Has Adobe fired their installer development team yet?

[donmontalvo]

Of course not, why spend more money on competent/capable staff who have a clue about PKG/MSI standards? Don'tcha know they've got to meet their profit margin?

From page 20 of ADOBE® FLASH® PLAYER 11.5Administration Guide PDF:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/flashplayer/pdfs/flash_player_1...

Silent installation of Flash Player Do the following to silently install Flash Player 11.3 on Mac: jnhsxqkW41nqslxtwAQC Note: You need to be a super user to proceed with the installation. Note: This is the only supported method to install Flash Player silently on Mac. Other methods, such as extracting and installing the .pkg file, are not supported and not recommended.

Of course this is a complete farce. Right, Silent Installation my butt.

I hope every Mac administrator who shows up for MacIT brings a couple tomatoes, so Adobe's installer development manager can get a taste of reality on Thursday. Make sure you throw before the words Creative Cloud comes out of his mouth.

https://blogs.adobe.com/oobe/2013/01/join-us-at-macitmacworld-131-what-the-creative-cloud-means-for-...

Don

[gregneagle]

Don, you must be new around here!

This is essentially unchanged since:
http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/unattended-installs-of-flash-player-11-3/

[donmontalvo]

By "silent" I meant the ability to push to logged off Macs. :)

[ernstcs]

You wouldn't think writing files would be so hard...

[gregneagle]

Don: again, this hasn't changed since 11.3. Same issues then as now.

[donmontalvo]

Yep, I know, I'm just being the Town Crier since MacIT is here and the offshore bloke responsible for the Adobe installer fiasco is in town. I wanted to insure he gets a warm welcome.

[franton]

Fairly sure Adobe (or at least Jody Rogers) reads this ...

[donmontalvo]

Jody isn't the problem. His team brought us AAMEE, APTEE, AUSST, RUM, etc., and they've made deploying/patching Creative Suite better than it was, and the tool is maturing over time to make things even easier. However....

http://afp548.com/2013/01/24/report-your-issues-to-adobe-or-else/

A few years ago when we were faced with thousands of Mac users and no easy way to deploy CS to them, we followed this route. Polite, formal emails to Adobe to alert them about the time/effort wasted trying to deploy their very expensive software. Throw a number at them and make it clear that their software is even more expensive than the high initial cost. The emails were followed by conference calls, and eventually we got Jody (their Casper guy) and he initiated AAMEE. AAMEE has been a blessing, but it’s really a big huge roll of duct tape. The root of the issue was and continues to be the incapable/incompetent Installer Developer team at Adobe…the result of chasing profits and cutting costs. That translates in Adobe staffing up with cheap, offshore staff who sit comfortably thousands of miles away, never worrying about being accountable for the cr@p they deliver. They’re cheap, so Adobe is going to protect them. Ask Scott Forstall who ends up taking the blame… Public lambasting, community revolt, that’s all effective, but it has to be balanced with those formal emails. Make sure you copy your Adobe rep, copy Jody Rodgers and Karl Gibson, and if possible copy Victoria Selwyn. Keep the pressure on…or Adobe will just ride out the storm. It’s gotta be a tsunami or nothing is going to change. Don

...now take a look at the Flash Player installer fiasco. There's a deep rooted issue that Adobe has to address. It's got nothing to do with Jody's team. The problem is the folks who hide behind the curtain at Adobe making the "We can increase profits by coding once and porting to multiple platforms" decisions, mooching off the effort and hard work of the Mac admin community. We aren't the Adobe Benevolent Association ya know.

If Adobe's installer development team STILL don't understand why we need PKG/MSI installers, I say fire them all and let Jody and Karl vet new candidates who can provide quality delivery.

Adobe's installer development team manager is at MacIT this week, and I'm betting he'll deflect these issues with Adobe's "Buy our new Creative Cloud service" mantra. Right out of the McDonalds playbook.

Don

[franton]

I'm not disagreeing with you Don! I also thought it was highly unnecessary to have to sign up to a program so I can download "enterprise" flash installers, which are the same as the old ones.

