Adobe Acrobat Pro Student and Teacher Edition M1 Silicon

[User_T52]

I want to purchase the Adobe Acrobat Pro Student and Teacher Edition for my Mac. However, the only version that is available at my local retailers is the 2020 edition, and acording to Adobe's website “Classic versions of Acrobat - Acrobat Pro 2017 and Acrobat Pro 2020 currently do not support native mode.” That being said, there was an updated version of Adobe DC (version 21.007.20091) released in September of 2021 that does run natively  on Apple computers with Apple Silicon M1 processor.

I'm only going to make this purchase if they update the Adobe Acrobat Pro Student and Teacher Edition to a version that can run natively on my M1 computer. Does anyone know if/when Adobe plans to update the Adobe Acrobat Pro Student and Teacher Edition to the September 2021 version (21.007.20091) or later?

[jamesm33053138]

This is a great question, I would love to know the answer. I've had Acrobat Pro 2020 for over a year now and made the upgrade to M1 processor a few months ago. I would really like a native version of this application! As far as the OP is concerned, I'm sure just an acknowledgment that work is in progress would be sufficient.  How about it Adobe?

[Jaycanuck 74]

I've been waiting for this response too. One would hope that they'll be updating 2020 to run natively on M1. The M1 has been out for almost the same time as Acrobat 2020.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I have no knowledge of the official releases or updates, but I suspect a native mode version will be for a newer release such as 2022 or 2023, not updated an older version. Acrobat 2020 was released about 5 months prior to the first M1 systems. However, one never knows...

[Jaycanuck 74]

Thanks for your reply. I was under the assumption that 2020 was the last perpetual licence of Acrobat. Is this not the case?

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Again, I wouldn't know. My assumption is it would be based on user input--by user input, I mean large corporations and agencies, not a simple, one-person user such as myself. 

[jamesm33053138]

I went ahead and contacted Adobe, speaking to an a support agent using their online chat. They told me that a native version of Acrobat Pro 2020 was coming....

I kind of agree with you, this is actually the point of a subscription model v perpetual license, so was expecting native support to come in the next perpetual release and that I would need to pay for the upgrade. I still want to remain on a perpetual license, and I'm very happy with the feature set on 2020 Pro, so if the agent is correct, and native support is provided in an update, this would be a big win for me.

[Michael28172581fjop]

Does anybody know news about this?

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Did you do any research? A quick google brought this up:

Acrobat and Acrobat Reader support Apple devices with Apple Silicon M1 processors. You can now choose to run Acrobat and Acrobat Reader in either native Apple Silicon mode or the Rosetta emulation mode.

Source:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/apple-silicon-m1-processor-support.html#:~:text=Acrobat%20and%20A....

[Michael28172581fjop]

Yes, I found that, but to change these settings I need to install Acrobat Pro first and that doesn't work.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Or you can change the preferences per the link provided.

[jamesm33053138]

Current status is still that Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 can only be run on Apple Silicon computers using Rosetta 2. I'm guessing that by now if they haven't rolled out a native (or Universal Binary) version then they probably have no intention of doing so. When I originally contacted Adobe about this I was assured there was a plan to release a native version of Acrobat Pro 2020 in a future update, so I'm sorry if my previous post misled some people!

It does seem a little cheeky for Adobe to still be selling users very expensive perpetual licenses for Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020. I completely get that for people who have already purchased it then its unrealistic to expect a free feature upgrade on a perpetual license, but I do think their sales page for Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 should at least advise potential new customers that they are buying software that requires Apples translation service to function and might stop working in the future.

The subscription model versions of Adobe Acrobat so support native mode on Apple Silicon macs of course. For me, the only issue I have with running Acrobat Pro 2020 via Rosetta 2 is that I need to also run MS Office in Rosetta 2 to avoid Adobe PDF errors and enable Actrobat plugins to work.

Unless Adobe release a newer version of Acrobat Pro on a perpetual license I will be looking elsewhere for my PDF software once Acrobat Pro 2020 stops working. I refuse to buy software on subscription.

[Michael28172581fjop]

Hm, the installation of Adobe Pro crashes everytime I try. So I thought it might be because of Apple silicon. It's a brandnew macBook Air 15  (M3) with Sonoma 14.4.1.
So I tried to install Rosetta 2 and got this message:
"2024-04-11 17:11:09.641 softwareupdate[2662:33166] Package Authoring Error: 052-77538: Package reference com.apple.pkg.RosettaUpdateAuto is missing installKBytes attribute

Install of Rosetta 2 finished successfully"
Do you know what to do about this?

[jamesm33053138]

Looks like some missing meta data during the install process of Rosetta 2. Its a warning, and does not appear to have prevented Rosetta 2 from being installed successfully. Are you able to run other Intel applications successfully or is it just Acrobat Pro? Are you getting any errors when Acrobat crashes? I'm assuming you've tried to run Acrobat after installing Rosetta 2 and its not working?

[Michael28172581fjop]

I don't know whether I have other intel-applications. I could not install Acrobat so it couldn't crash