Opinion: ARTS PDF detonates cozy relationship with Adobe to release an Acrobat competitor. What's gonna happen now?I can't tell you where I first heard this apocryphal story, but I know it's been told to me a least a couple-three times going through the stack of history courses one takes en route to what my alma mater called a BSJ degree (the "J" standing for "journalism"; you fill in the rest of the blanks):
Alfred Nobel, after inventing dynamite, realized he'd created a monster weapon that man could use in war against his fellow man. Racked with regret, he shouted, "What have I done?" to the heavens, quit his job and devoted the rest of his life to making amends by sinking his quite considerable riches into developing the peace prize that he named after himself.
(It didn't really happen that way. In fact, Nobel, a reclusive single man, shocked the world after he died in 1896 by revealing the peace prize in his will.)
Click here to read Jim Felici's review of Nitro.
In the same way that Nobel shook up the industry with dynamite—his invention that enabled the safe transport of nitroglycerin, a volatile explosive his factories made that wasn't ordinarily stable for shipping—ARTS PDF remade the market for PDF software by announcing Nitro PDF, a PDF-making Acrobat competitor, at the Acrobat & PDF Conference in Orlando, Fla., in April.
This kind of shakeup—if, indeed, Adobe's rock-solid footing in the market can be shaken—can only be good for us people who use PDF on a daily basis for better communication and productivity. Competition will spur innovation and economies that Adobe might not be "inspired" to create without a touch of competitive goading.
Read the full story on PDFzone.com: Nitro PDF Software Is Explosive Stuff
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