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The Adobe Updater Is My New Favorite App…

TO HATE.

Those who use the newest of Adobe’s Creative Suites on old hardware (a 1Ghz PowerBook G4 for me) can sympathize I am sure.

My laptop is getting old, yes I know. But Adobe, your updater application slows my computer down more than Photoshop and Illustrator do! Now, I am kind of used to slow these days, so I normally wouldn’t complain too much if it weren’t for the craziness I witnessed this afternoon after rebooting from the latest system updates from Apple.

I was never happy with Adobe Updater, so I normally tell it to go away when it does come up. Given that, I had an update to install — Acrobat 8.1 Update. Fine, I just restarted, so I’ll let it go through before I start back on my work.

Maybe not a good idea.

Steps to update Acrobat 8 Professional

  1. Hit update on the Adobe Updater. (My CPU and HD will now be pegged for the install, Okay I am used to that.)
  2. Waiting about 10-15 minutes…

    waiting screenshot

  3. The install is seemingly 90% completed or so. Now a dialog comes up that says some items need “repaired”. Items like the Safari PDF Plugin, eww, no thanks — too slow. So I uncheck that and let it go to town “repairing the PDF Printer”.
  4. Woops, I see a dialog that says “Wait For App Shutdown Title” — “Please click OK when other apps have stopped” with both Cancel and OK buttons. What? Wait a moment, wait for what app to stop? The updater? Because that’s the only app really running in the Dock. Confused, I click OK.

    It returns. I click OK, again… I see a pattern emerging here.

    looping screenshot

    After a few bouts of click madness just for fun, I click Cancel. I have no idea what that means. The dialog doesn’t read well obviously. Cancel could mean destroy the computer immediately for all I know.

    But then it works. Five minutes later, I am greeted with this screen:

    completed screenshot

  5. Looking at Acrobat’s information in Finder it is indeed updated to 8.1.0.

Utterly slow, confusing and just plain bad Adobe, for-shame.

UPDATE: Looks like Gus Mueller loves the updater too. Thanks for the links Daniel.