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Press Releases

• PDFpen 12.2 Features Adding Items to the Library From the Context Menu and More October 6, 2020
• PDFpen 12.1 Adds Page Label Support and More June 17, 2020
• PDFpen 12 Adds Optimize PDF, Magnifier Window, Callout Tool, and More April 28, 2020
• PDFpen for iPad & iPhone v5.2 Features Creating and Editing Hyperlinks January 23, 2020
• PDFpen 11.2 Adds Content Editing in Table Cells November 5, 2019
• PDFpen for iPad & iPhone v5.1 Features Multiple Windows on iPadOS, Dark Mode, and Paper Styles October 3, 2019
• PDFpen 5.0 on iOS 13 Features Dark Mode and Paper Styles September 19, 2019
• PDFpen 11.1 Improves Column and Table Data Selection, Adds Automatic Page Rotation Options July 9, 2019
• PDFpen 11 Adds Split View, Font Bar, Continuity Camera Support, and more May 16, 2019
• Smile Launches TextExpander for Chrome Beta April 17, 2019

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Awards & Reviews

June 9, 2020, Useful Things
PDFpenPro 12 for Mac
“PDFpenPro has saved me many hours of frustration in dealing with forms and PDF content. It is one of my personal top 10 must useful software programs on Mac.”
-John McMinn, Host, Useful Things (Podcast)

June 8, 2020, The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing
PDFpenPro for Mac
“PDFpenPro 12 for Mac is the best-in-class solution for viewing, editing, modifying, and distributing documents composed in the PDF file format.”
-Professor Michael L. Kleper, Editor, The Kleper Report on Digital Publishing

May 5, 2020, Visuals Producer
PDFpenPro 12 review
“PDFpenPro 12 puts powerful functionality that Acrobat delivers for some time now in the hands of Mac users without charging a subscription fee and that’s a good thing.”
-Erik Vlietinck, Editor, Visuals Producer (EU)

August 19, 2019, Mause Reviews
PDFpen and PDFpenPro
“As a teacher, I find [PDFpen] a great addition to my applications. Nowadays, a number of assignments are submitted digitally. This tool saves me a lot of time. I can quickly annotate an assignment or touch up my existing lessons which are in a PDF format. Give the demo a test run and see how it compares with your use of Preview. If you are like me, PDFpen is worth the price.”
-Marcel Dufresne

July 23, 2019, Mac|Life
PDFpen: Adobe Acrobat now has a serious rival that’s also cheaper
“If you’re working in an environment that already subscribes to Adobe’s Creative Cloud you’ll have the Acrobat app already, but if not you should try the trial of PDFpen first. […] The bottom line. A powerful, affordable alternative to Acrobat Pro for PDF editing and document scanning.”
-Carrie Marshall, Contributor, Mac|Life

May 19, 2019, AppleInsider
Hands On: PDFpen 11 brings Split View and precision page number positioning to the Mac
“The more often you use PDFs and the more work you have to do with them, the more you need a dedicated app such as PDFpen 11 or PDFpenPro 11.”
-William Gallagher

April 24, 2018, iMore
PDFpenPro 10 review: Mark up and edit PDFs just like documents!
“[Smile’s] PDFpenPro 10 ($125) is… designed to make PDF documents, which, by design, are difficult and even impractical to edit, as fluid and easy to make changes to as any word processing and page layout document. […] [The new Precision Edit] tool was like magic and made fixing the document a delight. It turned an expected hours-long process into about 30 minutes of work.”
-Jeffery Battersby, iMore Contributor

January 16, 2018, The Sweet Bits
Acrobat Alternative: The 2018 Best Mac PDF Editor Replacement.
“PDFpen for Mac is the Superior Acrobat Alternative Solution”
– Della Harris

