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The Adobe Install Experience, part 1

27 August 2008 12:37 pm UTC

I recently re-installed Abobe CS3 from scratch. Whether the experience was typical or not I leave to you to decide. Here’s an event-by-event description.

I was motivated to record the install process because I had previously installed CS3 on my boot drive. Knowing Adobe’s penchant for cluttering up the Applications menu, I thought I would select the option to install the apps in a different location: viz., inside an “Adobe” folder in my Applications folder. It turned out that CS3 doesn’t work if you install it in a different location. Photoshop popped up a dialog box at every launch prompting me to “fix” the defective installation. (Clicking the Fix button did nothing.) Acrobat would not launch at all.

So I set up an external drive that I boot from when running anything from Adobe or Microsoft. Here’s how the Adobe install unfolded.

I start by closing all active applications and double-clicking the DVD icon.

AdobeInstall1.jpg

I’m not sure where the installer is. Is that first icon a folder or an application? I decide to look in the Read Me so I double-click Creative Suite 3 Design Standard Read Me.html, click the link for Install Your Software, and read this:

AdobeInstall2.jpg

OK, I’m looking for “application folder found at the root level of your disk,” inside which I will find Setup MacOS®. Well, I guess the application folder was “Adobe CS3 Design Standard,” signified with an icon that to me looks more like a printer than a folder.

OK, let’s open it.

AdobeInstall3.jpg

Well, it isn’t called Setup MacOS®, but rather Setup, and it has that same goofy icon (so the same icon represents both a folder and an application), but I’m not frustrated yet. All in good fun. Let’s launch Setup.

Prompted for my password. Good, OK. Whoa, now there are two bouncing icons in the Dock. Both say Setup. Wait, they’ve disappeared before I could screen shot them. Wait, one is back.

AdobeInstall4.jpg

Yep, that’s right, when I clicked on the Read Me it launched Safari, and now I have to quit it. OK, quit Safari, accept license agreement, and move on.

AdobeInstall5.jpg

I don’t know what Adobe Version Cue CS3 Server is, so I deselect it. Look at those file sizes. Surely some of that is clip art and stuff, but I don’t see any way to refine the selection. I sure don’t think I’ll install anything from the other 2 DVDs. By the way, those numbers add up to 3,472.6 mb, not 4.7 gb. That means those unnamed “shared components” take up a whopping 1.3 gigabytes. There’s nothing we can do about that, though, so on to the next step.

AdobeInstall6.jpg

Here’s that trap for the unwary. Whatever you do, don’t press the Browse button and select an alternate folder.

I should have started this earlier. It’s 8:38 in the evening. I start the install, and a progress bar shows up.

8:48. After 10 minutes, the progress bar is 90% across.

8:54. Progress bar hasn’t moved any further.

8:58. Has it moved a little? I’m not sure. I can hear disk activity.

9:03. About 92% done.

9:06. Done. DVD ejected. Look at all these happy green checkmarks:

AdobeInstall7.jpg

Six components have been installed: the four I wanted, plus the huge and mysterious Shared Components, plus Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Wait—isn’t “Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard” the name of this collection of applications? I mean, if you’ve installed Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, haven’t you by definition installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard? Or is it a separate application or something?

Let’s find out. Here’s what my Applications menu now looks like.

AdobeInstall8.jpg

Nine new items! And I didn’t get the option to ditch Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central CS 3, or Adobe Stock Photos. I don’t even know what the first 2 are for. And two versions of the Adobe Help Viewer? Doesn’t the newer one replace the older one? What’s wrong with the Apple help viewer, anyway? And why does the Adobe Help Viewer have to take up 2 slots in my Applications menu? Shouldn’t it launch on its own from within Adobe apps? Or am I going to sit down at the computer and say, “La de dah, I think I’ll just browse Adobe Help. Hmm, 1.0 or 1.1? Oh, what the heck, I’m in a kind of 1.0 mood today…”

Or assuming that people actually do launch the Adobe Help Viewer deliberately, why not stick it somewhere like, I don’t know, maybe that /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities folder that just go created? And what’s up with the icons: a generic application for 1.0, and a big question mark for 1.1. When I see a question mark I infer that Finder doesn’t know what the underlying file is; I certainly don’t associate with a help viewer.

Well, I’ll deal with that later. Let’s see if our apps work. First is Photoshop.

AdobeInstall9.jpg

OK, fair enough. Thank you for separating the serial number into fields so I can type one block at a time without wondering if I need to type the separator hyphens.

