Christopher Mackay’s Blog

Time for another copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3, from the people who brought you Dreamweaver CS3 (which was no different from Dreamweaver 9 except that you paid for it, again, and it was slower and –if it’s even possible –buggier than ever).

After suffering through the Flash-based Adobe store (kill me now), I give them my credit card number, and wait for the transaction to be processed.

I get a nice screen telling me that

We are currently reviewing your order.

You will receive an email within the next three hours confirming your order if you placed your order within North America business hours.

Wow. Do they have Adobe Gnomes who manually review each order to determine the customer’s worthiness?

Okay, calm down. It’s just Adobe letting you know who’s in charge. They’re a little passive-aggressive; it’s only natural given all the Adobe Love on the net these days.

Then the email arrives. Three hours becomes “within the next business day”, which would be FOUR DAYS FROM NOW (it’s the Friday before the Labour Day weekend).

You will receive an email within the next business day confirming the status of your order.

It’s ecommerce, people; we’re not rigging an election here.

I’ve had many opportunities over the last few months to speak with the nice folks at Adobe Support. They’re unfailingly polite and helpful.

Maybe they should work on Adobe’s Software Installer team.

I upgraded from Adobe Contribute 4 to Adobe Contribute CS3 yesterday. Not, you know, because I wanted to; but because out of the blue, when trying to administer a Dreamweaver-based web site with Adobe Contribute 4, like always, it suddenly told me I needed a newer version of Contribute. Then it would quit.

I fiddled with it for a bit, then decided to just give in and upgrade. It’s not that much money.

1. I download it (it’s over 300 MB!): success.
2. I install it: success.
3. It asks for the serial number. I give it the serial number: success.
4. It asks for the serial number of the version I’m upgrading from. I give it the serial number: rejection. WHAT?!? I’ve copied the serial number from the email Adobe sent me in 2006, when I bought version 4…
5. I copy the serial number from version 3, bought from Macromedia (in 2003, if memory serves): rejection. This is ridiculous.
6. I call Adobe, and 10 minutes later they walk me through a procedure that gets it to work.

This is the same thing I went through with Photoshop CS3, and twice with Dreamweaver CS3.

It used to be that you could rely on an installer to find your previous version on your hard drive, and it could figure everything out from there. Not any more.

It used to be that you could COPY AND PASTE the serial numbers from their own email and expect that to be recognized (it worked when I needed it originally, after all). Not any more.

Will Adobe ever figure this shit out? Seems unlikely.

Last night we went to see Wall•E for a second time, because it was such a great flick.

We saw it at the cinema in Amherst, Nova Scotia, which is part of the Empire Theatre chain, the same chain that runs all of the cinemas in Moncton (Trinity Drive) and Dieppe (Crystal Palace).

When we got there the box office was closed; instead, all customers were to line up at the junk food counter, even if they only wanted tickets.

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