The Adobe Updates Saga (a.k.a Adobe Sucks Saga)

Filed under Intertubes, Software on November 19th, 2007

Not wanting to be tagged as a Photoshop lover or an Adobe shill (I’m referring to my previous post), here is a recount of me trying to be kept up to date with the latest Adobe wares.

As you probably already know, last Friday (11/16) Adobe issued some updates to Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom programs. Good luck trying to download them or find any useful information about them.

I know what you’re thinking. “I’ll go visit the website”. No word on the front page about any updates.

Well, there must be something on the Downloads page. Let’s see, there’s an “Updates” option in the Downloads menu. It has to be here, right? And, sure enought, it is. We see a listing for “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 Update - November 16, 2007″, complete with links for the Windows and Macintosh version. Yeah! Let’s now click on the Macintosh link.

It takes us here. Hey, where’s our 1.3 update? All we can see in this page is the older 1.2 update. Damn.

Maybe we’ll have better luck with the Camera Raw update. Back to Downloads -> Updates we go. Here is is. “Camera Raw 4.3 update, November 16, 2007″. Let’s click the Macintosh link below it. Hmmm. Interesting. It changes under our feet,
through an internal direct from:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3821

to:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/?notFoundID=null

Which leaves us on the main Downloads page with the listing of every product.

Change of strategy. Maybe we can find a link to the updates from the product page. Let’s visit http://www.adobe.com/ap/products/photoshoplightroom/. Sure enough, here’s a link for the mythical “Lightroom 1.3 Update”. We hesitantly click on the Macintosh link next to it. Ah, the good old http://www.adobe.com/downloads/?notFoundID=null page.

Touch luck. It seems that there are no updates for us today (or any of the four previous days, for that matter).

Updating? Forget the Updater

With some Adobe stuff, you can use Adobe Updater to, em, update it. A fine piece of software that does not play well with FileVault and chokes your system to 100% CPU (seehere, screenshot included).

Not that Adobe sits on its hands. It suggests, and I kid you not, this solution:

Solution 1: Change the Adobe Updater preferences to not check for updates. If your computer is connected to the internet, then you can change the Adobe Updater preferences to not check for updates.

Solution 2: Edit the AdobeUpdaterPrefs settings file. If your computer does not have an internet connection, then you can manually edit the AdobeUpdaterPreferences.dat file. (…) If the 1 tag already exists, thenchange the value from 1 to 0. Otherwise, add the line 0 anywhere between the tags.

Solution 3: Disable the Updater.api plug-in. (…) Rename the Updater.api plug-in to Updater.api.old

Those are the Windows “solutions”. I guess something similar exists for the Mac. Good luck trying to find it.

Oh, the incompetence

It’s not that Adobe doesn’t know about those issues. It might be that, with no competitors and all, it just can’t be bothered.

For example, the Lightroom Journal, hosted on Adobe by Lightroom stuff, aknowlegdes the problem with the broken links et al and even provides an alternative download method (via ftp). Still, 4 full days later Adobe’s page remains erratic.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 10:10 am.
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