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Well, meeting, singular. Today I wandered over from the San Jose Fairmont to Adobe for my meeting with the install team.

Aside the first: The directions to get there from the Fairmont were far too complicated. It should be "Walk out of the main entrance of the Fairmont to the street. Look up. See the big building with "Adobe" on the side? Go there.

I had lunch with Barry Hills, whose title is Sr. Director, Engineering and Program Management, CSBU, but whom I think of as "The Installer team guy". Not totally accurate I suppose, but lets me keep track of it. Now, for obvious reasons, I wasn't sure what to think. I didn't think he'd throw stuff at me, or try to punch me in the gob, but, I wasn't sure if there'd be a barely-disguised hostility. Face it folks, I've been beating his team like a bad dog for months now.

Instead, what I got was someone who was really friendly, and who bought me lunch at the Adobe company cafeteria.

Aside the second: It's the first company cafeteria I've ever seen serve Beef Wellington. I had the meatloaf, it was outstanding.

Barry, and really all the folks I met with today, (since Barry "outed" himself on John Nack's blog, he's going to be the only person who I actually name), were not only completely friendly, but repeatedly thanked me for coming out. I repeatedly thanked them for bringing me out. In other words, it was not mortal combat with chainsaws and rail guns in the courtyard. They didn't act, at all, like I'd pissed on their baby, but rather were really open in talking about the obvious mistakes and problems with the installer, why some of them were there, that yes, the enterprise took it in the shorts even with CS4, (the exact phrase used, by one of the folks there was "raped the enterprise". You can't accuse them of not knowing there's a problem with that description.)

I liked that, because while I am willing to be a hardass where necessary, I'd rather not have to start that way. I was very pleased to not have to do that at all. They went over what they're planning for CS5, and even into CS6, (I'm pretty sure those aren't under NDA...everyone knows what they're going to call the friggin' suite), and what they could change and what they couldn't. I was also impressed that it wasn't just the installer team there. There were people from the CS Team, and I don't mean low-level engineers, but folks who actually make decisions. That I wasn't expecting, and it was a huge help

Some things I learned:

• As it turns out, MSI creation and use is a lot more messed up than Apple Packages. Some of that is just Windows, a lot of it is just MSI. This was news to me, and I'm not being snide here.


• One of the limitations they have, (and I'll guess any installer team from any company has when dealing with a large suite like CS), is that they can't tell the product teams to build the product in a way that makes the install easier. That's not to say they can't, and, (I'll guess), don't talk to the various CS product teams about doing things to make the install better, but, they have limited influence, so a lot of what they can do is limited by having to work with what the product teams are doing. In other words, sometimes, it ain't their fault.


• They completely agree that a lot the the installed file structure is incomprehensible, and that they should do a better job of explaining what's in there, and going forward, naming things better. They actually were very agreeable to this idea, since removing the "black box"-ness of the CS structure would be advantageous to both them and us.


• They talked about some of the reasons why CS installers want you to quit so many apps. (Without going into detail, there are a lot of non-Adobe apps that like to lock files, even in a read-only situation, and the "quit EVERYTHING" was a misguided attempt at working around that. It's not all about web plugins.) I recommended they start talking about such things, even without naming names, (since sometimes they can't).


• They were really open about the changes they're making, and wanted to hear what I had to say about them, and I don't mean in that "We'll take that feedback under advisement" way. They asked me as many questions as I asked them, they asked me about possible edge cases, and "what if someone does this thing". I have found that people don't ask you a shitload of questions if they're not taking what you're saying seriously.


• We agreed that John Nack has gone above and beyond in his willingness to use his blog as a place to talk about stuff that has NOTHING to do with Photoshop

There are a lot of things we talked about that I can't talk about here yet. (I'm actually being somewhat conservative about this, but they extended a lot of trust to me today, I'll not pay that back by breaking it.) However, as I get the okay from them to give out details, i will. I can say:

They are serious about fixing the installer. It fucks up their world too. I also mean "fix" in the best sense, not just in the "let's patch the sucker up more".

No, we are not getting everything we wanted right away. But we are over time, getting a lot of what we wanted in the fairly short term, and they want to give us MORE of what we want as they are able. They are also committed to doing their own work, and not making their customers pay for the shit end of the stick.

They agreed that they need to be more open about things, both about what they're doing now, and in the future. They agreed that an Installer Team blog was a great idea, so that we as a group can talk to them without going through Nack, who is pretty much the Metatron of Adobe. I don't know when they'd be able to start it, but they were talking about it as a when, not an if. (Standard warnings about working in <BigCorp> apply. I'm guessing after the holidays at the earliest. Yes, they do have families, and they get to spend time with them.)

They want to make things better in the CS4 time frame. They agree that it is not only a legitimate need from a customer point of view, but that it would be a good show of faith, and that such things have value.

If anyone expected that at 1700 hours, Pacific Time, I'd be announcing some monster change, um...dude, scale back the drugs...a LOT. Honestly, I was expecting a lot less than what I got. I think that as we get past the holidays, and they can give me real info to talk about, (and other people too. God knows, I don't want to become the Metatron for Enterprise Installers at Adobe. I dunno about you, but I pay for this bandwidth, let them spread that love around!), we'll see that they are going to make this better. I was really afraid that I'd be talking to people who were completely clueless about the seriousness of the problem, and was delighted to discover that no, they aren't. They really do understand how bad this is, and have really good ideas on making it better.

Oh, and no, it doesn't mean I stop watching them, and prodding them, or that anyone else should either. But, they asked for some rope to work with, and I am willing to give it to them, because if what I saw today was genuine, and I really do think it is, they aren't going to hang themselves with it. So let's see what happens, and as I can, I'll talk about more stuff.

(aside from the NDA, we talked about a LOT. I also need some time to cogitate on it too, it's kind of a jumble at the moment.)

So TL;DR version:

They know it sucks. They have great ideas on how to fix. They accepted a lot of feedback in a serious, willing manner. They're going to be more open about stuff as they can. They can't give us everything, but they can give us a lot. Let's give them a chance to deliver, I think they will.

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Installers MATTER, Adobe Installer Team

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