I Am Really Sick of Adobe

I like to use the BBC Desktop iPlayer for catching up on TV programs that I have missed. You can download it for free from the BBC iPlayer site. It requires two components by Adobe to work: Adobe AIR and Adobe Flashplayer.

I run an Apple iMac with OSX 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard). Everything was working fine until around 3 weeks ago when I went to download a show using the Desktop iPlayer. It behaved as though it wasn’t installed and took me into the web browser version. When I tried to download from there I was informed that I would have to install Desktop iPlayer again. I don’t know why, but I went along with it.

The first thing the installation does is tell you that it needs Adobe AIR and asks if it’s OK to download and install. After clicking “Yes” to this I got a message saying “Adobe AIR Installer Couldn’t write the application to the hard drive. Please verify the hard disk is available and try again.”. I am the Administrator on the system, so permission shouldn’t be an issue. Anyway, I reasoned that there might be some kind of clash with the existing installation, so I uninstalled the Desktop iPlayer by dragging it to Trash and uninstalled Adobe AIR with the uninstaller (which I found in Applications/Utilities). I re-booted and tried again. I still get the same message.

I then downloaded AIR direct from the Adobe site and tried to install that, but the installer just sits in the dock and nothing happens. Someone on a forum suggested that the uninstall may not have been completely successful. It’s hard to try and uninstall again because the uninstaller deletes itself once it has done it’s job. I found though that, if I mount the installer dmg file from Adobe on my desktop, I can access the uninstaller within that using Terminal. The command that worked for me was “$ /Volumes/Adobe\ AIR/Adobe\ AIR\ Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ AIR\ Installer -uninstall”.  This gave me a satisfying message saying that all versions of AIR had been uninstalled but it didn’t make any difference! Still AIR won’t install.

I have tried Adobe chat support. The agent there was very polite but more intent on getting the serial number of the product, finding out where I bought it from and whether it was a trial or full version. They didn’t seem to comprehend that it was a free download from Adobe and didn’t have a serial number. In the end they said that it looked like it was a technical issue (!) and gave me a case number and a phone number to ring (020 7365 0735). I have tried ringing this number but just get held in a queue with no clue as to whether I am going to be charged for the information when I finally get it.

So I’m still trying. I’ve posted the question on a couple of forums where people have a similar (but also significantly different) problem to mine. So far no joy. I emailed Adobe support around 3 weeks ago (they say that they’ll get back to me in 3 days – huh!) but have heard nothing so far. I’ve tried going on the Adobe forums but my password/username will never work. I’ve reset it 3 times now but they still won’t let me in.

As I say: I’m really sick of Adobe. And there’s more.