Adobe – Crappy Software

Crappy Update from Adobe

December 2, 2017 Jeremy ButlerLeave a comment

I’ve railed on this blog before about the extortion fee that Adobe charges for the Creative Cloud subscription. Supposedly, one of the “advantages” of this subscription is that one gets all of CC’s latest updates. Alas, this often backfires.

After updating to Adobe Audition 2018 I began getting a weird echo when monitoring my voice to create a radio show.

I spent over an hour trying to figure out why a system that had been rock-solid suddenly was giving me issues. Then I happened to check that sneaky “smart monitoring” setting, which Adobe turned on by default. Once I killed that, all was back to normal.

Sigh. Don’t you hate it when an “upgrade” screws up your workflow? Why on earth would Adobe change a default behavior like this?

Turns out, I am not alone in this crappy situation. SteveG posted a note about it on the Adobe Forum, with this helpful screenshot:

Screenshot by SteveG (AudioMasters). Source: Adobe Forums.

LeeNukes had the same problem, too.

Adobe Creative Crap… er… Cloud Error Messages

September 13, 2015 Jeremy ButlerLeave a comment

Adobe Creative Cloud Error 2 Update Progress Latest in a series of Adobe Creative Crap… er… Cloud error messages. This time around, it stalled mid-update.

Then it repeatedly displayed an error message: “Adobe Creative Crap… er… Cloud is needed to resolve this problem. However, it is missing or damaged.”

Sigh. Oh, Adobe, why’d you have to force me into your extortion… er… subscription plan?

Update, 10/7/2015:

A week later I got yet another error message.

I Just KNEW Adobe’s Creative Cloud Subscription Model Was Going to Be Crap…

December 5, 2014 Jeremy ButlerLeave a comment

…and now they’re proving me right.

I hated Adobe’s new plan of charging an ~~extortion~~ subscription fee for Creative “Cloud” when it was first announced. I finally and very reluctantly gave in to it when they reduced the annual fee to an absurdly low level for college professors like myself.

But now Adobe has shown me why this approach is so dangerous for consumers.

A few weeks ago, CC automatically updated Dreamweaver, a crucial piece of software for me–software that I use virtually everyday. And in updating to DW 2014.1 they disabled a key part of the program–its “design view.” Now, you are forced to use “live view” (although only when editing fluid-grid layouts).

The problem for me is that live view is extremely clunky and slow and absolutely does not fit into my workflow. And I depend on design view for all sorts of things–including very quick edits to Web pages.

The loss of design view makes Dreamweaver unusable for me. I’ve been a Dreamweaver support for many years, but if they don’t fix this, I’m going to have to find a alternative.

I Love Dreamweaver, Except When It Acts Crappy

August 28, 2007 Jeremy ButlerLeave a comment

Macromedia… er… Adobe Dreamweaver is one program I use almost every single day. Aside from Firefox, it is my most-used application. I love it.

Except when it acts crappy.

In the many years I’ve used Dreamweaver, there have been some encounters with craposity. Usually, this occurs when I’ve upgrade to a new version — which I do with religious fervor. Most recently, I upgraded to version CS3 and I ran into this bit of crap today:

The only thing more crappy than software misbehaving is misbehaving software that gives you utterly unhelpful error messages.

“An error occurred”? Oh, thank you so much for that news flash, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3! Could you possibly give me a clue as to why?

Dreamweaver threw this error when I tried to use its Web photo album (Javascript) command. Unfortunately, the photo album is something I use frequently and so I cannot just ignore the problem and hope it’ll go away. So far I have found nothing useful through Google or the Adobe support site. The only suggestion that seems remotely helpful is to completely re-install DW and Fireworks (which DW uses to generate the photo album).

This is a royal pain the ass because the Adobe Creative Suite 3 installation — of which DW and FW are components — is painfully slow. I mean, it took something like 2 hours for me to install it initially. Plus, it forces you to close all Web browsers while you’re installing it. So, your computer is essentially useless while it’s churning along.

Man! What a piece of crap!

Update 8/30/07: In desperation, I tried the uninstall/reinstall method. Took about half an hour to uninstall DW and FW. I don’t know for sure because I started it going in my office and then went home for the day. The next day, I began the reinstallation. Timed it. Clocked in at 45 minutes. Sheesh.

But, of course, the big question is, Did it fix the problem?

Answer: nope.

I guess it’s time to give up on this function of Dreamweaver. Yesterday, I experimented with Photoshop’s Web albums. They work just fine. I’ll start using them instead of DW’s.

This makes me suspicious. Is Adobe sabotaging a formerly Macromedia product? Are they making DW and FW buggy so that users will shift over to Photoshop? Do they just not care about fixing DW/FW issues?

Or am I just being paranoid?