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John Loiacono, Adobes SVP of the Creative Solutions Business Unit, has ruffled a few feathers with his rather unflattering comments about open-source alternatives.
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Adobe Bashes Open-Source Alternatives
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GJSNeptune
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Lame.
InorganicMatter
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They're just jealous because ProPDF Writer +Foxit Reader make a better combo than their own software. 
I've yet to figure out how Foxit can do in 2MB what Adobe needs 20MB+ for.
I've yet to figure out how Foxit can do in 2MB what Adobe needs 20MB+ for.
They're just jealous because ProPDF Writer +Foxit Reader make a better combo than their own software.
I've yet to figure out how Foxit can do in 2MB what Adobe needs 20MB+ for.
Maybe. But Foxit had one of the most annoying ads running in the corner telling me to buy Foxit. I'm wondering if it's still there, but it bet it is.
Adobe needs to get their head out of their ass and start thinking about WHY people are flocking to open-sourced alternatives.
Adobe was always able to sell their products are insane prices regardless of free or cheaper alternatives, but now they're mucking up. Instead of bashing alternatives, they need to figure out whats wrong with their own products.
They're not as monopolistic as Microsoft is, and they can't get away with the heavy activation crap and security and their attitude like Microsoft can. Not everyone can forgo Windows, but anyone can forgo Adobe.
My number one biggest qualms with Adobe is the lack of speed fixing issues. I'm an IT manager for a project management firm. Employees here make schedules and charts and CAD drawings and print them out in PDF by the buttload. One day about a month and a half ago, everyone's Adobe Professional 8 suddenly stop working. It opens for 10 seconds, then poof.
Adobe would not acknowledge the problem for a month. They maintain that the people who's having issue were the pirates. The Adobe license server caught them and shut them down.
That's a crock of shit because our project management firm isn't going anywhere near pirated software.
I don't know where Adobe is now with that issue. I stop paying attention to them and installed PDFCreator and CutePDF on everyone's computer.
Is open-source bad? I don't think so Adobe. It's working beautifully in our company.
Adobe was always able to sell their products are insane prices regardless of free or cheaper alternatives, but now they're mucking up. Instead of bashing alternatives, they need to figure out whats wrong with their own products.
They're not as monopolistic as Microsoft is, and they can't get away with the heavy activation crap and security and their attitude like Microsoft can. Not everyone can forgo Windows, but anyone can forgo Adobe.
My number one biggest qualms with Adobe is the lack of speed fixing issues. I'm an IT manager for a project management firm. Employees here make schedules and charts and CAD drawings and print them out in PDF by the buttload. One day about a month and a half ago, everyone's Adobe Professional 8 suddenly stop working. It opens for 10 seconds, then poof.
Adobe would not acknowledge the problem for a month. They maintain that the people who's having issue were the pirates. The Adobe license server caught them and shut them down.
That's a crock of shit because our project management firm isn't going anywhere near pirated software.
I don't know where Adobe is now with that issue. I stop paying attention to them and installed PDFCreator and CutePDF on everyone's computer.
Is open-source bad? I don't think so Adobe. It's working beautifully in our company.
GlobalFear
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Sure beats having Adobe reader slow the system to a crawl, the buggy piece of shit.
I'm pissed off enough that Adobe wants us to pay 900-some-odd bucks for Acrobat 8, and it honestly doesn't do all that much! It's a nice format (pdf, that is), and the markup stuff would be nice, but for $900? No thank you. I can't see why that's worth the cost, even though we need a solution for pdf files.
I'm no fan of open source generally speaking. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it isn't, but Adobe's software has been getting worse and worse as the years have gone by. Now what used fit on a single 1.44MB floppy requires 75MB of updates and that's bullshit. That's only one example of how Adobe's products have been sucking for some time.
Yeah reader hasn't give me issues and the absence of an annoying, banner-like ad in the interface makes it my current reader. When Foxit decides to get rid of that ad, I may consider it then.
Adobe wouldn't "open-source" any of their software. Why? Because developers would obviously laugh at their code. Why am I saying this? After years of asking for a x64 version of flash there's still no sign from Adobe. I've read in some Adobe blog that it's not trivial and that some "code" doesn't translate well... WTH does that mean?
