I'm surprised at the number of Adobe supporters in this thread; it's Stockholm syndrome-esque.<p>For those who like the UI: Sure, it's better than the GiMP. But it's still awful. <a href="http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/</a> has been on HN before. It's a compendium of more-or-less small things that are just howlingly wrong.<p>For those suggesting the installers aren't awful, Bynkii has spent plenty of time destroying that idea (and, yes, he swears):<p><a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/dear_adobe.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/dear_adobe.html</a> (the installer rant that ultimately led to a meeting with Adobe and the installer team starting a blog)<p><a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/why_wont_they_stop.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/10/why_wont_they_stop.ht...</a> (Why install two out-of-date copies of Opera, Adobe?)<p><a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/02/adobe_takes_back_the_crown.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/02/adobe_takes_back_the_...</a> (Comedy licensing ineptness)<p><a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/11/dont_manage_the_message_tell_t.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/11/dont_manage_the_messa...</a> (on John Nack's message-massaging over the installer nightmare)<p>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?
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.<p>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.<p>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).
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:<p>1.)Register for Trial<p>2.)Download installer Software<p>3.)Download Product (Freeaking HUGE Arse Files 1GB)<p>4.)Run installer (starts to uncompress the download - takes forever)<p>5.)Run real installer (again, takes forever)<p>6.)Jump through tons on splash screen startup nags<p>7.)Finally get software to start - my computer with dual core processor now crawls to a hault.<p>8.)Trial expires, but Adobe "auto updater" still thinks I want updates for my expired trial????<p>9.)Unistall (get coffee and wait 30 minutes - no joke)<p>FAIL
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<p>Is Adobe software <i>frustrating</i>? Yes, at times. Is it <i>incompetent</i>? No, I wouldn't say so.<p>And this line:<p>>> <i>Hell, at my consulting rate, it’s already cost 2/3 of that to install the damn product.</i><p>Well, that's just silly.
An illustrated version of this rant:<p><a href="http://www.betalogue.com/2008/11/13/adobe-cs4-installer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.betalogue.com/2008/11/13/adobe-cs4-installer/</a><p>...and a response from Adobe:<p><a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/notes_from_installer_mgmt.html" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/notes_from_installer_mg...</a>
Isn't proprietary software nice? It doesn't work well, you have to pay for it, and you are legally prohibited from fixing it.<p>Sounds like a <i>great</i> deal.
He mentions wanting an open source solution for developing on Chumby. I have used Sprouts [<a href="http://www.projectsprouts.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.projectsprouts.org/</a>] 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.
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.<p>Check out <a href="http://www.dearadobe.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.dearadobe.com</a> for more constructive criticism (which I may have initially found through Hacker News, but I don't really remember).
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?<p><i>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.)</i><p>If you can buy a key tool for merely three hours of your labor, it's <i>cheap.</i> It's equivalent to someone on minimum wage buying a DVD or something..
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.
Hi, the CS3 installer did indeed take longer than the current installers. More context here:
<a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/OOBE/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.adobe.com/OOBE/</a><p>(Lots of text here at Hacker News on that year-old plaint...?)<p>btw, if you're developing for Chumby, there are many options besides Adobe's Creative Suite:
<a href="http://osflash.org/" rel="nofollow">http://osflash.org/</a>
<a href="http://swftools.org/" rel="nofollow">http://swftools.org/</a><p>jd/adobe
The Three Laws of Software<p>(with apologies to The Three Laws of Thermodynamics)<p>1. Software written by someone else is bad software<p><pre><code> aka. You can't get ahead.
</code></pre>
2. Software written by me more than six weeks ago is bad software.<p><pre><code> aka. You can't even break even.
</code></pre>
3. Its been at least two months since I have written software of any significance.<p><pre><code> aka. You are behind before you start.
</code></pre>
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.
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.<p>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).<p>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.
...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.<p>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.
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.
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.
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_____.<p>Mint.com is a perfect example of filling the vacuum left by accounting programs like quickbooks becoming too complicated for the average person.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>Welcome to the world of programming...