PDF Viewer

@__tosh Thanks for hunting! Super proud to finally share this with the world, we're looking forward for loads of feedback to make this even better. Don't hold back! We know that there's still a lot to improve, but we're already using it every day and didn't want to hold back any longer. Yes, the app is free, has no ads and no in-app purchases. What's our business model you're asking? Check out our blog and follow up with any questions here. https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2016/p...

@arno_app Great question! We've spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. The UI code for this app is mostly done in Swift 3. The PDF editing is powered by the PSPDFKit SDK which can also be licensed by other apps - that is mostly Objective-C++. And we share a common core with Android, which is about 500k LOC. We've blogged about the sharing a while ago - this is still mostly up to date: https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2016/a... - Android UI is also all Java and custom-built; you can't really share UI code without making compromises, so we rewrote it specifically for each platform. There's also PSPDFKit for Web coming later this month which also uses the common C++ core, but a completely new JavaScript-based UI. https://pspdfkit.com/web/

@steipete Wow! Sounds like a lot of work. How long did you work on the app alone for both plattforms?

@arno_app @steipete PSPDFKit has been in the works for 5 years on iOS and almost 2 years now on Android. We have a team of over 30 people working full time on the SDKs. The apps took a bit over 6 months each but with some of the previous components, like the file manager, having a skeleton version of them already built. Obviously, the frameworks were the only reason we were able to put out the 1.0 in that short of a timeframe.

@steipete @arno_app Am I understanding correctly that with sync feature it will be cross-platform collaboration?

@alexeyplekhanov @arno_app Yes! We have a prototype for a year now but sync has a lot of edge cases (and syncing view state in real time/presentation mode) so we're working hard to really get it perfect before it's out.

@dredurr - That's a great question. Thank you for asking! The major differences come in the UI and UX of the two apps and what you get for free versus what you have to be a paying subscriber of Adobe to get. Acrobat is honestly not great on mobile currently and not really built specifically tailored for each platform. For instance, finding various views of the file manager on Acrobat on iOS is difficult, importing from other cloud service providers beside DC or Dropbox is not easy, after you highlight a sentence of text you then have to reselect the highlight tool to highlight more text, etc. These are the little details that make all the difference in an alright user experience and a great one. We all know on mobile, if the UX is not delightful, people will just pull out their laptop. The other difference is in paid versus free features. For instance, if you want to view a thumbnail summary of the pages, this is only available as a paid subscriber of Adobe's. Further, if you want to edit the document by rotating a page, deleting a page, or reordering pages, these are also not available without being a paid subscriber. We offer all these features for free and make it easy to use them. I hope that helps you make the switch! I really hope you check out both apps and let me know what you like more about Adobe over us. Thanks again for the question.

@dredurr I've always used adobe for pdf annotation before too. It gave me chills every time I anticipate using it. The experience has always been sub par. I now rely on preview but that's only a little better. That said, I still really only annotate on my laptop and not mobile. Will give this a try for a new experience! @jdrhyne