Bloonface:
A lot of that influx has not stuck around. Everyone is very aware at this point that active user numbers have dropped off a cliff.
[…]
These are people and organisations who were engaged with Mastodon and fediverse to the point of investing real time and resources into it, but simply dropped out without a trace some time between November 2022 and now. I know multiple people who tried it and then gave up, due to lack of engagement with what they were posting, lack of people to follow, inability to deal with the platform’s technical foibles, or worse because they found the experience actively unpleasant. Something has gone badly wrong.
[…]
As it exists at the moment, Mastodon functions essentially as Twitter did in about 2008. In some ways, that’s nice. The userbase is calmer, the DiscourseTM does not get spun up as easily.
[…]
So what does Mastodon bring to the table in addition to Twitter, that might justify someone deciding to take the plunge and move to it? There are a few unique things about the platform, but they generally fall into the broad category of “things users don’t care about”. Chief among these is decentralisation.
Via John Gruber:
I would like to see Mastodon thrive. But the platform’s ideological zealotry is obviously holding it back and seemingly isn’t going to change. That’s why I’m much more optimistic about Bluesky’s long-term prospects.
The Mac and iOS developer community has largely moved over to Mastodon. But most others have not, and there’s enough happening on Twitter (both with developer content and questions about my apps) that I still feel the need to check it. This isn’t so easy without a client app. For now, I’m using Fluid to make an app for each account. I need this because Twitter’s e-mail notifications have never worked for me, and the Web site doesn’t show all the mentions if you aren’t logged in.
Mastodon works OK, but I haven’t found much to like about it other than that it’s not Twitter. Maybe there’s less drama, but that hadn’t been a problem with my feed. Overall, I would say that almost everything about the Mastodon user experience is worse. Search is just terrible in comparison with Twitter. The best parts are that it works with RSS (like old Twitter) and that, although pages require JavaScript, they do load completely and so can be easily saved and searched offline.
Previously:
Fluid Mastodon RSS Search Twitter Web
Shane Stanley:
We are pleased to announce the release of SD Notary 2, the application for notarizing applets and other files. SD Notary 2 replaces SD Notary, which is still available but uses a method Apple intends to discontinue in the near future.
We advise all users of SD Notary to download and use the new application, which is based on Apple software that is faster and more reliable. The exception is those running versions of macOS before 11.3. Just be aware that those older systems will soon lose the ability to notarize for good.
Mark Alldritt:
SD Notary 2 uses a newer tool, notarytool, instead of the deprecated altool used by the original SD Notary. This requires changes to how you set up the app, how it logs progress, and how it interacts with Apple’s servers, but it does not change what it does, and how you configure the various notarization options.
Previously:
Developer Tool Mac Mac App macOS 11.0 Big Sur macOS 13 Ventura Notarization Programming SD Notary
jimthing:
Just wondered if Preview (and other PDF apps for that matter) are considered “stable” at the moment?
I know the story above is from some time ago, but still in 2022 I have editing issues in all my PDF applications where markup gets screwed-up, with even Preview being continually unreliable for marking-up documents that need to be accessed and used days/weeks/years after their creation.
For me, at least, Preview works fine these days, in that the previously discussed bugs, form saving, and progressive rendering weirdness have been fixed. I think my biggest issue is that copying the selected text doesn’t always work well.
It seems to me users are caught in a bit of a trap here. While Adobe giveth in open-sourcing PDF format years ago, they then taketh-away, as ultimately they have (reliable!) control of PDF editing software compared to every other app out there. And seemingly they know it, as the price they continue to charge for using Acrobat remains excessively high years later… even Standard DC is $13/mth, while Pro DC is just 2 bucks more at $15/mth (both provided you take an annual commitment), so even if you only need the Standard tools it’s $156 (making $180 for Pro little more!) – but that’s PER YEAR, so pretty expensive for average users.
Adobe Reader no longer has a good interface, but from what I hear for many uses it’s the only option. Fortunately, I only work with basic PDFs. Howard Oakley has a series of posts about PDF without Adobe.
MacGuyver:
That being said, my PDF viewer/notator of choice on macOS is Skim. It is free, open source, fast, lightweight and has many customizable features. Skim started in the scientific/education/research area but is very useful for daily PDF wrangling. Unfortunately, it is dependent on PDFKit, so do not use it for editing and sharing important forms (that should always be done in Acrobat Reader or Pro).
John:
I have to admit my first interaction with support re. PDFpenPro since their acquisition from Nitro was less than satisfactory. I was attempting to edit a form originally created in Acrobat Pro by adding a new form field and found myself unable to edit the field’s border (or for that matter, any of the previously created form fields’ borders). I’ve tried 3 times now to submit a ticket on their support page[…]
David Buckley:
I recently experienced the issue of form filled out in Preview simply did not stay filled when shared. Super broken and really problematic as it was a form I REALLY needed to have filled out properly and usable by recipient.
jimthing:
So it seems there is basically no clear answer here on best app usage. I suppose things are open to constant change with each app update, contributing to making such hard-and-fast determinations difficult anyway, along with each user’s individual needs & usage.
The things I’ve heard here and elsewhere seem to be[…]
David Weintraub:
Apple’s Preview software does what 97% of their users need. It can open most PDFs, allow you to mark them up, and even fill some of them out.
[…]
If I need people to fill out forms and gather information, I use web based solutions like Google Forms, MailChimp, or SquareSpace Forms.
Adam Engst:
My understanding from talking to a friend at Adobe (but some time ago, so I might be misremembering) who knows more about PDF than anyone on the planet is that PDF truly is a standard, but there are lots of implementations of various versions of the standard, many of which don’t do a good job. Apple’s implementation falls into that category. And interoperating between multiple mediocre implementations can cause headaches.
Adobe Acrobat is probably the closest you can get to a reference implementation. I’m not fond of the app, but it’s the best bet for any tricky PDFs.
Marcel Weiher:
Acrobat Reader is a 360 MB download, 1.12 GB on disk.
My cube had a 400MB drive. That included DPS and Preview.app. And TeX. And Sybase. And the developer tools, Project Builder, Interface Builder etc. Improv. Mail.app.
Previously:
Update (2023-07-17): Pierre Igot:
Apparently, in macOS Ventura, the search feature in the Preview app is broken as soon as you try searching for a keyword containing… an accented char. I have lots of PDFs in French. I open one containing 2 occurrences of “René” with an accent and 8 occurrences of “rene” (without an accent) inside French words. When I type “ren”, I get a (predictably) longer list of hits. As soon as I type “é”, I get a system beep and… this. So it finds the 2 occurrences, but lists them as “not found”.
If I type “rene” in the same PDF without the accent, I get the 2 + 8 = 10 matches, but the 2 occurrences of “rené” are not highlighted properly and they only show because Preview found “ren” in them. Similarly, in another PDF containing 7 occurrences of “décennie”, matches for “décen” are all listed, but with “not found”, with a system beep, and no way to highlight them.
Acrobat Adobe Reader Mac macOS 13 Ventura PDF PDFpen Preview.app Skim
