How do Adobe make money out of Acrobat ?

[Justin Smith 10]

Here`s something I`ve often wondered, how do Adobe make money out of Acrobat ?

Actually, is it still called Acrobat ? Whatever, I mean the reader that has become universal for displaying pdfs.

[Tony Erikson 10]

I don't think they make money from any of their readers or players. I think they make money from the creation software they have.

[Sarkysod 10]

I don't think they make money from any of their readers or players. I think they make money from the creation software they have.

 

They do indeed make it on the creation software side of things, have you seen the price for Acrobat Pro?

[Tony Erikson 10]

They do indeed make it on the creation software side of things, have you seen the price for Acrobat Pro?

 

Yes.

[melthebell 863]

yeah they have free stuff like i think you mean acrobat reader, but then they DO have other very expensive bits of software

[Sarkysod 10]

I use CS 5 on my mac at work, I'm glad I did not have to pay for it! Totally overboard for normal home use, when some open source alternatives like GIMP are just as good for most users.

[swarfendor437 14]

They also tried to make money from Microsoft. Apparently a lot of delays on one of the OSes (can't remember if Vista or 7) was to do with the inclusion of 'save as Acrobat format' - which is what probably led to Microsoft producing its own version vis-a-vis XPS format. There's an even better format that was produced originally as Open Source (personal use is still available) but is now owned by Lizard Tech - and that is DjVu which can compress documents far greater than a .pdf file without loss of clarity or content.

[andyofborg 11]

The specification which defines the PDF file format is freely available and anyone can implement it. It's not the easiest specification to implement but it's not the hardest either.

 

You don't lose clarity or content with a PDF, that's the whole point of using it.

[PuressenceUK 10]

Every Mac user in the world in a corporate setting, which is responsible for 99% of every advert, e-shot, photo edit you ever see needs Adobe software. I suggest you look at their website and see what they sell before assuming all they do is Adobe Reader.

[swarfendor437 14]

The specification which defines the PDF file format is freely available and anyone can implement it. It's not the easiest specification to implement but it's not the hardest either.

 

You don't lose clarity or content with a PDF, that's the whole point of using it.

 

You don't with DjVu either - it just manages to stuff more into one file than you can in a .pdf.

[Justin Smith 10]

Every Mac user in the world in a corporate setting, which is responsible for 99% of every advert, e-shot, photo edit you ever see needs Adobe software. I suggest you look at their website and see what they sell before assuming all they do is Adobe Reader.

 

I`m aware they don`t just do Acrobat Reader, I`m just surprised that a commercial organisation is prepared to supply something for free.

The thing is, that, plus the internet generally, has the unfortunate side effect that many people out there seem to think that information has no value, and they`re entitled to all of it, for free. Bit like my website, which is becoming the default site for those after aerial information, relatively few people actually buy anything. One assumes all the rest feel they don`t "owe" me anything, even if it`s just a small token order, for everything they`ve just learnt.....

In the same vein, I wonder how many people actually give Wikipedia anything ?

I have done in the past, not much, but at least it was something !

[Cynic 10]

If you want people to pay lots of money for an application that saves documents in a particular format then it makes sense to make sure the rest of the world can open documents saved in that format. The success of Adobe Acrobat (the program you pay for to make PDF documents) is dependant on people knowing that if they make PDF files using Acrobat people will be able to open them. That is why Acrobat Reader is free.