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Why does this keep happening?

At its heart, at its very heart, my regular ranting about installers is based on one simple idea:

Don't fuck with your customers

That's really all it is. When I go to install something, don't fuck with me. Don't do stupid shit. Don't make me go through some fucking song and dance. Give me a way to install your product on one machine or one thousand in a way that is easy, simple and reliable. Don't just change shit on me without warning, and for the love of christ, don't lie to me.

That's all any of us are asking. Make installations simple, don't fuck with us, don't lie to us.

For some time now, Flash had been doing it right. Oh, they still had the chrome and all that idiocy, but for the sysadmins out there, a few seconds work, and bang, installer package that worked. W00t.

Bu then, with the latest versions of Flash Player 11.3 and now 11.4, they screwed it all up. I'm not going to detail it, Greg Neagle does a smashing job of it,

here
here
here
here
AND here

The testing I've done verifies Greg's.

Goddamnit, what the fuck? If you have to be logged in, it's not a silent install. If there's dock icons and fucking dialogs, it's not a slient (un)install. Words mean things. "Silent Install" means things, and you can't just use them incorrectly to suit your fucking marketing copy.

But even worse, the Flash team BROKE their fucking installer. It worked correctly, now it does not. I was hoping, really, really hoping that this was just a bug in one of the 11.3 releases, and it would be fixed. But hey, 11.4, and no worky. It's not a bug, it's a design decision, and it's a stupid one.

It fucks with the customer, because now, the same procedure that's worked for quite some time does not.
It lies to the customer, because now, if you use the 'old' procedure, i.e. the one that was actually a silent install, and then try to update from System Preferences, Flash acts as though you wish to uninstall. That's not what you hit. You hit check for updates.

This is unacceptable, it is stupid, and it reeks of someone with no goddamned clue making engineering decisions because the idea of a branding-less install chapped their hide.

Knock it the fuck off guys, we already have a lot of reasons to not use Flash Player, stop making the decision to abandon it entirely that much easier.

Categories: Adobe, Technology

Posted by John C. Welch at 12:19 | Permalink

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At its heart, at its very heart, my regular ranting about installers is based on one simple idea:\n\nDon't fuck with your customers\n\nThat's really all it is. When I go to install something, don't fuck with me. Don't do stupid shit. Don't make me go through some fucking song and dance. Give me a way to install your product on one machine or one thousand in a way that is easy, simple and reliable. Don't just change shit on me without warning, and for the love of christ, don't lie to me.\n\nThat's all any of us are asking. Make installations simple, don't fuck with us, don't lie to us.\n\nFor some time now, Flash had been doing it right. Oh, they still had the chrome and all that idiocy, but for the sysadmins out there, a few seconds work, and bang, installer package that worked. W00t.\n\nBu then, with the latest versions of Flash Player 11.3 and now 11.4, they screwed it all up. I'm not going to detail it, Greg Neagle does a smashing job of it, \n\nhere\nhere\nhere\nhere\nAND here\n\nThe testing I've done verifies Greg's.\n\nGoddamnit, what the fuck? If you have to be logged in, it's not a silent install. If there's dock icons and fucking dialogs, it's not a slient (un)install. Words mean things. \"Silent Install\" means things, and you can't just use them incorrectly to suit your fucking marketing copy. \n\nBut even worse, the Flash team BROKE their fucking installer. It worked correctly, now it does not. I was hoping, really, really hoping that this was just a bug in one of the 11.3 releases, and it would be fixed. But hey, 11.4, and no worky. It's not a bug, it's a design decision, and it's a stupid one.\n\nIt fucks with the customer, because now, the same procedure that's worked for quite some time does not.\nIt lies to the customer, because now, if you use the 'old' procedure, i.e. the one that was actually a silent install, and then try to update from System Preferences, Flash acts as though you wish to uninstall. That's not what you hit. You hit check for updates.\n\nThis is unacceptable, it is stupid, and it reeks of someone with no goddamned clue making engineering decisions because the idea of a branding-less install chapped their hide.\n\nKnock it the fuck off guys, we already have a lot of reasons to not use Flash Player, stop making the decision to abandon it entirely that much easier.