Ten or more years ago, if you wanted to create a PDF out of a document, you purchased software from Adobe or one of its newly minted competitors. If you’re running recent versions of macOS, Windows, or Microsoft Office, you don’t have to buy anything to create a PDF document of another electronic file. What can free do for you? - Creating PDFs Now there are tons of PDF creation software packages at different price points. Adobe’s Acrobat Pro is still the gold standard and requires a subscription, but there are great alternative options, including free ones. It was not at the time.Īdobe’s second major strategic move came in 2008 when it took its PDF specifications and made them open source. With the specifications free to all, any developer could create software to create or read PDFs without running afoul of Adobe’s copyrights. Similarly, Adobe had a version of Acrobat Reader for all platforms, not just Microsoft Windows, another major difference in the late 1990s when Apple macOS were a tiny, shrinking market and Linux was unheard of outside of nerd circles. Today, when we do so much computing through websites and phone applications, this move seems obvious. We’re accustomed now to opening Microsoft Word documents, for example, on devices that don’t have Word installed so you can read, but not edit, the file. That was hardly the case when Adobe took that innovative step.
Adobe decided to charge a bundle for the PDF creation software (Adobe Acrobat) and give away the software to read, but not edit, the files (Acrobat Reader). The first decision was made in the mid-to-late 1990s, at the start of the internet boom.
The primary reason for PDF’s ubiquity in our lives comes from two business decisions Adobe, PDF’s creator, made 15-25 years ago.
Even in our personal lives, PDFs are ubiquitous: appliance instruction manuals, new car brochures, bank statements, etc. The PDF format’s great attraction is that it reproduces electronically exactly what a printed document looks like. And it does so across any device – smartphone, iPad, computer, TV, etc. By Jeffrey Schoenberger, Affinity ConsultingĪs a legal professional, you have encountered your fair share of PDF files and assumably created more than a few.
0 kommentar(er)
