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I have a full paid license of acrobat pro. I want to pay for the 2020 version as that's the last one before it became rental software crap. I refuse to pay mont

I have a full paid license of acrobat pro. I want to pay for the 2020 version as that's the last one before it became rental software crap. I refuse to pay monthly for this software. That and office, give me the full one time license. Im not paying for cloud crap.

lenerdenator 2y ago
<sarcasm>Dear lord, did you stop to think of the shareholders before you wrote that screed?!</sarcasm> SaaS is a virus that has drastically reduced the power of the individual creator for the benefit of people who really don't need more money. I wish there were a viable FLOSS alternative to more of Adobe's CS software.
- dartos 2y ago
  SaaS itself is fine. A lot of software has recurring costs for the saas company (think clarifai, chatgpt, or circleci) Subscriptions for software that you run on your own machine is a little much tho.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    The word for the activity occurring in your second sentence used to just be called "hosting". The problem is that there are fewer and fewer pieces of software that aren't hosted somewhere.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Gotcha capitalism with a side of rent-seeking. If indies need it, then sure, it can be necessary to sustain smaller shops that have to support backend/cloud features and multiple OSes that churn APIs faster than a newspaper.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Isn't the shareholder us?
asnyder 2y ago
I recommend a one-time Fox-it PDF pro purchase. While they too are getting into subscriptions they still make a one-time purchase available. Haven't found any significant deficiencies, nice tool overall.
tombert 2y ago
Genuine question; what does Acrobat Pro buy you over the free versions and/or OSS competitors? I uses Apple Preview a lot because it lets me edit and sign documents pretty easily, and that came bundled with my Mac. What does the Acrobat Pro include that isn't in the free stuff?
- hedora 2y ago
  I’ve been wondering about this too. In addition to signing documents with Preview, MacOS/Linux/Windows can all print to pdf / pdf/a, and the Notes app on iOS includes a camera-based document scanner that exports to OCR’ed PDF. I’ve been making PDFs with LaTeX, for decades, but those other tools are more mainstream, and work fine. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for acrobat these days.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  One huge flaw of Apple Preview is that it doesn't handle PDF forms well, as I discovered when trying to print tax returns.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Really? Me and my wife did her immigration paperwork a few years ago with Apple Preview (I think?) to edit the forms. I'd be curious to hear what Preview messed up?
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      It looked fine on screen, but only printed the first 4-5 pages properly, then lots of stuff was missing on subsequent pages. After that I couldn't print at all and ended up having to remove/reinstall the printer in OS preferences. This was just a few months ago, OS up to date, unremarkable Canon printer.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  None of the free apps I tried can fill out certain forms. The one built into Firefox is pretty good but still a little janky with some fields.
downrightmike 2y ago
The only problem is that ADobe is making the adobe engine incompatible with older versions. I've had PDFs that were made less than 10 years ago indesign etc that refused to load in Edge, which is where we work.

lenerdenator 2y ago

<sarcasm>Dear lord, did you stop to think of the shareholders before you wrote that screed?!</sarcasm> SaaS is a virus that has drastically reduced the power of the individual creator for the benefit of people who really don't need more money. I wish there were a viable FLOSS alternative to more of Adobe's CS software.

dartos 2y ago
SaaS itself is fine. A lot of software has recurring costs for the saas company (think clarifai, chatgpt, or circleci) Subscriptions for software that you run on your own machine is a little much tho.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  The word for the activity occurring in your second sentence used to just be called "hosting". The problem is that there are fewer and fewer pieces of software that aren't hosted somewhere.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Gotcha capitalism with a side of rent-seeking. If indies need it, then sure, it can be necessary to sustain smaller shops that have to support backend/cloud features and multiple OSes that churn APIs faster than a newspaper.
datavirtue 2y ago
Isn't the shareholder us?

asnyder 2y ago

I recommend a one-time Fox-it PDF pro purchase. While they too are getting into subscriptions they still make a one-time purchase available. Haven't found any significant deficiencies, nice tool overall.

tombert 2y ago

Genuine question; what does Acrobat Pro buy you over the free versions and/or OSS competitors? I uses Apple Preview a lot because it lets me edit and sign documents pretty easily, and that came bundled with my Mac. What does the Acrobat Pro include that isn't in the free stuff?

hedora 2y ago
I’ve been wondering about this too. In addition to signing documents with Preview, MacOS/Linux/Windows can all print to pdf / pdf/a, and the Notes app on iOS includes a camera-based document scanner that exports to OCR’ed PDF. I’ve been making PDFs with LaTeX, for decades, but those other tools are more mainstream, and work fine. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for acrobat these days.
anigbrowl 2y ago
One huge flaw of Apple Preview is that it doesn't handle PDF forms well, as I discovered when trying to print tax returns.
- tombert 2y ago
  Really? Me and my wife did her immigration paperwork a few years ago with Apple Preview (I think?) to edit the forms. I'd be curious to hear what Preview messed up?
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    It looked fine on screen, but only printed the first 4-5 pages properly, then lots of stuff was missing on subsequent pages. After that I couldn't print at all and ended up having to remove/reinstall the printer in OS preferences. This was just a few months ago, OS up to date, unremarkable Canon printer.
8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
None of the free apps I tried can fill out certain forms. The one built into Firefox is pretty good but still a little janky with some fields.

downrightmike 2y ago

The only problem is that ADobe is making the adobe engine incompatible with older versions. I've had PDFs that were made less than 10 years ago indesign etc that refused to load in Edge, which is where we work.