Editorial: Adobe's Flash Updater is Bloated and Shady

[Guest]

Win7 64 SP1 machine. Wasn't paying attention to the Adobe Updater prompt and ended up with Chrome installed. Followed instructions for removal and basically rendered my machine useless. All default file type associations were associated with Chrome (which I uninstalled). The great folks at Google conveniently left out the coding to reset your file types to default upon it's removal. No browser could be accessed, no fix-it program could be downloaded, and no .exe files could be executed. Finally found a .reg file that changed my .exe problem, but only on my Admin. profile. Other home users are still bricked due to botched registry entries remaining from Google. You can't even access a Command Prompt, let alone an Elevated Prompt (required in Win7 64 to make Reg. changes apply to all Users). Bottom line? I should have paid closer attention. But what's to say for the majority out there who don't know what nasties are exploiting their machines, and how they're doing it? Adobe bundling this software was shady business. I also don't think it is asking too much for Adobe to have 1 updater handling all of their products, and to limit the activity to just that.

 

[Ed Mann]

This does seem like a bit of a "Waaaaaaaaaahmbulance" story.

NOT!

I agree 100% with Per Hansson's assessment of Flash. I have over 100 machines to look after and at first I welcomed Adobe's promise to automatically update Flash. Scripting uninstalls and reinstalls was time consuming and tedious given Flash's weekly new security vulnerabilities. As if Adobe doesn't already take more than enough of my money for Acrobat, they want to give me bloatware they have sold-off to google and mcafee? Adobe is no friend of the system administrator.

 

[jonjonjon]

Yet another flash bashing post, just install Google Chrome and get over it already. When your using Internet Explorer what do you expect? Also please stop spouting the HTML5 to replace Flash crap already. Flash ins't going to disappear anytime soon, so quit complaining.

really? flash is already dead on mobile because of html5. you dont need flash anymore for youtube. flash is on its last leg. adobe flat out sucks. what good does chrome do? all it does is have garbage flash directly integrated into it. that's exactly what I want a crappy plugin integrated into my browser.

 

[Guest]

I wish I could find proof, but there is one nagging thing about your opinion piece here that bothers me... Windows 8 is not the first Microsoft-based operating system that came pre-bundled with a version of Flash. I don't recall if it was Win95 or Win98, but one of those two (I'm quite sure) had a very, very early version of Flash preinstalled.

 

[Guest]

I personally saw a huge change from when Adobe bought Macromedia and started ruining, oops running Flash updates and the software's development in general. Flash is a cow compared to what it used to be. High end systems some times have trouble with slow down on it. Forget about getting an old system to run it unless you use an old security flawed browser. So personally I tend to agree with the author. Adobe seems interested in making money and nothing else. Maybe it's pay back for all the pirated copies of Photoshop, who knows?

 

[captaincranky]

I personally saw a huge change from when Adobe bought Macromedia and started ruining, oops running Flash updates and the software's development in general. Flash is a cow compared to what it used to be. High end systems some times have trouble with slow down on it. Forget about getting an old system to run it unless you use an old security flawed browser. So personally I tend to agree with the author. Adobe seems interested in making money and nothing else. Maybe it's pay back for all the pirated copies of Photoshop, who knows?

Although this a quite a "necrobump", you are correct about Adobe wanting payback for the pirating of its software. Witness the subscription based, "Creative Cloud".

But, since this is a very old thread, I feel manifestly obligated to inform you that, "hindsight is always 20/20".......

My P-4 519 rig is struggling with loading pages on Firefox with only AGV running. Flash is dead from "Noscript". So, to be fair, Flash isn't the only thing slowing down old rigs. It took close to 9 hours to cut and paste 81GB to another HDD with that rig two days ago.So maybe it's time to give it a proper burial....

 

[Guest]

Add on to my prior post above: I also used to like Adobe as a company. What a shame and what a waste....

Don't even get me started on antivirus.....

 

[captaincranky]

Add on to my prior post above: I also used to like Adobe as a company. What a shame and what a waste....

Don't even get me started on antivirus.....

Some Adobe programs have for years, been an issue with updates. Photoshop Elements, never quite had its issues attended to, they just released another version, seemingly with some of the same problems, (or perhaps new ones), but with a few new features.

Camera RAW compatibility was only covered during the period between releases of Photoshop CS. If your new camera was released during a later version of PSCS, you were SOL with respect to a plug in for it. The issue can be worked past with a later version of Adobe's "Digital Negative Converter", but you are left with the original RAW file, and the new DNG file. It's not an earth shattering issue, but there is a fair amount of nuisance value to the extra work involved.

I was amazed that Adobe updated "Lightroom 4", all the way to version 4.41. But, not having gotten around to using my copy of 4.0, until after I installed 4.4, I can't speak to whether or not its issues were severe enough to warrant the update.

 

[Per Hansson]

Yea, seems like my Christmas wish for 2013 did not reach it to Adobe's office.
Here's to hoping for this years Christmas then?
No?
Where is my HTML5 adoption