Yes, PDF is certainly a viable format that has its uses. I imagine almost everyone has some sort of PDF reader software installed, since it's unlikely you'd never need to open a PDF. That said, most free PDF software including free versions of Adobe are primarily PDF readers, and offer limited editing functionality, so doing things like convert PDFs to other formats is not something they are capable of. So for people unwilling to pay, it is very user-unfriendly in comparison with a folder of jpgs. In addition to that, you hit on another one of the reasons we don't use PDF when you say that it isn't the best for images, which is all that magazine scans are. Releasing a book as a CBR is madness. For magazines, it's a legit choice (and for comics, I'm sorry, but it's the ONLY sensible choice.)
But again, people who prefer PDF are welcome to convert their mags to whatever they like. No one here will ever try to force you to do otherwise. If you like Adobe, by all means, use it. CBR files won't always display exactly as intended on PDF software depending on how the pages have been edited, but they'll still be perfectly readable, so you may as well use the software you're most comfortable with.
I'd like to point out that the only reason a PDF would be smaller than a CBR of the same original jpgs is if the PDF resamples the jpgs at a higher compression rate, lowering their quality. This can be done to CBRs as well, you just save the jpgs with a higher compression rate before ZIP/RARing them. It goes without saying that compressing our scans to save space should only ever be done for personal use and not reuploaded elsewhere, as most scanners don't appreciate low-quality versions of files they worked hard on being released back into the wild.
I hear you on storage space. I haven't really downloaded mags in years, but even so I've got 2 TB of them. But that's nothing: I've got over 16 TB of comics. And then there's all the TV and movies. 3 external HDDs? Ha. I've currently got 10.