An Open Letter to Adobe

Dear Adobe – and mainly you, Acrobat Reader. Listen here, bub. Your delusions of grandeur have escalated to a whole new level. Well, I guess they did a long time ago. They’ve been at this level for quite some time. But it’s not funny anymore. It used to be kind of cute how you’d show up at the party with the bigger boys acting like you’re one of them. Like you’re the really cool cop who brought the donuts to the Saturday Morning Citation Plus Club meeting. We all used to kind of watch you as you entered and we’d smile and say, “Isn’t that cute?” and “Yeah. Thinks he’s a big boy.”

You are like the high school kid who shows up to a frat party with your older sister and tries to hang with the college kids. The kid who must be reminded that he’s still just a high-schooler, and he shouldn’t try to act so cool while he’s at the party. You can’t drink as much as the big kids, you don’t know the secret handshake, and – no matter what you say – no. You have not been laid near as much as the college kids.

It’s annoying enough that every time I turn on my computer I’m reminded of your presence because you show up down in my system tray by my clock. Why? Well, you preload yourself with the startup services on my computer so that if I need to open a PDF file, it will open faster. Forget the fact that the more things that preload, the slower the boot-up process itself will be. If we all try to be first in line, it just takes longer to line up, guys. And has anyone really ever complained about the time it takes to open a PDF file anyway? I don’t think so. And personally, I don’t see that preloading Adobe Reader has ever sped up the process of opening a file.

It’s even more annoying when your little bubble pops up every third day reminding me that there’s a new update for Reader. Look, we know you want to be included. We know you want to keep coming to the party! But seriously, let me remind you: you open pdf files! That’s it! That’s all you do! That’s not that big a deal!

Oh, but today’s update is for security? Oh, okay, let’s have a look at the message you gave me when I clicked here for details.

Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahahaha! Oh, that’s so precious, Adobe! You really are a cutie! But STOP IT. Dude. Seriously. Get a hold of yourself! Listen! You are NOT a file that assists terminal services. You are not an important system process. You are not one of the big boys! You do not have power to bring down the system like lsass.exe. You’re not a host. You’re not a remote management protocol. You’re not an FTP client. You are a document viewer.

Stop. Seriously, Adobe, just stop. It’s not funny anymore. It’s like when a four-year-old gets you to laugh at something, so proceeds to tell you the same joke over and over and over and over and over. And when he tells it for the twentieth time it’s hard to even politely smile anymore. Well we’ve all smiled enough. I think we’ve all had enough. No one really believes anyone can take control of my system just because I haven’t installed an Adobe Reader update. No one. Come on. You’re just making yourself look bad now. And frankly, it’s embarrassing.

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