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Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

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Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#41

Post by jpk »

ActionHank wrote: post #16
DHPersonal wrote: post #6

Killing Adobe XD because they couldn't buy Figma for $20 billion means to me that they would never have been a good owner for Figma. XD may have not had as many features as Figma, but it was still a decent program and could have been a very good competitor to Figma for far less than the cost of buying out that company. The buy-in of Adobe's subscription model was a compelling reason for my employers to provide only X…

Staff likely fled teams working on XD as soon as the news surfaced around the acquisition. They probably have no one left who can move quickly with the product or the code base to catch up now.

Interesting guess, but citation needed.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#42

Post by jmull »

DHPersonal wrote: post #32
karaterobot wrote: post #27

Adobe XD was meant to take on Sketch, and failed at that, which meant it was fully two generations behind Figma. They couldn't compete, and as a company they have no capacity for making innovative web design products. They do seem to have a capacity for ruining the ones they buy, so I'm glad this attempt failed.

In that time between XD's inception and Figma's buyout attempt, hasn't Sketch caught up to Figma and become a decent competitor to it? I haven't used it in a while because my employer doesn't support it and my freelance work has effectively ended.

I used Sketch recently and it was a good and effective communication tool between dev, design, client, and pm from my perspective (dev). I assume design too, since it was their choice.

I'm not sure what it was missing before, but it seemed to have everything we needed. There were some things missing from the web app that the native app had, but it seemed like that was just the hook to upgrade from the free-tier.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#43

Post by sumanthvepa »

I'm really disappointed for two reasons. First the existence of XD as a competitor kept Figma innovating and the price in check. Now, ironically Figma is the monopoly here!

Second I have a creative cloud subscription and XD was good enough for me. Now I have to purchase Figma separately and also pay for Adobe CC because I still need the other software. So much for preserving consumer choice.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#44

Post by deaddodo »

silvestrov wrote: post #28
deaddodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube was bought mainly because Google Video was failing as a platform. About the only thing it ever offered over YouTube were longform lectures and presentations. Combining the two platforms (e.g. allowing longer videos but using YouTube's social interface) just made YouTube better.

Isn't there something about that seeking in movies was only possible in Google Video and not on (original) YouTube? So they ended up with the YouTube frontend and mostly Google Video backend?

Yes, modern YouTube's infrastructure inherits more from Google Video than classic YouTube, but the frontend descends from YouTube's (albeit, completely Ship of Theseus'd at this point).

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#45

Post by ActionHank »

jpk wrote: post #41
ActionHank wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staff likely fled teams working on XD as soon as the news surfaced around the acquisition. They probably have no one left who can move quickly with the product or the code base to catch up now.

Interesting guess, but citation needed.

You will never get confirmation or citations for this sort of thing.

What you can do is think for yourself as a dev in that team, would you stick around?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#47

Post by jwells89 »

deaddodo wrote: post #17
asah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Video was killed after the YouTube acquisition and YT flourished under Google.

YouTube was bought mainly because Google Video was failing as a platform. About the only thing it ever offered over YouTube were longform lectures and presentations. Combining the two platforms (e.g. allowing longer videos but using YouTube's social interface) just made YouTube better.

I was a bit bummed when Google Video was shuttered. In some ways its simple to-the-point UX was nice compared to that of YouTube, which had become cluttered pretty early on. It was also sometimes a backup for when videos on YouTube got taken down.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#48

Post by jwells89 »

DHPersonal wrote: post #32
karaterobot wrote: post #27

Adobe XD was meant to take on Sketch, and failed at that, which meant it was fully two generations behind Figma. They couldn't compete, and as a company they have no capacity for making innovative web design products. They do seem to have a capacity for ruining the ones they buy, so I'm glad this attempt failed.

In that time between XD's inception and Figma's buyout attempt, hasn't Sketch caught up to Figma and become a decent competitor to it? I haven't used it in a while because my employer doesn't support it and my freelance work has effectively ended.

I don’t know how Sketch compares on the collaboration front, but I still use it a lot personally for three reasons:

- It still has a one-time/annual purchase option available

- It’s still offline-first, with a fully first-party-documented file format[0] (no lock-in)

- It’s suited well for screen-destined vector graphics creation, whereas Figma has a strong prototyping bent to it

[0]: https://developer.sketch.com/file-format/

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#49

Post by jasim »

It is hard to believe that a company with the expertise of Adobe in graphics programming (Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Illustrator) cannot build a vector design program.

Adobe XD was almost there, and they made some great decisions in nooks and crannies usually forgotten - like bringing in Chrome rendering engineers to build a subset of HTML and CSS for the plugin ecosystem.

While there are hundreds of little decisions to be made - from the runtime, text rendering, gpu vs cpu rendering, to how shadows are rendered and line heights are determined - none of these are engineering problems beyond the ken of a good team of systems and graphics engineers and designers, the likes of which Adobe has in spades.

The attempt to acquire Figma for such an enormous sum itself felt like a serious decision making mistake, and the final nail in the coffin is the complete abandonment of vector design tools.

I would pay good money to read the insider account of the corporate politics inside Adobe that led to all this.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#50

Post by pavel_lishin »

ActionHank wrote: post #45
jpk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting guess, but citation needed.

You will never get confirmation or citations for this sort of thing. What you can do is think for yourself as a dev in that team, would you stick around?

> What you can do is think for yourself as a dev in that team, would you stick around?

Are paychecks still coming in, and do I still have a mortgage to pay?

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