Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader: the difference
It's my understanding that Adobe Reader is free. Adobe Acrobat is more versatile but it is not free. Can anyone explain the difference? I am using a MacBook Pro, El Capitan.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
13 replies
The simple explanation is:
- Acrobat = creates PDFs
- Reader = reads PDFs
Thanks. That is helpful. And makes sense. What baffles me is that no matter how hard I tried to download a new version of Adobe Reader I was steered towards downloading something called ADOBE ACROBAT READER DC. Which I have now downloaded. So far it seems to be free. So I can't complain about that. I just don't know why Adobe makes the issue so cloudy.
Adobe (like many other outfit) is pushing users towards it "Digital Cloud" (DC in the AppName) service = most current iteration
Aha! Now we are getting to the core of the issue. Thanks for pursuing this puzzle with me.
you're welcome 
Mac OS has a PDF reader built in: Preview. I haven't used Adobe Reader for years - care to share why you feel you need a third party app for this?
I second babowa's comment. The majority of PDFs that most users encounter can be opened either in Preview (on every Mac), or will display fine in the built-in plugin in Chrome browser as well. Therefore, unless you have a specific need to have Adobe Reader installed, you shouldn't! The reason is that because it also installs a browser plugin, it adds vulnerabilities to your Mac and it's browsers that would not normally be there.
On a Mac, (and now on Windows 10 even), you can easily produce PDFs from any document directly from the print dialog. In addition, you can even use Preview to do minor manipulations to PDFs such as combining them and reordering pages. Therefore, the vast majority of users do not need either Adobe Reader or Adobe Pro versions on their Mac to work with PDFs.
Now that you mention Chrome Viewer, Firefox does a pretty fair job too...
from > https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1595/en_US/ipad_user_guide.pdf - using FF built-in "Find" function for "Accessor"... [ies]
Thanks for the very helpful info. I guess I'll stick with Preview.
I've come to see the light after reading the online help. I'll dump Adobe and use Preview. Thanks.
That's great - Preview has come a long way as it now even includes the capability of editing/adding text/adjusting size, etc.
chikojak wrote:
(...) What baffles me is that no matter how hard I tried to download a new version of Adobe Reader I was steered towards downloading something called ADOBE ACROBAT READER DC. Which I have now downloaded. So far it seems to be free. So I can't complain about that. I just don't know why Adobe makes the issue so cloudy.
Agreed. ...I just hit this same issue when my Mac offered to upgrade to/download Adobe Acrobat Reader DC — which I did. My Adobe Reader app disappeared in the process. You're right chikojak, this issue is cloudy and I don't understand why Mac-centric blogs haven't picked up on this major "all-new" update — or did I just overlook the coverage of it?!
Btw, some PDFs can't be opened by Preview and so the need for Reader. And there's this help page from Adobe:
Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader: the difference