I think part of the issue is that PDF isn't responsive to the size of the device. A PDF is not much more than an image from the perspective of layout. I'd love to be able to reflow text from a PDF such that a single column fills my screen edge-to-edge and scrolling allows me to advance through the paper, as opposed to requiring me to reposition the viewport every time I reach the end of a column. I know this isn't the purpose of PDFs, and I love them in different contexts where layout (including typography) does matter to me. But I also really want to be able to easily consume papers in a way that isn't constrained by the PDF layout.

Yes, I want my cake and a pony. Cakepony.

Yup. I agree. I even find the experience fantastic on the original iPad, as well as a brand new one. I find it just fine on my phone, which isn't nearly as large a screen.

I am guessing it is an individual taste thing. That makes some sense.

Yeah fair point, I use an iPad mini. But I have heard similar complaints from older folks (40+) who have full-size iPads. I think much of it stems from dual-column printing, which is just kind of antiquated/annoying on digital.

Fwiw, this conversation greatly varies depending on who is doing the reading -- the rather banal fact is that the average 25-year-old student has much different ability to screen-read than the average 60-year-old professor (or a 60-year-old student, for that matter) :)

so no need to search tablet specs for the culprit. PEBCAK :)

The screen of a tablet is large enough to display a PDF. But PDFs are split into pages. That's perfect with paper, where we flip pages. It's very unnatural on screens, especially touchscreens, where we use vertical scrolling to move around.

Then there are minor issues of margins, possibly zooming to make text readable, etc.

That's why PDFs are so bad on mobile. The ideal format is one column text, figures and tables between paragraphs of that column, no page breaks, bidirectional links to notes. That's HTML, I guess.