51–60 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you need the cluttery look? syncing text-files or evernote or something would be that otherwise.
yes, i like the cluttery look because i can arrange the windows in a way that makes sense to me.
Another example is InDesign. There are other DTP apps available, but for professional publication design, InDesign is the leading DTP program.
What Adobe has is "mindshare" amongst designers (and a wealth of tutorials, brushes, scripts, plugins, presets etc).
But there are encouraging signs that some users are considering alternatives. Sketch (Mac only) is a suitable alternative to Illustrator for many (if not all) tasks. So is Affinity Designer (Mac only too, but a Windows version is in the works). Affinity Photo (Mac only again) is an alternative to Photoshop.
Plus, there are actually a wide number of digital painting apps for both Windows and Mac (e.g. Painter, Clip Studio, ArtRage, SketchBook Pro etc).
Like other posters have said, there is plenty of scope for new desktop apps to rival old established apps. So much existing software has poor UX. If you can develop a better UI and a better or easier method of accomplishing tasks, people will take an interest. Both Sketch and Affinity Designer/Photo have enjoyed a swell of enthusiastic users who champion those programs. Much of their success is precisely because they offer a different/quicker/easier/more comfortable way of performing tasks than the clunky, cumbersome UIs of their Adobe rivals.
I'd hate to think that someone would give up on a desktop app because they think the desktop space is too established or settled. You might not topple your rivals, but you can certainly carve out a profitable niche.
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yes, i like the cluttery look because i can arrange the windows in a way that makes sense to me.
that will give trouble on smaller screens, you'd have it scrolling or need to zoom a lot
Desktop is for sure at the end of the hype cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle but that does not mean that you cannot make money or not be successful when you write a very good software or you hit a particular niche. And I would not fear Google or Apple, I cannot remember when Google did the last time a rich and good desktop app for end consumers (was it Picasa, the last one?) and the only big professional…
Funnily, Google [itself] has discountinued its "desktop search engine", which is a great pity, as there have been no decent alternatives and then, what do you do when you need to search, say, a document database, consisting of some .xlsx and .docx files (which are essentially compressed XML files, as I get it)?
I also had great hopes for nepomuk on KDE but I think that is discontinued now.
I am doing just that. A hugely ambitious project, with a very wide potential user base, but I have lost all hope in finding funding at a reasonable rate. I am consulting during the day to pay for what I need, and working on the product at night.
tell me more about your project
Desktop is for sure at the end of the hype cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle but that does not mean that you cannot make money or not be successful when you write a very good software or you hit a particular niche. And I would not fear Google or Apple, I cannot remember when Google did the last time a rich and good desktop app for end consumers (was it Picasa, the last one?) and the only big professional…
Funnily, Google [itself] has discountinued its "desktop search engine", which is a great pity, as there have been no decent alternatives and then, what do you do when you need to search, say, a document database, consisting of some .xlsx and .docx files (which are essentially compressed XML files, as I get it)?
I don't think all the interesting stuff has been written. But more importantly, I think a lot of the existing software is just terrible. Big old monsters that can be time consuming to learn, and which kinda lock you in for numerous reasons. Horribly inefficient cluttered user interfaces, with old paradigms that aren't necessarily a great way to interact with the computer... I think there's a lot of innovation to be m…
It's also hard to make money when there's so much free software available, some of which is quite good. For example, it would take a huge amount of effort to improve on the functionality of Libre Office, Paint.net, Audacity, Wireshark, etc. (just to name a few of the free programs I use) but since people can get these for free, a competing product would have to be a whole lot better to convince people to pay for it.