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lemme get one thing straight: Im not a conspiracy theorist nor am i paranoid, but when i love a product, i do everything one step short of marrying it. And Flash was one of those programs.
I also lvoe a great deal of other software, like Maya and Softimage XSI for instance.
Was i pissed about Adobe buying Macromedia? Not really, though i was skeptical
Was i pissed that Autodesk bought Alias|Wavefront and Avids Softimage lineup? Not really.
Was i pissed that Sony Product bought Sonic Foundry's editing suite? Nope.

i embrace change and when i see software go to bigger companies, i can only expect
A. a more polished and feature rich product
B. worse customer support
C. some pretty big changes either in UI or high-level functionality. But as long as the core and original goals remain the same, thats fine by me.

What ive noticed, is ever since Flash 8, the last truely great Flash, Adobe has really been trying their best to ruin everything Flash used to stand for.

lets be a little anaylitical here, and please correct me if im wrong on any of this, but this is what ive gathered since starting with Flash back on v5:

- Flash is a lighting quick program to create vector based drawings and simple animation tools to bring websites to life
- Backwards compatibility was a creed, using the latest version fo flash, you could theoretically author to Flash 1 or even FutureSplash (Flash before it was Flash) should you so incline, and as long as you followed that versions rules, which Flash would warn about.
- Actionscript was designed to be robust, fast, and easy to understand. AS2.0 which was based off of an alpha blueprint of ECMAscript (Javascripts syntax base) was introduced to heal all of Flash 4 and 5's limitations, and the company kept updating this langauge to include support for future technologies (Think OpenSocket and XML)
- A playback engine so fast and compact you could grab in it seconds and be ready to play your favorite content without fail, old and new.
- An overall authoring environment to create online web applications and simple animations, as well as simple 2D based games

For anything advanced, such as 3D Applications for example, Director existed.

Since Flash CS3, they did away with the quick user interface, and introduced AS3.0, a language inspired by Java of all things, (though the idea makes sense, javas been a primary web application language since the dawn of programmable toasters). AS3.0 seems to be intended for the hardcore of web programmers, as it requires much setup and a better understanding of its syntax. AKA not n00b friendly. Though certainly powerful.
But this was still satisfactory, even though the UI lagged ALOT especially (in my experience with it) when using Wacom tablets, it was still usable from simple things to advanced things, so it filled a great niche.

CS4 to me, seems to want to destroy everything Flash stood for.
Ill admit, i was excited for Astro (Flash 10s indev codename), i was excited for the Hydra Language, i was excited for a great deal many of things, considering how hacked together CS3 felt (i feel everything was hacked together as a quick re branding and skinning to fit with the CS3 suite, and never truly optimized)

My experience with Flash CS4 has been less than satisfactory.
Not only am i experiencing backwards compatability FAULTS (such as when using AS2.0 to create new empty movie clips, sometimes itd fill the damn thing with a semi-opaque BLACK), and when streaming audio off a server using the Flash 10 player would garble the sound inappropriately (on some computers, not all), leads me to believe the Flash 10 player wasn't exactly tested by Adobe labs, and rather going on the hope and prayer that the fanbase would note all the issues and write in, while companies like the one i work for, which base their entire operation on Flash developed applications, have to suffer INSANE and incurable Troubleshooting issues (aka MY department) simply because the end client decided to update their player??
Say what you want, but try to envision a company spending well over $15g's on a suite of Flash Safety Presentations, only to have the content show up as a bunch of Black squares with the audio completely FUCKED, and then US, the developers of that content, having to tell the client (whos already foaming at the mouth) that there wasn't really much we could do about it. And spending tens of thousands of dollars and many man-months thinking up workarounds with an already tight schedule.

this.createEmptyMovieClip("MCName", 1000);
this.MCName._width = 550;
this.MCName._height = 400;

should NOT, and i do repeat SHOULD NOT, be filled with semi-transparent BLACK. that is bullshit.

though at press time, these issues seem to have been corrected, and the company i work for has also called up adobe to bitch and piss themselves about this crap themselves.

lets not forget though, about "Simple Authoring Tools" has been royally buttfucked too. In my initial testing, all i did was make a ball tween form one side to another.
Nope.

Creating the motion tween does nothing, until you edit its fucking graph.
It actually took me a few minutes to realize "Create Classic Tween" was buried deep in the Context menu.
No.
And on top of that, would it have KILLED them to have the graph auto create as a straight line from point a to point B? I mean classic tweens are EXACTLY like that already!

the thing that really brings my intestines in a constant knot, is how forced AS3.0 is now with CS4. Like holy crap could they have been less Geurilla Warfare about it? Ok i get it, you dont want to support AS2.0 anymore, i can understand you wanting AS3.0 in the spotlight. But do you have to FORCE me to recode everything in AS3.0 from AS2.0 simply because i want to use your fucking GRAPH or that neat new Skeletal Vertex Animation tool?
AS3.0 can do a bunch of things 2.0 cant, but i can pretty much tell you that most things CS4 does on the authoring side, can be done in AS2.0 if you know what your doing. Skeletal animation aside of maybe.
Why am i so pissed off about this? Why do i have a bug up my ass about this? Because im an AS2.0 programmer, not an AS3.0 programmer. The cultures, fanbase, and even the languages are pretty damn distinct, as i dont want to have to learn a whole new freaking language AND syntax, simply because i want to mix in some of CS4s new features.

Fuck that.

you know, i could go on and on, but i wont, ive said enough. But i will end off on a positive note: I absolute LOVE CS4's UI. It feels artsy, its lightning quick again (for the most part) and definitely gets the job done.
The only thing i dont like is how they made the long standing horizontal "Properties" panel, fucking Vertical?! Its SO awkward now having a floating window (one of my biggest pet peeves in computers of all time, which is why me and Mac dont get along) floating above my goddamn work area when i jsut want to Dock it, out of the way, and i do NOT want it undernethe my tools menu, thats ridiculous! I have to extend out my tools window just to see everything, taking up stage real-estate!

*ahem*

Flash is dead to me. Ill check out CS5 when thats released, but for now ive been burned twice in a row now by Flash, fool me once, fool me twice.

i miss 8, but i hate Vista Aero Basic... it bugs me enough that i dont use it because of its Vista incompatibility.

am i picky? Sure as hell i am.

im done ranting now, good day and good night.

(edited for weird spelling mistakes Chrome failed to catch :\)