It used to be that Adobe could do no wrong by me. Each new version of their software was significantly better than the last, not just in function, but ease-of-use as well. I'd been happily using CS2, it did everything I needed to and more, it never crashed (well, hardly ever), and wasn't too painfully slow on my older machine. I knew I'd have to upgrade to CS3 eventually, but with the inevitable backwards-compatibility problems I would have to wait until my main client upgraded as well. That time finally came, and Adobe have now let me down in every possible way with this upgrade.
First of all, I bought the upgrade at my local Mac retailer along with a new MacBook, and iPod Classic. The whole excusion was predicated by the sad death of my old iPod, and the rest of it was stuff I needed anyway. So I get home with all my shiney new toys, and get a little distracted. CS3 sat on the sidelines while I got the hardware all tricked out. Then one day I got a file from a client that was CS3 format, and I had about 3 hours to turn around some changes to it and ship to a printer. OK, I sighed, guess it's time to install CS3. Opened the box, put the disc in, and nothing. A window popped up with the contents of the disc, but when I went to open it there was nothing in it. Scratched my head, thought maybe there's a different install disc, but there was only one disc in the box. Put the disc in again and the system claimed it was blank. Ah, crap.
So I call Adobe tech support, amazingly get someone on the line right away, and he tells me I've got the wrong disc in, there should be another Installation disc in the package. I can tell he doesn't believe me when I say there is no other disc, and the one I've got is frigging blank. He tells me I have to return my defective copy to my reseller (which is about 10 miles away). In the meantime I can download the Illustrator 30 day demo and at least get my urgent project done. Well, the download is over 1 GB and there's no way in hell I'm going to make my deadline. My client is understanding, and talks the printer into giving me another day to get the file to them. It eventually installs, I get the job done, and I think my problems are over.
When I hauled myself out to my reseller to exchange the lemon for a complete package, they tell me that Adobe should have been the ones to replace the product, that they don't deal directly with Adobe and have no way to return the bad disc. Luckily I know these guys, have given them a lot of business over the years, so they are nice enough to exchange my bad copy. I give them my Adobe case number so they can make sure Adobe knows they screwed up.
Again distraced by the shiney hardware things, I let the software sit around for a while longer before installing. This time all the discs are there, and the installation seems to go OK, though I had to run a slightly scary command-line script to fully remove the demo version. That should have be the first sign that the installer for CS3 is not as robust as it should be. I launch Acrobat, it registers me, everything seems OK. UNTIL, that is, their auto-update utility tries to update CS3 to the lastest version. The updater downloads OK, but it hangs on installation of several components. So now it's half-updated, and some of the components are very unhappy about that and won't launch at all.
I checked support at adobe.com and no mention of this problem. However, the forums are full of people with the same problem, and Adobe have offered zero support for any of them. They seem to be ignoring the whole issue. So now I guess I have to uninstall my screwed up half-way updated software and re-install the old version from the disc again.
This is the type of behavior I expect from a Microsoft or a Quark, but this was the first time I've ever had any problems with Adobe. If it was just one problem I could forgive, but this upgrade nightmare has cured me of my unquestioning adoration for Adobe and their products.
Oh, and don't get me started on the insane multiple upgrade paths they have for CS3. I can't believe they want me to buy the web package for an additional $400 just to create the one or two animated gifs I need to make every year. It was standard in CS2 Design Standard, why is it gone in CS3?
Adobe, you're dead to me. Too bad I have to use your products pretty much every single minute of my work day. And remember what you did to Quark when CS first came out? If you keep pissing off your most loyal users, some upstart young company will come out with better products, and the same thing will happen to you.