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There has been some consideration lately on my part as to what exactly my problem is with Adobe. Particularly with Air. Let's talk.

See! See! Air asked me to do an update and added a stinkin' desktop shortcut. Very annoying. Especially, considering that in Vista, I have to enter a a password to delete the shortcut.

This is an example of Adobe's general hostility towards its users. Adobe wraps its products in disruptive and hostile copy protection, creates services and updaters that erode system resource pools, and generally treat the users playgrounds as they're own little stomping grounds.

I believe adobe is manhandling of my personal computer space, and that the shortcut appears without my permission or warning is a symbol of a larger problem of end-user hostility that permeates many of Adobe's products.

I posed this sentiment to some folks at Adobe who have not yet responded. I'll keep you updated if I hear back or I change my mind.

Adobe Evangelist Dan D. says he's not sure what I don't like about Adobe Air.
What don't I like about Adobe Air? Seems like such an easy question.
1. The Sins of the Acrobat.
Adobe will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth because of the sins of the Acrobat. Acrobat reader is an invasive, openly hostile application toward users. Look no further than the advertising space it puts on the User Interface. If that's not enough, look at the way Acrobat shovels third-party applications at you (Yahoo toolbar). Then, for the hat-trick, look at the bizarre services, updaters and installers that come along with a _simple_ document reader.
2. Closed sourced wrapped around Open Source.
There's nothing so magical about whatever Air's secret sauce is that couldn't be improved upon by giving the raw source code to the public, especially considering it uses WebKit. I feel this way about _all_ software. Given the hostility of the Acrobat reader, why shouldn't we assume that behind the scenes air is spying, tracking, recording, and storing data?
3. Draining the Developer Pool.
Wouldn't it have been incredible if Snitter was _actually_ an OSX program instead of a blurb of adobe code floating within the host Operating system? Instead of developing a native ap, however, the fine people behind Snitter are developing an air ap. Good for adobe. Not so good for the host OS. And, probably not so good for the developers as well when the Air platform is changed to suit Adobe's whim.
4. All-new security holes.
Any hole in Air/Adobe's Runtime will quickly become a cross platform vulnerability. Imagine the phishing implications alone. (A letter claiming to eBay tells you to install the new EBay Air application) Sweet!
So is this ill-informed ravings of a tin-foil hat wearing looney. Kind of. Here's a great list of ten reasons to love and ten reason to hate air.