Where’s the bloggers on new Acrobat?

September 18, 2006 By

I thought that something like a new version of Adobe Acrobat, which, according to Google on a search for “PDF,” which is the file format produced by Acrobat, is found 2.5 billion times on the Web, would be covered more heavily than it is.

Particularly on sites that pride themselves on covering everything that moves on the Web like TechCrunch or GigaOM.

But, no, no coverage at all about Adobe Acrobat. Despite having something like 500+ million players loaded on computers near you (Adobe’s numbers, but sounds pretty accurate) there’s nothing out there.

Then I went to Google Blog Search and Technorati and did searches for other bloggers who are covering the new Acrobat announcements. Nothing. Even CNET’s News.com has nothing up about it. You would think that at least someone would post the ceremonial “that sucks” kind of commentary. But, no, just silence. It’s like everyone is reading about the HP scandal and forgot that other stuff could happen.

Interesting. But if some new video service or a new Web 2.0 company or service were announced right now (even from my own company) it’d get covered all over the place.

What do you make of that?

By the way, how do I know that the bloggers are missing out? Cause Christopher Coulter is here at the ScobleCasa. He watched the demo of Acrobat 8 and said “that’s cool” at several places. He even said nice things about my video skills. Oh, boy, now the world has gone topsy turvy.

Filed Under: 1

http://thechrisproject.com Chris

I wish Acrobat Reader was boring. I wish it didn’t take so long to start up. I wish it didn’t tell me about the new whizzbang video player it has if only I’d upgrade. I wish I didn’t have to upgrade, ’cause I wish Acrobat Reader didn’t even have a video player in it. In fact, I kinda wish it was just a simple portable document format, one that people could use to get consistent _looking_ documents across multiple platforms. That would be nice.

I also wish the search was better. I can never see enough context around the search results and I hate that every time I hit Control+F, I have to delete the last term I typed in.

This is why people don’t care. Adobe has some serious work to do before convincing me that I should care about a new Acrobat.
Pingback: Transparent Agenda » Adobe Acrobat 8
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ Tim Bray

Acrobat, for the last two or three versions, has been a slow, painful, awkward piece of software. Those of us living on Mac or Linux haven’t used it for years. Why would a new version be interesting?

I can remember, a new rev of acrobat came out during the Bubble days. When the program starts up, there’s a long slow irritating delay while it loads all its plugins. I remember seeing, in this new release, “Loading WebBuy”. Which I think encapsulates the problem. I smell PHBs upstream.
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ Tim Bray

Acrobat, for the last two or three versions, has been a slow, painful, awkward piece of software. Those of us living on Mac or Linux haven’t used it for years. Why would a new version be interesting?

I can remember, a new rev of acrobat came out during the Bubble days. When the program starts up, there’s a long slow irritating delay while it loads all its plugins. I remember seeing, in this new release, “Loading WebBuy”. Which I think encapsulates the problem. I smell PHBs upstream.
http://daviddalka.com/createvalue/ David Dalka

Great, what if I’m not a fan of Acrobat and I’d almost always prefer the data in another format?
http://daviddalka.com/createvalue/ David Dalka

Great, what if I’m not a fan of Acrobat and I’d almost always prefer the data in another format?
http://askars.wordpress.com/ askars

I don’t even care about the news as I’ve stopped using Adobe Acrobat Reader and have instead started using Foxit Reader which is pretty light-weight and loads faster than the Acrobat Reader.
http://askars.wordpress.com/ askars

I don’t even care about the news as I’ve stopped using Adobe Acrobat Reader and have instead started using Foxit Reader which is pretty light-weight and loads faster than the Acrobat Reader.
Gerard

Robert, here are the bloggers talking about Acrobat: http://www.technorati.com/search/foxit?language=en&authority=n
Gerard

Robert, here are the bloggers talking about Acrobat: http://www.technorati.com/search/foxit?language=en&authority=n
http://www.acaso.net/ Alberto Caso

> “PDF”, which is the file format produced by Acrobat,
> is found 2.5 billion times on the Web

Acrobat is not the only program that produces PDF.

