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PDF Max – More Than Just A Reader

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I use iBooks for most all my iPad reading activity, but what if you want to do more than just read on your iPad. An iPad app I checked out this week, called PDF Max, goes well beyond reading for iPad power users.

PDF Max Features

By and far, the number one feature is the ability to edit PDFs. Here’s some of what I found in PDF Max:

– Add, move, or delete pages
– Add notes
– Create and fill shapes
– Freehand draw
– Sign documents with your finger
– Add audio notes
– Add stamps like “Approved” or “Confidential”
– Create external links
– Create and edit a document outline
– Tabbed document viewing
– Search within the document

There’s actually a lot more to it, but that’s the stuff that really stood out to me. Of all those features, the ones I think I’ll use the most are the ability to sign documents and the page management. It’s pretty common for me to get a document emailed to me in PDF format and have to print, sign and scan before I can email it back. With PDF Max, I can send the PDF to PDF Max right from my email, sign it, and email it out right from the app. Of course, the ability to email out anything other than the original PDF (without your changes or signature) requires the Pro version of PDF Max. Luckily, it was only $1.99 and came as an in-app purchase, so I didn’t have to stop what I was doing to upgrade. This Pro requirement applies to some extended features like creating shapes in more colors, but the free version let me do everything I listed above without bugging me for an upgrade. There were no ads and the it fell short of being called “nagware” as it didn’t nag me about upgrading. They gave away everything but the one piece I’ll fork over the $1.99 for. Well played, Mobeera.

Shortcomings

I absolutely love free, so of course I didn’t like having to pay for the Pro version, but that also means I’m picky and only pay when I see value. Despite giving me nearly everything in the free version, I saw the value of the two dollar upgrade and went for it. As a paying customer, I have but one concern about this app, and that’s the bookmarks. Without adding much to the traditional bookmark model, PDF Max actually made it less user friendly than the iBooks way of bookmarking. In iBooks, I tap a bookmark icon and I’m done and when I look at my bookmarks, I get page previews. In PDF Max, I have to give my bookmark a name. It’s a nice option, but the little bit of work to pre-fill the Name field with “Page [x]” would make it so much better. And page previews would be a great update to the bookmark panel. That said, I really had no other complaints.

Conclusions

If you need to export your PDF with changes, drop the $1.99 for the Pro version of this robust app. Either way, this is a great addition to your iPad, even in the awfully function-rich free version. Both are easily worth every penny.

This was a sponsored review, but all opinions about this app are entirely mine and are a result of spending plenty of time using it.

Perfect Reader : The iPhone And iPad PDF Reader

Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.

One of the advantages of having an iPhone or iPad is the ability to enjoy all forms of media in one device. From videos to photos to ebooks, every base is covered. Apple’s iBooks software did a great job of bringing ebooks to the iPhone and iPad, but apparently, something was missing because FutureMedia Studio built and released an app that they’ve boldly named Perfect Reader. With a name like that, I was anxious to dive in and see just how close to perfect they got.

A PDF Reader App That Works

Before any app can be called a Perfect Reader it should at least provide all the basics I’ve come to expect in any app designed as a book reader. At the very least, I need to be able to load and delete my own files. Done. What about the navigation? Can I thumb through pages or do I need to navigate with interface buttons? Perfect Reader actually has several ways to navigate.

Not only could I thumb through pages, but there were left and right buttons and a slider for faster navigation through long documents. Orientation locking is a must and was included in this app. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed on your side, trying to read and fighting to keep your iPhone from changing the orientation. My last basic requirement is the ability to zoom in and out. This is not as important on an iPad, but it’s necessary when trying to read a book on an iPhone, as is full screen support, which Perfect Reader also delivers. So far, this app has all the basics taken care of, but what about all the bells and whistles?

A Reader With A Lot Of Features

With “Perfect” in your name, you have a lot to live up to. Although I am hesitant to call this reader perfect, it gets pretty close. The vast array of additional features is proof enough that FutureMedia Studio really is trying to deliver the perfect PDF reader for your iDevices.

Among the features I found in this app are:

Folders – Create and manage folders and move your PDFs among them
Easy Importing – Transfer your PDFs into PerfectReader in three ways: Using iTunes, Wifi Transferring and using Open In feature – Open PDFs from other applications such as Safari, DropBox, MobileMe, Box.Net, GoodReader, ReaddleDocs, etc..
Renaming – Rename your documents from within the app
Text-To-Speech – The included Text re-flow engine reads your PDF to you
Search – Search all documents or from within the one you’re reading, including highlighting
Dictionary/Wikipedia – Look up any text without leaving the reader
Encrypted PDF support – I haven’t tried this
PDF Outlines and Hyperlinks – Support for Adobe’s outlines and hyperlinks is built in, which is nice for those huge technical manuals
Bookmarks – Bookmark any page for reading later
Printing – Print to a printer on your network

A full set of screenshots showing many of the features can be found here.

With all these features, Perfect Reader is already worth the purchase price, but it could use just a bit more.

