I have to ask is Adobe out of their minds? They aren't releasing a version of Acrobat Pro Extended for Mac? Or do they not plan to sell a lot of this version even on the Windows side? Are there plans to add it later, like Premier which was brought back from the dead?
Let's see. Extended adds some features that could be very useful for content creation. Mac sales are increasing at up to 5X PC sales increases. They now have 7.6 percent market share (growing from 2.5-3 percent two years ago). Many universities are saying half of their students are buying Macs now. And Apple owns 66 percent market share of computers over $1,000. Considering we're talking about a $700 product, who's going to put it on a generic PC that costs $250? Oh wait, my company's IT department would.
I understand why Adobe doesn't make a Standard version for Mac. Preview might be considered to compete with that product. I was happy as long as they made just one version that had all the features (or at least the vast majority of features) of the top-end Windows version.
But now I'm seeing features in the Extended version that could help my department (which is moving to an all-Mac environment) do its work. We're a non-profit research and and educational institute with schools in 14 countries.
Acrobat is for more than Business!
1) Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes Adobe Presenter 7. Adobe Presenter 7 is an add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint on Windows for publishing content as Flash presentations with audio, video, Flash animations and apps, quizzes and more. This is a former Macromedia product, and has only ever been available for PowerPoint on Windows for technical reasons.
2) Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes the ability to convert various video formats to Flash video embedded in a PDF. A very large majority of our Acrobat customers who use Mac OS X (which by the way, includes me), obtained their version of Acrobat as part of the Creative Suite. CS3 includes the Flash CS3 Video Encoder. So those users have the ability to convert video formats to FLV already. The converter in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is based on the one in CS3. And the Flash Video Encoder included with CS3 supports batch conversion of video too.
3) Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes the ability to Geospatially Register “PDF maps”. This is NOT converting raw GIS data to geospatially-aware PDF maps. That is done by specialist and advanced GIS software such as those from companies like ESRI. These are Windows applications, in Windows environments, for those whose job it is to create these maps as PDF or otherwise. The functionality in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended allows these users to manually add geospatial information - such as the longitude-latitude bounding box - to an existing image of a map in a PDF, such as one that’s been scanned. It can also import geoTIFF and geospatially-aware JPEG2000 image files and retain the geospatial coordinate information when saved as a PDF file.
It’s important to note that the entire Acrobat 9 family can consume geospatially-aware PDF maps with the Geospatial Location Tool to view, find (which can be done in Reader 9 too), measure distances and markup locations (which Reader 9 can also do if the document has been enabled for extended features in Adobe Reader from Acrobat 9 Pro or Acrobat 9 Pro Extended).
4) Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes 3D functionality. Acrobat 3D versions 7 and 8 were also Windows-only. Why? These had features and functionality for those in the CAD/CAM space (who are using products such as AutoCAD, Solidworks, Catia, and so on). These are very document-centric users that need to securely collaborate on designs to ensure accuracy. Again, this is overwhelmingly a Windows marketplace. Acrobat 9 Pro on the Mac includes a 3D tool to add U3D to a PDF, just as before.
Ali Hanyaloglu
Adobe Systems Incorporated
@acroboy