I merely say that Jody has his own account on jamfnation. They've more than likely heard the complaints. You can infer from their actions outside of CS your own conclusions ;)

[donmontalvo]

LOL, I totally forgot about those agreements. We had to sign one for AIR. I guess whoever keeps coming up with these ideas at Adobe has to secure their position. :)

[chris_kemp]

So Jody's the point person for AAMEE? Hmm...been trying to get some info about it from the few Adobe contacts that I have...

[donmontalvo]

Jody is the father of AAMEE. :) Not sure if it's him now or Karl. I'm guess (or hoping) Jody's role is being expanded to cover the other problem areas like Flash Player and AIR, but not sure.

[miles3w]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like downloading the installer from: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.edu.html works.

The version is 11.5.502.146. I think this is the latest version according to this page: http://www.adobe.com/products/about-flash.edu.html

The same command seems to be silent with the above download: sudo ./Install Adobe Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager -install

[jarednichols]

The general point that Don is making (and that I completely agree with) is that Adobe is making things extraordinarily difficult by being different. "It (the completely convoluted and labor intensive install method) works the same way it used to work," is a terrible argument. It's essentially, "We've always done it that way so why change it?"

Change it because its stupid.

Change it because wasting hundreds or thousands of dollars in engineering time that effects the bottom like is becoming a business decision.

Change it because for YEARS your customers have been telling you that this is the wrong way to go.

Change it because Apple provides a standard installation method that EVERYONE ELSE FOLLOWS.

My feeling, though, is that Adobe KNOWS it's the only shop in town. Who you going to go to? The Gimp? They have zero reason to change. They are the standard and have been for 20 years. Whatever competitors there once were (Macromedia) were bought years ago.

This is the problem with monopoly power. You can charge whatever the hell you want and make it painful while not giving a shit. People will still come back because they have no other choice. It would be one thing if they were expensive but listened to customers and made the whole experience painless. I don't mind paying for something of quality. It's why I use Macs and pay for my American Express. However with Adobe you're paying a ton for the privilege of being punished.

I shouldn't be yelling at my computer, looking like a complete lunatic, because I'm trying to package Adobe products. It's happened and it will continue to happen.

[donmontalvo]

@miles3w wrote:

The same command seems to be silent with the above download: sudo ./Install Adobe Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager -install

That is correct....if a user is logged on to the Mac...and yes, you can wrap up the installer and trigger it with a post-installation script in a Distribution Bundle. But can you push it to many logged off computers (zero-touch)? Nope.

I can also use a roll of duct tape to fix half the problems in my home. Heck, I might even market myself as a plumber and hustle up some profit. Can I misrepresent myself as a certified plumber? Nope.

Don

[mm2270]

@miles3w-

The same command seems to be silent with the above download: sudo ./Install Adobe Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager -install

That command is not silent on two counts. One that Don already pointed out in that it cannot be run while the Mac is sitting at the login screen, and two, a stupid icon pops up in the Dock while the installation is happening. As gregneagle pointed out, this has been the issue with Adobe's so called "silent' installation methods for years and years. Some idiot there simply doesn't understand the definition of silent..
These two issues are related. You're running an actual application with the above command, which is WHY it shows up in the Dock and must be run while someone is logged in.

The second issue can be fixed with a simple Info.plist manipulation, but don't know of any way to get around the other.

OTOH, had they just issued a standard pkg installer like everyone else....

[donmontalvo]

@miles3w I guess you'll have to be responsible for a couple thousand Macs to understand the significance of zero-touch packages. :)

[taugust04]

I've decided to ignore Adobe's recommendations on how to install Flash Player.

I still extract the Flash Player.pkg installer and upload it to Casper Admin. I understand that this is unsupported by Adobe, because they have some 'extra stuff' that goes on to get their auto-update utility to work. I don't need it to work. I push out the updates with Casper, and it will be available in Self Service when that area is ready for us here in our environment.

When that method stops working, I will just package a snapshot with Composer, and deploy that package, instead of Adobe's.

If the snapshot method stops working, I might just stop deploying Adobe Flash Player. Simple as that.

I'm already doing snapshots of the Shockwave plug-in, since their package installer fails about 75% of the time due to pop-up messages in their .pkg.

[gregneagle]

mm2270 writes:

The second issue can be fixed with a simple Info.plist manipulation, but don't know of any way to get around the other.

You'd use launchctl bsexec to get around the other. The method is mentioned here:
http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/unattended-installs-of-flash-player-11-3/