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by dsspence 5731 days ago
Apple doesn't license PDF from Adobe even though it is part of OS X's native graphics renderer.

“The Quartz renderer and the PDF interpreter that Apple ships with Mac OS X are built with Apple code, with no external licenses, by Apple employees. Adobe just publishes a specification for how it’s supposed to function. This gives Apple considerably more flexibility with regard to what Quartz and the PDF interpreter can be used for.”

http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/osx_quartz

1 comments

Steve Jobs learned from his experience with Adobe and the licensed version of Display Postscript. (see footnote 1 http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus )
Thanks to you and the parent commenter for a very insightful response.