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Omni Group Layoffs

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Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#141

Post by robenkleene »

empthought wrote: post #136
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently) Honestly starting to feel like the past 4 years of OS X changes have just been too much burden for the few remaining OS X software developers across the board. I recall when the Mac App Store came about a lot of developers moved their software to it, then sandboxing happened and that seemed like an absolute nightmare for most to implement, t…

Surely this is the motivation for Catalyst.

The problem with Catalyst is that it’s just bringing iOS apps to the Mac, and iOS does not produce profitable businesses in many categories. The #1 paid iOS app, Procreate, has only 17 employees, OmniGroup pre-layoffs had ~40.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#142

Post by matwood »

saiya-jin wrote: post #119
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.

Often you don't need more than you have, and its nice to have fixed costs. An example - you buy Photoshop or Lightroom, and they cover 100% of your needs. As long as you can run it, you are happy with what they provide. Well apparently that didn't generate enough cash for Adobe but that's a long story. Tons of businesses uses commercial software with little need of support in form of some patches. Usually toolsuites…

People give adobe a lot of grief for moving to subscription model, but I think they managed it the best they could. I used to pay ~$100/year for just the LR software. Now I pay ~$120/year for the software + 1TB of storage + the mobile apps. They at least attempted to add value for the subscription fee, and I love having my 500gb+ of photos always available/editable on all my devices.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#143

Post by HumblyTossed »

taneq wrote: post #132
7777fps wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.

As a consumer of software there are three MAJOR problems with the subscription model: 1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising. 2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers…

All great reasons. I would like to add, also, that I wonder how many subs developers think people in flyover country (not the 500K/year SV country) can actually afford each and every month?

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#144

Post by mantap »

taneq wrote: post #132
7777fps wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the subscription model? Vendors get recurring money and aren't incentivized to make sweeping changes to have major releases to get more money for the same product; consumers can manage cash flow by only paying while they need it, there is a lower barrier to purchase, and vendors have more predictable income.

As a consumer of software there are three MAJOR problems with the subscription model: 1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising. 2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers…

> If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising

High quality software has always required a recurring payment model. It's not viable to sell standalone versions to a new set of customers each year. In the past this was informal with upgrade versions every year. You could theoretically choose not to upgrade but software developers would have all kinds of tricks to "encourage you" such as not providing forwards compatible file formats.

What the subscription model does is align customers with the realities of software development. Yes the cost of software never stops rising but neither do the maintenance costs.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#145

Post by tguedes »

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?

Non-Mac/iOS users generally don't pay for software/don't care enough about polish to pay a little extra for something. That's why the majority of developers develop for iOS first and release on iOS first even though Android has the far larger market share (https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-reven...).

The type of person who is willing to pay extra for the polish Mac/iOS has over Windows/Android, is usually also the type of who is going to be willing to spend more for a better app.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#146

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Brent Simmons seems to be keeping pretty good spirits—the last paragraph of his blog post made me chuckle. Good for him, he seems like a lovely person.

https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work

> The hard part of all this: normally everyone would get together for a happy hour for a few drops of encouragement and friendship. These rituals are nice, and they matter to me.

> But — (gesturing again at this fallen world) — nope.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#147

Post by ptx »

pdpi wrote: post #139
taneq wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer of software there are three MAJOR problems with the subscription model: 1) If it's for a piece of software I use on an ongoing basis the cost often rapidly eclipses what I'd have paid for standalone software, and it never stops rising. 2) There's usually some awkwardly contrived cloud tie-in, purely to enforce subscriptions, which breaks the software if your internet connection or the supplier's servers…

I think you should look into the subscription model that Jetbrains has for their IDEs. It has none of the issues you described other than, inevitably, the recurring cost.

JetBrains products might be unusual in that the IDE is all about integrating lots of constantly changing external tools and therefore needs constant updates, so it's well-suited for a subscription model.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#148

Post by twarge »

In my experience their stuff has a surprising amount of friction. It also used to be buggy, but it's not that anymore. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels a little like they're just not getting the basics right.

Just one example: In omnigraffle, pinch to zoom has all kinds of janky jumpiness that is simply disqualifying. And they only got it to this point very recently.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#149

Post by rvense »

tarsinge wrote: post #101
riffraff wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

I think we're a middle generation that grew up before the internet that this makes sense for. The CDs are probably going at the next move, but I expect to keep my MP3 collection forever.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#150

Post by veidr »

This seems a good thread to memorialize OmniWeb — for a few years there, it was the best web browser of all time.

When was that? 2002-2005 ish?

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