When will Apple stop neglecting Preview?

[businessnumbersmoneypeopl]

Preview has been part of the every Apple's computer operating system since 1989. Yet it seems that very little attention has been going into optimizing the app, in contrast to the progress with Safari.

I know Preview is a more marginal product compared to browsers, where competition is both more fierce and more important for the broader ecosystems (Google vs. Apple). Yet Preview still essential for many professionals who have to work with lots of pdf documents. This is a quite large group of people in a range of industries, not to mention students.

I find it astonishing that a 2020 Macbook Pro cannot handle a big pdf file with lots of annotations and highlights without a significant lag. The same happens with a large number of pdf documents open. I'm not an engineer but it sure feels strange that 2020 pro computers cannot handle properly a file format that was invented 29 years ago.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I was under the impression that anyone needing to do professional-level PDF work was using a third-party app. It doesn't really have anything to do with what kind of computer you're on…except for minimum-required system specs.

 

[MacGizmo]

Preview has not been around since 1989. It didn't exist until Mac OS X v.1 shipped in 2000. Preview was originally part of NeXTSTEP as of 1989, but that's not the same thing.

Preview is not widely used by any professional for anything. It was meant as a consumer-level PDF and image viewer, specifically for people who were NOT professionals and had simple needs. Anyone with even remotely serious needs uses Adobe Acrobat, or one of the numerous pro-level PDF editors. The only reason Preview even exists on macOS, and NeXSTEP before that, is that both OS' used Postscript Display language at the core of their OS – so providing a viewer for Postscript files (which is basically what a PDF is) was as easy as including a simple text editor.

Apple has put a lot into Preview over the years. It started as nothing more than a viewer, but they've added quite a bit in the way of editing and other features. I'm not sure what else they can do with it to make it more capable without directly competing with Adobe Acrobat, which they absolutely do NOT want to do.

Not to ignore your problem, I point out these things because you're attempting to use the app for something it probably wasn't designed to handle. But it's hard to say, because:

• What do you consider a "big PDF file?"
• What do you consider "lots of annotations and highlights?"
• What is "significant lag?"
• What do you consider "a large number of pdf documents open?"
• How much RAM do you have on your Mac?
• What video card do you have on your Mac?