I paid a lot of good money for my CS3 "upgrade" (for native OS X Intel code), and I am frankly annoyed with the Yahoo and Adobe Stock Photos tie-ins, and now Kinko's. Adobe should work on removing the bloat and making Acrobat not crash at startup because of borked auto-update functionality before they add more crud to it.

The program is beginning to feel more like a Kazaa-like adware infestation than a legitimate productivity tool. That's why I systematically use Preview on my Mac over Acrobat, and run batches daily to change the file creator to not launch Acrobat even on Acrobat-generated files.

Who are these people hiring to do their development? Microsoft?

It's not that difficult to "remove a button".

But then, I've come across the general standard of coding at Adobe and much of it would have been very in place at Microsoft.

That's why I don't use Adobe Reader, and haven't for a long time. I use Foxit PDF Reader at home, and being the IT manager at work, I've installed it on all our PCs there as well. Foxit Reader has a much smaller footprint, loads faster and is more reliable than the Adobe bloatware, and it doesn't auto-update unless you specifically tell it to.

Get rid of Adobe Reader and get this one. Or there are many other alternatives out there.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

I don't understand why you're using Adobe Reader, I've been on mac since 2003 and never downloaded or installed it, I just use preview. What makes you use it in the first place?

If Adobe had done it as a "send to my printing place" with a defined means by which ANY printer could receive documents via a webservice or however it's done, then it would be a really good idea. Instead, they focused on getting what probably is a tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of things via a stupid tie-in. They're probably going to lose more in terms of lost good will and lost sales than they ever stood to gain, so why did they do it?

Oh - I thought it was the work of some redneck hacker, who had a grudge against those Kinkos at FedEx ...

PS you can remove the startup bloat by moving the plugins to another directory - search and ye shall find !

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/ produce a PDF reader/editor without tie-ins that is an order of magnitude faster. Cheaper too.

It does my head in that almost every time you open a pdf that Adobe reader prompts you to download a "critical update".

It's a document reader, FFS! The only critical thing it needs to do is open a doc, any updates after that are non-ctitical, and a pain in the rear

Remember the good old days in the print publishing industry when Quark was the enemy?

When everyone had Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator and wished that Adobe could bring out an alternative to Pagemaker that would rival Quark?

Well Adobe did that with InDesign, although the first releases were flawed and unfortunately timed promotions on subsequent releases coincided with the dot com crash, meaning that the print customers were neglected in favour of the more lucrative and exciting video editing and web market once the share prices plummetted.

But the web products were a waste of time – we all knew that Macromedia was the leader in that field. As, it appears, Adobe finally admitted when it got out the cheque book.

And so with web (albeit someone else's products) and video effects firmly established the focus returned to the print customers. "Hooray!" we cried, believing that once again Adobe cared about the customers who supported it from the outset and made it great.

And just as the print industry was beginning to feel loved by the company that it has always admired for its contribution to the industry, Adobe whips out a knife, stabs it in the back and decides to mould its products for the home user and corporate markets.

Come back John Warnock – we miss you.

Hmmm....Does anyone else think the combined company should be known as FExK - pronounced /feck/

Well, Adobe is once again blundering it's way through another poor choice.

I never use Adobe products anymore, as their competitors are making very lightweight and capable products. As a Systems Integrator, Acrobat Reader fell out of favor a little over a year ago, supplanted by Foxit Reader. When using the much faster and much less pesky (no browser crashes when opening a pdf web-link!) Foxit software, I decided to try Foxit PDF Editor.

WOW! Now this is what I need to make pdf files exactly the way I want. Changing text and images is so much simpler than using Acrobat Pro. Try changing an image in the pdf file using Acrobat...

In the web world, I've changed all my website links from Adobe to Foxit for a pdf file reader.