Bloatware is a Business Opportunity (Part I)

2008/07/15

Bloatware is defined by Wikipedia as:

Software bloat, also known as bloatware or elephantware, is a term used in both a neutral and disparaging sense, to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to be larger, or to use larger amounts of system resources (mass storage space, processing power or memory) than necessary for the same or similar benefits from older versions to its users. Additionally, the term bloatware is used in common language for pre-installed, huge software bundles, mostly consisting of demos and trial ware.

My favorite example of bloatware is Adobe Reader, currently at version 9. This latest version is a 33MB download, but you can't just simply download it. You first have to get the Adobe Reader Download Manager, a plugin just for downloading Adobe Reader (!). After installation the thing takes up 210MB of your harddrive (!). Ben Hoyts' article is especially funny:

For starters, version 8 was a 22 MB download. Version 9 is a mere 33 MB — a whole major version up, and not even twice as big. The default download includes a 19 MB eBay Desktop program, for all your “faster searching, smarter bidding” needs. So tempting … but I opted out.
On my cable connection, it took about 5 minutes to download, nicely allowing me enough time to brew a decent cup of coffee while I waited.
But it wasn’t just a simple, ordinary download. First Adobe told me to download a Firefox plugin. I assumed the plugin would help me read PDFs in my browser. But oh no, this was a special plugin, an Adobe Reader Download Manager (TM) — a plugin specially designed to help Firefox download Adobe’s powerful PDF viewer.
After the plugin was installed and Firefox restarted, the download began. I couldn’t wait to try Adobe’s MUCH FASTER and SMARTER product.
Download done, I double-clicked the installer. It spent a long time unpacking and validating the installer, which gave me warm fuzzies about Adobe’s good grasp of stability, security, and enterprisey robustness.
After the unpacking, the install process itself took 10 minutes. I could only thank Adobe’s engineers, presuming they were filling up my hard drive with yummy icons, tasty DLLs, and amazing 3D JavaScript add-ons. No matter — the 210 MB it required was there to be used.
I had just slurped down the dregs of my coffee when the installer finished. I was so thankful when it told me I needed to restart my computer, welcoming the extra time to drink coffee, as well as the pure delight I knew I’d get from starting all my applications again.
I could finally try out this new software. I was impressed. It started in a minuscule 13 seconds, plus the time it took me to skim their poetic and beneficent license agreement.

My other favorite is Nero, the CD and DVD burning tool. The latest version is Nero Ultra Edition 8, a 185MB download, which includes: Nero Home, StartSmart, Burning ROM, WaveEditor, SoundTrax, Vision, Recode, ShowTime, MediaHome, PhotoSnap, Cover Designer, Toolkit, BackItUp, and SoundBox. The amount of bloat here is stunning. There's actually an RSS reader in there, so you can catch up while waiting for your CD to finish. Nero went from burning CDs to wanting to "Create and Manage Your Digital Life", this coming straight from their website. Nero is so bad, there's actually a project called Nero Lite, where they strip the bloat from the installer to bring it down to 20MB.

And then there is Adobe Photoshop. The latest version, Adobe Photoshop CS3 comes in at 1GB installed (that's 2GB on the Mac, probably because it includes both the PowerPC and Intel binaries) according to adobe.com. Photoshop is so bloated that one of the developers, John Nack wrote about it on his personal blog:

Photoshop has been accreting power & users for the better part of two decades. The once-little app has proven almost endlessly adaptable to new needs and workflows, but all that morphing has a price. In many cases we've traded simplicity for power, and not all the pieces look like part of a cohesive whole. In fact, I sometimes joke that looking at some parts of the app is like counting the rings in a tree: you can gauge when certain features arrived by the dimensions & style of the dialog. (Cue old-timey prospector voice: "Oh, Lighting Effects--you can see the scorch marks from the great fire of '43...")
This isn't exactly a news flash--far from it. So, the question is, What exactly are we gonna do about it? No one wants to work with--or work on--some shambling, bloated monster of a program. (Emphasis added)

The last example is Norton AntiVirus. According to symantec.com, the latest 2008 version takes up 300MB on your disk. But with Norton, it's not so much the hard disk space as it is the fact that is installs memory resident daemons that completely hijack your system. Most computers will crawl to a halt and become unusable if Norton is running. Norton AntiVirus has become the problem it was designed to eradicate: a virus. I personally would rather have viruses on my computer than run Norton AntiVirus. Others have come to a similar conclusion:

As I recall, Norton was the program that harassed her so badly that she decided to switch to Mac. I remember my experience with using a PC and having Norton. It was terrible. I finally came to the conclusion that I had to uninstall it, regardless of what perils I might be subjecting myself to. I was sure that Norton screwed with my computer’s performance far more than any virus would. (Emphasis added)

Continue to Part II.

- Marton Trencseni