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December 18, 2008

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.

Technorati Tags:
Installers MATTER, Adobe Installer Team

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December 15, 2008

'nother brick to your skull...

So last night, I had cause to use Illustrator CS3. I keep both CS3 and CS4 on my drive, as I have to support users with both versions. The Adobe updater launches.

"The Adobe Updater needs to be updated"

"Okay, go ahead"

"Authenticate please"

"Sure, have fun"

"The Adobe Updater needs to be updated"

"Okay, go ahead"

"Authenticate please"

"...Okay"

"The Adobe Updater needs to be updated"

"Okay, go ahead"

"Authenticate please"

"...Didn't I just...<sigh> okay, fine"

"The Adobe Updater needs to be updated"

"Okay, go ahead"

"Authenticate please"

"...I.said.go.ahead"

"The Adobe Updater needs to be updated"

"Okay, go ahead"

"Authenticate please"

"FUCK OFF, I'M NOT UPDATING YOU, EAT SHIT AND DIE"

Yet another, another, another reason why Adobe's overcomplicated installer philosphy is bad. I had no idea what the problem was, there was never an error. It would auth, download, and bam, goto 10.

Logs? We don't need no steenking logs! If it doesn't install, it's your fault! Why you run other software besides CS?

I wish I could bill them for all the hours I've wasted with this kind of shit.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy, Bad Installers, Installers MATTER

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December 8, 2008

During all the talks I've had with people about Adobe, and their many issues, a recurring theme is "Don't they care? It seems like all they care about is that we use their products. The fact that the way they do things makes us hate them, that if there was any serious competition to them, we'd flock to them in a heartbeat doesn't seem to matter to them."

I don't know for sure, because Adobe is both a faceless conglomerate and a collection of people who do care, and some of those people are friends of mine. But I think that it's possible to get so caught up in a certain way of looking at things, that you stop caring about things that don't...that aren't a part of the things you think are important. That's dangerous, because the things you dismiss are really important to a lot of your customers.

A perfect example is this article by Duff Johnson, on Why Reader remains the standard for PDF viewing. Duff has some factual points. Reader is the best at dealing with truly mucked-up PDFs. I always keep a copy around, because every so often, maybe once a year, I get a PDF I can't read in Preview.

So, once a year, I need Reader. Obviously, I'm not a statistically valid sample, or even vaguely representative of any group of users. So this is, just me.

However, look at what Duff dismisses. He blithely dismisses the real speed issues in the Reader plugin, especially on Mac OS X. (It's not much better on Windows. Adobe plays some "load a bunch of Reader into RAM on login" games to make it seem faster on Windows. Disable that, and it slows down rather a lot. You still pay that piper, but most of the money changes hands unseen.) Reader is slow. BOG slow. When its loading, it eats Safari for lunch. God help you if you have to read and close multiple PDFs throughout the day. The UI load alone sucks. With Safari's built-in PDF viewing, my delay is PDF download time. That's it. Really, for 99% or possibly more of my PDF viewing needs, Preview and the Safari-native PDF features not only work just fine, but work smoothly, and seamlessly, with no pain whatsoever. In light of that, the fact that Reader has a more technically correct PDF engine doesn't really matter much.

Duff completely ignores the fact that when it comes to reading PDFs, which is still, (Hopefully) the main purpose of Reader, it's not as intuitive or fast as Preview. I still, on occasion, have to authenticate to launch Reader so it can "repair" its installation. Why? I don't know. I have no useful information from Reader on this. It's not installing the Safari plugin, I told it not to. But, it needs an administrator password, or it won't work.

I never.

Ever.

EVER get that from Preview. But Reader handles malformed PDFs better, and so that's all Duff cares about.

Note that I say "Safari" plugin, not "Web Browser" plugin. The reason is that Acrobat, even today, even two versions after their initial Mac OS X release can ONLY talk to Safari. You use FireFox, or Opera? No Acrobat for you!

But Reader handles malformed PDFs better, so that's all that matters, right?

The truth is, using any Acrobat product, (ESPECIALLY on a Mac) and dealing with Adobe as an IT manager creates a low-level miasma of misery, not unlike this bit from "Good Omens" (MANY thanks to James Bennett for using this in his article on Python 3.0. I'd forgotten what an incredibly great description of so many things in the IT world it is.):

What could he tell them? That twenty thousand people got bloody furious? That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city? And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people? In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves? For the rest of the day. The pass-along effects were incalculable. Thousands and thousands of souls all got a faint patina of tarnish, and you hardly had to lift a finger.

That, is what using Reader creates in so many people. Low-level misery and a slight tarnish on your soul.

To be fair, Duff is not an Adobe employee, so his opinions are not "official" in any way. But I have heard his point used to dismiss every.single.complaint about Reader by people who are on the Acrobat team and do work for Adobe. So his point isn't "official" but I have to say it is, at the very least, "representative".

