The problem with the document in question is that it is actually a highly compressed PDF/A document-- not a true PDF.

A little sleuthing revealed it was created with LuraDocument PDF v2.28 emulating Acrbat version 1.5 (6.x). LuraDocument is a pricy Windows enterprise-server solution for generating highly compressed PDF/A (or ‘PDF archival") documents. A discussion about PDF/A documents can be found at:

http://www.infonomics-digital.com/infonomics/20080506/?pg=61

Improved PDF/A support was introduced in Acrobat Professional 8. In addition to improved compliance testing, Acrobat 8.x and above corrects some of the simpler errors that it finds. Also, Acrobat 8 was the first product to support the even newer PDF/A-1a format.

Your Mac has trouble with these files because it is converting the embedded postscript in them on the fly to PDF. For instance, a PDF/A file can contain an embedded Flash file which is something Preview's underlying graphics engine was not designed to handle.

Basically when you save the file down in a Mac, the PDF/A image compression is removed sacrificing file size for speed and ease of handling.

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