Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…
Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
171–180 of 1001 posts
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#172It’s a very sad day for designers.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Adobe is where software goes to die. After EA acquiring Westwood, Macromedia is the second biggest let-down of a sale in the software industry in my book. Perhaps Skype comes close.
Are there any examples when an acquisition actually led to improved value for the users rather than ruined or straight killed the product?
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#174Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…
Making 9 sliced graphics for the web is obsolete though. That said Flash also supported a bunch of innovation for its time, and it too was obsoleted. Maybe 9 slice graphic were already dead at Fireworks’ peak. Figma is officially way more overrated than this stuff ever was. Does anyone know a person who’s like, bonafide smart, using Figma? I feel like everyone I know who does “Figma” day to day is doing negative ROI…
So apparently spending your days in Figma can result in negative ROI shit like designing a billion dollar product.
But hey, I used to have the same gut feeling…that anyone who does something different to what I do all day is worthless. Then I got older and learned my model of the world, with me at the center of it, was naive and incorrect.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#175If true, congratulations for Figma founders, and a bad day for designers that were looking for a way to escape from Adobe. I don’t think that in the long term this will give Figma as an ecosystem any benefit — unless Adobe will keep it separate from the main Creative Cloud. This reminds me of the Trello acquisition. As a loyal Figma user I’m pretty sceptical of the future. Hope to be wrong. UPDATE: Looks like it is i…
UPDATE n. 2: Dylan Field (CEO of Figma) has addressed these kind of concerns on their public disclore of the fact: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/ Citing him: > Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. As others have said, there’s really a missing OSS version out there that can compete feature-by-feat…
You won't believe what happens next.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#176Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#177Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#178Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adobe’s direct competitor is Adobe XD, which launched with practically no features and was slowly developed only to dwindle to death as a rarely used cloud service, while everyone does the important work in Figma. The parent comment is spot-on. Antitrust legislation needs to be invoked to prevent this acquisition from happening.
It amazes me that people posting on a YC controlled board whose entire purpose for existing is to fund startups long enough to get an exit - statistically most likely through an acquisition by a bigger company - wants to stop acquisitions. The funding environment for startups would be a lot worse if investors thought that the only way they could recoup their investments is through exits. Look how few of YC companies…
Parts of the Adobe software suite has more than 30 years of technical debt, and it shows.
What's so hard to understand?
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#180Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…