3 ms·

Apple did it because they were the underdog 15-20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't give a shit. There's no realistic market opportunity for a small third party to g

by tpmx 5y ago

Apple did it because they were the underdog 15-20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't give a shit. There's no realistic market opportunity for a small third party to get a sizeable amount of revenue either, with Adobe looming. I kinda miss the early 90s when we actually had competing software "houses" with some financial muscle.

zinekeller 5y ago
Wrong answer, at least for a time. Microsoft was actually sued by Adobe over the PDF implementation with Office 2007 (before it was standardised in ISO, that was circa 2008-9 if I remember correctly). That's also the reason that XPS (the weird Microsoft format, not Dell laptops) exists. Nowadays though, I don't really know since Microsoft has successfully overturned that case (probably because of Adobe being Adobe?).
- tpmx 5y ago
  So, not really the wrong answer for the past 12 years or so, then.
  - not2b 5y ago
    The number of years depends on when the various patents expire. Does anyone know?
motform 5y ago
preview.app has been around since NextSTEP, which used display postscript for its windowing engine. Having a first-class pdf reader falls out pretty naturally.
- tpmx 5y ago
  Sure. Spending money on implementing okayish PDF forms support.. I'm going to out on a limb here and say that it wasn't done out a position of strength.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    wild guess here -- MacOS had given way to MacOSX, but commercial printing and publication workflows had not. Windows via market mechanisms (plus assorted dirty tricks), had a lot of installed desktops by that time in the print world, with a much smaller set of the artsy people and some others still championing Macs. When MacOSX got stable after the first few releases, the NeXTstep postscript handlers were there, and Apple wanted to compete to get users to buy new Macintosh hardware for print. Anything and everything to attract print people was definitely included. Forms were appealing to some businesses and I dont have insights on that part of it, other than noting that odd media formats and bolt-on web'by things were being added to PDF at the time, and as for common forms solutions, apparently fifteen years later its still not settled.

by tpmx 5y ago

zinekeller 5y ago

Wrong answer, at least for a time. Microsoft was actually sued by Adobe over the PDF implementation with Office 2007 (before it was standardised in ISO, that was circa 2008-9 if I remember correctly). That's also the reason that XPS (the weird Microsoft format, not Dell laptops) exists. Nowadays though, I don't really know since Microsoft has successfully overturned that case (probably because of Adobe being Adobe?).

tpmx 5y ago
So, not really the wrong answer for the past 12 years or so, then.
- not2b 5y ago
  The number of years depends on when the various patents expire. Does anyone know?

motform 5y ago

preview.app has been around since NextSTEP, which used display postscript for its windowing engine. Having a first-class pdf reader falls out pretty naturally.

tpmx 5y ago
Sure. Spending money on implementing okayish PDF forms support.. I'm going to out on a limb here and say that it wasn't done out a position of strength.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  wild guess here -- MacOS had given way to MacOSX, but commercial printing and publication workflows had not. Windows via market mechanisms (plus assorted dirty tricks), had a lot of installed desktops by that time in the print world, with a much smaller set of the artsy people and some others still championing Macs. When MacOSX got stable after the first few releases, the NeXTstep postscript handlers were there, and Apple wanted to compete to get users to buy new Macintosh hardware for print. Anything and everything to attract print people was definitely included. Forms were appealing to some businesses and I dont have insights on that part of it, other than noting that odd media formats and bolt-on web'by things were being added to PDF at the time, and as for common forms solutions, apparently fifteen years later its still not settled.