Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Acrobat’s Intrusiveness, Performance, and Pricing

  • Many describe Acrobat as bloated, slow, and malware‑like: it hijacks the PDF file association, is sluggish to start, and constantly nags for subscriptions or sign‑ins.
  • A background Adobe service keeps files open and appears to attempt uploads, causing deletion problems and raising serious PII/privacy concerns; users complain they cannot truly disable it.
  • $25/month pricing for Acrobat is seen as outrageous given the poor UX and resource usage.

Lock‑in via Non‑Portable “PDFs”

  • Several government and enterprise forms rely on Adobe‑only features (Dynamic XFA, scripted forms, smart‑card signatures), which display “Please use Adobe Reader” in other viewers.
  • Some tax/state forms actively block other viewers and even prevent exporting to a “normal” PDF, forcing users to print and scan.
  • Commenters argue this contradicts the “portable” promise of PDF and is used to entrench Adobe’s dominance.

Alternatives: Viewers and Editors

  • Popular viewers mentioned: SumatraPDF, Okular, Evince, Zathura, sioyek, Skim, qpdfview, xpdf, Atril, Edge, Chrome/Firefox (PDFium/pdf.js), PDF-XChange, Master PDF Editor, Xournal++, and Bluebeam (industry‑specific).
  • macOS Preview receives strong praise: fast, integrated, supports forms, encryption, annotations, and basic editing; some note high memory use and crashes with very large PDFs.
  • Several highlight browser readers (especially Firefox) as sufficient for most needs, including form filling and basic editing.

Editing, Signing, and Workflow Pain Points

  • Users still resort to Acrobat for edge cases: complex forms, certain signatures, Altium schematics, robust print dialogs.
  • PDF editing/signing is fragmented: some tools allow only drawing signatures, others only image‑based, some support certificates poorly or not at all.
  • Many business workflows involve reordering pages, redaction, merging, and annotation of PDFs, so “never edit PDFs” is seen as unrealistic.

PDF Format Complexity and Ecosystem Dynamics

  • Commenters note PDF’s extreme complexity (forms, JS, 3D, multimedia, DRM, accessibility, etc.), making a fully compatible, fast reader very hard to implement.
  • Some argue Adobe’s control of the standard plus corporate inertia and non‑user buyers (IT/enterprise contracts) reduce incentives to improve Acrobat.
  • The thread’s project (a Vim‑like Rust/MuPDF reader) is praised for speed and simplicity, though early testers report scrolling and multi‑file rendering bugs.