Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Omni Group Layoffs

mjtsai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 257 posts

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#101

Post by tarsinge »

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…

I think the not owning the software subjective sentiment is made worse by the subscription model. Personally paying for Photoshop for example was more acceptable when it was "physically" an App in my Mac. I still have very old versions I can launch on vintage Macs or Emulators. As a kid I definitely remember owning and organizing my apps with their nice icons (the spatial file manager helped), thinking it was "real" things.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#102

Post by leoedin »

dman wrote: post #86
ac29 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting. Don't we spend on software, though? Software spend is surely in the billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions a year. As consummate consum…

Worth thinking about the number of companies globally that make a living writing software in the following categories of development tools a. Debuggers b. IDEs c. Querying Tools d. Text editors e. Source control tools f. Build systems The market for development tools does not look particularly vibrant based on the above.

I work in the embedded space and so I have used a few proprietary debuggers/IDEs/build systems. They've still got a lot of market share.

The huge problem with them is that they're proprietary. They don't have the wide usage of the open source equivalents, so debugging problems is hard. If you want to develop at home, at work and on a PC in a lab, you have to navigate licensing issues. If you want to do a build and test as part of your CI process, you have to navigate licensing issues. Then you move jobs and they've bought into a different, incompatible proprietary system and you have to learn it all over again.

The open source options are actually good enough, and the advantage of being able to have the entire build system on a new computer after running a few apt-gets and downloading some free software is huge. The skills persist across jobs, I can use them at home for my own projects, I never have to worry about licenses expiring.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#103

Post by scarface74 »

worthless-trash wrote: post #19
gowld wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a great opportunity to build a Windows alternative. Omni software is deeply Mac, using Mac UX/UI components that don't exist elsewhere. If they GTK/QT/JSed it, it wouldn't be Omni and it wouldn't be worth $50-$250 a pop.

Are you saying using mac components alone gives it the $50-$100 a pop value, if so thats some quality brainwashing going on.

Yes. I would pay for a native Mac experience. I would never pay for any app that uses something like Electron. If you’re okay with mediocre software, why buy a Mac outside of doing development?

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#104

Post by alain_gilbert »

DavideNL wrote: post #85

It's sad to see apps full of ads/tracking and ridiculous subscriptions thrive, while quality software like this gets into trouble. I've been happily using Omnifocus for a long time; - Single purchase, no subscription - e2e encrypted syncing between devices (+ server storage) - 0 tracking, ads etc.

I don't think subscription is that bad.

Development and support is never ending.

Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies.

At some point the market is not infinite.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#105

Post by rubidium »

alain_gilbert wrote: post #104
DavideNL wrote: post #85

It's sad to see apps full of ads/tracking and ridiculous subscriptions thrive, while quality software like this gets into trouble. I've been happily using Omnifocus for a long time; - Single purchase, no subscription - e2e encrypted syncing between devices (+ server storage) - 0 tracking, ads etc.

I don't think subscription is that bad. Development and support is never ending. Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies. At some point the market is not infinite.

“ Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies.”

This is a lie perpetuated by the saas industry. If you compare saas companies shutting down “services” to prior product companies stopping updating versions you don’t see much difference.

Also, sw engineers used to care about designing something well. So when you used something the first time it was occasionally delightful. Now it’s just “launch and we’ll worry about that in our next sprint”.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#106

Post by rubidium »

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…

“ almost like suggesting Microsoft drop their desktop Office applications and just focus on Office365”

Not sure if you’re experience is different, but this seems to be exactly what they’re doing. Outlook windows app is buggy and terrible. Outlook 365 is great.

Excel is the only app better on native then web.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#107

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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…

Sketch/Figma seem like a different class of product to me, I don't see much overlap.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#108

Post by tonyedgecombe »

rdslw wrote: post #87

I would, and I'm actually considering, to offer them $2000 just to compile me Omnifocus 1 (latest of v1 branch) as 64bit app, as it's currently 32bit and can't work due to CatalinaCurse. Omnifocus 2 was a joke in any category, while I have mixed fealing about 3 (speed, ergonomics, features). Anyone want to chip in? :)

Have you looked at Things, I've been using it for the last year and am really pleased with it.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#109

Post by alain_gilbert »

rubidium wrote: post #105
alain_gilbert wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think subscription is that bad. Development and support is never ending. Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies. At some point the market is not infinite.

“ Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies.” This is a lie perpetuated by the saas industry. If you compare saas companies shutting down “services” to prior product companies stopping updating versions you don’t see much difference. Also, sw engineers used to care about designing something well. So when you used something the first time it was occasionally delightful. Now it’s just “launch…

I'm not saying the product can or cannot be good on first release...

But the world is ever changing. Let say you build a UI for database. In a few years, a new version of mysql or postgresql will be released, and you have to update your software as well to use the new features.

What I'm saying is that almost whatever you are building, the development will never be done.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#110

Post by toss4732 »

alain_gilbert wrote: post #104
DavideNL wrote: post #85

It's sad to see apps full of ads/tracking and ridiculous subscriptions thrive, while quality software like this gets into trouble. I've been happily using Omnifocus for a long time; - Single purchase, no subscription - e2e encrypted syncing between devices (+ server storage) - 0 tracking, ads etc.

I don't think subscription is that bad. Development and support is never ending. Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies. At some point the market is not infinite.

I think companies should use something like what Jetbrains does with its IDEs. You get a lifetime access to the version you paid a year subscription for. Keep the yearly subscription up, and you are getting updates, getting a more recent lifetime access, and the sub gets cheaper.
Post reply on HN