Some of our products are plug-ins for InDesign, and other than occasional PS work, I ignore everything else in the suite.
InDesign itself is rock solid, and a pretty impressive piece of work. (Even if they are slowing down on development--I guess there's not all that much to do with it.)
On the UI, yes, it's a kinda half-way house. But most print-oriented designers live in InDesign, so they probably get used to it as their own little world.
That said, everything else about Adobe's suite (updating, serialization, etc.) is just punishingly bad, as Merlin points out.
It does tend to make one despair.
The main problem with Adobe that I can see is that the suits took over once Chuck Geschke and John Warnock left. These guys were consummate engineers, and their products reflected that fact.
And, then, to add insult to injury, Macromedia took over Adobe, and pretty much turned the company into a Flash-only place. I hate Flash and all that it stands for.
The last time Adobe let their desktop publishing app slow down on development, QuarkXPress ate their lunch and they had to invent InDesign to compete again. Adobe Pagemaker used to be a serious competitor. (Of course, it also used to be Aldus Pagemaker).
InDesign itself is rock solid, and a pretty impressive piece of work. (Even if they are slowing down on development--I guess there's not all that much to do with it.)
On the UI, yes, it's a kinda half-way house. But most print-oriented designers live in InDesign, so they probably get used to it as their own little world.
That said, everything else about Adobe's suite (updating, serialization, etc.) is just punishingly bad, as Merlin points out.
It does tend to make one despair.
The main problem with Adobe that I can see is that the suits took over once Chuck Geschke and John Warnock left. These guys were consummate engineers, and their products reflected that fact.
And, then, to add insult to injury, Macromedia took over Adobe, and pretty much turned the company into a Flash-only place. I hate Flash and all that it stands for.
Oh well, maybe I'll whine privately at Chuck...