Working as a programmer myself I read that statement as proof they have poor coding practices. At least give us a beta or something, give us a sign you're working on it. But really, a huge corp like Adobe takes years and tons of excuses to come up with a single product which is simply a platform conversion (x86->x64). In the mean time, thousands of "open-source" programs are working in x64.
Hey, it took the OpenOffice crew 1 year to make OO with x64 and it was mostly minor issues and that software is huge.
Adobe or MS what's the difference? BS all the time.
Working as a programmer myself I read that statement as proof they have poor coding practices. At least give us a beta or something, give us a sign you're working on it. But really, a huge corp like Adobe takes years and tons of excuses to come up with a single product which is simply a platform conversion (x86->x64). In the mean time, thousands of "open-source" programs are working in x64.
Hey, it took the OpenOffice crew 1 year to make OO with x64 and it was mostly minor issues and that software is huge.
Adobe or MS what's the difference? BS all the time.
Either that, or it would suddenly become virtually impossible to make any money off the software.
I agree that Adobe needs to drastically lower the prices of their software. Imagine if Microsoft charged $900 for Windows. I mean, I think its worth paying, say, $100 to get commercial software, but for $900, I can understand why many businesses are going with the minor headaches of open-source instead.
Still, I am a fan of commercial software and intellectual property over open-source. I don't think open-source is good enough to become mainstream (and some inherent flaws will, IMO, prevent it from being good enough for a long time), but it does have its place as a nice bulkhead against customer negligence. That is, if the commercial companies will pay attention...
Still, I am a fan of commercial software and intellectual property over open-source. I don't think open-source is good enough to become mainstream (and some inherent flaws will, IMO, prevent it from being good enough for a long time), but it does have its place as a nice bulkhead against customer negligence. That is, if the commercial companies will pay attention...
Team Obi Juan
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I'm certain that Acrobat reader is the thing I hate most in the world, all aspects of it... Install, running it, etc.
Open Source doesn't equal no money.
There are lots of example where Open Source projects brought tons of money: JBoss, eclipse, tomcat, linux, etc..
Man, IBM sells it's Websphere Application Server Developer bundled with Eclipse (IBM Flavor) with Tomcat as the servlet container and Apache as the web server. Sure these projects don't directly make money (they are financed by companies like IBM) but the main contributors often get hired by major companies like Sun, IBM and BEA.
Look at how Linus Torval made a name for himself. Open Source is not going to crush commercial solution it's more evident they will coexist. I think Open Source haters are morons who don't understand what it really is.
There are lots of example where Open Source projects brought tons of money: JBoss, eclipse, tomcat, linux, etc..
Man, IBM sells it's Websphere Application Server Developer bundled with Eclipse (IBM Flavor) with Tomcat as the servlet container and Apache as the web server. Sure these projects don't directly make money (they are financed by companies like IBM) but the main contributors often get hired by major companies like Sun, IBM and BEA.
Look at how Linus Torval made a name for himself. Open Source is not going to crush commercial solution it's more evident they will coexist. I think Open Source haters are morons who don't understand what it really is.
DeathFromBelow
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You guys do realize you can disable that little banner ad? Uncheck "Advertisement" under the view menu.
That didn't work in the version I tried (this was about a year ago). I suppose I could try it again, *shrug*.
Again, Reader hasn't given me any problems (compared to the previous versions), so I'm gonna expect drastic improvements if I'm gonna switch.
Monkey God
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given a choice between an add, and waiting 30 seconds everytime I want to view a PDF and have a bunch of bloated crap installed on my system, im gonna have to go with free and fast Bob.
I've never noticed the ads
One thing I hate about PDF is that you need a program, this should have been integrated into office or windows a LONG time ago.
I've never noticed the ads
One thing I hate about PDF is that you need a program, this should have been integrated into office or windows a LONG time ago.
I've been blessed (or cursed) with very good "peripherals". Other than ads actually geared toward me (PC H/W I don't mind), other blatantly annoying "buy me buy me" ads drive me up the wall.
But on the Windows integration, it is probably a MS issue. How long has OSX (or even OS9?) had the PDF as a standard part of the OS?
