… in software development can be easily found within the famous Adobe Acrobat Reader. Well, not all evil, but most.
The program, once a must-install after a Windows & MS Office installations, has become increasingly bloated since version 5, encouraging users to go for light and easy alternatives
Why my rant against this poor, harmless, standalone piece of software? Because 2 out of those 3 adjectives are not even valid anymore.
Bloat
Risking redundancy claims from netizens who update themselves with articles and blogs, here’s yet another rant on the big bloat. Make that Unnecessary big bloat.
Here’s a list of old Acrobat Reader versions from oldversion.com. Check the size of each installer.
Old Versions Available of Acrobat Reader
Acrobat Reader 2 (1.4 MB)
Acrobat Reader 3 (3.9 MB)
Acrobat Reader 4 (5.2 MB)
Acrobat Reader 4.05 (5.5 MB)
Acrobat Reader 5.0 (8.4 MB)
Acrobat Reader 5.0.5 (8.6 MB)
Acrobat Reader 5.1 (13.0 MB)
Acrobat Reader 6.0 (15.9 MB)
Acrobat Reader 6.01 (16.3 MB)
Acrobat Reader 7.05 (31.5 MB)
Acrobat Reader 7.07 (20.2 MB)
So the size of the installer has increased 15 times, for a software which accomplishes very little new features. (and 20 times, if you look at version 7.05).
Agreed, some improvements in rendering, fonts, security, accessibility have been there. But the installer size feels as if you are just bundling 5-6 different applications together, instead of progressing on one piece of software.
I add 2 of the latest versions, not present in the above list
Acrobat Reader 8 (22 MB)
Acrobat Reader 9 (33.5 MB) (with an option to bundle additional 19MB of Free eBay Desktop. Search faster, bid smarter. Yayy)
Correction in the line above: The option is not to “add” the eBay desktop, but to “remove” it (Its ticked by default). So the default installation stands to be a good 52.4 MB.
The very size if the installer makes me shudder. So I did the smart thing. Not to install. But here’s a verdict of the poor guy who did
After the unpacking, the install process itself took 10 minutes. I could only thank Adobe’s engineers, presuming they were filling up my hard drive with yummy icons, tasty DLLs, and amazing 3D JavaScript add-ons. No matter — the 210 MB it required was there to be used.
[...] It started in a minuscule 13 seconds, plus the time it took me to skim their poetic and beneficent license agreement.
210 MB of space on disk for a PDF reader. Just because memory is cheap.
I’m not done yet. More rants in my next post.