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

241–250 of 257 posts

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#241

Post by rurp »

toss4732 wrote: post #110
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.

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.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much the perfect model and I wish most companies would adopt it. It supports both types of customers: people who always want the latest updates and features, and those who want the most stable software.

I am firmly in the second group, but get why so many people prefer the first. I like that those users can get all of the updates they want, while I don't have to constantly burn mental energy figuring out UI changes and new bugs.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#242

Post by ubermonkey »

rvense wrote: post #149
tarsinge wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note that the CD is your 'license' to the music. You shouldn't sell them or give them away unless you also erase the music.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#243

Post by wjdp »

philjohn wrote: post #206
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…

Because free-to-use online tools like Draw.io are "good enough" for many people who would have previously stumped up for Omnigraffle for more basic needs. I also wonder if being MacOS/iOS only has hurt them, in the long run, more than they'd like to admit?

Our product team is mostly Mac, but avoid using Mac only software as they need to interop with people on other OSes, plus the lock-in factor.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#244

Post by Traster »

blihp wrote: post #37
kbumsik wrote: post #6

I think Omni Group's locked down to Apple is a mistake. As a iPad Pro/iPhone user I wish to buy their products but as a Windows/Linux desktop user the lack of cross-platform support is a huge dealbreaker.

It's also what made the company: they were originally developers of software targeting NeXT machines/OS. Their products are a better fit in the role of 'big fish in a small pond' of the NeXT and then Mac worlds. Also, the Windows world has never valued the kind of craftsmanship Omni puts into their products... it's much more of a corporate market where managers and purchasing departments decide which products win.

The flip side is that I'm never ever going to use a diagramming tool that isn't compatible with windows.

Even if it were great, the fact I can't use it on my company workstation? Useless. Or even if I happened to have a mac workstation - being unable to share the source files with colleagues? It's dead on arrival. So basically it's a great diagramming tool so long as you work at a company that exclusively uses Macs. Which there really aren't many of. It's basically a diagramming tool for employees of Apple. Who, by the way, produce their own similar (less good) tools.

The productivity tools? Fine, you don't need to be able to share that. But Omnigraffle is juts a bizarre decision.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#245

Post by Ma8ee »

mehdix wrote: post #202
starsinspace wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps we should move from "buy the software" to "sponsor the developer" idea, such as what GitHub is doing with the "Sponsor" button.

We used to call that shareware.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#246

Post by regulation_d »

OmniOutliner is one of my favorite pieces of software.

The idea of hierarchical organization of knowledge is, to me, a really powerful one. I started using it when I was in law school, and it helped me stay organized as I was changing careers and learning how to write software. Even today, where my employer uses Jira and spreadsheets to stay organized, I use an outline as well, which despite being additional effort still provides a lot of value to me.

I've heard really good things about notion, and I may try it out one of the days. But for me, OO has been a particularly effective organizational tool in my arsenal.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#247

Post by [deleted] »

devchix wrote: post #201
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…

This is the wrong way to look at this. You are not paying $12.95 for a bound copy of papers with ink on it, nor for a printed disk with magnetized bits on it, nor the electricity that powers the servers that host the transfer of those bits. This is so obvious I didn't think it needs to be said. It's advantageous for you to think of it this way, though, right? In your way of thinking, no software should ever cost anyt…

[deleted]

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#248

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

new2628 wrote: post #231
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are books fine? Publishers don't print to order. The publisher has already printed thousands before you'd even heard of the book. The only marginal cost here is delivery, and that delivery person is already likely to be going down your street with a van full of goods whether you order or not. The marginal cost is just them adding the extra stop and unload for you, which is probably pennies. Or if you go to a bookstore that already had it on the shelf, it's practically zero marginal cost.

Everything is an exercise in amortization. You seem happy to amortize the obvious parts (printing, binding, stocking, delivering), but not the behind the behind the scenes parts (writing, editing, marketing). That's a crappy distinction.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#249

Post by e40 »

tasuki wrote: post #152
e40 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the irony here?

We were trying to sell him software. His company sold software.

Re: Omni Group Layoffs

#250

Post by taneq »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #232
HumblyTossed wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you're talking mobile apps and microtransactions and we call these people "whales" then this is a bad thing. In a professional setting is it suddenly OK to treat your customers like this?
Post reply on HN