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Apple acquires Pixelmator

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#151

Post by prophesi »

bromuro wrote: post #79
lynndotpy wrote: post #68

Is there any way this can go bad? When Apple acquired DarkSky, they absolutely destroyed a service that I loved and relied on. Four years on, Apple Weather is less reliable than DarkSky, and not even close to feature complete. But DarkSky was a cross-platform service, whereas Pixelmator is software that's already Apple-only. I'm wondering how much I should be worried, and if I should already be abandoning ship.

DarkSky wasn’t available in app stores other then US so I don’t even know what are you talking about :(

It started off only using the USA's National Weather Service as a source[0] but gradually added international support[1]. But even then, outside of the US/UK, you would have been better off finding an app that you know uses your region's weather stations.

[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oliviadam/dark-sky-hype...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190110174010/https://darksky.n...

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#152

Post by vr46 »

butterknife wrote: post #97
tigeroil wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic is a weird one. It has really truly excellent included instruments (such as Alchemy) and effects, but the app itself feels rather outdated. The mixer, whilst having had some nice features added since Logic 9, is in dire need of an update.

All the AI hubris but Logic still does not do fades or zero crossings when cutting audio clips. And don't get me started on the audio zoom. This is basic stuff! It feels like the audio code was not touched since emagic days.

In defence of the AI hubris, I laid down a funky rhythm guitar track, verse and chorus, and then fiddled around with the AI bassist and AI drummer and blow-me-down-with-a-feather if the results weren't outstanding. Like a perfect demo. I was able to send that to my mate and say, here you go, here's a demo with guide tracks for the bass.

For making demos and filling-out sketches, I'm thrilled. Here's the audio, and all rough playing, bum notes and general incompetence are my own.

Drums and Bass by Logic AI: https://www.mixcloud.com/hnvr46/demo-rvg/

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#153

Post by latexr »

surfingdino wrote: post #126
robenkleene wrote: post #53

Pure speculation: This is about visionOS. Photo editing is the least friction "pro" task to bring to a spatial computing platform. The other options I considered: ⁃ Renewed interesting in pro use cases in general. I don't see enough incentive for this. Apple's historical interest in this was winning over creatives, but particularly creatives interested in photography are already won. ⁃ Apple wanted the tech for somet…

Hasn't Apple just discontinued Vision Pro?

They have not. They stopped production on the current version of the hardware, which is not the same thing as discontinuing the product.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41925006

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#154

Post by segasaturn »

vr46 wrote: post #15
bangaroo wrote: 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…

Aperture could have been amazing, but it was slow, buggy and suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to - just as Lightroom appeared. FCP was outstanding in its time, but was neglected. I went all in on Logic, however, and that has proved a great buy, no subscription model, fantastic extras and works super well. If they can rebuild a enthusiast-targeted set of…

>suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to

How does that happen? Forgetting to periodically save their work and have the app crash, or was it saving incorrectly and producing corrupted files?

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#155

Post by mrweasel »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

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)

> Pixelmator was one of the apps that was extremely-tightly-integrated with Apple's APIs and ecosystem

While I can understand that companies want to build cross platform applications, something like Pixelmator shows us what can be done if you take advantage for the platform you're targeting. We're not seeing that often enough anymore.

The few other times I've seen code that truly uses the operating system and APIs it's mostly been server software. It's not unique to macOS either, Windows provide a ton of APIs as well.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#156

Post by hifromwork »

cyberpunk wrote: post #24
talldayo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adobe must be trembling. Adobe is probably popping open a champagne for every cross-platform Creative Cloud competitor that gets mothballed with Apple's capital. If Microsoft acquired Affinity next, the Adobe offices would look like a disco ball for a week.

I’ve never seen a graphics person using a windows machine in all my years in tech… Maybe I’m in some sort of bubble.

We all live in our own bubbles. I never saw a tech person using MacOS, it's always Windows or Linux - I assume that's not your experience either (and I only know a few people using MacOS privately). That probably mostly depends on the country one resides in.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#157

Post by latexr »

echoangle wrote: post #134
surfingdino wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't Apple just discontinued Vision Pro?

Did they? Do you have a link? All I can find is some rumors about reducing production.

They didn’t. The thing you found about reducing production is likely what GP is thinking of. The headlines had several people thinking the same as them on first read.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41925329

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#158

Post by alexwhb »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #137
blihp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talent and ideas that were Pixelmator will be substantially diffused as it's absorbed by Apple... most of what you liked about Pixelmator is likely no more over the next year or two. Depending on Apple's reasoning for the acquisition (i.e. how much of it was just for the talent vs the product) you'll may see some small glimpses of Pixelmator's influence a couple years from now in Apple's stuff. Most of the time A…

I don’t understand why companies buy other companies for the talent and not product. Why not just make everyone working there an incredible offer at the same time? It would cost so so so much less than these massive buy outs. Maybe not all of them would take you up on it, but if you buy the company a lot of them may not stick around post-buyout anyway. I feel like this would be a lot more effective also because in a…

Ya that’s a solid point. Though many startups give their employees equity options… so you have to factor that in too. Also buying a start up for talent seems risky since many people that join startups are looking for a totally different energy than a large corporation, so it seems reasonable that there’d be a big drop off of that talent as soon as it gets acquired… especially if the vision is not aligned

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#159

Post by [deleted] »

surfingdino wrote: post #126
robenkleene wrote: post #53

Pure speculation: This is about visionOS. Photo editing is the least friction "pro" task to bring to a spatial computing platform. The other options I considered: ⁃ Renewed interesting in pro use cases in general. I don't see enough incentive for this. Apple's historical interest in this was winning over creatives, but particularly creatives interested in photography are already won. ⁃ Apple wanted the tech for somet…

Hasn't Apple just discontinued Vision Pro?

[deleted]

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#160

Post by stego-tech »

I don’t think this will be good for users, but I do think this is the right call at the right time for the company. They get (presumably) top dollar for their outfit prior to the next big market crash, and just as investor funding is drying up outside the AI realms. Hopefully everyone involved gets enough dosh to live comfortably, and can focus on their next big passion or project once the NDAs and Non-Competes run their course.

For us users…oof, the market just got that much smaller. I already avoid Adobe, and I’m considering bailing on Capture One (if I could just get those Fuji LUTs elsewhere) for my photography hobby; Photomator seemed a natural alternative to explore, but now that’s no longer the case.

Man, what I would give for Aperture to make a comeback. Just something simple, fast, and lacking in feature creep. No pesky AI masking or image replacement, just good old hardware-accelerated gallery management and image editing sans subscription.

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