Has PDF format changed or has Acrobat such important change that deserves more public attention?

> Despite having something like 500+ million players loaded
> on computers near you

Maybe a new version of the PLAYER (or the PDF format) is worth mentioning everywere, but there aren’t 500+ million Acrobat Pro installations.

Regards.
http://www.acaso.net Alberto Caso

> “PDF”, which is the file format produced by Acrobat,
> is found 2.5 billion times on the Web

Acrobat is not the only program that produces PDF.

Has PDF format changed or has Acrobat such important change that deserves more public attention?

> Despite having something like 500+ million players loaded
> on computers near you

Maybe a new version of the PLAYER (or the PDF format) is worth mentioning everywere, but there aren’t 500+ million Acrobat Pro installations.

Regards.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

There’s a ton of stuff you can do with Acrobat beyond PDF generation, not that what it can do in that area sucks by a long shot.

Good luck getting Adobe to talk about it on a wide scale though. I never thought I’d say this, but even Microsoft has better marketing than the Acrobat team.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

There’s a ton of stuff you can do with Acrobat beyond PDF generation, not that what it can do in that area sucks by a long shot.

Good luck getting Adobe to talk about it on a wide scale though. I never thought I’d say this, but even Microsoft has better marketing than the Acrobat team.
daddydoodaa

Just because I understand, doesn’t mean I care.

It seems to do much more than I need for it to do. I imagine Acrobat 9 will come out in 18 months and will offer even more than that…

No thanks, Adobe.
daddydoodaa

Just because I understand, doesn’t mean I care.

It seems to do much more than I need for it to do. I imagine Acrobat 9 will come out in 18 months and will offer even more than that…

No thanks, Adobe.
http://podslug.com/blog Erik Herz

The integration with Breeze is pretty cool. When will MS have the same “click to collaborate” from Office to LiveMeeting?

Also I wonder if the PDF Package feature can be used to protect other file formats. I see that a MS Project file was in his package. What if a WindowsMedia file was in there?
http://podslug.com/blog Erik Herz

The integration with Breeze is pretty cool. When will MS have the same “click to collaborate” from Office to LiveMeeting?

Also I wonder if the PDF Package feature can be used to protect other file formats. I see that a MS Project file was in his package. What if a WindowsMedia file was in there?
http://blog.oppositionallydefiant.com/ Brian Kuhn

Robert,

Ever since the whole Adobe/Microsoft Office 2007 incident concerning the PDF format, I have dumped all things Adobe. Abode is dead to me. I doubt this has anything to do with the silence, but I know a number of people who have also said goodbye to Adobe due to that incident.
http://blog.oppositionallydefiant.com Brian Kuhn

Robert,

Ever since the whole Adobe/Microsoft Office 2007 incident concerning the PDF format, I have dumped all things Adobe. Abode is dead to me. I doubt this has anything to do with the silence, but I know a number of people who have also said goodbye to Adobe due to that incident.
http://spaces.msn.com/sjackerman Steven J. Ackerman

Why would anybody be interested in the latest malware from Adobe ?

Since about version 5 this software has become bloated, slow and the cause of frequent crashes on all of my machines… but why not ? After all, the reader is free and you get what you pay for…
http://spaces.msn.com/sjackerman Steven J. Ackerman

Why would anybody be interested in the latest malware from Adobe ?

Since about version 5 this software has become bloated, slow and the cause of frequent crashes on all of my machines… but why not ? After all, the reader is free and you get what you pay for…
http://joeclark.org/weblogs/ Joe Clark

Michel Kenward, “the last version” did not “create a new file format.” Acrobat and PDF versions are two different things. The current PDF version is 1.6 and there is no obligation whatsoever to use that version if you don’t want to or don’t need its features. Just as you can continue producing HTML 4.01 Transitional documents even though XHTML 1.1 exists, you can keep on using PDF 1.4 or earlier.

I suppose I’m biased in saying this because I volunteer on the PDF/Universal Access committee, but an imaginable reason to upgrade to Acrobat 8 is the easier creation of accessible PDFs. (The committee is working on the Portable Document Format, not Acrobat.) As Adobe offered me a beta-test only of the Windows version and I have seen no information whatsoever on accessibility improvements, I certainly concede this reason is hypothetical at the moment.
http://joeclark.org/weblogs/ Joe Clark

Michel Kenward, “the last version” did not “create a new file format.” Acrobat and PDF versions are two different things. The current PDF version is 1.6 and there is no obligation whatsoever to use that version if you don’t want to or don’t need its features. Just as you can continue producing HTML 4.01 Transitional documents even though XHTML 1.1 exists, you can keep on using PDF 1.4 or earlier.

I suppose I’m biased in saying this because I volunteer on the PDF/Universal Access committee, but an imaginable reason to upgrade to Acrobat 8 is the easier creation of accessible PDFs. (The committee is working on the Portable Document Format, not Acrobat.) As Adobe offered me a beta-test only of the Windows version and I have seen no information whatsoever on accessibility improvements, I certainly concede this reason is hypothetical at the moment.
http://www.nickdavis.com/ Nick Davis

Why is there no buzz? Because Adobe has proven for the last 7 versions that a new release is not buzzworthy. Just tell me, breifly, the major imprevements in each of the last 3 versions……….

I’m still waiting.

So you can now make fillable forms easier! Wow, a feature that should have been in V2 without havin to spend thousands on a PDF developer library.

The only differences I’ve seen in recent versions (from the reader side that it — I use PDFs extensively for prepress), is that Adobe keeps adding other programs to the download bundle.

Consider that an upgrade I can do without.
http://www.nickdavis.com Nick Davis

Why is there no buzz? Because Adobe has proven for the last 7 versions that a new release is not buzzworthy. Just tell me, breifly, the major imprevements in each of the last 3 versions……….

I’m still waiting.

So you can now make fillable forms easier! Wow, a feature that should have been in V2 without havin to spend thousands on a PDF developer library.

The only differences I’ve seen in recent versions (from the reader side that it — I use PDFs extensively for prepress), is that Adobe keeps adding other programs to the download bundle.

Consider that an upgrade I can do without.
http://www.itedge.net/blog Jason Hartley

I agree with Michael. I’m sure Acrobat 8 has some great new features however, the average user of Adobe Acrobat bought the product because they want to print to a PDF and don’t know or care about 95% of what Acrobat can do. If it was possible to print to PDF directly from an application or easily find freeware to print to PDF, 95% of the Acrobat users probably wouldn’t buy it at all. Adobe must realize this as well, as implied by the law suit they filed against Microsft to stop the integration of a PDF writer in Office 2007. While PDF is a great format, if it’s not simplier for the average business person to use those Acrobat features, the new version will not bring much of an impact.

If Adobe really wanted to make news, they should release a $14.99 or $24.99 PDF writer with basic functions that would appeal to more business users and wouldn’t require a purchase req to spend $150 or so to print PDF’s. They could then market this product to the entire companies instead of a speacialty users. How many license has WinZip sold by using a low cost corprate licesng model and solving a simple need of the majority of business users?
http://www.itedge.net/blog Jason Hartley

I agree with Michael. I’m sure Acrobat 8 has some great new features however, the average user of Adobe Acrobat bought the product because they want to print to a PDF and don’t know or care about 95% of what Acrobat can do. If it was possible to print to PDF directly from an application or easily find freeware to print to PDF, 95% of the Acrobat users probably wouldn’t buy it at all. Adobe must realize this as well, as implied by the law suit they filed against Microsft to stop the integration of a PDF writer in Office 2007. While PDF is a great format, if it’s not simplier for the average business person to use those Acrobat features, the new version will not bring much of an impact.

If Adobe really wanted to make news, they should release a $14.99 or $24.99 PDF writer with basic functions that would appeal to more business users and wouldn’t require a purchase req to spend $150 or so to print PDF’s. They could then market this product to the entire companies instead of a speacialty users. How many license has WinZip sold by using a low cost corprate licesng model and solving a simple need of the majority of business users?
http://www.dthomasmaddox.com/ Tom Maddox

Ah, a new version of Acrobat … and an upgrade for only $150! Which supplants the v. 6 and 7 upgrades I’ve done to v. 5., each of which cost roughly the same. Oh, joy!

