Adobe, master of the painful install
After using Macs for about two years, I've become accustomed to the painless installation process there: open the dmg, drag the app to the Applications folder, and you're done. Unfortunately, I recently had to install Acrobat Reader to electronically sign some insurance documents. They have managed to come up with a downright pathological installation process:
- Download AdbeRdr80_DLM_en_US_i386.dmg.
- Open the dmg.
- DownloadReader.pkg is inside; open it.
- Click through some stuff.
- Wait for the "Adobe Reader Download Manager" to download another 23 MB dmg.
- The "Download Manager" has silently quit (what?), but the dmg is now mounted. Open "Adobe Reader 8 Installer.app" and wait for it to finish.
- The "Installer" has silently quit (what?), but it must be done, because Acrobat is now running.
This is amazing. When I saw the very first pkg file, I was annoyed: I hate installers and they're rare in the Mac world. As I kept installing and installing, it was almost surreal. In the above list, there are three times where something is being installed. Working back from Acrobat itself,
- "Adobe Reader 8 Installer.app" installs "Adobe reader.app", so it's the installer.
- The "Download Manager" installs that, so it's the installer installer.
- DownloadReader.pkg installed that, so it's the installer installer installer.
So, while most Mac programs have shed the archaic notion of an installer altogether, Adobe Acrobat Reader has a program that installs a program that installs a program that installs the software you actually need.