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

Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#221

Post by erik_landerholm »

markdown wrote: post #184
GordonS wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use. As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I knew they would shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I knew other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to kill it feels so wrong :( I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a simi…

> I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff I still use it as my primary web/ui design tool and in fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye to it forever if I upgraded.

Can you use a virtual machine?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#222

Post by cj »

Congrats Dylan. I remember riding caltrain with you from south bay to SF, watching you sit on the floor of the train coding a "photoshop alternative" thinking your idea was crazy!

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#224

Post by returnInfinity »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #118

Adobe can't eat penpot! https://github.com/penpot/penpot https://penpot.app/ https://help.penpot.app/technical-guide/getting-started/#sta...

Cloud features are critical in an enterprise setting

The UX in my org share all the figma designs through figma cloud, I can quickly provide feedback and this is important! All designs are stored in the cloud, I can quickly go back and refer them when necessary.

I am not sure if the open source solution provides all these features yet, but a new startup can provide these.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#225

Post by AlexandrB »

scarface74 wrote: post #160
vouaobrasil wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more proactive when it comes to super-massive companies like Adobe. Such companies have learned to be much more cunning when it comes to get around existing laws, and plus they have much more money than ever.

What do you think happens to VC investments when it’s harder for companies to be acquired? If you were a founder and wanted to sell your company, would you want the government telling you that you can’t sell it for the best price?

What's the point of VC investment if the innovative products that are funded are snuffed out by large companies? Might as well not bother and save everyone some time.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#226

Post by rcarmo »

zx2c4 wrote: post #102
nayroclade wrote: post #54

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…

I too really loved Fireworks (and Dreamweaver) back in the Macromedia days. As a kid then, it was really very intuitive to do all sorts of odd creative projects easily. Riding on nostalgia fumes, I went searching for screenshots and in the process amusingly found: https://askubuntu.com/a/244128 - a Linux user still running Fireworks 8 in WINE. I'm almost tempted to try the same...

I just did, since I have WINE installed to run music software. It runs _perfectly_, although with early 2000s era UX conventions (i.e., very small fonts, some pixelated). Edits seem very fast, although it is hard to say on my hardware (Ryzen 7). As a curio, it's a fun experiment, but being a bit less nostalgic and more realistic now, I'd quicker reach for GIMP or Krita on Linux (on the Mac, I use Pixelmator Pro and Affinity Designer for the semi-advanced editing I need)... Although I do love this thing.

FYI, the download of version 8 was available to use as a 30-day trial, which seems legal enough today, if only for experimentation, and I actually have a license of MX someplace from my G4 Mac days.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#227

Post by bezier-curve »

markdown wrote: post #184
GordonS wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use. As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I knew they would shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I knew other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to kill it feels so wrong :( I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a simi…

> I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff I still use it as my primary web/ui design tool and in fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye to it forever if I upgraded.

I still use Fireworks CS6 for one-off mockups. I don't specialize in design myself, but I think that's exactly why I like using it - its UI is intuitive and simple. I've tried newer/maintained vector editors like Inkscape and Krita, and still feel like there's a void left by Fireworks for casual users like myself.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#228

Post by aceazzameen »

yuchi wrote: post #143
yuchi wrote: post #18

If 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…

I'm just going to assume he'll leave Adobe in one year to move on to his next adventure.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#230

Post by _fat_santa »

pembrook wrote: post #22

I’d put the odds at about 95% that Adobe will ruin Figma with bloat, 14 different “Creative Cloud” background processes, and hostile pricing models within 5 years. This is huge news for Sketch. However, to be honest, this is the type of acquisition that should be blocked IMO. Adobe is literally acquiring a direct competitor here. To me the consumer harm is pretty clear. Instead of a more competent org (Figma) growing…

I'm betting they will leave it alone, at least for a while. I'm sure the C suite at adobe is not blind to their reputation and they know that if they start tacking on "Adobe" features to Figma, user growth will stall out.

Everyone is referencing the Macromedia purchase but I would argue that it was a very different kind of purchase. With that Adobe spent $3.4B acquiring them, in Figma's case they paid $20B. I could see how Adobe is willing to throw away $3.4B to kill their competition but I'm not sure they would be willing to do that to a $20B purchase.

If anything they keep is exactly the same, kill Adobe XD, and rename Figma to Adobe XD.

Post reply on HN