Adobe Application Manager tells me I need to update something, so I do. After updating the one item there was to update, the item now reads “Updated” out to its right – but even though everything has been updated, the application hangs on to my cognition for no reason rather than prompting me to quit, like any good installer should. Even worse, the “Update All” button remains lit. Even yet worse, it’s functional – you can click the button, it just doesn’t do anything. Give me the simple protection of my time by offering to quit the app.

It might help if it was clear if the user’s context were clear, but given that “All” and “Updates” also nearly always only show the same items, maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s so hard to tell which one is selected. But I was only more confused when I realized that they didn’t take the time to do something well spaced when laying out the other elements on the page. The “Ps” icon, the labels for “Photoshop CS6” and “New features!” would be so easy to make as nice and as clean as you’d want an interface to the world’s greatest graphic design tools to be.

And this is just the one time this past month of having recently returned to Adobe’s Creative Suite software that I finally simply broke down and took a screenshot. Their software is full of this stuff.

Thanks, Adobe, for the frustration that drives us to be better than the great tools you give us. It is inspiring.