Why I Hate Adobe | Hacker News Reader

Why I Hate Adobe

marcgayle.com

155 pointsmarcamillion62 comments

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I haven't installed Foxit in a while, but that's what I have had installed on my machine since forever and have never had these problems.

Perhaps they too have become corrupt...but maybe next time I will take many people's recommendations and try Sumatra.

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.

"Open Source apps usually don't try to slip crap onto your PC"

Unless you blindly run CPAN.

Care to clarify?

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

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.

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/

Oh I guess they changed that at some point, it used to be tricky to download just Quicktime. Still, when installing iTunes on Windows they don't even give you the option of not installing Quicktime, Bonjour, Apple Mobile Device Support, Apple Application Support and Apple Software Update (which will go ahead and install other garbage if you're not careful).

I honestly wouldn’t install any Apple software on a PC – Apple doesn’t like you :)

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.

Admittedly, their Windows software sucks :)

And I've never understood that.

If you're a web developer, you'd wish Apple were more aggressive and just replaced IE with Safari entirely.

...I wouldn't mind that. Especially if it was IE6.

No, I wouldn't, because I have to test with IE to make sure my stuff is going to work for the required customer base. Other parties messing around with my carefully configured development system are not welcome, ever. You don't get to install software updates without checking with me first. You don't get to install add-ons or toolbars or system tray utilities or lurking processes. These things are a threat to my system and my ability to do a proper, professional job using it, and they will be dealt with accordingly.

Ok, but I'm referring to the general home user (that uses iTunes), not a carefully configured corporate environment. If all these moms and pops out there switched to Safari and cut IE6 usage in half, I really would not mind. Yes, I know it's evil, but so is supporting IE6; this is my disgruntled self speaking.

IME, most home users left IE6 behind a long time ago. Sure, there's still the odd one, but it's the big corporations with their standard desktop configurations and in-house software tied to IE6 that are really holding things back. At least we seem to have turned a corner in recent months, with even major players like Google basically saying that if you're still on IE6 it's now you're problem not theirs, so I imagine even the hold-outs will find it increasingly difficult to ignore progress in future.

"The question is who doesn't do crap like this with popular consumer downloads."

That's why I prefer to use Linux. Even Google pushes their spybar along with lots of downloads.

Yeah, it's insane. J2EE for example is "serious" software, why would anyone downloading it also want a Yahoo toolbar!?

My question is why Firefox even has a mechanism through which these companies can install add-ons without the user's consent, and which in some cases can't even be uninstalled using the normal add-ons controls.

Wasn't Firefox supposed to offer a safer choice than certain other browsers, with an add-on system that kept it lightweight and provided the user with control over exactly what extra functionality they wanted to have available? Someone lost the plot somewhere.

Because there is nothing Firefox can do to prevent it. I suppose Mozilla prefers they do it with a documented interface rather than modifying the Firefox install directly. If you want to prevent applications from installing plugins into each other, then you need an operating system that sandboxes each application (difficult), or use a package manager that is run by a trusted party (Linux).

Google's updater is worse. There were seven memory hogging instances running when I looked once.

Google's updater should be manageable. It is a real pain when a whole lab of machines decides to update Google Earth at the same time. Not all of us have super high speed internet. I really wish Google would realize this.

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.)

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.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/31/using-foxit-because-...

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.

Evince is wonderful. Small and fast and works cross platform.

Other Adobe fun http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/

Another good one is: http://dearadobe.com/

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

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.

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]

Maybe this is a strange question, but why are you using Dreamweaver for file management?!

I understand Dreamweaver does a good job of managing projects - if not of managing actual, you know, HTML.

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.

Seems to me like that's the web version of sticking two fingers up at your customers every time they enter your shop.

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.

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

Next time you're doing one of those I would highly recommend ninite.com, they package everything up for you and make sure you don't get the toolbars and other junk.

> You don't HAVE to install Adobe DLM

Not the point. The process feels heavy-handed and shows contempt for the user. An emotional reaction is justified.

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

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.

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.)

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.

> 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.

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.

>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.)

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.

Well...I will agree that they were a great software company. I haven't seen too much innovation coming from them, outside of their traditional bread and butter (and that innovation is incremental at best).

However, I do agree that many software companies do this - but I disagree that it is in their own self interest. I think it is in the management's short-term self interest because they are rewarded with stock options that mature in the short term that they can then cash out. So they might make additional revenue from advertising in the short-term, but what does that do to their loyal customer base in the long term.

