Today I did my taxes using the "Fill-in" Acrobat forms. And discovered that the Acrobat Reader is crippled in that it can't save these forms; you get a "please pay money to upgrade" message. Frustrating.
So, I think smugly, they will print so I'll just use the "Print as PDF" option in the Print dialog. No cigar -- up pops a "This is not allowed" window. Same with the Preview option (how did they do that?). But, I thought, I shall not be duped into thinking that this can't be saved as a PDF -- if it can be printed it can be saved.
The solution I used was using an HP Laserjet printer that I have installed. In those drivers there is an option under "Output options" for "Save as File," which did work fine. I guess there is nothing Acrobat can do as it lets you print and this "Save as PDF" is handled in the driver after Acrobat hands off the data to it.
I'm sure that it could also be done with a dedicated PDF writer printer, but since OS X does this pretty well (not perfectly) by default, I suspect that many don't have one of these set up anymore. Now I have my tax forms saved on the hard drive where I can find them again. Yes, yes I'll e-file someday I'm sure.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040416005836764