Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Ashampoo adware

The German software company Ashampoo was having a tremendous sale. Seemed too good to be true. It was.

I was looking for a Mac program that could extract text from pdfs. After downloading several and trying them, I decided to look at the Windows side, where as usual there were more choices. I bought Ashampoo's PDF Pro for $20 marked down from $70. Wow! But after paying for it and entering my license number, no easy feat, but on Windows nothing ever is, I started the program and was faced with a full screen ad. I thought it was a one time thing. Nope. Second time I ran the program a different ad showed up. I had to click through the ad to get to use the program. Shades of Quicken.

This isn't software. It's adware. Nowhere on the Ashampoo site, nowhere in reviews, and nowhere on Google have I seen any mention of ads in these programs or this company. Ashampoo usually gets praised. I had used their Burning Studio Free version, which ironically was less intrusive than the paid version of PDF Pro. What a pisser. I paid with Paypal, which I often do with overseas purchases, and am still awaiting a refund.

I suspect the best pdf coverter for Mac is Abbyy Fine Reader, but who can afford it? Many years ago when I owned a scanner (a scanner!) it came with a free, stripped down version of Fine Reader which I used for a long time, which of course no longer works. But the technology was most impressive.

Ashampoo is also pushing the Opera browser on their web site. I used to use Opera when old versions of Firefox had trouble in 10.6. But it's owned by the Chinese now. How can Ashampoo support a program owned by the Chinese? That's stupid. It's like using Kaspersky software for security. I was floored the first time I read reviews on Windows sites recommending Kaspersky. This was years before it was banned.

Where's the common sense? How does Ashampoo think people are going to react to having ads inside software they have already paid for? Was it all a ploy to get my email address?

What's wrong with Adobe Acrobat X? I'm using version 10.1.16 which allows for exactly that.

How much is it? Adobe. Meh.

PDF Pen 10 does an excellent job with OCR and conversion to PDF but it isn't cheap at $74.99. For an additional $50 PDF Pen Pro 10 adds automatic or manual creation of PDF forms and basically anything and everything Acrobat can do. There are also a number of other similar apps in the Apple Store that have similar functions, many at a lessor price. I mention this one because it is the one I have used for several years and it just keeps getting better.

No clue. (Mine derives from 2011.) Check on Adobe's website.

I just checked while looking at something else on the Adobe web site and full license for Acrobat Pro is $449 USD, Acrobat Pro DC is $14.99/month, and Acrobat Standard DC is $12.99/month.

I think I'll stick with my modest purchase. Ashampoo emailed me, informing me that there is a way to turn off the ads. It's under Service Settings, something like that. There are two sections for preferences, Preferences and Services. I overlooked the latter.

I wonder if it was the white-text-on-black-background-circa-1980-dark-mode that made it harder to read.