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Apple acquires Pixelmator

pixelmator.com

41–50 of 597 posts

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#41
post #37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, because the overlap between After Effects and Resolve is insignificantly small. Anyone using AE for post-processing only has been in the wrong app for years already.

plenty of people doing motion graphics with Resolve and now Rive is really taking the 2D world by storm

I would be shocked if Rive had even 1% of the DAU that After Effects does.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#42
post #7

apple's pro apps have been in a weird space for a while. aperture dying was a bummer, and final cut and logic feel simultaneously actively developed and abandoned to me, there's just not much buzz around them. it would be very neat if apple started to build the necessary portfolio of software to provide a viable, ideally not-subscription-based competitor to adobe's suite of products. they certainly have had the chops…

Still sad that the Apple-award-winning vector drawing program Lineform all-but vanished. (and don't get me started on Freehand being bought by Adobe which is why I need to find a replacement vector drawing tool)

Cenon is nice, but hasn't seen much updating (but at least, being opensource gets updated as new versions are released).

Inkscape is workable, but still a bit awkward (and I doubt it will ever get all of Freehand's functionality/keyboard shortcuts).

I've been buying Serif's Affinity Designer (and their other apps), but they're still not as comfortable as FH/MX --- wish the Quasado/GraviT folks would get further along.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#44
post #7

apple's pro apps have been in a weird space for a while. aperture dying was a bummer, and final cut and logic feel simultaneously actively developed and abandoned to me, there's just not much buzz around them. it would be very neat if apple started to build the necessary portfolio of software to provide a viable, ideally not-subscription-based competitor to adobe's suite of products. they certainly have had the chops…

Logic is still solid, they even added audio stem decomposition in Logic Pro 11 recently.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#45
post #7

apple's pro apps have been in a weird space for a while. aperture dying was a bummer, and final cut and logic feel simultaneously actively developed and abandoned to me, there's just not much buzz around them. it would be very neat if apple started to build the necessary portfolio of software to provide a viable, ideally not-subscription-based competitor to adobe's suite of products. they certainly have had the chops…

Apple gained so much professional mindshare in the early 2000s with FCP, Shake, Logic, Aperture, Motion, XSan, XServe, etc. I worked in a graphics/media studio at the time, and the excitement was palpable. And creating things with those apps was just fun.

It feels like a shame that only vestiges of that time remain today. The bar is much higher in some ways (lower in others), it takes a lot more skill and specialized knowledge to compete, and almost all vendors don't put in the same careful attention to detail (especially UX) that the Apple pro apps of that era had.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#46
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends where you work. In CAD and 3D animation work, Windows machines outnumber the Macs I see 10:1. In smaller shops this ratio probably flips around but Adobe (and others) have a large and captive contingent of Windows users to profit off.

Adobe doesn't offer CAD and 3D animation products.

[(and others)]

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#47
post #8

This is in no way a criticism of the news, but if Pixelmator isn't for you, consider trying Acorn, developed by the reputable indie developer Gus Mueller: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/ It aligns better with my concept of an image editor, based on my experience with Photoshop 4.x-6.x and The Gimp.

[deleted]

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#48

I'm half unsurprised as Pixelmator was one of the apps that was extremely-tightly-integrated with Apple's APIs and ecosystem and was an excellent app as a result, and half worried that Apple will make unpopular changes to it as it's a less user-friendly app by necessity. (see also recently: Apple's Dark Sky acquisition and the worse integration of it into the Weather app)

The other half of this equation is Sketch. Pixelmator is great for photos, Sketch is great for vectors and UI design. Both committed to being first-class macOS applications. But Sketch has steadily been losing ground to Figma. I wonder if an acquisition is on the cards there as well?

I'd actually like to see that happen I think. For my use cases Sketch is infinitely better than Figma. Figma is an abomination of an app.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#49

Astonishingly to me at the time, the app never had a History function (as in Photoshop, list of history you could click through). I had been waiting 3+ years for it to materialize, in order to purchase it. Have since moved on to vector editors and don't see a need to go back. *Actually now that I think about it, I don't seem to miss the lack of History in vector editors (and just use undo).

Will fit right in with iMovie, which doesn't allow you to select the resolution of the exported video. It's like the island of misfit apps.

iMovie lets you select the resolution. File > Share > File, and the dialog that pops up has a picker for resolution right underneath the picker for format.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#50
post #12

Very interesting move. Adobe must be trembling. Lots of people have already left Premiere and AE for Resolve. If Apple offers Photoshop and Illustrator alternatives it will remove the need to pay for the Adobe subscription for a lot of Mac users (that will probably be the case for me).

Adobe is at a weird place.

I'm grandfathered in with a 30$ a month deal. I rarely use Photoshop/Lightroom and the PDF editor.

If I had to pay the full 60$ a month I'd cancel.

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