Preview.app is actually one of the few first-party Apple apps that I really miss when using a non-macOS computer.
I'd make the parallel with browsers: there's an argument for them to stay decoupled from the system.
Most people shouldn't have a hotkey to lock the active window on top of everything else. If they accidentally press it without knowing what they did, then they have a window stuck in the way and can't even get to The Google to ask it how to unstick it because they can't switch to their web browser window.
And yeah, there are also some features like Peek (the quick preview thing) that would make sense as being pulled out of PowerToys and included as native Windows features, but then they'd get fucked up by whoever is making all the godawful decisions about Windows development lately so I'm glad they haven't. If Peek were part of Windows they'd do something dumb like implement it as "Show this file in Edge" instead. Compared to PowerToys where apparently the developers have been tasked with making something good that people would want to use.
Keyboard manager for instance is plenty powerful while keeping a very simple interface, and will paliate the need for AutoHotKey for most people.
There's a flurry of other stuff that I guess Microsoft employees felt are tremendously helpful but couldn't convince management to bake into the system.
The best of my understanding is that NeXT considered Display PDF the successor to Display PostScript and OS X inherited it. I have no idea how much or how little the latest macOS and iOS rely on PDF encoding for their GUIs now, but I know at one point it was an integral part of the windowing and drawing system and is still in there for processing PDF docs.
Whether that is the fault of Acrobat or Preview, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, though, it means I frequently need to move across to Acrobat when addressing edits that someone has marked up in that software. And that acts as a constant reminder of how sluggish, awkward and nagging Acrobat can be. Even quitting the app is slow!
Unchallenged, and for something like 20 plus years running.
Anyway, you're on a Mac. Fix it yourself. Run the Shortcuts app and create a shortcut called something like "Maximize Preview". Set it to run an AppleScript:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Preview" to activate
tell application "System Events" to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of front window of (first process whose frontmost is true) to true
return input
end run
Now in Shortcuts create an automation that runs when Preview is opened, and select that shortcut you just created as its action. You may have to go into System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility and let Shortcuts and siriactionsd access to control your desktop.
Basically, you're doing something very uncommon for a Mac desktop, so it's not going to help you with that by default. It doesn't mean you're powerless to change it, though!
My "will give that a try" means that I put a link to your comment on a to-do list.
Heh, gotcha. I do hope it helps, though! Shortcuts is astoundingly powerful and I’ve used it for any number of personal nits like this. For example, combine it with Keyboard Maestro and you can add new commands to any app that’s scriptable via Shortcuts, like “if the current app is Notes, and I press F5, copy the current note and post its contents to Mastodon”, or whatever.
But, if you think Preview is similarly perfect—maybe we should just come to the conclusion that PDF readers are in a pretty good state.
Which makes Acrobat so confusing.
For me, Evince fails to accurately show the physical paper size. Okular manages to do this just fine.
On iPhone and iPad I've been using Notability.