Re: Adobe abandons the "grace period" for recent CS2 buyers

In article <59op33164kj94df36qgcbug0f01g4mutl6@xxxxxxx>,
PC Guy <pcguy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 05 May 2007 15:44:35 -0400, ZnU <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <ockp33lbn9s2gr9mg5nka9g4rfpj7rfhoa@xxxxxxx>,
PC Guy <pcguy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 05 May 2007 13:43:41 -0500, Jim <jpolaski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <sghp335b8behtu3bvdgorl43699sqa3rfb@xxxxxxx>,
PC Guy <pcguy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 05 May 2007 13:45:47 -0400, ZnU <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <0001HW.C26208FD0058FC79F0182648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
George Graves <gmgraves2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Bad Adobe.

It used to be that if one bought the current version of a software
title
within three months or so of the release of the next version, the
upgrade
to
the new version was free. This is only fair because software
companies
rarely, if ever pre-announce release dates for their next versions.

But Adobe is changing all of that. If you bought CS2 even days
before
CS3
was
announced, you have to buy it all over again - or at least pay the
full
upgrade price of $600 - which is pretty close to the street price
for
CS2
Standard.

CS3 is especially critical for Intel Mac users because CS2 was NOT
native
on
Intel Macs and was running in emulation. This causes all sorts of
problems
with certain things not working, with the apps quitting for no
reason,
and,
of course, running like molasses in January.

I suspect that the rest of the industry will likely follow suit.

Adobe has, IMO, gone off the rails lately. CS3 feels like Windows
software. The non-standard installer is named 'Setup', and doesn't use
Mac UI elements. The icon design is bizarre. Some of the new UI
elements
(like docks) are quirky.

What's really irritating is that when you install, you get a bunch of
folders dropped in Applications, and if you move them, the apps will
complain they're broken and need to be fixed the next time they
launch.
But even after fixing, Photoshop still can't find the Adobe help
application (another case where Adobe uses its own alternative to a
standard system component), and recommends re-installing. So, now I
have
to sit through a ~35 minute re-install (this is significantly longer
than it takes to install OS X, incidentally), because Adobe has
written
extremely fragile software. I've never see this kind of path
dependancy
issue with any other Mac application.

How can this be? I was under the impression, from the Mactards, that
OS X was immune to this type of issue.

You're not listening which is normal. This is not an OS X problem, but
an ADOBE problem. I hope that distinction is not over your head.

And it's not a Windows problem when it comes to the same issue on
Windows. But that hasn't stopped the Mactards from declaring it to be.

In Windows, it's common and accepted practice for applications (and the
OS itself) to store fixed path data in the Registry, and rely on it.
Moving applications around is not something users are expected to to,
and the operating system discourages it.

On the Mac, there is no Registry, and the sort of static information it
stores about where items are located is instead dynamically discovered.
Moving applications around *is* something users are expected to do, and
the operating system is designed to support it.

Note that when moving the new Adobe apps, the operating system doesn't
have any trouble finding them in their new locations. Adobe hasn't
managed to break the operating system's own flexibility. But it seems
the Adobe apps themselves don't share that flexibility. They don't use
the path-independent mechanisms the operating system provides to find
each other.

My guess is this is because they're using Adobe's cross-platform
toolkit, and that toolkit doesn't have path-independent mechanisms for
locating resources, because it's a lowest-common-denominator toolkit
that also has to work on Windows, which is heavily path-dependent. In
other words, it's virtually certain that the fact that Adobe's apps
break when moved on the Mac is actually a result of the poor design of
Windows.

So the take away from this is that the Macintosh is not immune,
contrary to what the Mactards have been saying all along.

No OS is immune from the programmer(s) being an idiot; the main problems is
Windows ENCOURAGES programmers to be idiots.
.

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