This makes talking to Adobe about some issues incredibly frustrating, because you soon realize, (and trust me, the Acrobat team is FAR worse about such things than the installer team. I WISH the Acrobat team were as open as the Installer team), that nothing you say is getting through, because you're not talking about the one thing they care about. So in a sense, no, they really don't care that you hate them, only that you use their stuff, even if it is only grudgingly. It's frustrating as hell to deal with, but that's Adobe for you.

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December 3, 2008

So since I was mentioned in a post on John Nack's site about my favorite thing in the world, namely Adobe installers, I want to say something here:

If there is any credit for this to be passed around, it is to many, many other people who are not me. The folks who make up the communities at MacEnterprise, AFP548.com, and hundreds, if not thousands of other IT professionals have been working patiently, and hard for years to get Adobe to listen about the problems their installers cause. I'm a johnny-come-loudly to this process.

Perhaps my...colorfullness and lack of shyness...had enough volume to rise above the threshold and get noticed. I know I'm not the first, the hundredth, or even the thousandth person to try to get Adobe to fix their installers. If I stand out in any way, it is for my willingness to to scream loud and ugly when needed, and my refusal to stop until I see some real progress.

The fact that Adobe is, to my eyes at least, taking this issue far more seriously than they have in the past, (at least from the outside. I can't know what they do inside, and if I did, I wouldn't talk about it here anyway) is fantastic. If my ranting and foaming and occasional good suggestion on many long phone calls with Barry and his folks have helped, that's great, although I'd have been just as happy had the ranting and foaming been unnecessary and nonexistent. As far as credit goes, I defer to Sir Isaac's comment:

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

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November 25, 2008

I just figured out one reason why you have to "repair" CS 4 Applications if you move them after installing, even if you move them before the first time you run them.

Because if you don't, the Adobe Updater doesn't know where they are, and so instead of telling you "Hey, I know you installed <applications>, but they're not in the same place, do you want me to look for them?", maybe with an option for the drive/folders/etc., the updater just fails silently if you run it from /Utilities/Adobe Utilities/Adobe Updater6/

Just brilliant.

Why is it that when I move Office, I can update it just fine, but CS has no clue how to handle this? (Yes, I know, Apple is even stupider about it. However, as I said on Nack's site, just because Billy kicks a puppy every morning, it's still wrong for you to punch a baby at lunch. 7-year-old logic is not valid.)

Oh, and what a grand, intuitive name for the CS4 Updater Folder: Updater6. Man, could you even begin to get more intuitive? I don't see how.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy

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November 21, 2008

So I finally give up on the Adobe Updater, (note: after five days), and download the specific update.

First oddity, the Updater was trying to install Premiere Pro 3.2, but the Adobe download site has 3.01, 3.1, 3.11, and 3.2. Meh, what the hell, download them all.

Let's run the 3.2 updater. Start it, authenticate, it dies.

Whaa?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, that's not right. Hmm, let's read the logs. Oh look, line after line of babble, and then the money shot: Safari was running. No dialogs, no warnings, just silent failure. No really, look, here are the log files:

11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (45) : ^[Aa][Dd][Oo][Bb][Ee] [Ii][Ll][Ll][Uu][Ss][Tt][Rr][Aa][Tt][Oo][Rr]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (46) : ^[Ii][Ll][Ll][Uu][Ss][Tt][Rr][Aa][Tt][Oo][Rr]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (47) : ^[Aa][Dd][Oo][Bb][Ee] [Ii][Nn][Cc][Oo][Pp][Yy] [Cc][Ss]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (48) : ^[Aa][Dd][Oo][Bb][Ee] [Ii][Nn][Dd][Ee][Ss][Ii][Gg][Nn] [Cc][Ss]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (49) : ^[Ii][Nn][Cc][Oo][Pp][Yy] [Cc][Ss]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (50) : ^[Ii][Nn][Dd][Ee][Ss][Ii][Gg][Nn] [Cc][Ss]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (51) : ^[Ii][Nn][Dd][Ee][Ss][Ii][Gg][Nn][Ss][Ee][Rr][Vv][Ee][Rr]
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (52) : ^[Vv][Cc][Pp][Rr][Ee][Ff][Ss][Hh][Ee][Ll][Pp][Ee][Rr]
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (53) : ^[Vv][Ee][Rr][Ss][Ii][Oo][Nn][Cc][Uu][Ee][Cc][Ss]3[Cc][Tt][Ll]
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (54) : ^[Aa][Uu][Dd][Ii][Tt][Ii][Oo][Nn]
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Conflicting Processes (55) : ^[Aa][Dd][Oo][Bb][Ee] [Pp][Rr][Ee][Mm][Ii][Ee][Rr][Ee]*
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] SPACE REQUIREMENT:
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Space required on system volume : 27416 KBytes
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Space required on target volume : 6854 KBytes
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] .................................................................
11/21/08 9:34:06 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Path to driver dmg, /Volumes/PatcherApplication/RIBSWrapper.app/Contents/Resources/Setup.dmg
11/21/08 9:34:10 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Applications were Quit result (non zero mean quit) = 0
11/21/08 9:34:10 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Following applications were found running, Safari

11/21/08 9:34:10 AM RIBSWrapper[316] Exit Code: 8
11/21/08 9:34:10 AM com.apple.launchd[122] ([0x0-0x2b02b].com.Adobe.RIBSWrapper[316]) Exited with exit code: 8

Why, why, WHY does this have to happen?

