Did you like the 3D PDF I just sent you?

For a while, I've been lauding the new 3D PDF documents as a new frontier in viewing three-dimensional images, and ever since I've been able to create them, I've been sending them to my friends all over the map. Problem is, only a select few have been successful in opening them and among the rest, only the more assertive have told me they saw nothing when they were opening them.

At first, I thought – quite correctly – that they weren't opening them with the right app. That's right, the best app is Acrobat Reader XI, not necessarily the PDF reader that's installed inside your machine or some older version of Adobe Acrobat. Yet, as I drilled deeper, I realized that smartphones and tablets are also unable to open these 3D PDF documents.

The exception might be if you have an iPhone or iPad, there's now an Adobe app that work for those, but nothing yet for Android. So if you think your smartphone or tablet are just as good and powerful as an old-fashioned computer, think again!