Where are the regular maintenance updates?

Question

Most expensive/professional software I own licences for
receives maintenance updates and bug fix patches on a regular
basis. Even with shareware and freeware, the patches and updates
just keep coming. Flash Professional should certainly be no
different, there's more than enough bugs to warrant some fixing.
But what did we get? Nothing! Some measly updates for the Flash
player, that's all. Clearly Adobe/Macromedia cannot be trusted in
this department, they just move on to the next project and leave
users to wrestle with bugs.
A few examples off the top of my head:
- The new smoothing algorithm introduced in Flash 8 is
kaputt. It blurs bitmaps even when they're shown in 1:1 scale,
anti-aliasing intentionally aliased stuff. Clearly there's some
rounding error or something messing with the scale of things. For
example, I used Flash 7 to make document and application icons in
128x128. They fit exactly to the pixel grid and when I exported
them from Flash 7 they were sharp as can be. When I export the same
icons to PNG from Flash 8 at 128x128, using the same source files,
the edges are suddenly blurred. With some trial and error I
discovered that I had to export them in 129x129 in order to make
them look as they did from Flash 7, then crop the picture in
Fireworks to 128x128.
- "Convert Lines to Fills" is a mess. It generates a
completely warped rendition of the selected lines if they overlap.
You have to walk Flash through the process by selecting a few lines
well away from eachother, move them away from the rest, convert to
fills, then repeat this process until you finally get a WYSIWYG
rendition of the lines you wanted to convert.
- Various UI graphics bugs. For example if you drag-select
across a number of layers and frames in the timeline and insert or
delete, leftovers from the black selection rectangle are still
visible in the timeline. You have to minimize/maximize the window
to make it redraw correctly.
- If I enter W/H/X/Y coordinates for an object, say "10.0",
it's because I want exactly 10.0. I don't want Flash to arbitrarily
change it sometimes to 10.1 or 9.9. Sometimes you have to enter it
twice to make it stick.
- Flash 'forgets' parts of audio files in the library. I
import a lot of WAV files to the library, and sometimes a few saves
down the line I discover there are mysterious silent gaps in the
audio. I have to re-import the files again to fill these gaps.
- FlashPaper (it installed correctly on very few computers,
you had to fix it in a DOS prompt, or FlashPaper would just hang
when you try to print). I've also had complaints that my FlashPaper
rendered PDF:s won't open in Mac OS X.
These are just a handful of examples I can think of at the
moment, I know I've stumbled upon dozens more and I'm sure there's
a collective pool of thousands. What I want to know is why
Adobe/Macromedia feels it's OK to not bother with maintenance
updates and fixes for a product of this price and magnitude? It's a
despicable business practice I would expect from shady vaporware
peddlers.

Answer 1

It's only your perspective that "nobody seems to care" that
couldn't be anymore incorrect - I see it
first hand how dedicated and caring the developers of flash
are.
I wont get into a platform war either - but i clearly
remember the MS promotion MS was using
claiming the new "Innovative" features of IE7 - specifically
showcases their new tabbed browsing
feature and popup stopper - FF had that long before them -
hardly innovative.
Vista looks and acts very much like Mac OS - at least on the
surface. It's so blaringly obvious to
me that they must have been studying OSX when they were
deisigning Vista.
Anyway - i dont really care about OS - and your points are
totally valid - I'm a PC user only
because flash always runs better on PC then MAC.
I just think your claims that nobody cares and complacency
within Adobe are ill-founded - I am very
much closer to the people that you are talking about and see
their dedication first hand for years -
unless you are as close or closer, it's hard for me to agree.
But if you feel this way from a users POV - then perhaps
something is wrong on a marketing level or
some other area. Flash 8 was developed by Macromedia - the
next version of flash will be developed
by Adobe - let's hold of on judging them until they come out
with the next version - until then,
complaints of non caring and complacency simply hold no
weight.
-regards
-c
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PitchBlank wrote:
>>I don't understand the logic of calling Adobe a
"monopoloy".
>
>
> It couldn't get any more logical, IMHO. Adobe and
Macromedia were the two
> biggest actors in the game, and have (had?) quite a few
overlapping products
> (Freehand/Illustrator, Fireworks/ImageReady/Photoshop,
GoLive/Dreamweaver).
> Then the two companies became one. While this doesn't
constitute a bona fide
> monopoly as such, it's pretty damn close. It's like
Microsoft buying Apple -
> right, so there's still Linux, but it's not like Linux
inspires competitors to
> innovate...
>
> > To be honest - I don't want a new set of tools that
do the same thing.
>
> Neither do I, but Adobe still needs competition or
they'll become more
> complacent than they already are.
>
> > MS is famous for duplicating (stealing) ideas from
others before them and
> calling it "innovative" (example; IE7, Vista).
>
> I don't recall MS ever calling IE7 innovative, and I
don't get this whole
> plagiarism thing with Vista. Where's the ripoff?
Gadgets? Apple stole that from
> Konfabulator. Instant Search? Apple implemented
Spotlight only *after*
> Microsoft had showed off their instant search. The
interface? I don't see
> transparent window elements prominently featured in OS
X, and Apple hardly
> invented the 3D look and feel with drop shadows around
windows. The Vista UI
> isn't a ripoff, it reflects the current fashion in UI
design. If bell bottom
> pants come back, both Lee and Levi's will make them,
without one ripping off
> the other. OS X features several Windows ripoffs (Time
Machine, Spotlight,
> automatic OS updates etc - and Microsoft had its Media
Player in place back
> when Mac users were still fiddling with crummy shareware
like SoundJam), but
> nobody wants to hear about those because they think
Steve Jobs is Jesus.
>
> Anyway, I don't want to get into the whole platform war
thing, my point was
> that Flash is buggy as hell and nobody seems to care,
especially not Adobe. I
> was expecting replies more along the lines of "No, it's
not buggy at all, it's
> flawless and you're a moron".
>