And I really can’t wait to go through the upgrade process step by bloody step, 5-to-6-to-7-to-8, one assumes, continuing a ridiculous process. I think the multiple reboots are my favorite part. It’s a great way to upgrade a program, especially if you hate your users.

All for a few new “features” and an increase in size and decrease in speed and increase in computer horsepower required to run the thing effectively.

And of course the documentation will continue to suck because, as a former high-up at Adobe explained to me, the Adobe Press products–which supposedly do provide decent documentation–are a big moneymaker, so there’s negative incentive to document anything.

And I have no doubt that Acrobat will continue to crash my computer more often than every other program on the machine combined.

Robert, no offense to you and whatever friends you hae at Adobe, but those of us who’ve actually paid for, used, and upgraded these programs are really sick of Adobe’s whole act with regard to Acrobat.
http://www.dthomasmaddox.com Tom Maddox

Ah, a new version of Acrobat … and an upgrade for only $150! Which supplants the v. 6 and 7 upgrades I’ve done to v. 5., each of which cost roughly the same. Oh, joy!

And I really can’t wait to go through the upgrade process step by bloody step, 5-to-6-to-7-to-8, one assumes, continuing a ridiculous process. I think the multiple reboots are my favorite part. It’s a great way to upgrade a program, especially if you hate your users.

All for a few new “features” and an increase in size and decrease in speed and increase in computer horsepower required to run the thing effectively.

And of course the documentation will continue to suck because, as a former high-up at Adobe explained to me, the Adobe Press products–which supposedly do provide decent documentation–are a big moneymaker, so there’s negative incentive to document anything.

And I have no doubt that Acrobat will continue to crash my computer more often than every other program on the machine combined.

Robert, no offense to you and whatever friends you hae at Adobe, but those of us who’ve actually paid for, used, and upgraded these programs are really sick of Adobe’s whole act with regard to Acrobat.
http://joeclark.org/weblogs/ Joe Clark

Duff Johnson, PDF/UA chair, covers Acro 8 and saving files in the bare Reader application.
http://joeclark.org/weblogs/ Joe Clark

Duff Johnson, PDF/UA chair, covers Acro 8 and saving files in the bare Reader application.
Francis

The reader (on any platform) is bloated, slow and full of bells and whistles that the vast majority of users *don’t want*. The writer, whether the normal or the Pro version, on the Mac is an appalling piece of software. I actively persuade people away from Acrobat reader as there are far better, more lightweight, efficient PDF readers out there that people could be using.

In short: “meh”
Francis

The reader (on any platform) is bloated, slow and full of bells and whistles that the vast majority of users *don’t want*. The writer, whether the normal or the Pro version, on the Mac is an appalling piece of software. I actively persuade people away from Acrobat reader as there are far better, more lightweight, efficient PDF readers out there that people could be using.

In short: “meh”
http://www.document-solutions.com/ Duff Johnson

You may be interested to know that there are, in fact, a number of bloggers talking about Acrobat 8.0. See: http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs
http://www.document-solutions.com Duff Johnson

You may be interested to know that there are, in fact, a number of bloggers talking about Acrobat 8.0. See: http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs
http://www.windjack.com/ Thom Parker

You’re missing the Acrobat User’s Group Blogs

http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/
http://www.windjack.com Thom Parker

You’re missing the Acrobat User’s Group Blogs

http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/
http://www.acrobatusers.com/ Kurt Foss

Bloggers discussing Acrobat 8 –>

http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/
http://www.acrobatusers.com/ Kurt Foss

Bloggers discussing Acrobat 8 –>

http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/
Ted Padova

Robert,

Adobe made public the Acrobat 8 forthcoming revision and lifted the NDA at 12:00AM EST on Sepetember 18. At precisely 12:01AM on September 18 several blogs were posted at http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs.

ted
Ted Padova

Robert,

Adobe made public the Acrobat 8 forthcoming revision and lifted the NDA at 12:00AM EST on Sepetember 18. At precisely 12:01AM on September 18 several blogs were posted at http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs.

ted
Russ Henry

Yes the new bat is cool. Can they allow the full (paid for) version to allow you to automatically pull out all of the stuff you don’t select out of the PDF?
How about an auto credits tag so we can make it easier for the DOCS to publish Biblio’s?