April 27, 2017, Macworld
PDFpen 9 and PDFpenPro 9 review: PDF-editing apps get solid enhancements over previous versions
“Acrobat is obscure and hard to master, and Preview typically insufficient. […] It’s into this gap that Smile developed PDFpen ($75) and PDFpenPro ($125)… both exhaustively featured and generally intuitive. […] New users will see very little light in the gap between Acrobat and PDFpenPro, or even the regular PDFpen edition.”
– Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor, Macworld

February 16, 2017, Windows Central
Write smarter and faster with TextExpander on Windows
“TextExpander, one of the most productive tools anyone who does a lot of typing can get. The idea behind it is incredibly simple, but it makes you so much more productive that once you’ve lived with it, it’s hard to live without it… it’ll transform how you work.”
– Richard Devine

May 6, 2016, Macworld
PDFpen 8 and PDFpen Pro 8 review: Corporate-grade PDF handling at a small-business price
“[PDFpenPro is] full-featured and generally intuitive… also a superb way to design forms, retrofit existing documents to contain form fields, and to fill out forms. […] The new version is a solid notch up from the previous release, adding a miscellaneous set of new useful features that bring it in closer parity to Adobe Acrobat.”
– Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor, Macworld

January 25, 2016, The Sweet Setup
The Best PDF App For Mac: PDFpen
“Smile’s PDFpen application is a functional, powerful PDF editor… with powerful features to meet even the most rigorous demands of PDF power users.”
– Mike Schmitz

January 1, 2016, Macworld
How to edit PDFs when switching from Windows
“I find Smile’s software [PDFpen] much more intuitive to use, much more richly featured for the precise kinds of changes and actions I want to take, and more full-powered than Preview.”
– Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor, Macworld

November 13, 2015, RayEdwards.com
7 Apps Every Writer Should Own
“If you happen to be a terrible typist (like me), [TextExpander] is very nearly a miracle from God. Saves me hours every week.”
– Ray Edwards

November 6, 2015, Subtraction.com
Desert Island Utilities
“[TextExpander] truly gives you super-powers at your keyboard… This is a truly robust piece of software that I feel confident will reward any user, regardless of what you use your Mac for.”
– Khoi Vinh

September 3, 2015, DrJasonDowns.com
Papers 3 and PDFpen – a match made in Heaven (a workflow)
“PDFpen is a powerful piece of software that allows me to alter PDFs in many different ways, but the one I rely upon the most is the ability to OCR a scanned PDF.”
– Jason Downs

June 12, 2015, Macworld
TextExpander 5 review: Typing shortcut utility makes you more productive by learning your habits
“TextExpander 5 is a no-brainer for anyone who regularly types the same or similar chunks of text, and who wants to speed up work while retaining flexibility. On an hourly basis, you’ll recoup the cost in a matter of weeks; the savings from tedium are priceless.”
– Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor, Macworld

February 15, 2015, Syracuse.com
Technofile: TextExpander has powerful macros for iPad, iPhone
“TextExpander touch, from Smile software, has been around for years, and has excelled in just about every way.”
– Al Fasoldt

December 28, 2014, iMore
iMore 2014 Hall of Fame
“[Smile software] also helped set the standard for Apple community support and sponsorship… they remain dedicated to the Mac and to the Apple community.”
– iMore

October 20, 2014, EricGFriedman.com
Tools I use: TextExpander
“The benefits from [TextExpander] have been endless. I have probably used this tool every day since I started using it…”
– Eric Friedman

October 3, 2014, RobbyBurns.com
Expand Your Keystrokes And Save Hours: Using TextExpander In The Middle School Band Classroom
“I have long advocated for… TextExpander. This app is available for OSX and iOS, but the Mac version is the one I cannot live without.”
– Robby Burns

October 1, 2014, Engadget
A look at the TextExpander keyboard for iOS 8
“I’ve used TextExpander on my Mac for years…it can save you hundreds of keystrokes a day, especially if you answer a lot of the same emails or do anything that involves repetitive typing.”
– Victor Agreda Jr, TUAW

