Preview is better, Acrobat Pro is WAY better — but PDF Expert is quickly catching up!

Marks against PDF Expert
- Gratuitous toolbar/sidebar: There is the horizontal toolbar up top, but a sidebar also opens up when using certain tools (e.g., highlighting). It’s a waste of space to dedicate a whole sidebar to something that could easily appear in the extant toolbar (when applicable, obviously). There is no need for a toolbar AND and sidebar when one would do. It’s not an efficient use of space (which becomes more of an issue when working in Split View).
- Nested bookmarks: they do not show up in bookmark sidebar (and they do in Preview, Acrobat, etc.)

Points in favor of PDF Expert
- Handoff between iOS and OS X. That actually improves one of my workflows. You definitely don’t get that with Preview or Acrobat Pro.
- Frequent updates and improvements (Preview and Adobe Acrobat are AWFUL about this).
- Updates that address my my previous complaints(!): For instance: "- Annotating: it’s not optimally intuitive, easy to use, or well-designed. It’s better than Adobe Acrobat Pro for sure, but not quite as nice as Preview. E.g., [a complaint — about the ease of changing the color of highlighting — which was addressed in the 1.4.1 update! Nice!]. Also, [another complaint — about the highlighting sidebar — that was (mostly) addressed an earlier update].” Also, “[I would appreciate] sidebars [that do not take up so much space]."

Stuff that I need from PDF Expert:
- the ability to scroll through PDF while changing name of PDF, adding Finder tags, etc — i.e., when the “rename” prompt is covering the PDF.
- the ability to click on and then edit annotated text entered in another app (e.g., Preview, Acrobat, etc.) without PDF Expert automatically applying a (red) border of the text box when I click on it.
- the ability to search for specific strings of letters (e.g., searching “aid” returns said, etc. Preview allows searches to search with quotes to search only for ‘aid’ — i.e., by typing “aid” into search box)
- the ability to highlight over one section highlighting that is one color to thereby change that section of the highlighting to another color (this can be done in Preview and it’s become crucial to my workflows).
- better features: OCR, object/text/image editing/removal, compression, metadata and hidden data removal, etc.

Stuff I want from PDF Expert
- keyboard shortcuts for each highlighting color (e.g., ⌘⌅Y for yellow, ⌘⌅B for blue, etc.)
- less reliance on sidebars.
- [another thing that Readdle provided]
- an explanation of whether PDF Expert improves upon Preview’s more hidden (but still sort of famous) issues. E.g., Preview’s memory leaks, Preview’s proclivity to drastically increase the size of a PDF (e.g., 3mb PDF turns into a 12mb PDF when it is opened and then saved by Preview, etc.)

The Verdict(s)?
- Preview and PDF Expert are neck and neck, but Preview is free and PDF Expert is not. So Preview wins.
- Acrobat Pro offers LOADS more features than PDF Expert, so Acrobat Pro wins by long shot!

There are two things PDF Expert could do to compete with the available alternatives:
1. Outperform Preview (not just match it) so as to be worth paying for the app when a free alternative like Preview is available
2. Offer pro-level features to compete with Acrobat Pro.
3. Drastically reduce the price of PDF Expert. (to something that seems negligibly different than free).

If (1) and (2) were done, I would recommend PDF Expert to EVERYONE — even if the price stayed the same.

(Full disclosure: I’d love to recommend something besides Acrobat Pro; I would relish in that SOOO much! I really hope someone like PDF Expert affords me the opportunity)

Byrd Nick about PDF Expert – Edit, Sign PDFs