Adobe today introduced Adobe Acrobat 8 software to provide knowledge workers tools for communicating and collaborating across the boundaries of operating systems, applications and firewalls.
“Hundreds of millions of users of Acrobat and Adobe Reader have established PDF as a trusted format that enables documents to flow between companies and across the gap between digital and print,” said Tom Hale, senior vice president, Knowledge Worker Business Unit, Adobe, in the press release. “With Acrobat 8, Adobe is enabling knowledge workers to use next generation electronic documents to easily collaborate with people, ideas and information, regardless of all-too-common operating system or platform constraints. With the addition of Acrobat Connect, they can take collaboration a step further to instantly and easily connect with each other in real-time over the web.”
For the first time, all of the Acrobat 8 products, as well as Adobe Reader 8, provide one-button access to Adobe Acrobat Connect software, a hosted software service that provides access to a personal meeting room for real-time web conferencing. Along with Acrobat Connect, Acrobat 8 further extends the family beyond simple PDF creation and now enables users to choose the most appropriate means for engaging others, through electronic documents or in real-time over the web.
The Acrobat 8 product line introduces several major innovations in the areas of document collaboration, PDF content reuse, PDF forms, packaging of multiple documents, and controlling sensitive information. For example, shared reviews put collaboration within the reach of virtually anyone with access to a shared network folder and Adobe Reader. A participant in a shared review can see comments posted by others, track the status of the review, and work even when not connected — reducing duplicated work and enabling large groups to collaborate more efficiently. Acrobat 8 also enables PDF content to be exported into popular formats to enable reuse and repurposing of content.
The Acrobat family consists of Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 8 Standard, Acrobat 8 Elements, Acrobat 3D Version 8, Acrobat Connect, and Acrobat Connect Professional.
Acrobat 8 Professional for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, and Acrobat 8 Standard for Windows, are expected to be available in November 2006 in English, French, German, and Japanese versions. Acrobat 8 Professional is expected to be available for an estimated street price of US$449, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat can upgrade to Acrobat 8 Professional for an estimated street price of US$159. Acrobat 8 Standard is expected to be available for an estimated street price of US$299, and registered users of qualifying earlier versions of Acrobat can upgrade to Acrobat 8 Standard for an estimated street price of US$99.
More information on the Acrobat 8 product line is available online at http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/
I LOVE the ability to generate PDFs, with all kinds of control over output quality, for free. Another thing that makes my PC friends sad.
Acrobat’s UI is horrible. I trashed my stolen copy ages ago.
Ok… Now give us a Universal Binary of Reader and the Plugin….
MW: Longer … could it take Adobe any longer to get this out?
I agree that the acrobat UI is terrible — but I use it for assembling multiple PDFs into one document.
The PDFs that Mac OS makes are large file size compared to PDFs created by some on-line services. Anybody have alternate suggestions?
To Bonkers for Mac
Try the setting of “Reduced File Size” in the Color Sync when you generate a PDF file, if you haven’t already done that.
i cant find anywhere if this is universal. WHAT GIVES!?!?!
thekilldare:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/productinfo/systemreqs/
thekilldare:
rasterbator’s law:
If it doesn’t say Universal upfront, and you have to search for it, it probably isn’t Universal.
@Ampar: Acrobat 6 and 7 also work on Intel Macs, doesn’t mean its Universal though.
Good point, pog. Thanks.
Look into Automator – it has the ability to do a lot of things with PDF files. It can join multiple PDF’s into one and it can do watermarking. It takes the place of a lot of what I do with Acrobat Pro.
It is in fact Universal. Adobe commented a while ago that Acrobat would be their first offical universal app (not counting Lightroom). It also lists ‘Intel’ on the specs for chips as Ampar noted.
From last April:
“We are working very hard on making our products Mactel (Mac Intel) compliant,” Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said at a Tokyo news conference. “When we ship the new product Acrobat 8 this fall it will be Mactel (Mac Intel) compliant. When we ship Photoshop and the Creative Suite products next spring they will also be Mactel compliant.”
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/04/21/photoshop/index.php
Bruce seems to imply Acrobat 8 is universal. Please kill the “mactel” expression. Sounds like a noodle dish from a toy company.
“Mactel compliant” doesn’t mean Universal — just means it’ll run on Intel Macs; could still be under Rosetta.
Guess I’d better stay in school till CS3 comes out so I can get it under academic pricing — though Quark Xpress is tempting me; it’s already Universal and about $300…
Bonkers for Mac,
As well as using the Reduced File Size option, you can configure your own as well:
To access the file-size and compression options of the Mac OS X PDF generator, select ColorSync from the third drop-down box in the Print dialogue. This will in turn present two other drop-down boxes; the bottom one, labeled “Quartz Filter:” allows access to the desired features. There is a built-in “Reduce File Size” filter, but you can adjust the settings, or add a new filter, by selecting the “Add Filters…” option (this will launch ColorSync Utility after most of the printing process is complete, so launching ColorSync Utility from /Applications/Utilities first and setting up your filters is often a better idea.)
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/Methods_of_Exporting_PDF_compared
If in doubt about Acrobat or any other app, a quick-and-dirty check is to run it through Trim the Fat, a freeware app that strips out the intel code so PowerPC machines aren’t hauling the extra freight. If there’s no code deleted, the app’s not universal binary.