Acrobat for Mac vs. Acrobat for Windows
Since the announcement of Acrobat 8, many people have been taking this opportunity to blast Adobe for their “poor treatment of the Mac OS” Acrobat user - none more vehemently than my friend John Welsh.
As a long time Mac user (bought my 128K Mac in the first 100 days they were available!) as well as a heavy Windows user (since most of my clients are), I wanted to take the opportunity to bring some facts to the table.
I’d like to start by breaking the Acrobat Professional package into 3 parts.
- Acrobat Professional
- 3rd party application integration (aka PDFMakers)
- LiveCycle Designer
Taking these in reverse order, LCDesigner continues to be a Windows-only application with Acrobat 8. Some have suggested “hacks” that would enable Designer to run on Mac - I agree with John that this is NOT a real solution. I also am of the belief that Designer will NEVER show up on the Mac…but for good reasons! If you consider that the Mac users who want Designer aren’t (mostly) in “IT”, they are instead “Creative Professionals” - then I would prefer to see Adobe integrated form creation support into their CS application (esp. Illustrator & InDesign). This would address the end-goal of the user - making Acrobat forms - but in an environment that is more to their liking (since Designer is NOT “graphic designer friendly”). I say this only as my suggestion/recommendation to Adobe - I know nothing!
Next, let’s look at the situation with PDFMakers…It sucks to be a Mac user 
. I’ve heard all the arguments - both technical and marketing - for why their are fewer and less-functional Makers for the Mac. But I think this is a case where, while Adobe is certainly not giving Mac users a fair shake, it just doesn’t matter! The right solution for this, IMHO, is for Apple to continue to improve the built-in PDF support and for developers to start leveraging it to provide better PDFs from their own applications. Also, I think this is an excellent opportunity for 3rd party Mac developers - just as it is on Windows.
Last but certainly not least - the main application, Acrobat Professional. While the majority of the application is written in a cross-platform manner (Acrobat SDK), sitting on top of that is a native application. In the case of Acrobat 8, this is a COMPLETELY NEW Cocoa-based Universal Binary! You can’t get more “drinking the Apple Kool-Aid” then that 
. (FYI: Distiller 7 was also a complete rewrite as a Cocoa-based application). Within the application, there is 100% feature parity - except where the feature integrates with a specific OS platform or 3rd party application. For example, on Windows, there are commands for integrating comments into Office or communicating with MSCAPI that simply aren’t available on the Mac. HOWEVER, Mac users aren’t left out as we have Keychain integration and (limited) Services support. In addition, printing from Acrobat Mac is BETTER (faster & higher quality) than on Windows due to close integration with the CUPS printing system on Mac OS X.
Bottom line - yes, there are some things that come in the Acrobat package where Windows users are getting “more for their money”. But Mac users are NOT second class - we are getting a top notch, Mac-savvy, core application from Adobe.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Leonard,
I would like to offer an opinion on your first remark (3rd point) related to forms creation and dispel what I think is a raging myth related to forms design. If you take a look at the vast world of forms from point-of-sale forms in catalogs and all other printed material, forms on the web, and every conceivable place forms appear I think you’ll find that it is the creative professionals who are assembling the layout of forms a thousand to one over IT people. You don’t really believe that the IT people at Adobe are coming up with the new logo images, layouts, and field appearances on forms do you? On commercial Web sites I think you’ll find most often a marriage between IT people and creative people who create forms designs. Quite often you find the IT people guiding the creative pros for the form design that needs to be consistent with the data flow.
I believe a much less likely proposition that we’ll see for Designer appearing on the Mac is for Illustrator or InDesign to implement dynamic form creation and sub forms. A much more logical solution is to continue with a product that was created solely for the purpose of designing forms.
LiveCycle Designer is both a forms design application and a forms creation tool. What we find in the latest incarnation of Designer in version 8 is some attention paid to the form creation side with very little attention paid to the design side. IMHO I think that adding layers, a UI consistent with InDesign and GoLive, and more design features will greatly enhance the product. Even PDF backgrounds aren’t that impressive when you realize that you can’t use a layout grid or guidelines when these backgrounds are used.
Having LCD available to Mac users just helps close the gaps now existing in forms development workflows where design professionals and IT people corroborate on electronic forms creation.
ted
November 18th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Leonard,
Could you please provide some details or information about why printing from Mac is higher quality than from Windows? I do not have a clear idea of what it is CUPS on the MAc land, and what it provides from improve quality.
Thanks in advance
September 28th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Thanks in advance
mirc indir