It happens with the After Effects updater too. I'm beyond infuriated and well into agog at this point.

---Update---

Even more agog at how the After Effects 8.0.2 updater has NO UI, but LOCKS UP MY MACHINE. Fucking Console isn't updating, can't even SSH into it.

Whomever made the decision to do this installer should be tased in the taint.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy, Installers MATTER

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November 19, 2008

So I go to install Adobe Reader 9. It has many updates, security and otherwise. Even better, it's an installer package. True, architecture specific, but it's still an installer package, so this should should be cake, right?

BAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

What are you smoking?

See, the Apple Installer Package is just a wrapper for an iNosso "powered" archive. No really, here's a screen shot that someone else kindly took. So it doesn't work via Apple Remote Desktop, it doesn't work via /usr/sbin/installer. It only works...by doubleclicking it and running it manually on every machine, or repackaging it.

My god, it's gone from custom installers that work with nothing to customer installers that work with nothing wrapped in an Apple Installer Package so you think it will work right.

FAIL

Once again, when it comes to making the lives of IT suck, Adobe takes the cake.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy, Bad Installers, Installers MATTER

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November 17, 2008

So while John Nack is busily doing his John Nack thing of "managing the message" with regard to the debacle of Adobe's Installers, I thought I'd help craft what Adobe should be saying:

"We've gotten, over the years, a lot of email from people about the custom installers we've created at Adobe. Most of it has been negative. Very negative, and to be honest, rightly so. To be fair, we didn't set out to create a bad installer. We wanted to create an installer that worked the same on both platforms. We thought we could do this. Maybe we could have, but that would have required far more resources than we gave it, and still would have ultimately been a failure.

We forgot that the installer for both the product, and product updates is a critical experience, especially in the case of the former, since that is a customer's first experience with the product. We forgot that installing software is, in the end, the copying of data from one location to another. We forgot that while people want a simple, easy to use install, that doesn't justify making a mess of their drives, and creating ever more complicated schemes that require ever more complicated install and uninstall procedures. We forgot that we aren't the sole source of good ideas in the computing universe. We forgot that one size fits poorly.

So here's what we'll do. While we cannot change the initial installation for CS4, what we can do is ensure that any updates for any Adobe product are designed in the way that is best for the platform that product runs on. For Windows, that means MSI installers, for Mac OS X, that means Apple Installers, and so on. It means that we will not make people quit applications they aren't updating, or that aren't Adobe products. We won't make you quit your browser just to update Flash, especially if that update is being applied remotely. For someone installing manually, we'll give them the option of restarting their browser at the end of the install.

For CS5, we're going to again, use platform-correct installers. We're going to ensure that we're doing things efficiently, but safely. You're all right, we don't need 5-7 disk operations per file copy when installing, and we certainly don't need to log permissions of files we're going to delete during an uninstall. We're also going to have a major, and hopefully welcome change to our directory structure. All common CS5 support files will be in one directory called "CS5". Within that directory, application - specific support files will be in a subdirectory with a name that clearly indicates that. Common support files will be in another clearly named directory. All directories will have clear, concise names.

We're also going to make sure that we vet new installers with a team made up of not just our traditional customers, but IT professionals, so that we know that installing our software on one, or one thousand machines is, if not pleasurable, at least not painful. Finally, the days of treating only certain platforms as "business" platforms, at least from the installation point of view are done. There are no more "business" platforms and "designer" platforms. There are only platforms our customers use, and we need to make sure that installing our products on those platforms is simple, easy, and "just works", no matter the platform.

Adobe has always prided itself on the care and quality of our applications, and now, we're going to make sure that our installation procedures show that care and quality too."

It's not hard. Admit you screwed up, then talk about how you're going to do better. It's even easier when the way to do better is right there. Trying to pretend otherwise is, at best, treating your customers like they're stupid, and at worst, treating them like they're stupid while lying to them.

You want to send the right message, just tell the damned truth.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy, Installers MATTER

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November 14, 2008

John Gruber asks, in reference to this article:

Is there a worse installation experience for any mainstream Mac software?

No

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy

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November 1, 2008

But I'd love to know why Adobe Bridge and Device central need an email and IRC client to function.

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