That function would be great for researchers and analysts who don’t want to re-read / highlight focus zones in massive dissertations and technical journals. What do you think? Just a thought, thinking outcloud. #; ) I’ll get back in the box now… sorry.
Russ Henry

Yes the new bat is cool. Can they allow the full (paid for) version to allow you to automatically pull out all of the stuff you don’t select out of the PDF?
How about an auto credits tag so we can make it easier for the DOCS to publish Biblio’s?

That function would be great for researchers and analysts who don’t want to re-read / highlight focus zones in massive dissertations and technical journals. What do you think? Just a thought, thinking outcloud. #; ) I’ll get back in the box now… sorry.
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

#22 saved me a lot of venting. *whew* But I still have more…

So I’ll just add that in the distant past I was a fan of Windows. In the less distant past I was a fan of all things Apple, and in the less distant netherworld of unreleased betas I was a fan of Adobe too.

At some point the future of all of these companies was in doubt and they worked hard to survive. But then, to a greater or lesser extent they all achieved the ability to draw residuals on their past successes. The iPod has remade Apple. So much so that I wonder if they even want to be in the computer business any more. MS still makes tons off of Windows and Office, but predictions of the eventual decline on those revenue streams are almost universal. Adobe, long a one-trick pony, after MS pulled the font rug out from under them, Acrobat made a lot more sense as a “perpetual” revenue generator and they dis a great job of promulgating the format to just about everywhere from Linux, Apple’s OS and even to Palm pilots and such. Small companies could of course survive for decades on these income streams, but these aren’t’ small companies, so they have to find ways to get larger streams to flow out of these existing products. This is almost never good for existing users, who are in many cases completely happy with what they have. All they need is for that existing capability to keep up with OS upgrades (most of which they don’t need either but are forced into). And so the march of “improved” technology goes on.

I was a beta tester for an Adobe product called Atmosphere back in, oh, 2000 or so (maybe earlier). Way back then they already had a system that would allow you to set up a 3D chat room on any ordinary web page, complete with customizable avatars, sound, etc. Not quite the full experience of Second Life, but for what content creation involved (a few hours of tinkering) quite impressive. Someone skilled in the tool could produce a 3D landscape that was breathtaking and approached a photo-realism that I haven’t seen anywhere else. the only problem was that the code was buggy as heck. After two years of delays it seemed to have gotten worse rather than better. they changed the scope from being a separate program with a plug-in for web work to only a plug-in and no separate viewer. The plug-in only worked with IE, and many of the beta testers (like me) had already switched to Mozilla. FINALLY they announced the production product, as if they had given up on fixing the bugs. Ahhh, but they had promised all beta testera a copy of the production product. I got mine. Shortly thereafter the product was unceremoniously discontinued, and the production team made to vanish. The next version of Acrobat had some sort of 3D capabilities built-in, which I’ve never seen operate as I had already begun my migration away from Windows and I suspect that’s the only place it will work (if it does work).

Call it bloat, or featuritis, the unfortunate requirement of being a publicly traded company impels these companies to abandon common sense and make former things of beauty into eyesores while they scurry to discover something new. A poor user has to hope against hope that these new endeavors such as Xbox and iPod will be such runaway sucesses that the companies will leave the old stuff alone, but that doesn’t seem to be the normal course of events does it?

Sickening.

