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Preview, the Mac app people forget about

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#241

Post by wildrhythms »

lostlogin wrote: post #39
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…

My passport application photo kept getting rejected as my eyes were ‘too dark’. I tried various things without luck, then in a rage, I copied my ‘light’ eye and stuck it over my shaded eye. I thought the passport photo submission tool would let me review before accepting an upload. Nope, off it went. The passport has worked in several countries, USA, UK and others. Thanks Preview.

Ancient companies requiring I print out a form, sign it physically, scan it, send it back... I just open it in Preview, use the text annotation tool and some random cursive font, "sign it", re-export, done. I haven't owned a printer or scanner in 10 years.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#242

Post by wanderingstan »

zora_goron wrote: post #217
wanderingstan wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get this functionality everywhere , I’ve taken using the TRex app: https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex I have it mapped to ctrl-alt-command-C. As more and more apps and webpages make text unselectable, it’s become invaluable. My favorite trick is to copy the URL when someone is screen sharing their browser in a virtual meeting!

Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about TRex! I've been using TextSniper ( https://textsniper.app ) for this functionality -- not sure how these two compare, feature-wise.

And I didn't know about TextSniper. FWIW, TRex has only failed me less than 1 out of a hundred times, and only in edge cases like getting a crazy complicated URL from a tiny fuzzy web call. I also like that it's open source.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#243

Post by reaperducer »

drcongo wrote: post #178
maxwelldone wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Many many years ago, when this trend first appeared, I made the Tumblr Tab Closed; Didn't Read [0] - it got retweeted by some web luminaries like Eric Meyer and Tim Berners Lee and, while the vast majority of the replies I got were in huge agreement, there were a bunch of "growth hackers" absolutely furious that I'd made it and now everyone hates them. So I wrote this [1]. The key takeaway is that "growth hackers" on…

I find it ironic that your [0] link is guilty of the very sin it moans about.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#244

Post by OnlyMortal »

dylan604 wrote: post #232
wlesieutre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I sometimes wonder if Preview being so much easier than Acrobat isn't an intentional poke at Adobe for all the times Adobe strayed from the one true path of Apple. That whole skipping a version of software release because Adobe didn't pay attention to words from up on high to quite using deprecated language surely didn't sit well.

It originated on NeXTStep which used Display Postscript.

The graphics primitives still apply to macOS.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#246

Post by samstave »

OnlyMortal wrote: post #244
dylan604 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder if Preview being so much easier than Acrobat isn't an intentional poke at Adobe for all the times Adobe strayed from the one true path of Apple. That whole skipping a version of software release because Adobe didn't pay attention to words from up on high to quite using deprecated language surely didn't sit well.

It originated on NeXTStep which used Display Postscript. The graphics primitives still apply to macOS.

No post body was provided.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#247

Post by wtetzner »

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…

Yeah, PDFs on Windows are a pain. I've set Firefox as my default PDF reader on my Windows box.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#248

Post by abawany »

wlesieutre wrote: post #19
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…

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:/…

I recommend trying SumatraPDF - it also supports epub.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#249

Post by wtetzner »

josho wrote: post #93
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.

I usually end up printing out the dead-tree version with the black rectangles, and scanning it back in, just to be sure the data under the black rectangles can't be retrieved.
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