Acrobat8
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Adobe shipping Acrobat 8
Adobe today announced the immediate availability of Acrobat 8 (Universal Binary!), both Standard and Professional versions. Acrobat 8 Pro costs $449 USD, or $159 for qualifying upgrades, while Acrobat 8 Standard is a$299 or $99 for upgrades. You'll need Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later.This version "introduces several major innovations for professionals in a wide variety of areas, such as architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), IT, legal, marketing, manufacturing, and publishing" and enables users to "effectively engage with the rich, high-value information in PDF documents and forms, and more reliably and securely drive their work to completion leveraging the ubiquitous, free Adobe Reader software."The free Adobe Reader 8 is expected to be released in early December 2006 and Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium will include Acrobat 8 Pro, as well as Dreamweaver 8 when it ships this month - although the rest of the Suite isn't UB yet.The Acrobat family has 4 versions now - Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Elements (Windows) and Acrobat 3D (Windows). Plus, the free Adobe Reader. Figuring out which one is really the best for your needs involves using this product comparison matrix. If you want to be able to create forms, for example, you'll need to spring for the Pro version. UPDATE: An older press release indicates that Acrobat 8 Standard isn't even available for the Mac, but it's not really clear to me on Adobe's website. If true, that really sucks. Way to show your continued support for Mac users, Adobe! Care to defend that, John Nack? More details as we get them...Adobe also announced the immediate availability of a free trial of the Acrobat Connect, a hosted service and the first web conferencing and collaboration solution to offer "always-on" personal meeting rooms.
Adobe announces Acrobat 8 Universal Binary, Creative Suite 2.3
Ali Hanyaloglu at the Adobe Blogs has announced version 8 of Acrobat, their software for all things PDF, with a nice surprise: it's Universal. It's being bundled with the also recently announced new Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium, a retail upgrade (don't you love how they like to charge for .X upgrades when 1/8th of the suite is Universal?) which also now includes Dreamweaver 8. GoLive, fortunately, will be spun off into a separate product (yea that's right: I said 'fortunately'), but who knows how long Adobe will grace users with a choice in web design apps, especially since Premium Creative Suite buyers are already getting one major suite in their bundle.Check out the new Acrobat 8.0 page, as well as the Creative Suite 2.3 press release, for details on what's new in this $159 upgrade (admittedly, a deal for Dreamweaver 8 alone). CS 2.3 is expected to ship before the end of 2006, but remember: the rest of the suite isn't Universal yet, and they won't be offering Universal upgrades to CS2. If you aren't dying for Acrobat 8 or Dreamweaver 8, I'd recommend waiting until the first half of 2007 to upgrade, especially if an Intel Mac is in your future.
