macOS 10.12.2 Users Urged to Avoid Using 'Work-in-Progress' Preview App to Edit PDFs

[Ebenezum]

Oh the humanity! Get a grip people! You all act like it's the end of the world or something. I personally have never used preview for anything related to PDFs. I grew up with Adobe Acrobat Reader and Pro and the first thing I do with a new Mac is set all my PDFs to open with Acrobat Pro using the get info command. If you think this is bad buy a cheap Windows laptop and get FoxIt for Windows PDFs and get ready for pure hell! Preview has always been like the Stickies app for me since I rarely use it and the interface is probably the worst thing since Windows 2.0. Although it could be and should be better, I never lost any sleep thinking that Apple was going down the tubes because of the Preview App! Haaaa! Their customer satisfaction rating isn't near the top for nothing. But Whiners will whine and babies will cry. Meanwhile, I will be working in the new and improved, or much improved, Final Cut Pro 10.3.1. I also Use Adobe Creative Cloud Apps which have lots of bugs in their new versions as well, but nothing major that affected workflow or getting the job done. I suggest if you wanna hear about real problems talk to my Windows 10 buddies! Peace Out!

Preview is just the tip of the iceberg. Real problem is the new PDFKit which is used by many third party software. I have no idea why Apple thought it would be ready for release when it contains serious bugs that in the worst case leads to data loss. Released OS should not contain these kind of bugs in any circumstances.

This reminds me of Yosemite with discovered bugs which were only fixed after 8 months after Yosemite was released, it remains to be seen how long it will take for Apple to fix PDFKit.

 

[kingtj]

Right! And what I find disturbing too is that all of these changes, breaking things, are apparently only so Apple can standardize the PDFKit functionality between OS X and iOS.

Why even CARE if that's unified, unless it's part of the suspected goal Apple has had for a while now of merging both together in the future? Ever since they put "Launchpad" into OS X, people had concerns that this was on Apple's secret roadmap for the future. Kill off the Mac as we know it, and merge the iPad and iOS into OS X with devices that try to do it all under one operating system (more like Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 tablet).

Preview is just the tip of the iceberg. Real problem is the new PDFKit which is used by many third party software. I have no idea why Apple thought it would be ready for release when it contains serious bugs that in the worst case leads to data loss. Released OS should not contain these kind of bugs in any circumstances.

This reminds me of Yosemite with discovered bugs which were only fixed after 8 months after Yosemite was released, it remains to be seen how long it will take for Apple to fix PDFKit.

 

[AstroGimp]

All,

I had ALL these issues especially with encrypted PDFs which were always completely blank! I just installed 10.12.3 Beta 2 and it appears that ALL of my issues have been resolved!!

I just tested a scan with OCR and it looks good so the invisible OCR layer IS in fact there!!

I'm not sure if Apple fixed their new PDFKit, or simply realized that the new one was a POS and reverted back to the old. I'm hoping they went back to the old one cause the new one shouldn't have gotten out the door!

So, I'd highly recommend you sigh up for the beta problem and download it ASAP!

Good luck and post your results!!

 

[infantrytrophy]

All,

I had ALL these issues especially with encrypted PDFs which were always completely blank! I just installed 10.12.3 Beta 2 and it appears that ALL of my issues have been resolved!!

I just tested a scan with OCR and it looks good so the invisible OCR layer IS in fact there!!

I'm not sure if Apple fixed their new PDFKit, or simply realized that the new one was a POS and reverted back to the old. I'm hoping they went back to the old one cause the new one shouldn't have gotten out the door!

So, I'd highly recommend you sigh up for the beta problem and download it ASAP!

Good luck and post your results!!

AstroGimp,

Thanks for the info. That's great news!

Just to clarify- did you edit the scanned PDF with Preview? And which scanner/software combo was used to scan the document?

The problem I have is corruption of the PDF file only after editing with Preview, then saving the edited document. OCR layer was OK before editing with Preview. And this problem occurred only with documents scanned with the ScanSnap 1500M using ScanSnap Manager v 3.2 L90. This software uses ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap v4.1 for the OCR part. OCR'd PDF files created with the IOS app "Scanbot" are not affected in this way, nor are other PDF files downloaded from various external sources (bank statements, utility bills, etc.).

Because the problem appears isolated to only specific documents created in the above manner, I am uneasy about using this scanner/software combo for archiving documents in the future. Could it be that these documents do not comply with some required PDF standard? Maybe a future version of Preview or some other PDF-capable software will be a problem as well.

Thanks again.

 

[WolfSnap]

All,

I had ALL these issues especially with encrypted PDFs which were always completely blank! I just installed 10.12.3 Beta 2 and it appears that ALL of my issues have been resolved!!

I just tested a scan with OCR and it looks good so the invisible OCR layer IS in fact there!!

I'm not sure if Apple fixed their new PDFKit, or simply realized that the new one was a POS and reverted back to the old. I'm hoping they went back to the old one cause the new one shouldn't have gotten out the door!

So, I'd highly recommend you sigh up for the beta problem and download it ASAP!

Good luck and post your results!!

10.12.3 beta 2 didn't work for me. I actually installed it first to test, but, alas, real estate forms are still b0rked.

Funny thing, when I called Apple, they specifically knew that real estate forms were one of the forms that were having huge issues. So, guessing there's still more work to do to fix it. But, it really is a huge pain.

Also, thanks for PMing me about it -- very thoughtful

 

[AstroGimp]

AstroGimp,

Thanks for the info. That's great news!

Just to clarify- did you edit the scanned PDF with Preview? And which scanner/software combo was used to scan the document?

The problem I have is corruption of the PDF file only after editing with Preview, then saving the edited document. OCR layer was OK before editing with Preview. And this problem occurred only with documents scanned with the ScanSnap 1500M using ScanSnap Manager v 3.2 L90. This software uses ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap v4.1 for the OCR part. OCR'd PDF files created with the IOS app "Scanbot" are not affected in this way, nor are other PDF files downloaded from various external sources (bank statements, utility bills, etc.).

Because the problem appears isolated to only specific documents created in the above manner, I am uneasy about using this scanner/software combo for archiving documents in the future. Could it be that these documents do not comply with some required PDF standard? Maybe a future version of Preview or some other PDF-capable software will be a problem as well.

Thanks again.

Yes, I just edited a scan that I did with my ScanSnap 1300M (!) I should be running the latest and greatest version since installed just the other day. Okay.. Now that I edited and saved it's looking like the OCR layer is now wiped out!

I'll have to run some more tests, but real quick that what appears is going on..

Well, not great, but at least I'm able to view docs again! Now they just need to fix the rest of it!
[doublepost=1483664996][/doublepost]

10.12.3 beta 2 didn't work for me. I actually installed it first to test, but, alas, real estate forms are still b0rked.

Funny thing, when I called Apple, they specifically knew that real estate forms were one of the forms that were having huge issues. So, guessing there's still more work to do to fix it. But, it really is a huge pain.

Also, thanks for PMing me about it -- very thoughtful

Aweee dang!

And yeah, I just found that after you edit an OCR scan it wipes out the layer.. Can't get everything we need, right?

haha... UGH!

Looks like I'll be submitting another bug report!

COME ON APPLE GET IT TOGETHER!!!

And no worries!

 

[maflynn]

I hate this, I really do. Why does Apple continually remove features. Its the old addition through subtraction trick. They say they're making it better by removing features. I get that they're unifying the experience but their track record of re-adding what was removed in their apps is not the best.

PDF handling was one major aspect that I liked in OS X, but now that's been gutted. At least I'm still on 10.11 and I guess little motivation to "upgrade."

 

[rhett7660]

Preview is just the tip of the iceberg. Real problem is the new PDFKit which is used by many third party software. I have no idea why Apple thought it would be ready for release when it contains serious bugs that in the worst case leads to data loss. Released OS should not contain these kind of bugs in any circumstances.

This reminds me of Yosemite with discovered bugs which were only fixed after 8 months after Yosemite was released, it remains to be seen how long it will take for Apple to fix PDFKit.

This. It is a big deal when you as a company, recommend your programming team to use your PDFKIT and dissuade you to use third party or create your own. Then you break it. From my understanding this has been present in all versions of MacOSX Sierra.

Apple needs to fix this and they need to fix this pretty darn quick. This is something that impacts a lot of folks. A lot of them.

 

[AstroGimp]

Yup!

I just submitted another bug report!

 

[infantrytrophy]

Oh the humanity! Get a grip people! You all act like it's the end of the world or something. I personally have never used preview for anything related to PDFs. I grew up with Adobe Acrobat Reader and Pro and the first thing I do with a new Mac is set all my PDFs to open with Acrobat Pro using the get info command. If you think this is bad buy a cheap Windows laptop and get FoxIt for Windows PDFs and get ready for pure hell! Preview has always been like the Stickies app for me since I rarely use it and the interface is probably the worst thing since Windows 2.0. Although it could be and should be better, I never lost any sleep thinking that Apple was going down the tubes because of the Preview App! Haaaa! Their customer satisfaction rating isn't near the top for nothing. But Whiners will whine and babies will cry. Meanwhile, I will be working in the new and improved, or much improved, Final Cut Pro 10.3.1. I also Use Adobe Creative Cloud Apps which have lots of bugs in their new versions as well, but nothing major that affected workflow or getting the job done. I suggest if you wanna hear about real problems talk to my Windows 10 buddies! Peace Out!

Due respect, this issue is more than simply the Preview app. macOS absolutely needs to handle PDF files in a rock-solid way. If macOS cannot do that, it is worthless as a business tool.

As for Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro, forget it. I struggled through several years' worth of Adobe Acrobat Reader versions and one version of Acrobat Pro before banning them from my life forever. Acrobat Reader was hopelessly bloated, slow to load, slow to scroll on a Mac, and simply near-worthless as a PDF reader. When I finally settled on using Preview (under Yosemite and El Capitan) to view, and subsequently perform simple edits and annotations, my life was much less frustrating. Until Apple broke the Preview app (and who knows what else with regard to PDF files), that is.

Apple needs to fix this, pronto!

 

[MacGizmo]

Preview had had issue for some time but it seems not to be an Apple priority as profits are.

Apple isn't a non-profit charity. EVERY company's priority is profit. Period.

While I use Acrobat Pro for everything, I realize that I'm a small minority. There are just a ton of consumers out there that don't need professional software. They rely on the built-in apps—especially since Apple went out of their way to brag about Preview's capabilities for years.

Apple is a CONSUMER-based company. So it's actually quite shocking that they haven't placed more emphasis on fixing issues like this.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Apple isn't a non-profit charity. EVERY company's priority is profit. Period.

While I use Acrobat Pro for everything, I realize that I'm a small minority. There are just a ton of consumers out there that don't need professional software. They rely on the built-in apps—especially since Apple went out of their way to brag about Preview's capabilities for years.

Apple is a CONSUMER-based company. So it's actually quite shocking that they haven't placed more emphasis on fixing issues like this.

Did you hear me say that about Apple? Perhaps you should take a hard look at what is happening within Apple these days and then re-read this thread and not draw early conclusions based on poorly interpreted concerns on this forum. Charity? They seen to give a awful lot to china these days.
[doublepost=1483818086][/doublepost]

Due respect, this issue is more than simply the Preview app. macOS absolutely needs to handle PDF files in a rock-solid way. If macOS cannot do that, it is worthless as a business tool.

As for Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro, forget it. I struggled through several years' worth of Adobe Acrobat Reader versions and one version of Acrobat Pro before banning them from my life forever. Acrobat Reader was hopelessly bloated, slow to load, slow to scroll on a Mac, and simply near-worthless as a PDF reader. When I finally settled on using Preview (under Yosemite and El Capitan) to view, and subsequently perform simple edits and annotations, my life was much less frustrating. Until Apple broke the Preview app (and who knows what else with regard to PDF files), that is.

Apple needs to fix this, pronto!

Have you tried PDF Expert?

 

[infantrytrophy]

Have you tried PDF Expert?

Thanks for the suggestion. I have not tried another macOS PDF app, but I am looking into that now in view of the issues Apple is having with PDF support.

So far, PDF Expert and PDFPen or PDFPen Pro seem to be the leading choices. I currently use PDF Expert on my iPad. It works well for reading PDF files and simple annotations. Extensive work filling multi-page forms is a little tedious on the iPad.

PDFPen Pro for the Mac has OCR support, a desirable feature. This means that you can convert existing PDF files to OCR'd files, either in single file or in batch mode. As far as I know, PDF Expert for macOS does not have that capability.

Another task that I have is to change my scanner or change the scanning software. The change in PDFkit by Apple for macOS Sierra caused substantial problems with my scanner's software (Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager), which relied on PDFkit. So far the best option appears to be switching to Exact Scan (http://exactscan.com/index.html). That change alone will cost $99.

I probably need to buy both ExactScan Pro and either PDF Expert or PDFPen Pro, but it will be expensive. Thanks, Apple, for screwing up perfectly good software. I suppose Apple's mindset is, "If it ain't broke, then keep fixing it 'til is is".

Any thoughts on PDF Expert vs. PDFPen Pro? Does PDF Expert have OCR capability?

 

[dyn]

Currently PDF Expert functionality is limited compared to PDFpen (Pro). That is to be expected since PDFpen has been around much longer. PDF Expert is very new and version 2 already brought the editing levels from Preview-level more closely to that of PDFpen. I don't think they are quite done yet.

Btw, PDFpen's OCR support used to be web based. It would send the PDF to their servers to be OCR'd and then back again. With the current version they seem to be doing this locally. This kind of improvements is also what PDF Expert is going through, it's just that PDFpen has a head start in this. Right now PDF Expert is the cheaper one out of the three. If you are coming from Preview then you are fine with PDF Expert. If you want more editing features then by all means, get PDFpen or even the Pro version.

 

[Val-kyrie]

PDF Expert for the win!

PDF Expert can't replace DEVONthink Pro Office or BookEnds--both of which I use.

 

[infantrytrophy]

PDF Expert can't replace DEVONthink Pro Office or BookEnds--both of which I use.

From a "big picture" viewpoint, are there some unintended consequences of Devonthink Pro Office? I considered that a while back, but finally decided against it because all of the data is in a big, proprietary database. Yes, I know that you can export all of the files as PDFs in the traditional folder/subfolder arrangement, but isn't it true that Devonthink Pro Office data is in a single database?

I like the arrangement of having my documents in a simple folder/subfolder arrangement on the Mac. Easy to back up, and accessible from other computers on my home network without having to install Devonthink on the other computers. I'm even considering putting the documents on a Synology NAS, maybe even accessible remotely. Wouldn't this flexibility be compromised by using Devonthink?

Years ago, back in my Windows days, I saved data in a proprietary format using PaperPort software. Nice software for the time, and I loved the ability to edit PDF files. The default file format, however was a ".max" file. It was a real thrash when I eventually had to convert those files to PDF. Conversion apps are easy to find for Windows, but not for OS X/macOS. Ever since then I have been leery of proprietary files and databases.

 

[Val-kyrie]

From a "big picture" viewpoint, are there some unintended consequences of Devonthink Pro Office? I considered that a while back, but finally decided against it because all of the data is in a big, proprietary database. Yes, I know that you can export all of the files as PDFs in the traditional folder/subfolder arrangement, but isn't it true that Devonthink Pro Office data is in a single database?

I like the arrangement of having my documents in a simple folder/subfolder arrangement on the Mac. Easy to back up, and accessible from other computers on my home network without having to install Devonthink on the other computers. I'm even considering putting the documents on a Synology NAS, maybe even accessible remotely. Wouldn't this flexibility be compromised by using Devonthink?

Years ago, back in my Windows days, I saved data in a proprietary format using PaperPort software. Nice software for the time, and I loved the ability to edit PDF files. The default file format, however was a ".max" file. It was a real thrash when I eventually had to convert those files to PDF. Conversion apps are easy to find for Windows, but not for OS X/macOS. Ever since then I have been leery of proprietary files and databases.

I also came from Windows and I also used to arrange all of my data by subfolders, but my data and the connections I draw from it has become more complex over time, and I needed a database program to help me manage an ever-increasing amount of information.