January 15, 2014, PCMag.com
TextExpander (for Mac) Review & Rating: Editors’ Choice award
“In the course of testing, I saved myself about nineteen thousand characters and more than an hour of typing. I can only imagine the tally this time next year. Given how many ways there are to spend time, any utility that reclaims it, in a manner that supports rather than encumbers your existing workflow, deserves commendation. Smile’s TextExpander 4 earns our Editors’ Choice award…”
– William Fenton

October 1, 2013, Creative Bloq
Turn your iPad into a flatbed scanner
“Who bothers with a scanner any more? This app does almost everything your rotten old flatbed used to.”
– Jim McCauley, Creative Bloq

April 11, 2013, Macworld
Review: With PDFpenPro 6, Smile makes a great PDF utility even better
“PDFpenPro is the crème de la crème of PDF editing and annotating applications.”  
– Jeffery Battersby, Macworld

February 5, 2013, The Mac Observer
PDFpen for iPhone: 2013 Editors’ Choice Award
“Reading PDF documents on your iPhone is easy, but editing? Smile Software makes it simple to do just that with PDFpen for the iPhone.”

May 10, 2012, Macworld
App Guide: PDFpen for iPad Review
“User-friendly interface, integration with Mac version make for a compelling app”

January 27, 2012, Macworld
PDFpen for iPad: Macworld 2012 Best of Show
“Like the Mac version, PDFpen for iPad ($10) is a feature-filled app that lets you annotate and edit PDF documents. You can also import images from your Photo Library and place them in PDFs. It can store files in iCloud, Dropbox, Google Docs, and Evernote.”

January 27, 2012, The Mac Observer
PDFpen for iPad: 2012 Editors’ Choice Award
“Smile’s PDFpen for the iPad follows in the footsteps of its big brother on the Mac by letting you edit and view PDF documents on your iPad.”

December 7, 2010, Macworld
TextExpander: 2010 Macworld Editors Choice Award
“What makes TextExpander a great app isn’t just that it’s so handy and so capable, but also the fact that it’s constantly evolving—refining its core tools, adding new ones, and adapting to an ever-changing technology landscape.”
-Macworld.com, Dan Miller

September 9, 2010, MacVoices
The Smile Software Crew Introduce the Cool New Features of PDFpen 5
“Smile is at it again, upgrading one of their wildly useful tools with even more new and cool features. Jean MacDonald, Philip Goward and Greg Scown join us to talk about PDFpen 5.”

May 18, 2010, Macworld
Essential Mac Utilities: text expanders
“The overall win, however (this time at least), goes to TextExpander, because of its support for syncing, creating expansions from selected text, and executing shell scripts in expansions. These features push it slightly ahead of TypeIt4Me, and help justify its higher price tag.”
-Macworld.com, Rob Griffiths

December 10, 2009, Macworld
PDFpen: 2009 Macworld Editors Choice Award
“When it comes to modifying PDFs, Smile’s PDFPen 4.5 fits neatly between OS X’s free Preview and Adobe’s $449 Acrobat Pro. At only $50, it goes well beyond Preview’s PDF processing power, yet it offers some of the same features you’ll find in the much more costly Acrobat Pro. … PDFPen may not be the most exciting product among this year’s Eddys, but it’s certainly one of the most useful.”
-Macworld.com, Rob Griffiths

January 2009
Macworld 2009: The Mac Observer Editors Choice Award
PDFpen 4
“Editing PDFs can be an intimidating and daunting task without the right tools. Smile’s PDFpen 4 fits that bill perfectly thanks to its easy to use features. …PDFpen 4 can handle almost everyone’s PDF editing needs, and it won’t hurt your pocketbook, either.”

January 16, 2008, The Mac Observer
Editors’ Choice Winners for Macworld 2008
PDFpenPro

February 2004, Macworld
Macworld: The 19th Annual Editors’ Choice Awards
DiscLabel

July 2003, Macworld
Macworld Announces Best of Show Awards
DiscLabel