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Omni Group Layoffs

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Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#231

Post by new2628 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #197
new2628 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll bite. I have a fundamental aversion to paying for something that has zero marginal cost. I feel I'm taken for a ride if I do so. If I pay for a book, I feel it cost some effort to produce it physically, print it, bind it, ship it. I cannot force myself to pay for an e-book, which is a pdf copied at no extra cost. Same for digital music and software or any other digital "good" or subscription. I sympathise wi…

What about physical things with near zero marginal costs? Do you feel like your logic applies to an album on a CD when everything was on CDs? It’s absolutely immoral to me that you see a long chain of work (research, writing, editing, marketing, printing) and judge it solely on its last component (printing). There are so many physical goods where the final piece is just a small portion of the final cost.

It's a continuum of course more applicable to some, less to some other things. I find books mostly fine, and I own a huge library, to a large extent inherited. CD albums already seemed dubious to me and hardly bought any, with software products it is entirely on one extreme of the spectrum.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#232

Post by blaser-waffle »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #143
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…

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?

80/20 rule, probably. Most of their revenue is coming from a handful of places, and and increasing the money coming out of other parts of the market might not be worth it.

Easy to support a couple hundred whoppers who pay big money on the coasts -- and who also have the time and money to really learn the tool. Expand that out to 100,000 customers with lower costs and greater support needs and it doesn't make sense.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#233

Post by chrisseaton »

starsinspace wrote: post #100
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…

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.

Seems super wasteful packaging though?

And I don't know about you but the first thing I do when I get a paper manual is go online to try to find a PDF version. Seems more like a downside than a value-add?

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#234

Post by devdas »

jtbayly wrote: post #154
tasuki wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the irony here?

It took me a second to figure it out, too. The potential customer was a software company, meaning that the only way they make money is if others pay—which they were unwilling to do themselves.

FOSS software can still be paid for.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#235

Post by Spooky23 »

adambyrtek wrote: post #173
Spooky23 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the enterprise space, subscription is just higher cost maintenance with the additional risk of losing the functionality to some high stakes bullshit at renewal time or spending lots of time on some rat race to upgrade.

Enterprises love subscriptions for the same reasons why they prefer leases over capital expenditure. They look much better on the balance sheet and allow to spread the cost over time.

Oh sure, enterprise CFOs love them. They love money too, and software companies who aren't Microsoft, Oracle, etc should be wary. Your entire company could be rendered irrelevant by a minor modification to a subscription offering that is critical. Why should I absorb a $7 user/month subscription for 100,000 people ($8.4M) forever when I can spend $500k upfront and 20% of that ongoing to hire someone to build a functional solution using O365, GSuite or Oracle whatever?

Look at Microsoft's behavior with O365. Many companies will be fully locked into Microsoft across voice, security and identity verticals based on tweaks to the O365/M365 licensing models. You need Azure AD to meet your email compliance requirements, but that's bundled with Intune, which in turn has a co-bundle with Defender ATP, etc.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#236

Post by taneq »

jhawk28 wrote: post #176
microtonal wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do JetBrains products still work if the company would go out of business or decided to undo the perpetual license? (I haven't upgraded my license since they switched to the subscription model.) [1] [1] It would probably be difficult contractually, but such things happen. See e.g. TextDrive hosting lifetime accounts.

Your perpetual license only works on a historical version. It doesn't work with any updates. The incentive is for them to continue building products that make you want to upgrade. The perpetual license key works in a disconnected network so it doesn't matter if JetBrains went out of business. You just need to make sure you have a local copy backed up.

Honestly that's OK, if it doesn't break my current build arbitrarily then maybe later I'll upgrade.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#237

Post by taneq »

mantap wrote: post #144
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…

> 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 upgrad…

No it hasn't. The only thing that makes you think so is the unrelenting churn of modern web development. Back in the day if you bought a particular toolchain you could keep developing with it for as long as you wanted and the only thing that could force you to upgrade is the need for more features. In the past you'd get nice-to-haves at every upgrade but if you didn't opt for it you would be perfectly able to continue developing your current condebase using your current, paid-for tools.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#238

Post by AlanYx »

robenkleene wrote: post #125
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…

Re "Notion, Figma and Whimsical", are any of these companies profitable? UPDATE: Whimsical mentions being profitable as of May last year https://whimsical.com/blog/on-the-path-to-sustainability I’m definitely still curious about the other two.

Notion has been profitable since at least early 2019 (the company's statements have been a little unclear about when they reached profitability; it might have been late 2018).

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#239

Post by submeta »

Just recently I took over a very rapidly evolving project, and I realized that OmniFocus for iOS (as much as I love it with all the custom „perspectives“ I created) is way to slow in quickly capturing and organizing new tasks & projects. That‘s why I temporarily switched to a paper based approach and than rediscovered Things3 (which I used prior to OmniFocus). Now after a week or two I realize how much lighter and quicker Things3 is compared to OF. And how impractical OF on iOS always felt.

OF for Mac is fine. Although I must admit - after using Things3 for a week or two - that OF feels like overkill, interface-wise.

Other Omni products feel like from distant past: OmniOutline (orgmode feels way lighter, better), OmniGraffle was super cool several years ago, but it hasn‘t evolved much.

I feel very sorry for this company because several years ago their products were so unique and typical for the Mac experience. Things have changed.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#240

Post by rhizome »

blihp wrote: post #30
thiagocesar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an amazing product. I cannot afford the price tag. I wonder how many more people would buy it if it was just a little bit cheaper.

Not nearly enough... that's the problem: the business models that produced products like that won't be around for much longer as the price gets closer and closer to 'free'. The economics of mobile are dismal for paid productivity software.

To be fair, what mobile app is as good at what it does as Omni* is at theirs? Or, to short-circuit exceptions proving a rule, what is the proportion, or furthermore, how many segments of the mobile market has apps as good?
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