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Apple acquires Pixelmator

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#201

Post by grahamj »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #130
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…

On acquisitions like DarkSky (RIP), sure. This looks a lot more like a Logic-style acquisition. Pixelmator would slot nicely into the same consumer set of productivity apps that ship with all Macs (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). Photomator will get them back into the market they abandoned when Aperture was shuttered. Speaking of Aperture… am I the only person who remembers that Apple owns Claris? Why didn't Apple just han…

ugh don't get me started about Aperture. I'm still salty about that.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#202

Post by kstrauser »

madeofpalk wrote: post #191
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.

On the other hand, Testflight has a pretty good acquisition story. It got "merged into main" and is now a first class citizen of the iOS development ecosystem. Workflow being acquired and turning into Shortcuts is a pretty successful outcome IMHO. Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Apart from Dark Sky, what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down…

I wish every acquisition improved the end product as much as Workflow's did. All Apple's OSes got better for embracing it. I can write and have written AppleScript things, but Shortcuts is a vastly more convenient UX for the things it's good at.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#203

Post by chrisbrandow »

Even if there’s a risk of a “Dark sky” outcome, I’m still happy, because I figured that Pixelmator was at long term risk of getting squeezed in the photo-editing market. It’s just tough for indie devs playing with the big boys.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#204

Post by Forgeties79 »

throwaway-11-1 wrote: post #139
Forgeties79 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The abandoning of FCPX after surviving the reputation blow it took during the transition from 7->X is baffling to me. In the mid 2010s it was actually a fantastic NLE, I used it for professional work for a solid decade. When it comes to speed editing there’s just nothing like it. But starting around 2019 or 2020 they just began to let it languish. To say they don’t have feature parity with resolve and premiere is bey…

I was around there ~2019 the original FCPX design team was purged when the art director from a print magazine took over for the pro apps. He brought in people worked on stuff like the LinkedIn website, ESPN baseball apps and Disney games. Engineers and QA were annoyed having to explain concepts like timecode

Well that certainly explains things lol

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#205

Post by wlesieutre »

zarzavat wrote: post #176
wlesieutre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dark Sky would've added more value if they'd just renamed it Weather and made it the built-in app, and yet...

I do hope they'll offer Pixelmator as an included app on Macs and Pixelmator Pro alongside Logic, Finalcut, and other "Pro" software. The lack of a built-in image editor can be annoying.

Photos works for some stuff, Preview includes basic adjustments too, but sometimes you just want something like a hue/saturation adjustment instead of color temperature and pink/green tint, or multiple layers so you can experiment with different edits non-destructively.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#206

Post by dbbk »

madeofpalk wrote: post #191
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.

On the other hand, Testflight has a pretty good acquisition story. It got "merged into main" and is now a first class citizen of the iOS development ecosystem. Workflow being acquired and turning into Shortcuts is a pretty successful outcome IMHO. Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Apart from Dark Sky, what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down…

I totally forgot TestFlight started out third party

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#207

Post by robenkleene »

mortenjorck wrote: post #121
pier25 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some people may not be familiar with the fact that BlackMagic Design incorporated its motion graphics and VFX package, Fusion, into Resolve a few years ago. It's an incredibly powerful compositing package, though its node-based architecture may present a nontrivial learning curve for people accustomed to the pre-comping workflow of AE.

> node-based architecture may present a nontrivial learning curve for people accustomed to the pre-comping workflow of AE.

I'd also emphasize that node-based compositing is more suited to VFX and layer-based compositing to motion graphics.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#208

Post by grahamj »

AlanYx wrote: post #51
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…

One of the senior Aperture team members went off to use the underlying OS RAW infrastructure in product called Gentleman Coders Nitro. It's a decent but little known Lightroom alternative with no subscription, albeit without all the recent Lightroom AI-infused features. It does have AI masking though.

omg thanks for the tip! It seems to support iCloud-synched smart albums which is a key feature I've wanted for years since Aperture.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#209

Post by gardaani »

madeofpalk wrote: post #191
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.

On the other hand, Testflight has a pretty good acquisition story. It got "merged into main" and is now a first class citizen of the iOS development ecosystem. Workflow being acquired and turning into Shortcuts is a pretty successful outcome IMHO. Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Apart from Dark Sky, what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down…

> what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down?

Shake was acquired in 2002 and killed 7 years later.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#210

Post by vunderba »

ModernMech wrote: post #119
kstrauser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the sweet spot for me. I don't edit images for a living, but I push pixels around enough for hobbies (e.g. making video game maps) that I want something user friendly and pleasant. Pixelmator Pro has way more features than I'll ever need or use, and all the ones I do need are ergonomic to me, a person who doesn't have decades of Photoshop muscle memory.

This is the market GIMP needed to fill but doesn't. It's definitely capable but it's never been "friendly and pleasant" to my eye.

Krita feels like GIMP done right to me,
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