Awful usability problem in Photoshop Elements 2.0

The funny thing about this particular “usability” problem is that I honest-to-goodness can’t use the application! I tried to fire up Photoshop Elements on my Mac just now, and it’s hung up trying to receive some kind of update from Adobe. There’s a Cancel button that doesn’t do anything. There’s a progress meter that’s stuck halfway. The cursor is the spinning color wheel (same as the hourglass, for those of you using Windows). While it’s doing this, Photoshop Elements is also hogging all of my CPU… looks like someone got into an infinite loop.

The thing is, I don’t care about whatever silly file Adobe wants to update. I just want to scan something! They’ve actually rendererd the software unlaunchable! Argh.