Adobe Reader 8.0 out for Mac

Santa came early, bringing a little gift from Adobe. Adobe Reader (née Acrobat Reader) Version 8.0 is out and guess what... It's Universal Binary and it's kinda fast. Not like lightening fast, but practically zippy. Thanks, Adobe!

Then again, since I have to complain about something (because you all say I do, so I must), I'll tell you how annoyed I am that I have to download an application that I don't want from Adobe in order to download an application that I do want from Adobe. When you go through the download area and click the download link, you get the familiar "Thank you for downloading Adobe Reader. Your Adobe Reader software download will start automatically." But that's a lie. The Reader software isn't downloaded. The Reader Download Manager is downloaded. So you have to download that, install it (grrrrr...), and then it launches and starts downloading the actual program you wanted to begin with, which takes much longer on an 8 Mbps cable connection than it should, and then you finally get the actual Adobe Reader installer. But wait, you're not in the clear yet. After it finally installs, it automatically launches, bugs you a few times about updating the Safari plugin and the immediately starts downloading an update for the Adobe Updater app. I nodded off at that point so I have no idea what happened next, but eventually I opened a PDF with it and noticed how much faster it launched than Adobe Reader 7.0.8. Three dock bounces to launch instead of 6. That must mean it's twice as good, right?

Ok, I've gotten that out of my system now. Did I mention the pretty new red splash screen? That's kinda nice.

Reader 8 requires Mac OS X v. 10.4.3 or later, weighs in at just over 20MB, and it awaits your call.

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Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

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Santa came early, bringing a little gift from Adobe. Adobe Reader (née Acrobat Reader) Version 8.0 is out and guess what... It's...

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Sheri VandeRiet

Well, I don't think I have what could be called a blazing-fast connection (DSL, not cable), but the whole download/installation process only took about 5 minutes, and I did other stuff while it installed. Maybe something is missing. ;-)

I also use Preview most of the time, because Reader has, historically, been slow and hogs RAM. Maybe this version will be an improvement; I'm willing to give it a chance, but will probably use Preview anyway.

December 06 2006 at 8:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

EricW

I find Adobe/Acrobat Reader works better on some docs than Mac's Preview, so I use both. But, it seems so cumbersome to load. It used to seem so streamlined. And I also find annoying that recent version updates have loaded as new applications requiring me to go back and delete previous versions. Why can't the app be intelligent enough to replace older versions?

December 06 2006 at 1:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Etresoft

I would have been very excited about this news had I not already found out about PDFView at http://pdfview.sourceforge.net/. It is just as fast as Preview but much nicer to use. Now, I don't think I'll even bother with Adobe Reader.

While you're waiting for one of the many Adobe Downloaders to download, get PDFView and try it out. You'll probably cancel the Adobe download long before it gets done.

December 06 2006 at 1:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Max

Youo can't use Preview if someone snd you PDFs with comments (those post-it thingies). You need Reader to see those, AFAIK.

December 06 2006 at 1:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ryan J. Bonnell

Or just download it straight from Adobe's FTP site:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/mac/8.x/8.0/enu

December 06 2006 at 12:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ralph

For me it's a "nature of the beast" thing. My work is finalized for sending to clients from InDesign to Acrobat Pro, and I have to have the reader(s) installed to be sure it all looks right.

December 06 2006 at 11:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

Yes, Preview is nice, but for work, sometimes, you do need Adobe.

As mentioned above, forms is one of the bigger issues - Preview will not work with PDFs created with Acrobat 7 (I think) with automated form boxes. I think the security options and permisssions and some other things are affected.

Oh well. Maybe Preview will be updated soon as well (or, at least with Leopard).

December 06 2006 at 10:43 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Archange11

Does Reader 8.0 allow me to view pdf's in the browser of Firefox on an Intel Mac? Schubert only works when Firefox runs in Rosetta mode, making it slow.

December 06 2006 at 10:41 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Whitver

Grrr...separate PPC/Intel versions?! What, does Adobe think no one in IT will be deploying this? Do they think IT managers *like* having to deploy 2 versions of the same software to just a certain subset of machines and having to keep track of which goes where?

Dumbasses...

December 06 2006 at 9:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

anonymous

yep, sticking to Preview.app here, too. it's just so fast and easy. Downloaded and tried Reader - anyone know why they use those installers still?

The only things I would love to see in preview.app are

(a) better text selection
(b) text selection with one-button underlining.
(c) tabs (hey, i want tabbed family members)

Oh, I'd be so happy.

December 06 2006 at 9:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply