Adobe's Alien Invasion Continues Not on all Cylinders

Where is the Weak Link? Dammit!

Just to preface this, I am trying to stay positive as hell regarding Adobe and their Alien Tactics. But it is getting a bit old... rewind.... Just to preface this, I am trying to stay positive as hell regarding Adobe and their Alien Tactics. But it is getting a bit old... rewind...

That is how the average user feels when they try to contact Adobe's support, whether it be through online chat or via telephone. In a nutshell, Adobe's customer service/support is going awry and to put it bluntly, royally sucks.

I know. I know. I promoted the positive side of the Creative Cloud in the last video, but that did not cover the "what if something goes wrong with the installation or launching of app" issue.

To be honest, I had a couple of issues with Photoshop CC initially. Then with Premiere Pro. And yes. Both of those issues were resolved fairly quickly. But the pattern continues... Now it is with Dreamweaver.

Hey! I Really Mean No Harm

Yes, we are now running at about a 25% "oops, this Sh^t ain't workin' right". I am sure that this will all be resolved soon, but in the mean time, and for those that are impatient... well. Adobe's take is very laid back and we don't give a Sh^t at this point. They lack in any sense of customer service that makes any sense. It seems they had "How to say you're sorry class 101" for all their employees. But that phrase does not a problem solve.

It is so bad, that their peeps can't even do simple telephone transfers anymore. I was on hold for about 20 minutes after being told in the chat session that this problem was beyond them and that I needed to talk to the "real" tech support people. Come again? The "real"???? what???

So as a loyalist, I called. By the way a number that is nowhere to be found on Adobe's ginormous site. Was on hold as I said... then after going through the whole verification of me being a valid CC subscriber, and having stated my case, the fellow with a strong accent told me that he will have to put me through and connect me to technical support. What? I thought this was technical support!

So he politely asked if he could put me on hold while he connects me to the proper people. I agreed. Several minutes went by. He got back on the line and said "Okay, I am going to connect you now." Remember, this was about half an hour in now...

"Thank you for calling Adobe. Our office hours are from... blah blah blah... Please call back during these hours.'

End Game

At this point I am fantasizing about having the CEO of Adobe in my office, tied to a chair and making him experience the total crap his people are doing. Yes. It's a fantasy that I am sure many have had.

But this simple fact about lousy customer service is starting to nibble away at the giant. And it is unfortunate. You see, Adobe can not use the excuse of "growing pains" at this point. They are too old and experienced for this even happen. It shouldn't period! But the money people are on this simple issue already. And by money people I mean the investment community. You know. Those guys on Wall Street.

They are publishing some not so nice headlines:

It's Time to Go Sour on This Software Company

The Motley Fool Blog Network

Sell Adobe: Potential 25% Downside

Seeking Alpha

Adobe's Candy Coated Earnings Report

The Motley Fool Blog Network

and on a more positive note and perhaps a bit optimistic. Hey! 1 out of 4 ain't bad. Right?:

Adobe Systems: A Huge Upside in Creative Cloud

The Motley Fool Blog Network

As a side note. I am still very optimistic that all will work out eventually. I remember the same issues when CS 5 came about. Troublesome installations, apps crashing etc.. But man, they better get their act together quickly. It is frustrating to say the least.

Why Sony Vegas will most likely never be a Mainstream continued...

A revisit and pseudo update to an ongoing software failure...

So literally just two blog posts ago I started venting about this, well, let's call it a tragedy. The tragedy - Sony Vegas Pro V12 (and prior) and possible even their consumer versions. Why even call it a tragedy? Well, when something looks so damn good to work with (their interface is awesome), get promoted to be the simple do it all, mix and match, load all things multimedia and oh, "we are Sony and can do no wrong" , and not to mention 3D which I could give a crap about, fails as miserably as this product - one just needs to vent and define it as a tragedy. This is based on first hand experience now for several years while always hoping that someday this would finally function without random crashes and bugs appearing and popping in as if they were "Murphy's" cousins. I digress.

So Sony Creative releases an update in the last couple of days. Being hopeful as most would be, I installed it. I am talking about V12 64 bit... fuggetaboutit.

This piece of software simply can have all the so called patch or fix releases it wants, but all that is happening is a simple stretching of a proverbial band-aid. As they tug on the band-aid to strongly towards one side, it opens a new wound on the other side. Useless! I wonder why heavy products such as Adobe After Effects, along with all the plug-ins can work so nicely, rarely have issues and make use of a true 64 bit process and memory while this software just seems to puke at any chance it gets?

