First, a bit of an aside. The sheer amount of negativity from me towards Adobe could easily be misconstrued as me finding the company’s engineers and developers incompetent and untalented. Quite the opposite is the case — I’m well aware there are many highly capable, dedicated people over at Adobe. What angers me is how little their potential is actually used. I don’t care who’s responsible either; I care about the end result. In short, my beef with Creative Suite-era Adobe is: as far as I’m concerned, there is a huge discrepancy between what they could achieve and what they do achieve.

That said, on to it!

If you thought that meaningless Web 2.0-esque blue gradient square blob with “Ps” written on it was a temporary placeholder icon for Photoshop CS 3, think again. They made a huge collection of these atrocities they dare call “icons”.

For a company that focuses on creating software for creative professionals, these are decidedly uncreative and unprofessional. They are also most certainly not what an icon ought to be.

If this were some cruel joke, it wouldn’t even be all that funny.

Update: Perhaps the best commentary I’ve seen on this matter is the following: