Those PDFs

[username:]

every time I go into an Apple Store I go to the MacBooks and open PDFs.
Every time I get a beachball on opening, then once the file is open, if I try to pan and zoom, I get more beach balls.

Plain text PDFs are fine, but anything with a picture or graphics the MacBook cannot cope.

How do people live with this?

 

[BrianBaughn]

They're probably like me and open them at home where it's fast.

 

[BeefCake 15]

every time I go into an Apple Store I go to the MacBooks and open PDFs.
Every time I get a beachball on opening, then once the file is open, if I try to pan and zoom, I get more beach balls.

Plain text PDFs are fine, but anything with a picture or graphics the MacBook cannot cope.

How do people live with this?

I don't understand the issue, is it how Macs deal with PDFs or is it Apple Store Macs working with PDFs? Do you have another model that works better with PDFs vs. the ones at the store? Which Mac are you testing this on at the store?

 

[zhenya]

Not sure what you are doing. I just tried opening a bunch of pdf manuals I have - heavy mix of images and text - 80MB - 300MB in size. All opened pretty much instantly, and the only way I ever saw a beach ball was scrolling extremely fast/zooming in and out very fast - totally not realistic usage pattern, and even then it was only once for a half a second.

 

[username:]

I don't understand the issue, is it how Macs deal with PDFs or is it Apple Store Macs working with PDFs? Do you have another model that works better with PDFs vs. the ones at the store? Which Mac are you testing this on at the store?

I said MacBook. I didn't say MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. I said MacBook.
I have a MacBook Air that is fine with PDFs. MacBooks suck with them. And just are slow in general.
How do people live with that??

 

[zhenya]

Yet you conveniently ignore the experiences of an actual owner who says otherwise...

What's the purpose of this thread?

 

[username:]

So you're saying the in store computers have no relation to the performance of pruchased MacBooks?

 

[username:]

Yet you conveniently ignore the experiences of an actual owner who says otherwise...

What's the purpose of this thread?

The purpose is to ask how people get around the slowness of the MacBook in particular when reading PDFs

 

[zhenya]

Are you being purposefully obtuse? There is no slowness to 'get around' that's why you aren't getting any further answers here.

 

[fatefulwhisper]

every time I go into an Apple Store I go to the MacBooks and open PDFs.
Every time I get a beachball on opening, then once the file is open, if I try to pan and zoom, I get more beach balls.

Plain text PDFs are fine, but anything with a picture or graphics the MacBook cannot cope.

How do people live with this?

There's already a thread about this: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-does-this-handle-large-pdfs.1881164

TLDR: It's an issue w/ Mac OS X, not the new MacBooks. Example PDF: http://www.ncc-ccn.gc.ca/sites/defa...l-capital-greenbelt-all-seasons-trail-map.pdf

If you open the same exact PDF w/ Adobe's Official PDF reader (https://get.adobe.com/reader/), there are no issues. I believe since Apple didn't invent PDF, they didn't optimize the reader (Preview), but then again, it wasn't really Apple's responsibility to make Preview a robust app for just PDF's (it does a whole lot more than just open PDF's). Supposedly, this issue has been resolved in the new El Capitan OS: https://www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/ (search for "Across-the-board")

If it really bothers you that Apple's Preview can't open the PDF's you want, then download Adobe's Reader (from the people who invented PDF), and your problems are solved.

 

[Queen6]

The issue is predominantly with Preview, it`s PDF rendering engine has been broken for some time. This can result in choppy scrolling with some PDF documents, use Skim or Apple`s QuickView and the difference is clear.

I use my own 1.2 Retina MacBook in an engineering environment and have literally thousands of technical documents in PDF format, for the most part Preview is more than adequate. What the OP is describing certainly does not match my observations of using the rMB in real world usage.

Q-6

 

[BeefCake 15]

I said MacBook. I didn't say MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. I said MacBook.
I have a MacBook Air that is fine with PDFs. MacBooks suck with them. And just are slow in general.
How do people live with that??

Don't buy the freaking computer if you're so pissed at it and any body that's trying to help you resolve an issue... Don't worry how they live with it

 

[username:]

Using the MacBook in store, it just seems frustratingly slow to do anything. It reminds me of using a windoze laptop back in the early 2000s.
But nobody seems to have the same issue so I guess it either doesn't bother anyone or somehow the multiple MacBooks I've played with were not typical of the usual "real world" MacBooks.
Also, there is no way I would ever download Adobe Pdf reader. Last time I did that my MacBook Air stopped working.

 

[zhenya]

Rarely did this emoticon more apply.

 

[fatefulwhisper]

Using the MacBook in store, it just seems frustratingly slow to do anything. It reminds me of using a windoze laptop back in the early 2000s.
But nobody seems to have the same issue so I guess it either doesn't bother anyone or somehow the multiple MacBooks I've played with were not typical of the usual "real world" MacBooks.
Also, there is no way I would ever download Adobe Pdf reader. Last time I did that my MacBook Air stopped working.

wow... just wow. i'm really speechless right now.

 

[Hastings101]

That Macbook processor people keep crying about scores better in benchmarks than my 2010 iMac with a crappy i3 processor, and that machine doesn't feel slow at all. So I doubt the new Macbooks are as slow as a "windoze" laptop in the 2000s haha. More likely it's a bug with PDFs in the awful mess that is Yosemite, like the guy above said.

 

[username:]

That Macbook processor people keep crying about scores better in benchmarks than my 2010 iMac with a crappy i3 processor, and that machine doesn't feel slow at all. So I doubt the new Macbooks are as slow as a "windoze" laptop in the 2000s haha. More likely it's a bug with PDFs in the awful mess that is Yosemite, like the guy above said.

It could be Yosemite, but they work fine on my MBA with Yosemite.
I would love to buy a MacBook for the retina screen, but I use PDFs a lot and in store the performance is not good enough for me.
Yet nobody has the same experience, actually nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
I guess I'll wait a bit, maybe for an update or El capitan.

 

[2984839]

I suspect the software. My PowerBook and T42 have no problems with most PDFs using xpdf.

 

[MyopicPaideia]

It could be Yosemite, but they work fine on my MBA with Yosemite.
I would love to buy a MacBook for the retina screen, but I use PDFs a lot and in store the performance is not good enough for me.
Yet nobody has the same experience, actually nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
I guess I'll wait a bit, maybe for an update or El capitan.

Are you loading up and viewing the PDF's on the Macbook in Safari? Or are you downloading them and then viewing via the Preview App?

I have noted a profound difference in performance between viewing PDF's in the Safari web browser and downloading them and opening them with Preview. Preview is much smoother than Safari. By the same token, I have had mixed experience when using Adobe Acrobat 10 vs Preview. Seems preview is faster with simpler PDF's, but Adobe better with Graphics/Photo intensive PDF's.

Also do note that this performance difference between the different PDF rendering apps seems more pronounced when using the rMB vs an MBA.

 

[MyopicPaideia]

Oops, duplicate post

 

[Queen6]

I suspect the software. My PowerBook and T42 have no problems with most PDFs using xpdf.

Open the problem PDF in Preview and then open in QuickView, then you will see on 10.10 it`s definitely software, as stated performance in Safari is generally worse.

Q-6