Turnersville, NJ—Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 for Macintosh is bloated beyond belief. Now, I understand that it's a universal binary, and has code within it to run on Intel and PowerPC Macs natively, but even split in half it's too big. So how big is it?
For those of you who don't know what Acrobat is, let me briefly explain. Adobe Acrobat is an application (and an architecture) that allows users to create portable documents that can be read, marked up, and printed on a variety of platforms (including Windows, Macintosh, and even Linux). It bundles up the document and all of its dependencies, including fonts, and creates a single file which is easily accessed by others.
Above: It's refreshing to see an aggressive, active monopolist tell customers its primary reason for releasing a new version of its dominant product.
Now, it's not a simple application by any stretch, but it's not nearly as complicated as Photoshop or InDesign. That said, the application directory for Acrobat on OS X is almost 1GB in size. You read that correctly, almost one gigabyte. It makes me wonder if there's some kind of high-end MMORPG buried in an Easter Egg. And the only difference I've noticed is a slightly revamped interface, and native Intel support on Macintosh. Unless you need some of the Adobe Acrobat specific features, stay far away from this pant-load. Enough said.
Microsoft Windows Vista reminds me of a 1974 Dodge Dart that's been pimped out. On the surface it seems fresh and new, using your 3D video card to achieve some level of depth, albeit, the color scheme looks like something Sponge Bob puked up. But underneath, it's still just a 1974 Dodge dart.
Now, I realize that Microsoft spent millions of dollars developing this behemoth, much of which was wasted on the new integrated DRM system designed to "protect premium content", because that's what users want, but after 6 years of development, you'd think the release would be better than a fresh coat of paint. When you consider that Apple wrote an entirely new operating system (well, sort of) in OS X in less time, a company like Microsoft should have been able to reach the same result. Instead, they foist this bloated, slow, incompatible piece of, er, tricked out 1974 Dodge on us. Before you ask, yes I've run it natively, as well as through a virtual machine. I'm not impressed. I was really hoping for more.