It's not love, it's software.

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By David Field
17:03 Feb 15, 2008

To my darling Adobe,

The last seven weeks have been mind blowing. They really have. We've done amazing things together that I've never tried before, and they were everything I thought they would be.

I'd say our relationship has been fantastic. We work well together. You've got smarts, and I know how to push your buttons.

Remember our marathon Premiere sessions? The girl I get hard drives from looked at me funny when I asked for another 500 gigabytes. She must have been wondering why I was still sweaty and exhausted. Of course, you know why. After we got that drive we were at it again for night after sleepless night. We must have gotten through at least ten iterations and a terabyte of preview renders before we got that final 100MB XML project file.

It was incredible, just like the time we spent happily swimming around in After Effects. And our sessions in Audition -- I'll never forget when we got that control surface to join us. Remember Beringer's motorised faders? That was wild, and I know you won't forget, because you've still got the drivers.

I'm so happy that we're making so many copies of this year’s CSE Revue DVD. It really makes me value how well we work together.

But there were some little things you did on the way that really annoyed me. I need respect in this relationship. I feel like you're not making an effort in the morning.

Even though we came so close, you just couldn’t commit to a full relationship. I had no DVD to show for the time we’d spent together. I’d arranged the timelines and links and you’d transcoded all the MPEGs, but you wouldn't do the pre-flight checks and couldn't commit. After seven weeks, I had nothing to show for the time we'd spent together. Just raw files that only I could play and a preview window I could show to a few friends at a time.

I want to be with you more than Apple. I think it's important you know that I called that one off because Apple's a crazy, controlling bitch who hates it when anybody else is around me -- even programs I've known and trusted for years. You're not like that at all. And I know it's just a small thing in our relationship, but I'm worried it's going to snowball into me being with you out of obligation, and later I'm going to end up saying "we need to talk".

But honestly, it took me an entire weekend to try to verify that DVD project's links and dependencies. I'd done everything right, too. I even started from scratch and recreated the entire project without putting a foot wrong. I got a perfect flowchart without having to ask you to undo anything once. But you wouldn't verify the button overlaps and just crashed out on me. Time and time again, you gave me the cold shoulder.

It was a nightmare. For me it was like you had a sudden bout of Tourette’s syndrome during the vows at a wedding. It's like you crawled under the table and tried to seduce the best man during his speech.

You just refused to take the last step and burn the master that had to go off to the replicators -- the last thing before I would have happily confessed my undying love for you. It's like you're hard coded to avoid commitment. And it's more than that.

Whenever I delete stuff from the bin, you scoop it up and throw it into a cupboard, hoarding media we don't need, and then get angry at me for not having a bigger DVD or that the stuff in my project is disorganised.

I need commitment, or I miss deadlines. And I missed my deadline. So I cheated on you. With your older sister. Encore DVD CS2. It started in a seedy, neon-lit corner of the internet where everyone was offering me sex and free music. I strayed from you and your paper manuals and your cardboard packaging. I'm so sorry.

Please forgive me. I don't want this to be the end of what we've got going on; I don't want us to be mad with each other. I hope that soon we'll have a talk where we both apologise and say "It's not you, it's me" to each other. I'll read your manual again, and you'll give me presents in the form of updates.

That or you could just get your software engineers to fix Encore-sodding CS-bloody-three.

Love, always,

-DAVE.

You can grab copies of the DVD from the CSE Revue website.

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Issue: 133 | February, 2012

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