OT: How I hate Adobe, let me count the ways (was Re: [OS X TeX] OT: log from Acrobat 7.0)

[stephenmoye at cox.net]

---- William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com> wrote: 
> On Jul 24, 2006, at 11:01 AM, George Gratzer wrote:
> 
> > Why is there so much hostility to Adobe? I consider Illustrator the  
> > best software I have ever used, except for Photoshop. Az an  
> > academic, I buy them really cheaply, and they provide the best user  
> > interface I have ever seen.
> 
> Apparently you've never used Freehand or Altsys Virtuoso? AI's  
> interface is so needlessly Byzantine in its intricacies and special  
> cases that it can be tortuous to use if one is accustomed to a  
> program which works in a sensible fashion. I'm posting a description  
> below this message of a set of tasks which I need to accomplish for a  
> large set of graphics on a regular basis --- some of them are really  
> difficult in Adobe Illustrator, others can't be accomplished in a  
> single step and require extensive user intervention and effort).
> 
> More reasons to dislike Adobe:
> 
>   - locked away Display PostScript forcing Apple to delay Rhapsody  
> (which was eventually killed as a concept and instead became Mac OS X  
> --- this also cost us nxHosting)
> 
>   - put forward the use of ``Adobe Graphics Manager'' (nee Bravo) as  
> the appropriate way to present high-end graphics on-screen --- except  
> that this is only available in Adobe products
> 
>   - bought out Aldus which pushed FreeHand v4 out to Macromedia which  
> resulted in it getting bogged down with web-oriented features ---  
> sued Macromedia over tabbed palettes resulting in a crippled  
> implementation of that in a later update.
> 
>   - killed off Aldus Intellidraw and Aldus Persuasion
> 
>   - bought out Ares and killed off FontMinder

Didn't Ares also develop FontStudio -- also MIA? And Adobe also bought up Emerald City Software, at which point we said a sad farewell to the delightful 'LaserTalk'.

Harumph.

Good points, William.

SGM
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