One has to ask, was this software a bad version of a 32 bit app that has been patched to death and now the company can't retreat as they have gone too far? Do their technical support peeps all look like Van Gogh as they don't seem to hear any of the problem and bug reports. What the hell are they doing? Are they simply building a database of issues and are overwhelmed? As it still is the case, their best solution seems to be, Uninstall - Reinstall. Like that would make a difference and not an option (again) since this upgrade was just freshly installed!

Sony! Listen up! You are starting to lose it big time! You bought this company several years ago. You didn't pay much attention to it as all you seemed to think was that since you make cameras and such, you also needed to have some editing stuff. You acquired, but you didn't fund. A few years ago you felt it was necessary to finally make the "Creative Software" division more prominent so you threw a ton of money at it. But did that money actually work for you? Based on what we see out here, a big NO! This just proves that even if you are a big company with a ton of cash, simply throwing money at something doesn't necessarily mean it will be put to proper use.

This somewhat reminds me of how cheesy your remote controls for the Blue-Ray/Internet Ready boxes are. But that is yet a whole other story altogether.

You make awesome cameras. You have some cool hardware - but when it comes to software, perhaps you should consider farming that portion out. That is all. Maybe not... seems I am not a lone ranger on a quest...

See what other interesting articles one finds by simply doing a Google search using the phrase "Sony Vegas is a piece of crap".

If only the crashes had some consistency - that would be actually nice. But this P.O.S. simply has no consistency.
 

Why Sony Vegas will most likely never be a Mainstream Professional Product

I have been (to my own demise) been using Sony Vegas Pro since version 8. Now as the years have passed and the Vegas Pro guys actually got more money and credibility from the mother ship, Sony itself (a couple of years ago) it seems that they simply have lost their direction. Or maybe they are being forced into creating crap by the mother ship. Who knows.

The only thing I know is that I am migrating away from SVP as fast as possible. This fat, buggy and buggier by the version, expensive (anything that you pay for that doesn't function is expensive) and time wasting piece of dung needs to a) be put out to pasture b) needs to be totally revamped or c) get killed altogether.

It seems the guys that create this monstrosity are simply following suit to other big boys that have this attitude that an upgrade doesn't need to function better, remove bugs of yesterday, and be faster, but rather, add new bugs, make old bugs stronger and oh, by the way, make this a fat clunky piece of crap that loses functionality as you use it more.

There have been hints along these lines from several users over time. If you happen to look at the Sony Creative Support or knowledgebase, well, that's an oxymoron.

Report a bug - you get a generic boiler plate message back a few days later telling you to totally uninstall  add a new user on you system with admin privileges and then re-install under that user. Perhaps they should stop at the uninstall part and leave it at that.

This typical response seems to be Sony Vegas' only solution. Does it work? Hell no! It is the most useless information, strategy, method, option, concept that could ever be contrived. The Sony guys seem to think that we all have time to tinker and experiment on their behalf. Perhaps this "boilerplate" concept was created to appease the user that blew a good 600 bucks to start, and then blew 300 more each year to keep up with the Jones' by constantly upgrading and thinking things will get better for sure with this new version. Hey, they changed the desktop icon... now that is improvement!

Sony, I hope you are reading this. I hope you take this to heart. I hope you actually take note and start really fixing things. I have reported to you diligently over the years about your damn memory leakage... (for those interested, just start up Vegas, open Task Manager and watch the processes, particularly the Sony Vegas one.... it just starts eating up memory even while sitting idle. God only knows why.)

But that's not all... you have trouble rendering to your own codec, particularly when it comes to simple internet mp4's. POS! (no, that does not mean Point of Sale)

You crash randomly almost as if someone, perhaps Sony's Other Brother (SOB) is spying on us and sees when we have stuff to get out on deadlines. You make the software puke like no tomorrow.

Then you invite companies to create plug-ins for you or you even team up with them so that before SVP even loads, we have to look at a crappy advert that makes the system crash. I knew blue wasn't my favorite color all along.

I may be ranting here... but I have had it with your shenanigans and your absolutely useless support fodder. Get real! Get some knowledgeable people involved. Listen to your users! Oh my god, that would be a concept in itself.

Oh and by the way, the BS parties (actual marketing soiree) that you throw at NAB every year... yeah, those are sometimes cool. But I wonder just what kind of magical machinery and software the presenters actually use, to be able to with good conscience, speak so highly of your software? Or is it that you simply pay big bucks for endorsements?

Yes, this may sound like a rant and another rant from a guy that has lost much time due to crashes (time is money), and that has spent way too much on upgrades over the years, and that was very optimistic until this last issue - new system, new install, cool GPU, lots of memory, awesome processor... and well Sony Vegas Pro 12 (whatever batch) - acts absolutely no different!

It's really too bad that it has to end this way. You actually have some neat features that no one else has. Too bad they are part of this atrocity that you call software.