among other things I was in charge of creating the installers, so I've
seen this exact phenomenon up close and personal. Smart engineers were leaving
the company left and right.

------
jrockway
Isn't proprietary software nice? It doesn't work well, you have to pay for it,
and you are legally prohibited from fixing it.

Sounds like a _great_ deal.

~~~
dasil003
And yet I'm not flocking to the Gimp download site, why not?

~~~
jrockway
Because you've convinced yourself that you need some feature it doesn't have.

So instead you pay $900 for something that doesn't work right either, and then
you "make fun of me" on a social news site.

Clearly you win!

~~~
wyday
GIMP vs. Photoshop isn't just about features. It's about polish.

I don't think I'll be able to convince you of this, but proprietary apps are
usually more polished than the open source counterparts. I'm talking about
every sense of the word polish: usability, reasonable bug levels,
compatibility, etc.

It's not that open source is bad. It's that for-profit software companies pays
programmers to polish the apps in such a way that open source programmers
aren't intrinsically motivated to do ( _real_ usability testing,
compatibility, etc.).

~~~
jrockway
_It's that for-profit software companies pays programmers to polish the apps
in such a way that open source programmers aren't intrinsically motivated to
do_

You say this like it's a fact. Could you cite a source?

(I like your "compatibility" argument. The other day, we received some Word
documents that crashed MS Word. OO.org opened them just fine, and the version
exported from OO.org didn't crash Word anymore. Clearly Word is more polished,
which is why it segfaults on invalid input.)

~~~
wyday
> Could you cite a source?

Like a research paper? No, I'm afraid not. All I can provide are similar
anecdotes like you provided (except for the opposite argument).

------
carlosrr
He mentions wanting an open source solution for developing on Chumby. I have
used Sprouts [<http://www.projectsprouts.org/>] for some Chumby projects and I
have been very happy with it. It doesn't have a drag and drop UI like Flash
(it's more for hackers than for average users) but it is easy to work with and
to setup.

------
thinkcomp
The majority of those files actually have nothing to do with Flash--they're
the help system, and it's frustrated me too that someone at Adobe thinks that
every single help page for every single product should have its own static
HTML file that sits on my hard drive. It's completely stupid.

Check out <http://www.dearadobe.com> for more constructive criticism (which I
may have initially found through Hacker News, but I don't really remember).

------
petercooper
So it took him 2 hours to install so I guess he consults at about $300 an
hour.. then he complains that it's too expensive?

 _This “free trial” download experience does not encourage me to shell out the
$995 Adobe wants for the product. (Hell, at my consulting rate, it’s already
cost 2/3 of that to install the damn product.)_

If you can buy a key tool for merely three hours of your labor, it's _cheap._
It's equivalent to someone on minimum wage buying a DVD or something..

------
ieatpaste
While I agree that your experience is frustrating, this is one isolated
incident. Adobe has been making quality products that I've personally been
using for the past 10 years.

~~~
old-gregg
One isolated incident? Please... Have you ever seen Adobe's PDF reader on
Windows? I don't have anything against Adobe, I haven't ever spent a dime on
their software, so who am I to complain, however:

Just about the only reason I need to reboot my Mac is whenever I watch flash
video (southparkstudios.com) and forget to close it before I shut the lid
down. When laptop wakes up, it's frozen and I can't kill the browser.

Buggy flash from Adobe is probably #1 reason stopping adoption of Linux right
now. Not only it's slow, has numerous issues with sound, but it also crashes
regularly and generally looks and feels completely fucked up: wrong font
rendering, steals focus and mouse clicks form the browser, etc. Ughh..

Photoshop is the only Mac program I've seen that uses "setup" and "uninstall"
paradigm, two idiocies from the Windows world.

And finally, their ridiculous Flash implementation burns my lap, I'm not
kidding - whenever I visit a heavily flash-infected site, my MBP gets burning
hot even for small video inserts on ESPN. BTW it also greatly reduces my
battery time. Adobe software is probably the only reason why surfing the web
on a 5 year old PC is a very unpleasant experience.

They are one of these old, big fat monopolies the world would be better
without, but we have no choice.

Suggesting switching to GIMP isn't an argument. All our designers use
Photoshop and nobody needs conversion headaches, Adobe owns the industry, it's
called the vendor lock-in.

~~~
katz
What amazes me is that Adobe Acrobat gets larger and larger in every new
version. And it always wants to access the internet.

I don't know about flash - I disable it by default. Disabling it gets rid of
both annoying moving advertisements and crap plugins...

~~~
zmimon
Yep. Add to that, the acrobat installer, _silently_ without notice or any
option to avoid it, installs Adobe AIR without your consent.

I take this as a sign of a company entering a stage of decline. Successful
companies on the rise do not need to use subterfuge to get deployment of their
products. When a company starts to become hostile to its own customers you can
tell the rot has set in. These days it is nearly impossible to download simple
software without getting crapware along side it (Sun is another prime
offender, and even Flash tries to shove toolbars down your throat.).

------
jdowdell
Hi, the CS3 installer did indeed take longer than the current installers. More
context here: <http://blogs.adobe.com/OOBE/>

(Lots of text here at Hacker News on that year-old plaint...?)

btw, if you're developing for Chumby, there are many options besides Adobe's
Creative Suite: <http://osflash.org/> <http://swftools.org/>

jd/adobe

------
lgriffith
The Three Laws of Software

(with apologies to The Three Laws of Thermodynamics)

1\. Software written by someone else is bad software

    
    
          aka. You can't get ahead.
    

