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Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

theregister.co.uk

1–10 of 134 posts

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#3
It's a real shame that Adobe is making this kind of mandate of Ninite. The Ninite catalog is a little limited for me given that I'm a developer, but when it comes to setting up a new PC(or a reformatted one)for friends and family, Ninite is the first place I go to for all programs and utilities they need, and most likely the last as well.

On the one hand I can see why Adobe wants total control over their installers, but I really wish they could also see that a lot of people simply don't want it.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#4

Never had this problem of Adobe installing unwanted Anti-Virus stuff. Is this common for Window-users? For Mac I would suggest Pacifist if you want to install selective parts of an installer: http://www.charlessoft.com/

During the installer the user will be asked if they want to install McAfee anti-virus. There is a checkbox on the page in the setup that is already set to true by the time they get to it, so most users will probably think that having "more protection" is a good thing and that Adobe is really looking out for them.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#5

Never had this problem of Adobe installing unwanted Anti-Virus stuff. Is this common for Window-users? For Mac I would suggest Pacifist if you want to install selective parts of an installer: http://www.charlessoft.com/

Yes, it is common on Windows. When you are on their website to install Flash, there is a tick box you need to untick to avoid installing McAfee Anti-Virus with it. It is basically like the Ask toolbar bundled with Java.

If you are not paying attention - which most people don't - you'll be installing unwanted software, because so much relies on basically crappy software (Flash and Java). Actually, that makes them crappy is their ubiquitousness. Even if you seldom use Flash or Java applets, you'll often find yourself having them installed, because there is that one site that needs one or the other.

Now, people like us with the technical knowhow know how to get around that (disable plugins; flashblock, etc.), but most people just install these things whenever there are updates, each is a change of getting crapware along with them. And Java is quite often updated.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#6

It's a real shame that Adobe is making this kind of mandate of Ninite. The Ninite catalog is a little limited for me given that I'm a developer, but when it comes to setting up a new PC(or a reformatted one)for friends and family, Ninite is the first place I go to for all programs and utilities they need, and most likely the last as well. On the one hand I can see why Adobe wants total control over their installers,…

http://chocolatey.org/ is starting to gain some traction for dev tools.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#8
post #5

Never had this problem of Adobe installing unwanted Anti-Virus stuff. Is this common for Window-users? For Mac I would suggest Pacifist if you want to install selective parts of an installer: http://www.charlessoft.com/

Yes, it is common on Windows. When you are on their website to install Flash, there is a tick box you need to untick to avoid installing McAfee Anti-Virus with it. It is basically like the Ask toolbar bundled with Java. If you are not paying attention - which most people don't - you'll be installing unwanted software, because so much relies on basically crappy software (Flash and Java). Actually, that makes them crap…

Checkboxes are not allowed to already be 'selected' with Direct Mailings in Germany or the Netherlands, see http://www.fedma.org . Perhaps this should apply for other webservices as well.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#10
This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per year.

In a similar vein, this is why Piriform cut them off from providing CCleaner via Ninite. Because automatic updating is a feature of CCleaner's business model, too. The paid version of CCleaner has automatic updates. Ninite was essentially taking that revenue model away from Piriform and using it for themselves. With free software supported by offers, Ninite is hiding those offers in exchange for cash. It's basically a paid ad-blocking service.

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