Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

Adobe retreats. Adobe had the good sense to retreat yesterday on the Reader toolbar's FedEx Kinkos button (and FedEx let them):

Adobe is removing the button with a version 8.1.1 update to be released in about 10 weeks, said John Loiacono, head of the company's creative products division, on his blog.

"I know that there are a lot of folks who will be asking why we can't do it this afternoon. The answer is we can't just go back to the 8.0 release since the 8.1 release that contains the button included a lot of critical security and quality updates in addition to the new print option," Loiacono said.

Labels: Adobe, duh, software

posted by Paul Murray at 5:27 PM | permanent link |

From the "well, duh" file. I noted last week that Adobe removed the "Save As" button from the toolbar in the latest version of Adobe Reader, in favor of a "Print to FedEx Kinko's" button.

Turns out some people are even more irked than me, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Adobe Systems Inc., the maker of Acrobat and Flash software, faces a wave of criticism from printing companies protesting a deal that gives FedEx Kinko's stores a prominent link on Adobe software.

The brouhaha could hurt Adobe's standing with important customers and partners and also throw a wrench into FedEx Corp.'s plans to revitalize Kinko's, the copy-and-print chain it bought in 2004.

Adobe's corporate rationalization for how wonderful this arrangement would be can be found in this June 6 press release.

Update: CNET has more details of the brouhaha.

Labels: Adobe, duh, software

posted by Paul Murray at 12:56 AM | permanent link |

Selling the toolbar. The newest version of Adobe Reader -- what we used to call Acrobat, but Adobe now reserves that term for its software to create PDFs, not merely open them -- replaces the toolbar's Save button with one to send the file to FedEx Kinko's for printing.

I understand that Adobe wants to make money, and I'm confident that's why this happened, but come on, folks: you eliminated the Save button for this? Honestly, which function will users need more often?

Fortunately, you can change things back yourself in a few seconds. Directions are here.

Labels: Adobe, software

posted by Paul Murray at 1:01 AM | permanent link |