I quit Adobe years ago, but once every couple of years I have to install Acrobat to proof a book PDF. WOW, I had no idea how bad it's become. Just an absolute shambles of an app. Terrible UI, v buggy. At one point today it decided to stop acknowledging key presses until I restarted the app 🤪 Awful.
There are alternatives to Adobe that allow editing and proofing. Many are free.
I spent US$75 for a forever license on an alternate 10 years ago (because what I paid for was better than what work provided) and my copy still works and still does everything I want a PDF editor to do.
@JHB17 The issue is one of integration into a publisher's workflow. I already have and use alternatives where that's not vital, but in some cases a publisher will insist on it, and it's not worth the risk of using something which might lose comments/notes/etc. It's the same (and only) reason I still have Word installed, because some clients insist on it for edits and tracking changes.
@antonyjohnston Also, they actively try to trick you into clicking one of their various "AI" buttons. Last time I counted 4 different AI-related things to dismiss on a default install.
@henryk Oh yeah, the dark patterns are very real.
Aug 7, 2026, 11:03 AM@antonyjohnston Acrobat has exactly one use for me: digitally signing PDFs (invoices) with a certificate. And if I can find something else to do so, it will be Acrobat to the bin as fast as I can type Cmd-Delete.
It’s an utter dumpster fire and I pity all of the corporate folks who have to use it
Aug 7, 2026, 11:10 AM@erik OpenOffice apparently lets you sign documents with your existing X.509 certificate.
Aug 7, 2026, 7:59 PM@nja Now that's an interesting option. Something to poke at tomorrow
@erik @antonyjohnston PDF-Xchange lets you digitally sign PDFs, but the feature is limited to the paid version (it works in free version, but adds watermarks). I think FoxIt lets you do it in the free version.
Aug 7, 2026, 1:45 PM@jernej__s @antonyjohnston Hmmm - looking for MacOS. Foxit can sign with an X509 certificate, but it’s as bad as Adobe. Package loads automatic background tasks, full of AI prompts and up-sells…
But this did inspire me go look around again and this looks promising: https://github.com/afanjul/bureaucrat-pdf
@antonyjohnston @antonyjohnston While it wouldn't be fair or accurate to say the wind blowing in this direction is a reason I left, it didn't do a lot to prevent my decision, that's for sure. DC teams were being cannibalized to do weirdly pointless LLM integrations and Product was... let's just say in even more of a "feature oriented" mood.
Definitely didn't do anything to mitigate my other reasons for departing. I miss the people, I don't miss the products.
@antonyjohnston FWIW you can still revert the UI mess back to the pre-2020 style (at least on windows) using a setting that isn’t too buried. Good luck!
I constantly get some weird "out of memory" errors for images, and then I have to close the PDF and reopen it again.
This has gone on for several years - on _both_ my private desktop and my work notebook.