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Omni Group Layoffs

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Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#71

Post by tonyedgecombe »

lozaning wrote: post #29
gowld wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that 30 years of research has taught them that they won't get double the customers at half of the price.

Way easier to get away with finding half of your existing customers that can pay double than to cut your prices by half and double your entire sales funnel. Or at least this was the wisdom imparted on me by a long time sales manager for a large VAR.

Or segment your product so you can extract the most value out of your customers.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#72

Post by tonyedgecombe »

kbumsik wrote: post #43
keyle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's best to stick to what you do well and do it really well. The market for their product is very different on the Windows side.

I haven't used their products but how the market is different from the Windows side? Aren't they general productivity tools?

Their USP is their integration into the platform.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#73

Post by asciimike »

_pmf_ wrote: post #59

I'd spend a lot of money for an Android version of OmniOutliner (and OmniGraffle); 100 EUR/year would be no problem. Sad they bet on a failing platform. Incredibly focused, well rounded products that are unmatched.

Curious why you consider iOS to be a failing platform when the App Store consistently generates 2-3x more revenue than the Play Store even with considerably lower volume (and iOS developers can typically charge more for their apps). Fragmentation in the Android ecosystem makes it considerably more costly to develop and the lower average cost of apps mean you're required to hit significantly higher scale in order to generate the same revenue as a developer.

Omni's business model (small number of incredibly loyal customers paying top dollar for the software) likely wouldn't have survived on Android.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#74

Post by tonyedgecombe »

_pmf_ wrote: post #59

I'd spend a lot of money for an Android version of OmniOutliner (and OmniGraffle); 100 EUR/year would be no problem. Sad they bet on a failing platform. Incredibly focused, well rounded products that are unmatched.

Sad they bet on a failing platform.

Mac sales aren't growing much but it's a stretch to say it's a failing platform.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#75

Post by asciimike »

snickmy wrote: post #61

I would love to hear more how the COVID19 has exacerbated the business down period. I naively thought that enterprise software would not see a strong impact from COVID19 in the first 2-3 months.

Honestly, I don't know how much of this was COVID and how much was just a slowing of the business over the past few years and this is an inevitable consequence of that. I think the business has always more or less run on fairly thin margins (again, it's mostly designed to fund a lifestyle of building awesome Apple apps, not get the founders rich at the expense of employees/customers/VCs/etc.), and so even fairly minor disruptions could cause that to become a big issue.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#76

Post by filleokus »

chrisfrantz wrote: post #41

I used to love Omni Graffle. But after spending a bit of time reading about their current product lineup, I can’t stop wondering why they didn’t transition to web apps years ago. Notion, Figma and Whimsical are eating their lunch. They have a far less robust feature base, but they’re fast, built for teams, simple to use and the pricing scales well. On the other hand, Omni is almost entirely native apps, bloated featu…

I don't know if I'm an outlier here, but to me the Omni Group is/was almost like an extension of Apple themselves. Like with Panic's or CultureCode's applications, they just work in the way a seasoned Mac user would expect. They fit into both the look and feel of the Apple ecosystem and support all integrations you would expect.

Of course the market for high-quality Apple only software is small. But I think they would be even less competitive and successful if they pivoted to the Web.

It would be almost like suggesting Microsoft drop their desktop Office applications and just focus on Office365.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#77

Post by cageface »

blub wrote: post #67
cageface wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The future of productivity apps is on the web. Pretty soon the only category of apps that will have to be native is heavy multi media apps like video editors and digital auto workstations.

That was supposed to happen any moment now for the past 10+ years. The reason it didn't is because web apps are clunky and less dependable.

It's happening right now as the original article shows. Web apps are eating native's lunch with a few exceptions and that list of exceptions just keeps getting shorter. The web is good enough now to build most of these apps and getting cross platform support more or less for free along with making it much easier to build in collaboration features turns out to more important than the advantages of any particular native toolkit might be for most cases.

The only native app I use anymore is a digital audio workstation. Deny it all you like but the trend is unmistakable. Even Sketch has been sidelined by Figma where I work now.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#78

Post by gkoberger »

thruhiker wrote: post #25

I'm sorry to hear this. In a subscription model world, Omni stand out in producing very high quality one time purchase software. I love OmniGraffle! Such a great product once you learn it.

(Maybe not the point, but maybe there wouldn't be layoffs if it was a subscription)

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#79

Post by KingOfCoders »

asciimike wrote: post #69
KingOfCoders wrote: post #36

I have been an OmniGraffle user from the very beginning (~2000). I love OmniGraffle. But I've seen Sketch come (and go) and there have been no significant updates for OmniGraffle for a very very long time. Omni only added to their iOS offerings and totally forgot about desktop. I understand that mobile "is the future" but, there is a significant need for desktop design applications. And although I still use OmniGraff…

I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest…

I would wish for some features of Sketch actually yes - then I wouldn't have had the need to buy Sketch (and next switch to Figma). Also some better/easier integrations with Powerpoint/Keynote would be nice, I draw 50% (in the past >90%) of diagrams in OmniGraffle that I use in PP/Keynote.

I agree that the basics are excellent (alignment, copy & paste, sizing, ...) and still best in class.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#80

Post by dewey »

yaacov wrote: post #14

I discovered Omni yesterday when League of Legends dumped 20 gB of text logs on my brother’s old MacBook, eating up all available disk space and crashing it. He asked me for help. I didn’t know what was taking up all his disk space so I searched for a tool to help me and found OmniDiskSweeper. Unlike the MacOS builtin tools that try to hide the underlying file system, OmniDiskSweeper actually helped me understand the…

ncdu is also a nice (free) alternative and can be installed via Homebrew (brew install ncdu):

https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

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