Adobe Acrobat 8 and Mac Marginization

[baleensavage]

Has anyone else noticed that Adobe appears to have canned all versions of Acrobat for Mac except Premium? If you check out Adobe's site or any store, the only version of Acrobat Standard 8 is for Windows.

Now, they are still in the preorder stage and this may change, but it does not bode well. If they truly have killed Acrobat Standard for Mac this will be a big hit to many businesses that use Mac software. Many Acrobat users don't need the $400 professional version and instead can get by with the $300 Standard or even the Elements version. Businesses often have to buy tons of these at a pop and that $100 per computer can make a huge difference. Also in the publishing world, there is hardly any software more essential nowadays than Acrobat. If Adobe is going to marginalize on any software Acrobat should not be it. Besides, what's next to go? Flash Standard? Photoshop Elements?

 

[bousozoku]

I was surprised to find that there was a standard version of Acrobat 7 for Mac, and of all places, there were retail boxes in Office Depot. I thought that they had only a Premium version for quite a while now.

Part of the problem was that Apple announced that they were using PDF internally with Mac OS X and that every application would automatically have PDF output without Adobe's assistance.

You can even find freeware and shareware to edit the files now, so Adobe's lightest version really isn't necessary. However, Adobe's just being stubborn and they'll attribute it to market failure.

Photoshop Elements sells pretty well and I think you'll see it quite a long time, but you'll never see Photo Album or Premiere Elements or a number of their other cheaper products because Apple has something that competes directly.

 

[baleensavage]

Part of the problem was that Apple announced that they were using PDF internally with Mac OS X and that every application would automatically have PDF output without Adobe's assistance.

You can even find freeware and shareware to edit the files now, so Adobe's lightest version really isn't necessary. However, Adobe's just being stubborn and they'll attribute it to market failure.

I agree that Acrobat Elements is largely useless on a Mac. They didn't even offer that one in version 7. But Acrobat Standard actaully had most of the important features, while still trimming from the cost.

The problem is that while Apple has included the basic PDF tools in their software, there still really is no alternative to Acrobat for complete functionality. For example, Previews PDF markup tools consist of a postit function and a red circle tool. This doesn't even come close to the extensive markup tools that Acrobat has. And while the "Compress PDF" and "Encrypt PDF" options are useful presets, with Apple's built in PDF generation you really have no way to set job options.

I just hate how these big software companies like Adobe keep getting rid of choices on the Mac platform. You would think with Apple's rising popularity that a company like Adobe, who really would be nowhere without Apple, would be adding Mac programs not taking them away. But I guess that's just wishful thinking in a Windows world.

 

[bousozoku]

I agree that Acrobat Elements is largely useless on a Mac. They didn't even offer that one in version 7. But Acrobat Standard actaully had most of the important features, while still trimming from the cost.

The problem is that while Apple has included the basic PDF tools in their software, there still really is no alternative to Acrobat for complete functionality. For example, Previews PDF markup tools consist of a postit function and a red circle tool. This doesn't even come close to the extensive markup tools that Acrobat has. And while the "Compress PDF" and "Encrypt PDF" options are useful presets, with Apple's built in PDF generation you really have no way to set job options.

I just hate how these big software companies like Adobe keep getting rid of choices on the Mac platform. You would think with Apple's rising popularity that a company like Adobe, who really would be nowhere without Apple, would be adding Mac programs not taking them away. But I guess that's just wishful thinking in a Windows world.

Consider that most offices use Windows, not Mac OS X and it's pretty clear why they do things with what they consider to be their general office version of Acrobat and why the Premium version is directed toward Mac users who would normally be Graphics-oriented. They may be money hungry and arrogant, but they're not dummies. Right now, Microsoft has their sights set on implementing their own format and Windows is where Adobe has to concentrate. Should Microsoft decide to do something on Mac OS X, you know that Adobe would be concerned there but I doubt that Microsoft would ever be precise enough to give portable documents that could be used by print houses.

I wish there was at least, an annotation tool within Mac OS X, so you could add your own notes to .pdf files. The average user could use that. At least, you can bookmark. Preview does a lot of things but it doesn't do any of them really well. Maybe, Apple will be addressing that in Leopard.