AdobeInstall10.jpg

Fair enough. Darn you for not separating the serial number into fields so I can type one block at a time without wondering if I need to type the separator hyphens.

Photoshop works! Let’s quit it and launch InDesign. Oops, an icon is jumping in the Dock.

AdobeInstall11.jpg

All right, but it strikes me as odd that this requires user intervention. I’d expect the updater to be able to update itself whenever there is a new app update to install. I mean, why not update the updater and the app in one go? OK, I can live with this, I’m not too frustrated yet.

Well, one more thing. This is a notification dialog regarding an update. What is that Preferences button doing there? Is this the time to set the application’s preferences? There’s a new updater on the way; does it maybe have some new preferences, so I’ll have to visit preferences again anyway? And why does the updater have its own preferences in the first place? Couldn’t the Adobe apps manage that interface task, without my having to deal with yet another app? After all, they have 1.3 gigabytes of Shared Components. Well, I haven’t time to ponder all this.

I have two icons in my Dock now.

AdobeInstall13.jpg

Now that is just bone ugly. There’s no outline or shadow or anything to help you read that percentage against a dark background. You know how the Mac arrow cursor has a little white frame around it? So you can see it against both dark and light backgrounds? This is not a new idea. You’d think a company that is supposed to know more than a little about graphics would have noticed this. You can’t just draw dark blue text on any background and have it visible. That’s just sloppy. I sure wouldn’t do that in my apps.

Sure is taking the updater a long time to update itself. How big a download is it??

AdobeInstall14.jpg

Well, there’s that Preferences button again. Funny you can’t get to Preferences through a menu like any other app.

It’s 10:38, let’s start the updates.

AdobeInstall15.jpg

Four icons! One is jumping. Then we’re back to two. Now three. Now two. Three. Two. Three. InDesign is still sitting there (like I could be working with it—ha!). The third one is called Patcher Application. If I had to guess I’d say that the Updater downloads a patch, then the Patcher applies it, then Updater grabs the next patch, etc., rather than Updater grabbing them all and then turning the lot over to Patcher.

It took me several tries to type this note, because the icon party down in my Dock keeps happening, and when it does it steals focus from TextEdit. I guess all I can do is relax and watch the Dock icons popping up like prairie dogs.

Hmm, you know, there’s no progress indicator. Not even a crude percentage number. Is this going to take a while, or what? I can’t do any work because the updater/patcher ping pong match keeps stealing my focus. I have no idea how long this is going to take. No, not true, I activated Updater and there is a progress bar. Well, thanks for that. I guess I wasn’t supposed to use another app during this process.

Sure has been a long time installing Flash Lite 3 Update For Device Central CS3. I don’t even know what Device Central is. Oh excuse me that was Flash® Liteâ„¢.

The app that’s called PatcherApplication in the Dock is called Adobe Software Update in the menu bar. Not to be confused with Adobe Updater, the other app that is running. As far as I can tell, PatcherApplication aka Adobe Software Update doesn’t have a user interface. Maybe this would be a good time for Adobe to look up the LSUIElement flag. If it ain’t a gui app, it don’t need no gui icon in the dock.

Twenty minutes later and I’m still updating Flash® Lite™. While I’m bored and restless I looked at the DVD boxes for my Apple applications: OS X Leopard. iLife 08. iWork 08. Adobe’s box says Adobe ® Creative Suite® 3. They sure have a fetish about that little R symbol. I wonder why they didn’t put one after the 3.

Frustration is mounting.

Oh come up, for heaven’s sake, it’s been half an hour… oh wait more Dock action:

AdobeInstall16.jpg

Well, Mr. Smart Updater, why didn’t you think of that before we left—I mean when you had InDesign launch you in the first place? OK, I’m getting irritable. At least we’re moving on past Flash® Lite™.

But what does that dialog box mean? The default choice is “Run this update again”?? I hope to hell that doesn’t mean I have to sit here for another half hour. OK, I’ll give it a shot.

AdobeInstall17.jpg

That jumping one is InDesign CS3 updater. Clicking it doesn’t make it stop jumping.

11:14. The updating process is complete. Hallelujah. After two and a half hours (on a Macbook Pro with a 10 mbps Internet connection) I ought to go to bed. But foolishly I decide to see what that Adobe Stock Photos thing is all about.

The Adobe Install Experience, part 2

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