Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?
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I found out yesterday that Adobe has dropped the ability to search within PDF files that are stored on network shares from their iFilter 11.x filter. Sadly I currently find the website that mentioned that (still looking)
This issue, along with few similarly related issues have brought up the question - How do you handle/deal with updates, renewals, etc?
Before rolling out any upgrade, say for Java or Adobe Reader, or remembering that it's time to renew an SSL cert - are you reactionary? i.e. do you just deploy and wait for something to break? or do you dig in, attempting to any any possible question first, maybe going so far as deploying the software to a test group that has protocols on things they need to confirm work?
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@Dashrender said:
I found out yesterday that Adobe has dropped the ability to search within PDF files that are stored on network shares from their iFilter 11.x filter. Sadly I currently find the website that mentioned that (still looking)
This issue, along with few similarly related issues have brought up the question - How do you handle/deal with updates, renewals, etc?
Before rolling out any upgrade, say for Java or Adobe Reader, or remembering that it's time to renew an SSL cert - are you reactionary? i.e. do you just deploy and wait for something to break? or do you dig in, attempting to any any possible question first, maybe going so far as deploying the software to a test group that has protocols on things they need to confirm work?
It depends on what the software is... For Adobe and Java, I'd just roll the updates if they are minor versions... but if it's like going from Adobe 10 to Adobe 11, then no, I'd find a way to do a test group.
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We push out the updates pretty quickly to keep from having vulnerable software. Java, flash and reader have a lot.
Sometimes there are features removed or changes users don't like. You just have to tell them this is the direction they are going now. Keeping users on old outdated software doesn't change adobes or anyone's roadmap, and is just a temp fix. We do some tests but it's nothing super intensive.
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Adobe products never evolve, they only devolve. Each version has less features, yet use more memory, that's sort of their approach to everything. They're a terrible company with terrible programmers who they probably recruited from Patterson Dental or some other crappy software company. So, I try to avoid them as much as I can, Foxit Reader is great replacement for reading PDFs.
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@tonyshowoff said:
Adobe products never evolve, they only devolve. Each version has less features, yet use more memory, that's sort of their approach to everything. They're a terrible company with terrible programmers who they probably recruited from Patterson Dental or some other crappy software company. So, I try to avoid them as much as I can, Foxit Reader is great replacement for reading PDFs.
I wouldn't generialize. It's not all Adobe products just most.
Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects they do a good job at. They just suck badly at anything else besides those.
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I'm just annoyed that Windows doesn't come with a great PDF viewer and iFilter built in.. what they hay? They finally added it to Office, now to get it to be in the base OS.
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Check out http://www.x1.com/
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@Jason said:
@tonyshowoff said:
Adobe products never evolve, they only devolve. Each version has less features, yet use more memory, that's sort of their approach to everything. They're a terrible company with terrible programmers who they probably recruited from Patterson Dental or some other crappy software company. So, I try to avoid them as much as I can, Foxit Reader is great replacement for reading PDFs.
I wouldn't generialize. It's not all Adobe products just most.
Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects they do a good job at. They just suck badly at anything else besides those.
Photoshop is actually a good example of bloat. The first version of Photoshop I used was Photoshop 5 (as in 5.0, not CS5), and today there aren't that many more features, and yet it's nearly 25 times larger in size. Adobe and Microsoft both seem to suffer from over bloating everything, and I think it actually has a lot to do with building APIs on top of APIs on top of APIs to the point you can't deprecate anything, just keep building.
Terrible company and terrible programmers does not necessary mean terrible product, but I'd rather use GIMP any day. Not only because it's not obscenely huge, but also because it won't cost an arm and a leg.
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@tonyshowoff said:
Adobe products never evolve, they only devolve.
We need to put this quote into the upcoming book "The Collection of ML Community Knowledge".
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@tonyshowoff said:
Terrible company and terrible programmers does not necessary mean terrible product, but I'd rather use GIMP any day. Not only because it's not obscenely huge, but also because it won't cost an arm and a leg.
I'm not an image editing pro (by any stretch) but I've always been the same way. If I am going to invest time learning and using an image editing app, I always put the effort into GIMP and Inkscape. If I did it full time, sure Adobe is likely better. But for more casual usage, GIMP means that I can always get access to what I need and all of the latest updates, forever. I don't need to keep paying to use something once in a while.
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@tonyshowoff said:
They're a terrible company with terrible programmers who they probably recruited from Patterson Dental or some other crappy software company.
I don't disagree.
But is there a real alternative? Gimp V Photoshop will go on forever but what about their other main apps?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@tonyshowoff said:
They're a terrible company with terrible programmers who they probably recruited from Patterson Dental or some other crappy software company.
I don't disagree.
But is there a real alternative? Gimp V Photoshop will go on forever but what about their other main apps?
GIMP and Inkscape are good alternatives that I know about. What other apps are you thinking of that you feel have no good alternatives? I never use most of their lineup so don't even know what all they do that people are using.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What other apps are you thinking of that you feel have no good alternatives?
I'm going to define the needs rather than products.
Photo Editing (Gimp)
Video Editing (Premier)
Audio Editing (Audition)
Graphic Design (Inkscape)
Print/document design (indesign)
Bulk video/audio encoding (media encoder)
Certain PDF features (Acrobat) -
@Breffni-Potter said in Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?:
@scottalanmiller said:
What other apps are you thinking of that you feel have no good alternatives?
I'm going to define the needs rather than products.
Photo Editing (Gimp)
Video Editing (Premier)
Audio Editing (Audition)
Graphic Design (Inkscape)
Print/document design (indesign)
Bulk video/audio encoding (media encoder)
Certain PDF features (Acrobat)Have you looked at Audacity or Ardour for Audio editing? I have a musician friend who uses Ardour.
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I've used Audacity to clean up bad audio from some old cassette tapes.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?:
@scottalanmiller said:
What other apps are you thinking of that you feel have no good alternatives?
I'm going to define the needs rather than products.
Photo Editing (Gimp)
Video Editing (Premier)
Audio Editing (Audition)
Graphic Design (Inkscape)
Print/document design (indesign)
Bulk video/audio encoding (media encoder)
Certain PDF features (Acrobat)Scribus is a big Document Design competitor although the learning curve is huge.
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@coliver said:
Have you looked at Audacity or Ardour for Audio editing? I have a musician friend who uses Ardour.
Audacity Yes it's free and works for simple 1 file edits but oy, it's a chore to use if you are doing anything bigger than that. Plus quite a few of the plugins leave much to be desired compared with Audition.
Ardour, Mac & Linux only is the only downside I have to it.
I will say that either tool does not replace the synchronization between Premier Pro & Audition that you can use.
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@Breffni-Potter never heard of Audition. I only know Audacity. Is Audition a new competitor?
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@scottalanmiller said in Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?:
@Breffni-Potter never heard of Audition. I only know Audacity. Is Audition a new competitor?
Audition is the Adobe audio editing platform. It has been around for a long time.
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@coliver said in Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Evolutions in software - how do you handle it?:
@scottalanmiller said:
What other apps are you thinking of that you feel have no good alternatives?
I'm going to define the needs rather than products.
Photo Editing (Gimp)
Video Editing (Premier)
Audio Editing (Audition)
Graphic Design (Inkscape)
Print/document design (indesign)
Bulk video/audio encoding (media encoder)
Certain PDF features (Acrobat)Scribus is a big Document Design competitor although the learning curve is huge.
I thought Scribus was the leader here. Didn't know that Adobe had a competitor for it. Not surprised but Scribus has a lot of mindshare and I've never heard anyone mention an Adobe product for this use case.
I have family that worked in this space and so I know Quark.
