If I remember correctly the free version of Acrobat Reader will display "teasers" – asking if you want to use some feature or another. Then if you express interest, you find out that the feature requires a "subscription".
It seems that Adobe may now be getting more obnoxious. I ran Acrobat Reader just now, and it put up this dialog.
The close button (upper left hand corner) did not work – and if I had pressed RETURN, it would have chosen the "Free trial" followed by a subscription that would have cost a minimum of $24.98/month (if I paid $299.76 for a whole year), or $36.98/month (month to month). I had to press the "See all plans" button, which brought up an Adobe Web page describing the subscription plans, and encouraging me to subscribe, before Acrobat Reader let me get to the normal screen.
I quit Acrobat Reader and started it again, and didn't get the dialog the second time. But I found Adobe's use of such a dialog to push a $299.76/year – $443.76/year subscription to be very objectionable.
For comparison, a Microsoft 365 Family subscription which provides access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Designer, Teams, and Forms for 1 – 6 people in the same family is $129.99/year. Or let's say that you paid Adobe $300/year for Acrobat Pro for 5 years. That's $1,500 that could have gone towards buying your next Mac.