I did encounter something similar (not as grotesque) with Sun when I installed Open Office....but for some reason it never rubbed me the way this one did.

Also...much to my surprise, when I was installing Avast Free A/V, I was shocked (and disappointed) to see a screen prompting me to install a 'free and secure web browser from Google'. The last time I saw that, was for their desktop search product, which also annoyed me then....as it did annoy me this time. I guess it is something that these companies go through, but it doesn't negate the fact that it annoys some customers.

I haven't seen too much innovation coming from them, outside of their traditional bread and butter (and that innovation is incremental at best).

I suspect you haven't used their flagship apps much.

I've used the Adobe Creative Suite on a regular basis for 10 years, and it's simply great software. There are always a few rough edges, but over all, it's wonderful. Premiere CS 4 as far as I'm concerned is the best ProSumer video editing app on Windows (It's been a while since I've used Final Cut. I got fed up with Apple years ago.).

After Effects has been nothing short of a phenomenal application for years. I did an animation project last year with my wife who produces Video, and their Puppet Kinematics tools are really, really cool. After Effects can be entirely GUI driven, or you can script procedural animations in javascript. I've just started using Adobe On Location for shooting live video, and it's really pretty amazing. I'm proficient with both PhotoShop and Illustrator as well, and frankly, they are a joy to use. Every new generation of the CS suite, they add more and more features that I've read about in graphics research papers the previous couple of years.

I know that Adobe has been getting a lot of crap recently for it's run ins with Apple and the problems that Flash has running on Apple hardware. But I suspect that might have a bit more to do with Apple than with Adobe.

So, I rather disagree with your assessment on Adobe.

You would be wrong. There is no convincing reason why Flash should perform so poorly on POSIX operating systems.

The reason is complacency. For a long time, Flash was the king of its niche, so they didn't bother to make it perform better on systems other than Windows. Adobe needs a kick in the pants.

It's the same way with Acrobat Reader. How many people use alternative PDF readers? Bear in mind that HN is a very biased sample.

> 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.

They only did that to stop Silverlight from appearing to be more open and more friendly to developers. Don't think for a minute the management from Adobe hasn't noticed the multiple languages support in Silverlight, or the Moonlight project.

While working for them they also talked a lot about "taking advantage of the control they have on their formats and protocols". PDF may be a standard, but it's theirs, and they can add things to it at any time to "improve the experience" of Acrobat users.

Flex may be open-source, but it's useless as long as it's tied to Flash. If you're looking for a real open-source alternative, check out OpenLaszlo, a project released before Flex that was almost killed by their clone.

ECMA4 was their attempt to make ActionScript not look like a proprietary language (which it is) ... something like Microsoft did with C#, only the ECMA standard for the CLR is actually usable.

Just last year they killed an open-source project for using the rtmp streaming protocol ... http://linuxcentre.net/rtmpdump-can-be-used-to-download-copy...

They say the SWF format is open. Well, it wasn't just 2 years ago, and the Gnash developers are still not using the Flash-player or the SWF format specifications.

> If you are RMS or a die hard GPL proponent

GPL or RMS have nothing to do with it ... it's in everybody's interest for the web to not be tied to something like Flash.

And you can console yourself with how they've opened pieces of Flash, but the truth of the matter is Moonlight is in a much better shape than any Flash-clone, and that's what I call ironic.

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*
Notice that (almost) all their open source project are for Flassh? Basically that's just an investment in their platform, and only their platform.
(I'm not anti-Adobe by anymeans. But they don't get any bonus points for this)

Well, from someone who has to setup a lab of Macs running Adobe CS and put Adobe Reader on our XP boxes, they are really a pain. They make assumptions about permissions and have horrible installers / updaters. To make matters worse, Adobe Reader is something of a "security risk of the week" piece of software. I find myself turing off javascript just to save people trouble.

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.

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

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.

Did you read the article? The author specifically mentions that he doesn't normally use Adobe Acrobat:
The worst part is, Acrobat isn’t even the best free PDF reader. Next time I will go with my usual default.
With "usual default" linking to Foxit.
Plus, you know, Adobe Air has Linux support. So it can install unwanted-but-necessary-to-view-some-site-or-run-an-app crap there too.

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 :)

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