Omni Group Layoffs • Hacker News Board

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#91

Post by emdowling » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

asciimike wrote: post #63

Was one of the first interns @ Omni back in 2013. I'm really sad to hear this, and I have only good things to say about Ken, Tim, and the whole Omni team. Most folks are highlighting what feel like obvious flaws in the business model: - "They charge too much for their software" - "'Apple only' meant limited distribution" - "SaaS apps are making desktop software obsolete" Those all may be true; however, I think these…

I agree with all of the above, but unfortunately no matter how good the intention and clarity of market ("high quality software targeted at a specific group of users"), if that user group is not willing to pay, then you are doing a bad job of solving their problems.

We can lament how sad this news is - and it is - but it does expose that, at some level, the company was not able/willing to meet the needs of their (potential) customers.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#92

Post by devin » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

I’m slightly confused. What about the current pandemic changed their business so much? Do people suddenly have less need for their apps? That seems unlikely. It seems like this has been coming for awhile. OmniGraffle missed the online diagramming collaboration wave, and OmniFocus missed the same thing on the project management side.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#93

Post by blub » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #77

blub wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nativ…

The original article shows that one company let some people go and a couple more developers have been affected by the current crisis.

For some apps collaboration or centralized control are important and those lend themselves well to web technologies. For others (like the Omni apps), said collaboration and getting mediocre cross platform for free are not as important.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#94

Post by mywacaday » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:57 AM UTC

filleokus wrote: post #76

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 woul…

I have spent a lot of time using GTD and trying to find the right software for me. Omnifocus is always at the top of GTD software lists but I'm stuck on Windows and would love to have a windows option.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#95

Post by riffraff » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:14 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #82

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…

> On the other hand my friends who are into electrical, woodworking or automotive take a deep pride in the tools they own.

I don't want to justify the "cheapness" of the software users, which is certainly excessive, but the feeling of ownership of a physical object is still very different from software.

For example, you can easily lend your toolbox to a friend, your hammer won't ever stop functioning through no fault of your own, you can re-sell or gift a chainsaw if you want to get a new one.

Since software is immaterial, we've ended up in a situation where these basic things don't work, people do not feel like they actually _own_ software, and thus feel less motivated to buy it.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#96

Post by Angostura » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:16 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #82

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…

This is very sad. But I used to buy all the Omnigroup software until a couple of years ago, the prices went up a lot and I stopped.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#97

Post by matharmin » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

e40 wrote: post #88

dman wrote: post #82

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…

Took a meeting with a potential customer years ago. He was high on our technology and seemed certain to purchase. At our last lunch he told us their software company's CEO had a policy, they only used FOSS software. The irony of it hurt. Still does.

At my company I take a very different view depending on where in the stack the tech is used:

Developer tooling (Developer machines, IDE's, source control, CI, issue tracking, etc): Pay for the best.

The product: Only use FOSS. Give back by contributing and by making some of our work available as FOSS.

For the product, especially for the client-side, I just see it as too risky to include proprietary software. Even if the pricing is fine for right now, it can easily change later (got burned by both Google Maps and Mapbox years ago), and in some cases even prevent you from using different pricing models because of base costs it may add per user.

On the infrastructure side I'm more flexible, but even there: 1. Stick to commoditized services as far as possible, where the pricing is predictable. I'd include most cloud services in this, and most "enterprise" offerings not. 2. Avoid hard vendor lock-in if feasible, but only up to a point (don't build something from scratch just to avoid the lock-in).

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#98

Post by sirn » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

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…

Unfortunately OmniGraffle for iOS is still far from the desktop OmniGraffle quality. Sometimes the app crashes when you try to do anything. Sometimes the app doesn't crashes, but refuses to save your past 10 minutes or so of work. It has been frustrating experience enough that I usually just fallback to Draw.io (which works surprisingly good on iPad Safari...)

Their other stuff on iOS, such as OmniFocus, OmniOutliner and OmniPlan has been nothing but fantastic.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#99

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #82

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…

Omnigraffle is an essential tool for me. I couldn’t write my articles without it, and it’s the best visualizer I’ve ever used.

I happily pay for it.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#100

Post by starsinspace » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #95

dman wrote: post #82

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into ele…

> On the other hand my friends who are into electrical, woodworking or automotive take a deep pride in the tools they own. I don't want to justify the "cheapness" of the software users, which is certainly excessive, but the feeling of ownership of a physical object is still very different from software. For example, you can easily lend your toolbox to a friend, your hammer won't ever stop functioning through no fault…

Maybe it was a mistake for the software industry to give up on the nice big colorful cardboard box with software inside it. Bought at a physical retail store, with CD-ROMs in it an a thick printed manual. Certainly gave more or a feeling of actually having bought something, different from just clicking a "buy" button in an appstore.