Preview, the Mac app people forget about • Hacker News Board

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#91

Post by wlesieutre » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #61

wlesieutre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat. You can right click on a page and it's got "rotate" buttons up at the top. But when you click on one, it takes a second to think about it and then opens a popup to offer you a free 7-day trial of the Pro version. Rotating a page is too powerful a feature for Adobe to not try and sell it to you. https:/…

What I hate about software like PDF viewers is that they are akin to: Here I printed your manuscript, but in order to read it, you need to pay me for these special glasses to see the ink. Oh you want a change? Pay me for these special gloves so you may handle the pages and reorganize them as you like.

Agreed, on a Mac I feel like a PDF document is a stack of paper that I can rearrange, copy, rotate, and otherwise handle however I want to.

On Windows it's more like a hardcover bound book that I can download and attach to an email to share with someone, but god forbid I want to change anything.

They can make me use Windows in the office, but next time something dies in my home PC I'm just going to sell the rest of it for parts and replace it with a Steam Deck.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#92

Post by jhasse » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #29

junglistguy wrote: post #24

Still don't know how to preview all photos in for example "downloads" Osx UX is a messsssss

Select them then open them? Or select, right click, open with. I suspect I’m missing your point somehow?

The thing is, that "selecting them" might not be that easy depending on the number of files and how the content of the folder is sortes.

On Windows/Linux you would just open the first file which is a lot easier.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#93

Post by josho » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #48

The best use of Preview/Markup is proper redaction of names for posting images to social media: 1. Set Shape Fill color 2. Set Shape Border color 3. Insert a Rectangle. The rectangle can then be moved/resized/copy/pasted to cover names precisely and won't inadvertently leak names like the spraypaint tool does.

Be careful with that workflow. If you ever share the modified PDF that rectangle likely hasn't redacted anything.

On a digital PDF the underlying text is still accessible, and even if the PDF was a scan, the original image likely hasn't been modified, instead a new shape layer was added.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#94

Post by kergonath » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

maxwelldone wrote: post #59

jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

This is my wish list for preview: 1. Support for h265 video previews (not sure about technical or any other licensing hurdles) 2. Basic playback controls (via keyboard) when viewing video previews - just play, pause, skip would do. I review a ton of videos and I'd often like to pause to take a screenshot or skip to quickly see what's happening in the video. 3. Option to zoom on text files like json, csv etc. Not a bi…

Quick Look does this, does it not?

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#95

Post by lordgilman » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #8

Etheryte wrote: post #3

I use many of these features often and it often blows my mind just how much better Preview is with PDFs than any other program. It's leaps ahead of anything Adobe's Acrobat spyware ever was and it comes with your OS right out of the box.

Apparently "Apple’s Core Graphics framework uses the PDF format for its internal vector graphics presentation." https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2020/apple-and-pdf-history/

The memory is mostly lost to time but MacOS X before 10.4 (released in 2005) took PDF screenshots of the desktop.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#96

Post by kergonath » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

herodotus wrote: post #53

I really enjoyed working with the Preview team before I retired from Apple. My small group created a private framework that added "document reconstruction" to PDF documents: basically an inferred DOM based on whatever information (mainly geometric) we could use in the PDF document. Our moment of fame game at WWDC 2009, when Bertrand Serlet talked about Snow Leopard during the Keynote. At around the 5:10 mark he talks…

Thank you very much for this feature, which I have used regularly for quite some years! That was one of the thousands of details that make Preview vastly better than most PDF viewers I have used.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#97

Post by maxwelldone » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

smcl wrote: post #12

You get an obnoxious modal popup asking you to sign up for something about 10 seconds after opening the page. I don't even know what I'm looking at yet, why would I hand over my name and email address? Instant ctrl-w, no thanks.

As an engineer and from a common sense perspective, these modals bother me a lot. However, in the interest of curiosity, I'd like to hear from PMs and the likes as to how successful these annoyances are in reality.

Broadly, I see two types of visitors to these kinda sites:

1. Someone new, who's most likely just following a link (like us) - they haven't even had a chance to read the article yet & knows nothing about the site, it's reputation, quality etc. All a pop up does is annoy a new visitor. I highly doubt people will take the time or even trust to give away their email with no obvious benefit.

2. A repeat user, someone who's familiar with the site. What's wrong with placing a simple signup form at the end of the article. It's unobtrusive & if people really like your stuff, they will sign up.

Or is it the case that people like us are not the target audience - they couldn't give two shit*s whether we stay on the page or not. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with SEO and shoving stuff on users to sell my stuff, so perhaps I'm naive.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#98

Post by ask_b123 » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

PrimeDirective wrote: post #68

All this, and yet you can't move forwards or backwards, when there are other files in the folder. I would be gladly wrong if someone could point out how to do this in Preview

It seems like you can move to the next or previous file with tab + up/down arrow keys.

I just found out by mashing all the buttons I could think of. :-)

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#99

Post by jkubicek » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

Lack of any equivalent Preview app on the iPad is the main factor that's prevented me from switching to an iPad as my full-time computing device. Filling in form PDFs, signing documents, performing some light editing is so easy in macOS and so challenging on iPadOS.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#100

Post by simlevesque » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

yasoob wrote: post #20

dry_soup wrote: post #17

The title would be much more clear with a comma after "Preview" IMO.

Yes! I was wondering which app it is asking me to preview. These are the times when I wish HackerNews allowed OPs to edit post titles after submission.

It isn't even fixed in the original blog post.