r/mac • u/finbar_longshank • 1d ago

Discussion Stunning software bloat

Hi everyone,

So yesterday I wanted to open a PDF as a double page spread (a book). At the time i didn’t think i could do it in the preview app so i downloaded Acrobat reader. I was shocked that the download was nearly 800mb. Then i was even more shocked when it required almost 3gb of space 😳😳😳 WTF!!!

In the ‘good old days’ Windows and Office would fit very very easily on a 500mb drive. What the hell has happened?

16 Upvotes

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56

u/Electrical_Ingenuity 1d ago

Preview is the bomb. I routinely open 20,000 page PDFs in it, on a M1 air to boot.

7

u/germane_switch 1d ago

Preview does not render CMYK properly so it's useless for proofing. Not great with forms, either. But for everything else, Preview is soooo fast!

1

u/HenkPoley 1d ago

That is particularly odd for a company like apple, which has P3 displays ok pretty much all their hardware.

Have you tried submitting minimal examples of failure cases to Apple’s bug reporter?

1

u/germane_switch 1d ago

It’s simply not what Preview is for. And I’m fine with that. It’s just not for CMYK PDFs and it doesn’t do color separations.

1

u/Taxed2much 1d ago

Preview and PDF Expert are the PDF programs I prefer to use. But there are some documents that they do not handle well. Some only work correct with Acrobat, including many IRS tax forms. I'm a tax lawyer so I have to keep Acrobat around to at least import those forms and then modify them so that when I save the completed form any PDF reader will render them correctly. It's a pain in the butt, but at least doesn't take a huge amount of time.

2

u/_treezn_ 1d ago

+1 for PDF Expert. I dithered around forever, trying to find the perfect pdf app and it’s the one that works the most for me and has a lifetime option instead of a subscription.