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I know, I know, I should stop being surprised that every release of Acrobat 9 for the Mac sucks a little bit more. But I am, at least somewhat. Every time.
So, in a quick look, based solely on what you can see at Adobe's Acrobat site, what do Mac users not get?
First, we don't get Standard. This isn't new mind you. Due to Adobe's complete and utter Mac marketing incompetence, along with their apathy towards any market that isn't full to bursting with 50,000 seat companies, they decided to drop Standard on the Mac. So if you need more than Reader and you want it to come from Adobe, your starting point is an MSRP of $449 new, or $159 new. (All monetary units are US Dollars.)
So what do you get for that? Well, you get most of the same features of the Windows users. What don't you get? Well, for 9, Adobe dropped Office integration. True, it sucked before, but now they stopped pretending. Now, Adobe won't tell you the real reason why unless you smack them around a bit but it comes down to the fact that they refuse, will not use any language for interapplication scripting but VBA.
No, not AppleScript, you're new here if you're asking that. The Acrobat team point-blank refuses to use anything that isn't VBA. So Office 2008 users? Fuck you, get a real copy of Office. One with VBA. Entourage users? Goddamned hippies, use a real client, like Outlook or Notes. Go ahead and complain, you know what you'll get told? I do, and it's here on the site courtesy of Leonard Rosenthal, from the Acrobat Team:
Yes, the PDFMaker macros are no longer present on the Mac. HOWEVER, the reason has NOTHING to do with VBA. As you point out, we could have continued to offer a LIMITED (compared to the Windows product) set of Macros using AppleScript/WebCapture, etc. However, we decided that we would rather "get it right" and spend the time to develop functionally equivalent solutions on the Mac instead of giving our users a "half-assed" product. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete that work in the Acrobat 9 time frame. When it's complete - you'll get it.That's a bullshit answer. They had NO problem, and I mean NONE shipping a half-assed version of the Windows Macros from Acrobat 5 through Acrobat 8. Half-assed didn't bother them until they couldn't use VBA. Then all of a sudden, stripping out functionality is the right solution, rather than using AppleScript to deliver what would have been far more capability than they'd ever shipped with regard to Office Integration.
They may suck as Mac ISVs, but the Acrobat team kicks ASS when it comes to bullshitting you.
You can't convert email to PDF. Because evidently, this is so hard on the Mac, that only a DEITY could do it. So the only explanation as to why I was able to script this (in AppleScript and shell) from Entourage to Acrobat is that Adobe is either bullshitting Mac users once again, and won't do interapplication scripting in anything but VBA, or I'm smarter than the entire Acrobat team.
Now, while the latter does warm the cockles of my heart, reality and past behavior dictates that the answer here is "The Acrobat team couldn't do it in VBA, so they won't fuckin' do it at all". Once again, bullshit.
There's an enhanced version of the web page capture, but the part where you can get just a part of the web page? Windows Only.
It doesn't specifically say Windows only, but since Acrobat on the Mac doesn't talk to Office, and there's no AutoCAD on the Mac anymore, I'm not sure how this feature will be able to work on the Mac:
"Export comments to Word or AutoCAD
Select and export comments back to your original Word or AutoCAD file. Comments appear in Word as tracked changes and in AutoCAD as a separate layer."
I'm real sure that LiveCycle Designer is still Windows only, so this bit should have the Windows-only asterisk too:
"Create dynamic forms Enhanced
Use Adobe LiveCycle Designer, a professional form design tool included with Acrobat 9 Pro, to further customize and automate dynamic XML forms."
How sure of that am I? Well, once again, here's my source. That's right folks, let's welcome back Leonard Rosenthal:
While the need for LiveCycle Designer on the Mac may have been an issue in the past, we believe that the new "Forms Editing" mode of Acrobat 9 (yes, on the Mac!) combined with our new forms marketing/positioning will remove that requirement. If you feel otherwise, please let me know why you believe Designer is still a necessity on the Mac.