Originally, DTPO offered the option to index all of one's files (which could become slow as the number of files increased) or it locked all one's files in a proprietary database file. The concern was how to recover one's files, if the need ever arose.

Currently, DTPO still offers the option to index all one's files but the database file is more like an accessible container in which all of one's files are preserved and indexed by the program. (I am not sure where the metadata, tags, smart folders, etc. are stored, but that was never my concern.) Consequently, I am able to archive and connect PDFs, webpages and webarchives, notes, emails, etc., and analyze connections without any fear of losing my individual documents. Yes, all of it is in a database file, but the file can be opened to display everything therein or files can be exported. I have found this solution to be acceptable.

Edit: I keep my database files on a DAS, but I would encourage you to check out DTPO again and ask about using an NAS in the forums--I haven't quite kept up there. I think there is also a way to use DTPO to serve files to a mobile computer or device, but I haven't tried that yet.

 

[WolfSnap]

Good news everybody! 10.12.3 Beta 3 that was released today fixes the PDF issues!

 

[rhett7660]

Good news everybody! 10.12.3 Beta 3 that was released today fixes the PDF issues!

Very nice to hear! Here is hoping the fix/release comes sooner than later!

 

[AstroGimp]

Good news everybody! 10.12.3 Beta 3 that was released today fixes the PDF issues!

Yup! I was able to scan with OCR, save, edit, save and the OCR layer was still there! I was also able to save to encrypted PDF and the OCR layer was still there as well! I also didn't have any issues with existing encrypted PDFs!

WhooHoo!

Looks like Beta 4 just came out so I'm REALLY hoping this wasn't a shorted lived win! Let's hope Apple doesn't have that short of a memory!

 

[infantrytrophy]

Yup! I was able to scan with OCR, save, edit, save and the OCR layer was still there! I was also able to save to encrypted PDF and the OCR layer was still there as well! I also didn't have any issues with existing encrypted PDFs!

WhooHoo!

Looks like Beta 4 just came out so I'm REALLY hoping this wasn't a shorted lived win! Let's hope Apple doesn't have that short of a memory!

Thank you to AstroGimp and WolfSnap for the positive reports on beta 3 of macOS 10.12.3 regarding handling of PDF files.

If convenient for you, please consider re-testing with the 10.12.3 final release and post results in this thread. I'm sure there are several people like me who would appreciate this.

Thanks again.

 

[AstroGimp]

Thank you to AstroGimp and WolfSnap for the positive reports on beta 3 of macOS 10.12.3 regarding handling of PDF files.

If convenient for you, please consider re-testing with the 10.12.3 final release and post results in this thread. I'm sure there are several people like me who would appreciate this.

Thanks again.

No problem, happy to help!

I just installed Beta 4 and everything seems to be good with it as well! I'm thinking Apple heard us!! YEAH!!

We'll have to check but I'm suspecting they just put the old (GOOD!!!) PDFKit back in place, at least for the time being. Since Beta 4 came out so quickly after Beta 3 I'd say a release is due real soon!

 

[WolfSnap]

No problem, happy to help!

I just installed Beta 4 and everything seems to be good with it as well! I'm thinking Apple heard us!! YEAH!!

We'll have to check but I'm suspecting they just put the old (GOOD!!!) PDFKit back in place, at least for the time being. Since Beta 4 came out so quickly after Beta 3 I'd say a release is due real soon!

Actually, they fixed another long standing PDF bug -- so, it wasn't just a replacement...

There was a bug when e-signing using ZipLogix e-signatures (real estate forms).. ZipLogix leaves the form fields open with markers for where the other side's signatures would be.. In the past, the form would display just fine, but the signatures would be missing. They're now visible -- even on the new iPhone beta too!

So, there was a LOT of issues fixed with the PDFkit engine. Very happy camper.. Now Docusign AND ZipLogix works properly! Yay!!

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Good to hear the good news.

 

[bingeciren]

Purchased PDF expert for the Mac when it was discounted and haven't looked back since.

While PDF Expert is an excellent product, and I use the IOS version, I'm having a hard time to see a significant difference between the functionality of the Preview and the PDF Expert. Am I overlooking or missing something?