Preview (software): Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Apple Preview describes the software application in Mac OS X, but originated essentially from NeXT's OPENSTEP software.

Due to the integration of the Portable Document Format display imaging model into OS X, Preview is both an image and PDF viewer. Although not nearly as full featured as Adobe's Acrobat Reader program, it does allow users to view, search and print PDF files, and shows pages as thumbnails.

Preview was rewritten for OS X 10.3 ("Panther") to give far greater performance when browsing PDF files, as well as fix some of the other obvious bugs in the software. The new version was written by John Calhoun.