Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#561

Post by cmelbye » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

huslage wrote: post #557

mikece wrote: post #169

And now all of the Figma users are saying "Oh [crap]... now I need to find a new tool to use." When is the last time Adobe acquired something and it improved? They destroyed Fireworks and Dreamweaver when they acquired Macromedia (which they only did because they wanted Flash). At this point I'm tempted to swear off Adobe products entirely -- except that the combo of Lightroom and Photoshop are the industry standard…

They have continued to let frame.io flourish since they bought them. I wonder if this will follow a similar model. Let's hope.

I give it a year before they dip their toes into Creative Suite integrations.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#562

Post by hedgehog » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #556

Since this is a thread of Adobe and some people might know this: In the late 80s and 90s many of the window managers were based on PostScript. Sun News was an extension of PostScript and Next was based on Display PostScript. How did licensing work back then. Could Sun have OpenSource News? I mean it did implement PostScript but my understanding is they were not using actual Adobe code.

I don't know specifically but it was bad enough that Apple decided to rework OS X before they shipped.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#563

Post by ukyrgf » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

tristanb wrote: post #510

joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

I considered putting Adobe in a VM because i didn't want the 30,000 extra processes running when I install it. Its embarrassingly fragmented and bad. I absolutely dread the moment when I need to install CS on my new machine.

I went a step further, or maybe backward, and I have a separate computer that I connect to with AnyDesk and it has all the Adobe crap installed on it.

Also, our company credit card got replaced, and the process of updating the card and re-activating Creative Cloud took two weeks. It got canceled August 29 and only yesterday, September 14, was I able to launch Illustrator without a nag window. I hate Adobe.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#564

Post by optimiz3 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

Still running Creative Suite 6 in a virtual machine (for security isolation and compatibility) as I only use the product 2-3 times a year and refuse to give in to Adobe's rent-seeking.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#565

Post by ChrisArchitect » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #243

thomassmith65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.

> except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.

It's pretty established now that for what we had at the time/the environment/and where the web was evolving, Flash was actually pretty damn good as far as UX for creators and the web has never regained that level of expression/ease yet. (despite all the technical problems and anti-open-web caveats)

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#566

Post by time_to_smile » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

hackitup7 wrote: post #458

So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers. Just goes to show that if you want an outsized exit multiple the best way is to put a gun to a $100B company's head.

> So smart for both Adobe

The market aggressively disagrees with this assessment.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#567

Post by klabb3 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

aluminussoma wrote: post #424

Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation organically (To their credit, their stock price soared through financial engineering). Adobe has instead augmented its capabilities through acquisitions. Today's acquisition of Figma is no different. And maybe that is fine. Adobe is not alone. Many big companies can only expand their capabilities through acquisitions. Those big companies are doing fine. Specific…

> their stock price soared through financial engineering

Not disagreeing with your point, but they can kindly fuck off piggy-backing on the good reputation of engineering, which is about building things, not rent-seeking and gate keeping. It would be like saying Intuit is innovating "political engineering". Or calling an unpaid internship at Goldman Sachs "volunteering". I have similar thoughts about "growth hacking", btw.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#568

Post by w-j-w » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #545

I read mostly disappointment here that Adobe will harm/destroy Figma. We have to remember, though, that Figma leaders think otherwise…

It's pretty easy to see the bright side of a deal that makes you incredibly wealthy.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#569

Post by lambdasquirrel » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #521

joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

For a large company, they also have pretty shady pricing. Like their “annual plan, paid monthly”. You’d think you’re just paying for the monthly subscription, but they hide the fact that you have to pay a penalty for early cancellation in the fine print. Dishonest, expensive, slow.

There are dark patterns in Adobe's pricing plans up the wazoo. And each year it seems that they change their UI just a little more to try to lock your data into their Creative Cloud. Photoshop now tries to save your files to the Creative Cloud (instead of your computer) by default.

I think the concern has definitely gone to an anti-trust level. Adobe packages Lightroom for free with Photoshop, probably with Capture One directly in their sights. Anti-trust definitely needs a reinvigoration.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#570

Post by ChildOfChaos » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

Whoa, $20b seems like an eye watering amount for a tool like this.

I guess it goes to show how little I know about all of this, but surely a company with Adobe’s resources and prestige could just engineer something like this for less themselves?

Seems crazy to me. I guess it’s mostly about removing competition and giving people less options to not use an adobe product rather than the product itself that has value?