PS: Unless I’m missing something, your pointer to the Acrobat video points to a page that requires you to have Flash version 8 (not available for Linux yet), nevertheless less, it automatically directs me to a product update page which doesn’t exist, although the script doing this never discloses that fact and instead just waits for something to happen that isn’t going to happen. Finally I discover that the actual video, on Podtech, is in a Quicktime format that I could have even played on my Linux machine. I cringe that they pay people to put this stuff together. It’s probably just as well for Adobe that I don’t spend much time blogging about them.
http://macbeach.blogspot.com Mac Beach

#22 saved me a lot of venting. *whew* But I still have more…

So I’ll just add that in the distant past I was a fan of Windows. In the less distant past I was a fan of all things Apple, and in the less distant netherworld of unreleased betas I was a fan of Adobe too.

At some point the future of all of these companies was in doubt and they worked hard to survive. But then, to a greater or lesser extent they all achieved the ability to draw residuals on their past successes. The iPod has remade Apple. So much so that I wonder if they even want to be in the computer business any more. MS still makes tons off of Windows and Office, but predictions of the eventual decline on those revenue streams are almost universal. Adobe, long a one-trick pony, after MS pulled the font rug out from under them, Acrobat made a lot more sense as a “perpetual” revenue generator and they dis a great job of promulgating the format to just about everywhere from Linux, Apple’s OS and even to Palm pilots and such. Small companies could of course survive for decades on these income streams, but these aren’t’ small companies, so they have to find ways to get larger streams to flow out of these existing products. This is almost never good for existing users, who are in many cases completely happy with what they have. All they need is for that existing capability to keep up with OS upgrades (most of which they don’t need either but are forced into). And so the march of “improved” technology goes on.

I was a beta tester for an Adobe product called Atmosphere back in, oh, 2000 or so (maybe earlier). Way back then they already had a system that would allow you to set up a 3D chat room on any ordinary web page, complete with customizable avatars, sound, etc. Not quite the full experience of Second Life, but for what content creation involved (a few hours of tinkering) quite impressive. Someone skilled in the tool could produce a 3D landscape that was breathtaking and approached a photo-realism that I haven’t seen anywhere else. the only problem was that the code was buggy as heck. After two years of delays it seemed to have gotten worse rather than better. they changed the scope from being a separate program with a plug-in for web work to only a plug-in and no separate viewer. The plug-in only worked with IE, and many of the beta testers (like me) had already switched to Mozilla. FINALLY they announced the production product, as if they had given up on fixing the bugs. Ahhh, but they had promised all beta testera a copy of the production product. I got mine. Shortly thereafter the product was unceremoniously discontinued, and the production team made to vanish. The next version of Acrobat had some sort of 3D capabilities built-in, which I’ve never seen operate as I had already begun my migration away from Windows and I suspect that’s the only place it will work (if it does work).

Call it bloat, or featuritis, the unfortunate requirement of being a publicly traded company impels these companies to abandon common sense and make former things of beauty into eyesores while they scurry to discover something new. A poor user has to hope against hope that these new endeavors such as Xbox and iPod will be such runaway sucesses that the companies will leave the old stuff alone, but that doesn’t seem to be the normal course of events does it?

Sickening.

PS: Unless I’m missing something, your pointer to the Acrobat video points to a page that requires you to have Flash version 8 (not available for Linux yet), nevertheless less, it automatically directs me to a product update page which doesn’t exist, although the script doing this never discloses that fact and instead just waits for something to happen that isn’t going to happen. Finally I discover that the actual video, on Podtech, is in a Quicktime format that I could have even played on my Linux machine. I cringe that they pay people to put this stuff together. It’s probably just as well for Adobe that I don’t spend much time blogging about them.
http://engtech.wordpress.com/ engtech

I’m in the FoxIt camp as well.

Acrobat Reader is a bloated piece of dung I gave up on a long time ago. I don’t want a PDF reader that tries to install toolbars, crashes my browser, and takes up 30+ MB of ram to read a 250kb file.
http://engtech.wordpress.com/ engtech

I’m in the FoxIt camp as well.

Acrobat Reader is a bloated piece of dung I gave up on a long time ago. I don’t want a PDF reader that tries to install toolbars, crashes my browser, and takes up 30+ MB of ram to read a 250kb file.
http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/ John Dodds

This is called Stockholm syndrome!!
http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/ John Dodds

This is called Stockholm syndrome!!

Where’s the bloggers on new Acrobat?

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