Yep, this has been my experience too. I remember having such a hard time trying to fill out a form I-9 for starting a new job last year that I had to not only download Acrobat, but for reasons I no longer recall I had to BUY A NEW PRINTER and PRINT the damn thing on paper to fill it out by hand! Absolutely batshit crazy nonsense!
I have seen weird pdfs that only display “help” messages when opened in preview… you have to follow a link and then open it in actual acrobat.