News By Tom Brownsword

Once upon a time (no, this isn’t a fairy tale) there was a company that had a great concept: create a document format that could be read on almost any computing platform. You create the document once and platform dependent software would open the documents on computers, whether it be running Windows, Unix, Mac…

And it was a great concept. The company released a free reader so that anybody could read the documents created while selling the software necessary to create the documents. It was a great business model and the company prospered and grew.

The company eventually realized that they could release the specifications for creating these documents “into the wild” and let people create their own applications for making these documents. Even more documents were made, even more “readers” were downloaded, and more people purchased their portable document creation software to take advantage of the powerful and superior features it offered.

Sadly, like all such programs, the reader — and the creation software — started to suffer from so-called “feature creep”. More and more capabilities were added to the software — both the reader and the creation software — and the downloads got bigger, the installs took more disk space, and the resulting “bloated” code had more security vulnerabilities that required frequent patches and larger chunks of code.

Being a responsible company, they maintained the software properly and informed people when updates needed to be made. They even took it a step further and included an automatic update feature.

That’s when the honeymoon ended for this user (that would be “me”, and remember, this isn’t a fairy tale!). The download sizes were huge, and with no Internet connectivity choice except for a dialup connection, the program downloads took forever and stole precious bandwidth from other Internet activities.

And today, when the latest update was finally done downloading (after what seems like a month), it asked me if I wanted to install it. I said “OK” (after all, I’m the security guy and need to practice what I preach) and went back to my writings.

Suddenly, without warning, Abode Acrobat Reader (oops, that slipped out!) popped up on top of all of my other windows, asking if I wanted to reboot. Of course I was in the middle of typing a blog post and the keys I typed must have been the correct combination to say “yes” because my computer instantly started rebooting.

Hey Adobe — HEY EVERY OTHER SOFTWARE MANUFACTURER — MODAL MODE FOR ACTION WINDOWS SUCKS! I HATE IT! SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY WORK WHILE INSTALLING SOFTWARE; WE HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN WATCH YOUR INSTALLER’S PROGRESS BAR!

Yes, I lost my blog post. I also lost the 20+ web browser windows that I had open because I was in the middle of some rather intense research.

Adobe Acrobat is gone from my computer. I’m going to give FoxIt a try. And I just might look for a Flash replacement, too.

You don’t play nice, Adobe, so you are no longer welcome on my computer unless I have no other choice.

FoxIt, on the other hand, is only a 2.2 megabyte download — that’s OK for a dialup user. You can also get the “Pro Pack” (which gives you some additional options) if you take advantage of one of their partner offers.

There’s a great marketing lesson in this and I recommend that you take a look at it. Go to http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php and click on the “Get It For Free” button (next to “To get the Pro Pack for free, click here”). Then select an offer — any offer — and see what happens:

* You enter an email address to which you want your activation code sent after you purchase the follow-up offer.

* You are then taken to the partner site to purchase the offer.

* You get a nice upgrade for free, plus (assuming you find something that you are interested in) another great product or service (although I didn’t order any for now, I may later. That wireless spy camera looks interesting…).

So losing Adobe isn;t all bad. I now have another reader that I think I’m going to like — plus I saw a different business model that captured my attention.

Thanks for listening,
Tom

P.S. — Should anybody from Adobe ever read this lowly blog, understand that I do like Adobe products, but behavior like this is not allowed on my computer. Play nicely — and create unbloated software that downloads quickly — and I might be back. Heck, I’d even settle for updates that only patch existing code instead of having to download the whole thing all over again.