4 ms·

Dear Adobe... top 100 complaints about Adobe software

16 points by nickb 18y ago

jauco 18y ago
summary, stop adding features and make your software fast (oh, and cheap)
- kajecounterhack 18y ago
  To be fair, reader is their only unbearably slow software (seeing as it takes a while to start even on a fast computer). Photoshop/Dreamweaver have had better startup times, for me at least.
  - pierrefar 18y ago
    Try Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac. I have better things to do with my life than wait.
    - nonrecursive 18y ago
      I had that problem until I bought cs3. Cs2 isn't for intel macs; it uses Rosetta which is why it's slow.
kajecounterhack 18y ago
Foxit > Adobe reader. Why? Because its faster. 'nuff said.
- ivank 18y ago
  On the other hand, Foxit's font rendering isn't nearly as good at small sizes (at least on Windows)
tdavis 18y ago
TL;DR: updater sucks, acrobat sucks, prices are too high, focus on stability and performance not bloat, standardize, international customers don't enjoy rape.
pierrefar 18y ago
Just "100"? I can think of 100 just as a former user Reader and Flash Player.
- rflrob 18y ago
  There's actually several thousand in their site, but that page only lists the top 100. Unfortunately, their page is also chock full of redundant gripes. Reader annoyed me to no end, but what I discovered (on a Mac) is that there was (almost) nothing that actually required it. The PDF-ness of OS X meant that Preview was darn near good enough for everything, and faster than a jackrabbit.
chriskelley 18y ago
I use Adobe software in production every day. Part of me feels comfort reading other peoples "gripes". At the same time, as a developer, I also sympathize with the development teams at Adobe. I'm sure many of the people on their respective teams take a lot of pride in the programs they send to market, and undoubtedly they fight many battles with upper-management that they end up losing. "Faster? Who cares about faster, add more features!" the man in the suit says. I speculate that much of the blame for the unreasonable bloat in Adobe applications over the last 5-6 years can be pointed to the people writing the checks. After Effects hit rock bottom on version 7, and only recently with the release of CS3 have things started to look a bit better. After Adobe acquired Macromedia, I'm sure there was a lot of merging they attempted, which so far hasn't been very pretty. Perhaps after another version or two, Adobe will wrangle everything together and start releasing quality software again. Here is a blog post from the Photoshop Product Manager about the dearadobe.com site: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/08/dear_adobe.html http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/08/dear_adobe.html
- mojuba 18y ago
  His blog post is nice, he answers thoroughly to most comments there, but this guy seems to be just a lightning rod. There are still no answers why their software is bloated, overpriced, and over-overpriced abroad, why Bridge is such an incredibly annoying and useless (and obligatory) piece of crap, why Reader's performance is even worse than just reasonably bad, why inconsistency in GUI between apps, why silent Opera installation, etc etc etc.

16 points by nickb 18y ago

jauco 18y ago

summary, stop adding features and make your software fast (oh, and cheap)

kajecounterhack 18y ago
To be fair, reader is their only unbearably slow software (seeing as it takes a while to start even on a fast computer). Photoshop/Dreamweaver have had better startup times, for me at least.
- pierrefar 18y ago
  Try Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac. I have better things to do with my life than wait.
  - nonrecursive 18y ago
    I had that problem until I bought cs3. Cs2 isn't for intel macs; it uses Rosetta which is why it's slow.

kajecounterhack 18y ago

Foxit > Adobe reader. Why? Because its faster. 'nuff said.

ivank 18y ago
On the other hand, Foxit's font rendering isn't nearly as good at small sizes (at least on Windows)

tdavis 18y ago

TL;DR: updater sucks, acrobat sucks, prices are too high, focus on stability and performance not bloat, standardize, international customers don't enjoy rape.

pierrefar 18y ago

Just "100"? I can think of 100 just as a former user Reader and Flash Player.

rflrob 18y ago
There's actually several thousand in their site, but that page only lists the top 100. Unfortunately, their page is also chock full of redundant gripes. Reader annoyed me to no end, but what I discovered (on a Mac) is that there was (almost) nothing that actually required it. The PDF-ness of OS X meant that Preview was darn near good enough for everything, and faster than a jackrabbit.

chriskelley 18y ago

I use Adobe software in production every day. Part of me feels comfort reading other peoples "gripes". At the same time, as a developer, I also sympathize with the development teams at Adobe. I'm sure many of the people on their respective teams take a lot of pride in the programs they send to market, and undoubtedly they fight many battles with upper-management that they end up losing. "Faster? Who cares about faster, add more features!" the man in the suit says. I speculate that much of the blame for the unreasonable bloat in Adobe applications over the last 5-6 years can be pointed to the people writing the checks. After Effects hit rock bottom on version 7, and only recently with the release of CS3 have things started to look a bit better. After Adobe acquired Macromedia, I'm sure there was a lot of merging they attempted, which so far hasn't been very pretty. Perhaps after another version or two, Adobe will wrangle everything together and start releasing quality software again. Here is a blog post from the Photoshop Product Manager about the dearadobe.com site: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/08/dear_adobe.html http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/08/dear_adobe.html

mojuba 18y ago
His blog post is nice, he answers thoroughly to most comments there, but this guy seems to be just a lightning rod. There are still no answers why their software is bloated, overpriced, and over-overpriced abroad, why Bridge is such an incredibly annoying and useless (and obligatory) piece of crap, why Reader's performance is even worse than just reasonably bad, why inconsistency in GUI between apps, why silent Opera installation, etc etc etc.