Not Quite Perfect

Loaded with features already, this reader really is perfect… almost. FutureMedia Studio didn’t really leave me a lot of room for complaints. In fact, there was only one existing feature that fell short for me and that’s the text re-flow. It did a decent job of reading the words correctly, but I doubt I could listen to more than a page of it. It’s not ready to replace actual reading for me. The good news is that FutureMedia is promising new text re-flow engine, so we’ll have to wait and see. The navigation was another space I saw room to improve, but only just slightly. The existing navigation is great, but it needs the ability to jump to a specific page number. That feature is invaluable in Adobe’s desktop reader and would be a big bonus here as well.

The last thing on my Perfect Reader wish list (and this is kind of a biggie) is epub support. I’m aware that Perfect Reader is designed as a PDF reader, but if I could have this thing read epub ebooks, too, it would eliminate my ebooks reader. For now, I can always just use ConvertFiles.com to convert my documents to PDF, though.

Conclusions

Perfect? Really, incredibly close. In the world of iPhone apps, the real question is “Is it worth the cost of the app?” If you have a lot of PDFs to read, there’s no doubt about the value of this app. At $3.99, it’s worth every penny. It’s only a couple tweaks away from perfect, as far as I’m concerned. If you’re curious, but not ready to spend a couple bucks, try out the Perfect Reader Mini first, but either way, your iPhone or iPad is incomplete without Perfect Reader.

How To Crack PDF Passwords In Your Sleep

There are many reasons a PDF might be locked. The author may want to prevent unauthorized editing, or in the case of a magazine, the publisher may want to prevent readers from printing the online version. I honestly rarely have a need for this kind of thing, but it does come up, so when Eltima Software asked if I wanted to review a copy of their software, Recover PDF Password, I agreed. They also offered up a couple more free licenses to my readers, so read to the end to find out how to get a free license or cash.

How it works
Like many password crackers, Recover PDF Password uses a “brute force” method to guess at a password. By this, I mean that it tries every combination over and over again until one matches. One thing I liked was that I could choose to exclude some of the more complete searching options like special characters ($%^&*, etc), numbers, or upper case letters to name a few. This speeds up the search incredibly at the risk of missing the correct password completely if it has one of these characters. To give you an idea of the speed difference, imagine you’re lucky enough to know that the password is six characters in length. To just try searching with the lower case alphabet, (if my math is right) the software has to try up to 308,915,776 possible character combinations (26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26). If you add in 26 upper case alpha + 10 numeric + 28 special characters, you get 90 characters total and 90 * 90 * 90 * 90 * 90 * 90 makes 5.31441e+11 (531,441,000,000) possible combinations to try. That’s about 1,720 times more than just lowercase alpha characters. Having the option to pick and choose is a big plus. Remember, too, that this is if you’re lucky enough to know the password length and it’s only six characters. The problem with cracking passwords is a matter of the time it takes, and this program does in hours what it would take you a lifetime to do on your own.

What I think is missing is the ability for the software to try dictionary words first. A good password will be a combination of upper and lower case alpha characters, special characters, and numeric digits, but let’s face it… too often, the password is merely “password” and a large portion of the rest are dictionary words. Using the method above, it might take 19 billion or so tries, give or take a billion, to conclude that the password is “password”. Trying all the 8-character words from a dictionary file would take somewhere in the tens of thousands of guesses. This is a feature I’d really like to see in any password cracking tool, as it should be used as a first pass, just in case.

My tests
First, I downloaded Recover PDF Password. The download took about a half hour, but I tried again (twice) later, and it came down in around 14 seconds both times. Then, I grabbed a random (locked) PDF from the web. I first tried with all the options on and was getting nowhere after a day. I decided to start over, telling it to try anything with lowercase characters and numbers from three to four characters in length. That went pretty quickly, eliminating all possibilities. Next, I moved on to 5-6 characters, which took a lot longer, as expected, due to the exponential growth in combinations to try. The program eliminated all 5-character combinations and then, about a third of the way through the alphabet, it recovered a 6-character password for me. The total search took 19 hours, 50 minutes, 28 seconds, and used about 50% cpu and 25MB of RAM pretty consistently.

After thinking about my wish that a dictionary file be used for the first pass, I decided to try a PDF with a password of “password” just for kicks. I grabbed one from Adobe’s site and set Recover PDF Password loose on it, trying only lowercase alpha characters and only with a length of 8. After about five minutes, it was estimating 100-108 days remaining.

Conclusions
First of all, it does what it says, so that’s good. At the $39.95 price for a personal license, it’s also within reach of anyone needing to recover a password on a PDF without breaking the bank. The down side is that a good password will take a very long time to crack, but that’s going to be true for any program, I guess. I’d love to see a dictionary file used, but it won’t make a difference for a secure password. The software is solid and complete with useful options to help save time and it’s worth the purchase as long as you can let it run in the background for a while.

UPDATE: Eltima Software tells me that they are now working on implementing the request for use of a dictionary file. That’s great news.

Get a free license
Want to try it out yourself or just have it handy for when you really need it? Eltima Software gave me two licenses to give away to readers. All you have to do to try for one is tweet with “http://Lnk.gd/ej” and “@joetech” and you’ve earned an entry. If someone re-tweets your tweet, you get another entry for every RT. Just to spice things up a little, I’ll throw in $20 (via PayPal) to a third winner. I’ll draw three twitter users at random from those who have entered. To collect, I have to be able to send you a direct message, so make sure to follow @joetech in case you win.