Oh Leonard. I don't have to tell you why I think it's necessary. One of your Adobe Cohorts did that for me:
One of the most requested features that we have in the LiveCycle community is to run LiveCycle Designer on a Mac. Well, good news. You can now run LiveCycle Designer 7.1 on Intel based Macs, using CrossOver Mac from CodeWeavers. The following instructions will work with CrossOver Mac, as well as CrossOver Linux, for those of you wanting to run LiveCycle Designer on Linux.This is completely unsupported. If you need help, please visit the Adobe LiveCycle Designer on Mac forum on adobeforums.com.
That's how Adobe responds to something that is one of the most requested features in the LiveCycle community: Let's give them something else. Leonard, we could always edit forms in Acrobat. It just sucked. Somehow, I don't see it perfectly duplicating LiveCycle Designer's featureset. So it's not quite going to be able to transparently roundtrip is it? No, somehow, I doubt it. Better chrome on the wrong tool doesn't make it the right tool.
This one:
"Easily create and manage electronic forms New
Use the new Form Wizard to convert Microsoft Word and Excel documents or scanned paper to fillable PDF forms."
may work on the Mac, but I'd want to see it in action first. Considering that Adobe's main Acrobat Evangelist , Lori DeFurio didn't show this feature working with Word/Excel on the Mac, but ended up using InDesign as the source for the Mac version, I have extreme doubts. (When it comes to Acrobat, verify, THEN trust.)
Now, there is Acrobat Pro Extended, which adds support for things like 3D object conversion, a new presentation tool, PDF Map creation,etc.
I won't go over the whole list but there are a few that just stand out as "WTF?"
"Create interactive, on-demand presentations New
Use Adobe Presenter, included with Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, to liven up your Microsoft PowerPoint slides with video, voice-over, demos, and interactive quizzes, and then output to PDF for reliable, cross-platform sharing."
Yeah, after all, who does presentations on a Mac? It's not like we have PowerPoint on the Mac or anything.
"Easily create PDF documents from OpenGL applications
Instantly capture your CAD designs in Adobe PDF with one-button ease from OpenGL-based applications on Microsoft® Windows® and UNIX® systems."
OpenGL? UNIX? On a Mac? Yeah, right, when pigs fly out of my butt.
Once again, the Acrobat team shows exactly what they think of their Mac users: Very Little.
Again, if they'd just man the fuck up and say: "The Mac is not important to us, we only care about big enterprise, and we're not going to do more than the minimal amount of work, including marketing, for that platform. You get what we give you and you'll like it. What choice do you have? We're Adobe, bitches!", they'd still be kind of a douchebag collective, but they'd at least have stopped bullshitting their customers.
What am I thinking, it's Acrobat. Bullshitting their Mac customers is what they do best!
Posted by John C. Welch at 12:03 | Permalink
Comments
I hope Macworld.com asks you to review Acrobat 9. More people need to be aware of how Adobe treats its Mac users with such contempt.
Posted by:
Grantwood 
|
June 25, 2008 1:29 PM
Well, a review for Macworld would be, shall we say, more tempered in its wording, but I think I could still get the point across.
Posted by:
John C. Welch 
|
June 25, 2008 1:58 PM
Yeah, I wasn't suggesting a verbatim review ;o)
Posted by:
Grantwood |
June 25, 2008 2:02 PM
Not that I'm anxiously waiting for Adobe Reader 9, but shouldn't it be available along with the rest of the Acrobat family? I only see 8.1.2 available for download.
Posted by:
Grantwood |
June 25, 2008 8:58 PM
I agree completely that Adobe's treatment of Mac customers has been 'half-assed' for years now.
I do have to ask, though... Leonard Rosenthal used to be a worthy guy, back when he worked at Aladdin. (Back when Aladdin was, you know, *good*, Stuffit was still relatively lean and mean, a program worth having on your desktop, and when they actually made other cool programs like ShortCut.) Has he gone that far downhill?
Posted by:
The_Prof |
June 25, 2008 10:36 PM
Leonard is being a good Adobe trooper. THe problem is, he keeps trying to play the "I'm Leonard Rosenthal, and too smart for you to even THINK of contradicting me" game, but reality isn't playing along.
Posted by:
John C. Welch |
June 27, 2008 2:34 PM
