Journal: News & Comment

I shall rant about the Adobe Reader installer now

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First, the evidence:

There is no sensible reason why an application designed to read PDF files, created by the company that invented the format, should be this unpleasant an experience to install.

Why, if I want to install Adobe Reader (which I don't, but I need to do it because on occasion Mac OS X Preview has trouble with a PDF file), should I download a program that runs an installer to install some software to download an updater than downloads more files to run an installer that installs software that is way too big and slow to start...

...which then wants to update itself and asks me to quit all my web browsers while it downloads three separate files of between 15 and 32 megabytes in order to go from version 7.0.5 to version 7.0.8?

...and then one of the installers fails with no explanation, so I still have version 7.0.5 after all that?

Is this a perverse joke? Or simply the worst piece of user experience design anyone at Adobe could come up with? Someone needs to be fired, and Adobe should start over. If Microsoft Office (Microsoft Office?!) and RealPlayer (RealPlayer?!) are simple drag-and-drop installations, something is seriously wrong over there at Adobe. Is this really the same company that makes Photoshop and so many nice fonts?

Okay, I feel better now. And will avoid Adobe Reader whenever possible.

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