What's the big deal? Showing a splash screen for less than 5 seconds (oh yeah, get an SSD) until everything initializes is better than opening a non-functioning UI ("the cloud" is not a solution - what are you going to do when your connection goes bad?). It would be nice to not have it, but for such a bloated program as Photoshop or After Effects, it's pretty much expected...
r: "get an SSD" - I recently upgraded my computer at work, and Photoshop CS3 (which does more than enough for my purposes) opens up in under 1 second. After a day of using this computer with an SSD as the primary hard drive, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered one for my desktop at home. Easily added years of usable life to the computer I bought new in 2008.