2\. Software written by me more than six weeks ago is bad software.

    
    
         aka.  You can't even break even.
    

3\. Its been at least two months since I have written software of any
significance.

    
    
        aka.  You are behind before you start.
    

The bottom line is that software universally sucks. The reason we keep trying
to make and use it, its far better than what it replaces. Maybe, if we try
real hard, we will finally get it right. If history is any guide, don't hold
your breath.

~~~
davi
Agreed. See also these pearls from Greenspun [1]:

    
    
      Computers are the tools of the devil. ...
    
      Everything I've learned about computers at MIT I've boiled down into three principles:
    
      Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work.
    
      Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't.
    
      PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.
    
    

[1] [http://books.google.com/books?id=RpCERTXtzJIC&pg=PA202&#...</a>

~~~
lgriffith
At least the Unix wizard can pretend he is going to make it work. All he needs
to do is pipe this into that and write just one more filter. Then he can ....

By that time both he are you are lost in a blur of keystrokes and flashing
characters on the display. As you leave the computer room, you can hear him
muttering: "Oh, damn. I am in the wrong shell. I have to do it this other
way...tap...tap...tap...."

The truth is, it doesn't really work there either. You are simply tired of
waiting and are willing to accept almost anything to stop the annoying tapping
noise and the endless muttering.

Hey, it keeps us off the streets so it isn't all bad.

~~~
davi
No, no, don't you see, that's a _bad_ wizard. You just have to go on a quest
for a _good_ wizard. Then everything will be fine.

~~~
lgriffith
and the one ring to control them all.

------
malkia
What always suprised me of INSTALLER applications (More specifically windows)
is that those are compressed .EXE files that get uncompressed to your TEMP
folder as another archive, that then gets decompressed again (and again...
)... InstallShield is prime suspect.

Then again, EULA (And please, get a pet - cat or dog to sign them) stuff
coming from Microsoft needs always to be an .EXE - why - well because you need
some kind of dialog to sign off the EULA (even a .doc file might come as EXE).

I just hate installer programs... And Adobe screwing up on the Mac where this
could be avoided by using plain-old DMG files - is just stoopid.

------
evaneykelen
...and insult added to injury: if you ever try to re-install your (purchased,
legitimate) copies of Adobe products you're faced with a very 'unpleasant' (I
wanted to use an other word) activation process, referring you back to files
on CDs that are simply not there, rejecting perfectly fine serial numbers and
randomly quitting the installation process.

Reinstallation tip: call the Adobe support desk and explain your situation,
they can somehow reset the activation process. This call will cost you an hour
or more but believe me, reinstalling will cost you 2-3 hours if you try it
yourself.

------
juliend2
Over time, the Adobe softwares got significantly slower and the features
amount did not followed. We have pretty much the same old features than
photoshop 6, but much much slower. I was running Photoshop 5 on a Celeron
300mhz when i began learning it. I will not upgrade from cs3 to cs4 anytime
soon.

------
jonasb
I haven't used Photoshop in years, so I can't really comment. But I was a fan
of Illustrator for a long time, and Lightroom is probably one of the best UIs
ever. The thing is that when you get proficient in their apps you get really
productive, so I can see why professionals go for their products.

~~~
blasdel
Lightroom is an extraodinary case -- the entire UI was written from scratch,
mostly in Lua, by a new team at Adobe. It wasn't bought from some other
shithead company like most of their products. The only code that's shared with
other apps is the image processing engine.

------
mojonixon
<http://seenonslash.com/node/2411>

That's all I have to say on this subject.

------
nazgulnarsil
as the UI of popular products bloats over time, a market opportunity opens up
for the people that the app originally served: people who just wanted a
simple_____.

Mint.com is a perfect example of filling the vacuum left by accounting
programs like quickbooks becoming too complicated for the average person.

------
weegee
The main problem is this guy is still using a G4 Mac. My iMac G4 isn't even
powerful enough to render a YouTube video smoothly for chrissakes.

~~~
Devilboy
Thats also Adobe's fault (Youtube vids = Flash)

------
trezor
I have no issues with Adobe software. Granted I haven't tried CS4 and Adobe
Acrobat had a period where it got constantly worse before Adobe got their act
together.

Still it seems to me that mostly there's only the Mac crowd which is
complaining here. Something I find amusing since they typically market the Mac
as a machine ideal for creative work.

------
miratom
"Maybe Adobe is used to Windows users accepting this level of user insult."

Why are mac people always so freakin arrogant?

------
sfphotoarts
wow, what a lot of whining. Just because you have a slow old mac you can't
really complain too much about this. And doing the math on 2/3 1000 at a
typical flash programmer hourly of say $100, that means it took you over six
hours of time... Something I find very hard to believe. I would suggest
upgrading to an Intel Mac.

In general Adobe products are some of the most functional, feature rich and
reliable on the market. Photoshop is an amazing piece of software. Saying it
has 'ugliest, least intuitive, inconsistent UI’ is just plain wrong. Adapting
to the differences in UI's between products and operating systems has never
been much of a challenge; it is a complex piece of software, but then so is
gcc, but I also don't complain about that. Complex problems require
sophisticated and complex solutions. Not everything can be Mickey Mouse.

Welcome to the world of programming...