It's not just their pricing that is rediculous it is also the quality of their software. It has become major bloatware and I for one am tired of every program trying to auto update itself everytime I try to use it. It gets really annoying.
GJSNeptune
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The Adobe updater thing makes me want to punt babies.
That just reminded me. I was under the impression there was discussion of the Adobe PDF becoming part of Vista, but there was a falling out. Or am I just imagining things.
People said a lot of stuff about Vista.
I never remember hearing that, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone said it.
I've never noticed the ads
One thing I hate about PDF is that you need a program, this should have been integrated into office or windows a LONG time ago.
Actually, this one is an MS issues; they are trying to replace the proprietary PDF with their own XML-based "XPS" format.
Not sure if they really think their format will gain popularity (in which case I woud declare that department stupid) or are just trying to avoid more antitrust trouble (probably the case).
I think we'll see PDF in Windows eventually, though. They already have a plugin that allows Office to save PDF documents; a plugin to open them isn't far off IMO.
I don't think it's monopoly that's stopping Microsoft from making PDF reading native. The Reader is free after all.
But then again so is Sun's Java runtime, but they threw a fit anyways when Microsoft made Java runtime a native Windows runtime with virtual machine.
Who the hell knows.
Btw, I find it ironic how Adobe allows Mac to natively support PDF reading when Mac users are Adobe's primary customers. (Yes I know they probably recieve licensing royalties, like Diskeeper did with Microsoft)
But then again so is Sun's Java runtime, but they threw a fit anyways when Microsoft made Java runtime a native Windows runtime with virtual machine.
Who the hell knows.
Btw, I find it ironic how Adobe allows Mac to natively support PDF reading when Mac users are Adobe's primary customers. (Yes I know they probably recieve licensing royalties, like Diskeeper did with Microsoft)
Er, Office is not part of Windows.
Office costs *more than* Windows
The person I quoted said:
So, I mentioned how Office could already write to PDF with a plugin.
I think was because Microsoft screwed up the runtime and made it proprietary in the process. If they want to integrate Adobe Reader into Windows, they need to bundle Adobe Reader with Windows, not integrate the code into Windows while changing it a bit to make it proprietary and stripping away all credit to the owner of the code and passing it off as their own invention.
To those of you who thought I liked Microsoft: I do, but they've made some mistakes in the past, and Java was one of them.
Of course, of course.
Not a Microsoft plugin, though. Adobe makes such a plugin, and I'm sure there are others, but it's not something that comes on the Office CD and you can't download it from MS.
Alright, but if you look on the Office 2007 save as menu, MS did put in an option that says "click here to get a plugin that lets you save to PDF" or something like that, so at least they are supporting it (and this time without stealing it).
Office does not have anything like that by default.
At least, not that I've ever seen. That may have been put there by Adobe Reader or something.
Are you using Office 2007? If so, click the office button, hover over "save as", and click "find add-ins for other file formats". You will get a help page with a link to this page where you can download the plugin from Microsoft.
The plugin is not available for any Office version except 2007.
Ah, interesting. I used Office 2007 briefly, but don't have it here at home or at work. Neat.
They're just jealous because ProPDF Writer +Foxit Reader make a better combo than their own software.
I've yet to figure out how Foxit can do in 2MB what Adobe needs 20MB+ for.
Have you ever tried searching a 400+page pdf manual, especially a relatively common phrase? Adobe's search sidebar with surounding text (similar to how google search results return) is far superior than potentially clicking next several hundred times to get the location you're looking for.
For printing out 1 page rebate forms I'll agree that Foxit does everything needed, it's only when you have to deal with big, badly organized, documentation horrors that acrobat reader actually begins to show real advantages.
The latest version is pretty decently snappy, even with Speed Launch disabled.
Perhaps it is my aging rig. It just seems when you click a PDF by accident in FF and it tries to load the embedded reader it takes forever and a day to load. PDF isn't a bad format and has its place, but the standard Adobe reader is too bloated (or was in the past) for my liking.
http://oldversion.com/program.php?n=acrobat
Reader version 5.1 ftw. Opens in a second and has so far displayed every PDF that I've come across *crosses fingers*
Reader version 5.1 ftw. Opens in a second and has so far displayed every PDF that I've come across *crosses fingers*