“Who cares? We’re Adobe!”

Yesterday our boss stopped by and was spreading the panic that someone in our security department started about the Acrobat 8.1.3 update. According to the release notes it addresses a number of vulnerabilities and Adobe classifies the update as “critical”.

So, how do I apply this patch to about 100 Macs in our company? By hand.

Repackaging any modern Adobe product royally sucks. I have experience looking for hidden serial number files, determining which files are crap and which files are required and resetting permissions so that things work properly when imaged to another machine. Adobe would make a four-star general feel like a private again.

They have refused requests from corporate clients for an Apple Installer package claiming that their software is just too complex to install through any mechanism other than their own. Our deployment tools, Casper and Apple Remote Desktop, are useless for most Adobe installations.

So, where does that leave me when I have to apply this “critical” update? Applying it by hand to each and every machine. That’s hours of work to sit in front of all those workstations and double-click updaters and enter my admin name and password. What’s worse is that for every new Acrobat installation I must apply four updates after installing the software.

No software is unfriendlier to corporations than Adobe’s. They’ve had since CS to hear our complaints and now CS4 is out. I’m now convinced they’re saying, “Who cares? We’re Adobe!”