I’ve just downloaded and installed Adobe Acrobat Reader for the Mac, both in PowerPC and Intel versions, and there’s just one thing to say: Impressive!
Since Panther I’ve avoided using the Acrobat Reader on the Mac, since the app seemed clunky and dumb to use; using Preview was simply fast and easy. Adobe Acrobat Reader was just a recompilation of the Windows source code to the Mac; but now, the Reader is a fully-fledged Mac application! It feels excellent, it is blazingly fast, it integrates in Safari, and it looks simply great.
The only drawback? It has the most stupid setup process I’ve ever seen on a Mac application:
- Download a DMG file with the installer
- Run the installer, which downloads the DMG file with the application
- Install the reader using the installer in the second DMG file
Why not just letting people download the DMG file, open it, and drag the application in the Applications folder, and basta?? In any case, this happens only once, and after that, the application feels really great. This will bring a nice deal of competition in that small field; the Apple PDF reader included in Preview is really nice to use, but I prefer the fullscreen capabilities of the Adobe Acrobat Reader (and yes, I read a lot of PDF files, so this is kind of a power app for me…)
By the way, the book in the screenshot is “Domain Driven Design Quickly”, feely available online!