Acrobat XI on MacBook Pro Retina down severely on scrolling PDFs

[Will_Parker1]

Hi all.

I've seen lots of threads around the net about slow scrolling on macbook and acrobat pro but having tried a few things I am compelled to ask myself for some help.

I have a Retina MacBook Pro 15" from Late 2012 and fully updated Mountain Lion (10.8.3), it has the solid state disk and I hit it with the cpu upgrade and ram upgrades on purchase.

For most applications it is gratifyingly fast - including, I should say much of the CS6 suite.

But when it comes to using PDFs in Acrobat XI it is really almost unusable.  The scrolling hesitation and interface lag for scrolling is horrendus.  It doesn't seem to matter too much if it is a big or small PDF in number of pages or size of images - ie pages of text that are rendered instead of text.

Sure, some of the PDFs I typically use are quite large and long. I am currently getting frustrated over one which is 690 pages but only 5 MB - another 300 pages and less than 2MB but they bog down something horrid.

And the most frustrating thing is that when I open them in Preview they scroll just as fast and cleanly as they do on my iPAD!!!

I have tried reinstalling, I have tried unchecking "run in 32bit" and I have looked at every internal setting I can find to no avail.

Can anyone suggest anything that might be causing it to be so sloooooow on this platform which should eat simple pdf viewing and annotating alive - (and I haven't even got the the point where I would be confident adding PitStop etc)

Best regards,

Will

[Steven_Yen]

Can you give me your email so I can talk to offline? I will look at your issue and report to our developers.

[Will_Parker1]

OK, no problem thank you for the PM.

[hammer0909]

Steven,

I am having the same issue as Will. Running a MacBook Pro with Retina and commenting and scrolling are horrible. I've been rebooting and doing my work in Acrobat for Windows because it's almost unusable on mac.

[Steven_Yen]

Hi All,

Acrobat 11.0.3 is not fully supported with HiDPI features yet, but we will support soon in next dot releases.

The scrolling problem that i can reproduce in our side. I have brought the issue to our developers and we will try to resolve the issue as soon as possible in next releases.

Thanks for finding bugs for us.

[hammer0909]

This can't come fast enough for me. Commenting is brutal right now. Thanks for the update!

[Steven_Yen]

Sorry to hear that, support HiDPI in Mac is our main target for next dot release. we have the fix already, and next dot release will come soon. Thanks for using our products.

[anyOldNameThatWorks]

I'm just reading this thread over a month later, and still no fix. If you had the fix on June 7, where is the dot release? I'm reverting to using Preview! How is it possible that nobody tested running this version on a retina display? Please fix this!

[Steven_Yen]

i have reported your issue in our bug database, and I expect it should be addressed in our next quareterly releases  around end of Sep.

Thanks for reporting bug to us.

[Brutalism]

So the message to MacBook Pro Retina Display users is: Acrobat XI is unusable for two more months at least. Even though you reportedly (by your own staff) had the fix two months ago.

Excellent.

I'm switching the Finder preference for PDFs to "Open with Preview". Goodbye Acrobat.

[etexter]

There is no real point. Adobe Reader has not worked for over a year. Preview is just fine. It's been "going to be fixed" for far too long. Actions speak. Posts about bug database and soon to be releases don't mean much. Adobe Reader has been unusable for over a year for any Retina user. Good game.

[Jon__aka_nle_]

Same error here. It's painfull to work with a Retina MBP, especially with comments! Preview is doing a decent job, but also has issues when there is a lot of comments.

EDIT:

From another thread (http://answers.acrobatusers.com/Severe-lag-in-Adobe-Reader-with-Macbook-Pro-Retina-13-q63571.aspx) if you go to Preferences -> Page Display and uncheck "smooth images" and "smooth line art" it will be snappier. The PDF will look like crap, but it will be snappier to work with comments.

[Steven_Yen]

We are working on the problem, and the problem should be fixed in our next quarterly releases that is Sep.

Thanks for your patience.

[C_F_McBlob]

FWIW, Apple had to "rework" a lot of apps to make them perform better with Retina displays, as did Microsoft with Office. Adobe made changes to apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but the fixes for Acrobat and Reader have been lagging. I don't have a Retina display, but I've read plenty about this and it will be welcome when it fianlly does come to fruition.

[bryan_kidd]

It's unusable. Switched to using Preview for everything except checking print artwork.

Really dissapointed.

[kdummula]

Any news on when the update is due for release!!!!

Hope the reader becomes usable again.

Thanks, K

[C_F_McBlob]

After the 10th is what I've heard.

[g_miles]

Adobe just doesn't get it.  Skim is a very good alternative, as well as Mac Preview.  Adobe claimed the September update would resolve this issue, but sadly this statement was untrue.

[g_miles]

How do we get this message to the developers? Viewing pdf files on a retina display mac with Acrobat XI is totally unacceptable at this time

[Luc_Leroy · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry it doesn't work for you, and if I write we support Retina Display, it because we do

You shouldn't have to change the info.plist to support retina display (unless you've messed-up with a previous install to try to make it support retina display like it is proposed to do for MS Office on certain web sites).

Menus, toolbars, dialogs... are all rendered at full resolution and if other users confirm that, then maybe you should question yourself about this instead of accusing Adobe of shipping non Retina compliant software...

Jon brings a good point asking you to check the plist file. Even Acrobat 11.0.03 supports Retina display (in the UI only, not the document view) so there is NO WAY you get pixelated menus with a regular install.

BTW - on a different thread I've asked you to double check that you're running 11.0.04 and eventually provide a screen shot. I'll be happy to help if you truly have an issue. LEt me know if you need someone from Adobe to provide you with some support.

Thanks,

Luc

[etexter]

I gave it a whirl. New version installed and does not work as the scrolling speed still is horrible. I have a 1 page color PDF that takes 5-6 seconds to move up and down the page. Same PDF in Preview works like a normal browser window.

In the end, you are not supporting the retina display properly for this product. I have no issues in LightRoom and other products. This one just sucks it seems. I'll try the next release probably in 6-8 months again once a new cycle comes out.

[hammer0909]

I just ran the 11.0.04 update and tested it. Although the scrolling is not as smooth as I'd like, it is in fact markedly improved. More important than that to me, is the fact that adding comments is not painfully slow and is almost normal. Kudos to Adobe for improving on this long standing problem!

One question I have… As other users have mentioned, if you do a get info on the Acrobat XI application, there are two options. One for open in low resolution and one for open in 32 bit mode. My 32 bit mode option was checked. I'm running a MacBook Pro with Retina and am running OS X 10.8.4. If I uncheck open in 32 bit mode, will it open in 64 bit mode? I'm very curious.

[g_miles]

Latest version installed; no alterations to the app have ever been made; everything installed and updated through creative cloud.  It has been acknowledged by Adobe tech support that retina display is still not fully supported. Continuing this forums blog no longer serves any purpose as it is clear that appropriate support cannot be rendered here.  What needs to happen is for the Adobe developers to actually fix the issue. 

[Luc_Leroy]

Hi,

g.miles wrote:

It has been acknowledged by Adobe tech support that retina display is still not fully supported.

Well, I'd be interested to know what is not supported.

That there may be a performance issue which is independent of Retina display is possible, but that's not 'not being fully supported' AFAIK.

Thanks,

Luc

[pammm56]

This shows that Acrobat is NOT ABLE TO USE THE RETINA DISPLAY.