[Mac Donald]

For the purpose of reading pdf's - not creating them or editing them - is there any reason to use Acrobat over Preview?

Related question: can you edit pdf's using Preview, or does Adobe only allow its own programs to do this? I admit I am somewhat confused by the pdf format --- it was created by Adobe, but it is an open standard; correct? Adobe does not own it? Any insight appreciated.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Mac Donald For the purpose of reading pdf's - not creating them or editing them - is there any reason to use Acrobat over Preview?

Generally, no. I have encountered the oddball PDF at rare times that shows garbled text in Preview but appears fine in Adobe Reader, though. Again, that's not the norm and that's probably only because I work at a publishing/printing company and I see PDF files that were created from all sorts of weird methods. Also, scrolling performance is a usually better in Adobe Reader, but it's not enough to sway me into switching.

Originally Posted by Mac Donald Related question: can you edit pdf's using Preview, or does Adobe only allow its own programs to do this?

You can edit PDFs in Preview in limited ways, but that's just because Preview is primarily a viewer, not an editor. You can annotate PDFs by adding text and ovals with the Preview app.

Originally Posted by Mac Donald it was created by Adobe, but it is an open standard; correct?

Correct. Furthermore:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia Portable Document Format (PDF) is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing two dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent format. [...] PDF is also an open standard in the sense that anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems.

[torifile]

I prefer Preview for my reading needs - it feels more lightweight than Reader. It also doesn't have that icky "carbon port" feeling Reader does. But, as Brad said, there are times when a pdf will have some weird characters in Preview that don't appear in Reader. For general use, though, Preview wins hands down.

[copland]

As torifle said: if the file is small enough Preview will display the file allready while Acrobat Reader is still loading (but I'm talking a B&W PM G3; so not the latest tec)

[BuonRotto]

Does Preview handle security and PDF forms as well as Acrobat assumably does? Just asking.

I strongly prefer preview for most PDf viewing. A lot quicker, has plenty of decent features to read big PDFs.

Ther are other apps that let you edit PDFs in various ways. Stone's Create treats an outside PDF as a "black box" so you can't explode it and edit it, but you can fill in the form, mark it up, etc. If it's a PDF exported from a Create file though, it will be editable when you drop the PDF back into a document though.

Also apps like Canvas and others will explode any PDF you drop in so you can edit the content, assuming it's not secured.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by BuonRotto Does Preview handle security and PDF forms as well as Acrobat assumably does? Just asking.

As far as I can tell, yes. Printing can be disabled and viewing can be passworded, but that's the extent that I've been able to test. I've entered text into a PDF form only once; so, it's at least possible.

[World Leader Pretend]

Also, FYI, If you use Preview more for photo veiwing, there is a program called Xee that I use. It loads and cycles through your picture folders very fast. It is primarily a veiwer though, so don't expect too much. Not bad though..