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Topic: Re: I hate to feel like an after-thought (Via Email)
Conf: (P-PDF) Mac Issues, Msg: 88983
From: LeonardR
Date: 6/4/2003 01:52 PM

At 10:43 AM 6/4/2003 +1000, p-pdf-mac-issues Listmanager wrote:
>ADOBE REP: Hey, look at the way Acrobat takes the custom
>transitions of bullet points in Power Point and converts them into PDF
>transitions.
>
>ME: Can you do that on a Mac?
>
>ADOBE REP: Uhhhh, no.

That is due to a combination of Microsoft engineering issues, and
Adobe marketing issues. The former in that Microsoft doesn't provide the
same degree of extensibility on the Mac as they do on Windows, and the
latter in that Adobe doesn't see the large number of Office users on Mac OS
and so won't invest the time/$$.

And to me, this is somewhat outside the main Acrobat product -
just as the all the "PDFMakers" (Office, MSIE, Visio, etc.) are...


>ADOBE REP: Hey, look how you can roundtrip comments from
>Acrobat to Word. And all the text and strike-throughs show up.
>
>ME: Can you do that on a Mac?
>
>ADOBE REP: Uhhhh, no.

This isn't just a Mac OS issue - the issue is true on Windows as
well. This particular feature requires Office XP (the latest and greatest)
- so most Windows users won't see this feature!


>ADOBE REP: Hey, look how you can automatically make and e-mail a
>special FDF-wrapped PDF to others for review and comment.
>
>ME: Can you do that on a. . . never mind.

Actually, that DOES work just fine on Mac OS X - I use it often...


>I didn't mind some of the differences between Windows and Mac, but
>it feels like the difference between the platforms is getting bigger, not
>less.

You're wrong on this one. I've done a thorough review of both
products - and they aren't that far apart...EXCEPT in terms of the PDFMakers...

The Acrobat application is almost 100% on par.


>And I know that Adobe would never release a version of InDesign,
>Photoshop, or Illustrator that had such a huge set of features on
>Windows but not on the Mac.

All of those other products are Creative Pro products - Acrobat is
an enterprise product. It has a VERY different market...One that is
dominated by Windows...


Leonard
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Leonard Rosenthol
Chief Technical Officer
PDF Sages, Inc. 215-629-3700 (voice)