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Now, with fewer features than the previous version, but at that same great too-high price!

Wait John, did you say fewer features?

Why yes Reader, yes I did!

But how can that be?

Well, it's simple. See, Acrobat's previous utter shit "Some of Office to PDF" Macros are gone, because they relied on VBA, and without VBA in Office 2008, then they won't work!

But that makes sense, right? I mean without VBA, how could they have done those Macros?

Oh simple, Naive Reader! They could have used AppleScript, which, since Office 2004 had been released, had been improved past what that creaky nigh-broken version of VBA offered. Prior to Office 2004, Adobe was indeed limited to VBA, but for the last 4 years? Not so much.

So you mean that Acrobat could have added more and better features in the Macros starting with Office 2004? Even supported Entourage?

Indeed Intrepid Reader. In fact, I showed this was possible with a rather inelgant, but functional AppleScript for Entourage: Structured PDF from Entourage, now at version 1.0.2!

So when the Acrobat team says they can't do proper PDF output from Microsoft Office on the Mac, and that they can't do it at all from Entourage, or really, any non-Adobe application, they're...full of shit?

Ah, the joy of knowledge sweeping out crap! Yes, that's right my Disillusioned Friend! When the Acrobat team says they can't do this, they mean they don't want to do it in any way that's not VBA and identical to how they do it on Windows!

But why?

Because Perplexed Reader, the Acrobat team has been bullshitting their Mac users for so long, they can't stop. Here's the deal: Acrobat is actually a really good application. It does some neat things that are hard to do in other applications. But, because Bruce Chizen et al decided that Adobe needed to be the next Microsoft, and suck Fortune 100 cock, they'd stop actively marketing Acrobat on the Mac other than occasional spasms of OMG, IF YOU DON'T USE ACROBAT, YOUR PDFs WILL BE UNUUUUUUUSABLE!!!!.

So what happens when you stop trying to sell a product to a market segment? Big shock, the sales drop. So by the time Acrobat 5 came out, 90% of Acrobat's sales were on Windows. Ever since, the only marketing done on the Mac for Acrobat is whatever the CS team feels like doing, and as you can see, that's limited to "Includes Adobe Acrobat Pro".

Thanks to this self-fulfilling prophecy, Acrobat sales on the Mac tanked so bad, you can't get Acrobat Standard on the Mac anymore. What did this do to companies who had bought many Standard licenses when Acrobat 8 came out? Well, let's ask one of them what their reaction was:

OWWWWW! MY ASS! IT BURNS! IT BURNS SO BAD!

Basically, it's like this: The Acrobat Team Leadership decided that only designers use Macs. Not programmers, no one in IT. Macs only are used for the making of pretty pictures. So on the Mac, Acrobat is really viewed solely as a better PDF engine for CS. Anything else it does is pretty much luck.

But John, that's completely stupid, and really, is a 1997 viewpoint.

I agree my Disenchanted Reader, but when you are actively ignoring a market segment, and devoting as few resources as possible to them, why do you care about facts? Hell, there are reasonably accurate reports of Acrobat Evangelists presenting in front of a Mac audience with the Windows version of Acrobat, as their MacBook sits forlorn and ignored, because they don't know enough about the Mac to use their own product on the Mac.

John...that's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. How can you be so deliberately ignorant of reality?

Ah my Innocent Reader: That's the Acrobat team for you. If you want to use their product, you'll do it in the way they tell you to, and you'll like it. Oh, it's not just the Mac segment that hates them. Read some of the SMB market comments on Acrobat and dealing with that team. You'll quickly realize that as far as the Acrobat team is concerned, if you aren't buying 50K seats, you don't matter, and you should be happy that the Acrobat team even allows you to buy Acrobat.

But I'm the customer, don't my needs matter even a little?

BAAAAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA...one of the biggest customer requests for Acrobat is to bring their new XML-based forms designer to Acrobat on the Mac. Adobe's answer?

Use WINE

But John, that's unsupported by anyone.

Yep.

So they are just blowing off customer requests unless it's something they were going to do anyway.

Yep.

That fucking sucks.

Yep, even more so because Acrobat is, when it's not giving you the finger, a really nice application that does some neat stuff with PDF that no one else does.

That's even worse!

Yep.

What's the answer then?

For some other party to write an inexpensive Acrobat knockoff for Linux and the Mac that takes care of things like standards - compliant structured PDF output from a variety of applications, doesn't cost $500 bucks, by a team that doesn't treat you like shit because you're not an F100 company. Were someone to do that, I, and a lot of other IT types on many platforms would evangelize the shit out of them.

The money is waiting, all that's needed is product. The scale of the Acrobat team hate by the SMB market in general and the entire Mac user base cannot be overstated, and we all have money. Give us the ability to kick that fucking team off our networks, and we'll send Adobe the videos of the burning product.

<Oh, and to any from Adobe or the Acrobat team who want to argue about this...until your actions reflect your rather weak protestations, and you change the facts of the situation, spare me and the rest of the Mac market the bullshit. You want to prove me wrong with real product that I can buy, I will happily change my opinion, in large type on this site, and any where else I can, but until then? You're all just bullshitting people, and you can't even come close to denying it.>

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Adobe Acrobat Team = Annoying, Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Bullshit

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