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Apple acquires Pixelmator

pixelmator.com

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#171

Post by mxey »

rty32 wrote: post #147
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…

> it feels like something they'd be well-positioned to seriously take on if they invested heavily in it. I agree, but history just proved that Apple does not care. And let's be real: Photoshop is cross-platform, and lots of content creation software is cross platform (or a web app). There are many more content creators that use Windows than people here are aware of or want to acknowledge (on HN, sometimes you get the…

> A similar example is the iWork suite. It exists, but neither users nor Apple seem to care about it.

I would disagree on that, at least about Keynote. I’m not the only one who loves it.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#172

Post by chongli »

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…

apple's pro apps have been in a weird space for a while

I blame it on Apple’s corporate culture and its relentless focus on secrecy and big event announcements. This strategy works extremely well for them in the consumer space but it’s just frustrating for pros to deal with. When professionals invest in a software tool for their business they need to have some assurance of commitment from the software vendor. It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to retrain for new tools and retool for new workflows.

Pros really like when a company that makes their tools is really open about the development roadmap and engaged in two-way conversations about issues with the tools and what needs to be fixed, what new features are needed, etc. Apple has traditionally been seen to be hostile to that sort of relationship.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#173

Post by vr46 »

segasaturn wrote: post #154
vr46 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Going back to 2007, so can't remember super clearly, but IIRC the db was a sqlite like thing and all info about everything was stored in this, and it was vulnerable to corruption, plus all versions and thumbnails were mixed together with original image files - a total mess. The digital photo management landscape wasn't so mature then, and some people trusted Aperture with their original images whereas later versions allowed or encouraged people to keep their "masters" elsewhere.

Because the whole thing was as slow as a slug dragging a ball-and-chain, pre-SSD, issues with that filesystem or master database were sometimes mistaken for just general slowness. I jumped to Lightroom faster than you could say Gordon Parks.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#174

Post by HumblyTossed »

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.

> Is there any way this can go bad?

6 months they'll realize they can't fit in with Apple's culture and most of the team will hit the road.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#175

Post by Vegenoid »

chias wrote: post #117

Call me jaded but > Stay tuned for exciting updates to come. the vast majority of the time the exciting updates end up being: 1. The product you know and love will continue with no difference! We just have free funding! Isn't that great! 2. We have stopped sales of the product, but don't worry, if you already own it you can continue to use it. 3. On X date it will stop working. Please migrate over to [other thing] wh…

I think this has happened enough times for it to no longer be a “jaded” view, it is the empirically supported view.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#176

Post by zarzavat »

wlesieutre wrote: post #132
askafriend wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelmator as a product is literally what Apple would have built anyway if they made an attempt. The difference here is how aligned the original team is with their acquirer...down to the corner radius on every button. With other products like Dark Sky, the product is substantially different in philosophy or design.

The main worry is that it will be an acquihire into the Photos app and Apple doesn’t actually want to have a separate image editor (let alone two). They used to have Aperture competing with Lightroom and then decided pro photography wasn’t a space they needed to be in, has something changed where now they want their own Photoshop competitor?

This would be very short sighted as Pixelmator adds way more value to the Mac platform than a better Photos app.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#177

Post by dahart »

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…

Multiple reasons. That it does happen should be reason to question your assumptions, rather than assume some obvious imagined alternative has been overlooked by everyone, right?

While poaching one employee at a time might be usually legal, attempting to poach all employees of a company might not be legal, and either way is considered unethical.

Paying off the investors may be the goal.

Eliminating the product or competition ethically may be the goal.

Buying the competition’s customers, and/or distribution channels may be the goal.

Acquiring the top talent, while giving them the expected reward for having bootstrapped a company, might be the goal. Founders are often uninterested in a salaried position for themselves, but may be interested in a return for the company and payoff for everyone in it - as backpay for their investment, completely separate from their salary going forward.

Also, your hypothesis is not accurate. Buyouts are not always, or even usually, massive. It’s common for them to be small and medium sized. It is definitely not a given that making persuasive individual offers would be any cheaper than an acquisition, let alone “so much” cheaper. Depends entirely on the situation.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#178

Post by jbverschoor »

prophesi wrote: post #151
bromuro wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Nothing beats the buienradar

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#179

Post by archagon »

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.

Apple is all-in on services revenue. They could decide to switch this to a subscription model just like their most recent pro apps.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#180

Post by jbverschoor »

kermatt wrote: post #56
toinbis wrote: post #9

Well done team Lithuania! Remember hearing Pixelmator founders giving a speech ~12 years ago. They were very vocal and repeated this many times: "Our marketing strategy is to just focus on the product". Not sure I agree with that statement, but they sure seem to followed it thoroughly. Congrats on the acquisition!

> "Our marketing strategy is to just focus on the product". I wish more companies had this perspective, in contrast to the "Barely MVP and mostly marketing spend" to get the most signups / MAU in hopes of an acquisition.

People tend to forget that product is one of the Ps

Marketing is not the same as promotion

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