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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

#221

Post by zerkten »

jwells89 wrote: post #75
staplers wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Not for the workers using those tools. Adobe has been coasting for a decade if not more. Probably difficult to see from the outside if you're not directly using it daily.

Moving to a subscription model is largely a symptom of that coasting. They couldn’t consistently come up with compelling reasons to upgrade to new versions of Creative Suite, with users being perfectly happy to run what they had for as many years as possible. They were always going to hit a ceiling on interesting features to implement, but they could’ve sold new CS versions on improvements in stability, performance,…

There is another element at play: modern software product management. I think revenues at the main driver, but behind that is the modern PM philosophy of hypothesis-driven development. In my experience, the average outcome is incrementalism in the extreme.

PMs break every feature down as an experiment to try and measure the value. It often misses consideration of the whole product. Everyone is scared of taking a big bet because it's harder to measure and too risky because all of these small bets are seemingly safer.

What I'd argue for is better product leadership that recognizes these new modes of development are just a tool. However, many product teams have become cults of experimentation and I expect this is the case at Adobe. It pays off as long as people are renewing, but the product suffers.

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

#222

Post by tamimio »

zigzag312 wrote: post #214
tamimio wrote: post #59

But I use XD for more than 3 years now, not just for mockups but also for diagrams and other quick drawing.. now I have to learn figma!

I've also been looking for a replacement for XD. I decided to try Lunacy instead of Figma and my first impressions are really positive.

I have never heard about Lunacy, looks promising from their website! How does it compare to XD and can you import XD designs? I will have to try it now XD is abandoned, thanks!

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

#223

Post by pavel_lishin »

mlyle wrote: post #74
pavel_lishin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You'd stick around until when the Figma team is expected to replace you, and not take any proactive steps to better your situation in the meantime? And you'd work just as hard, too?

> And you'd work just as hard, too?

I never said that.

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

#224

Post by seanwilson »

omnimus wrote: post #210
seanwilson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, didn't see that for Sketch, thanks. > If you don't have anything to add to the software why should you charge for it? That's fair, but then ~$150 is too cheap for a lifetime license for a major version of software if you're using that professionally for 5 years to generate $10,000s. Asking someone to pay a higher amount upfront is difficult though. > Also if anything software/hardware compatibility is always goin…

I agree that 150usd might be too cheap for pro market but like i mentioned maybe they found out they need to first go for amateurs. Who knows maybe they will make it more expensive in future or offer some kind of pro option. I also have to mention maybe your expectations are a bit skewed? Software dev got cheaper and not everything has to be breakneck hype venture capital squeeze. There is type design software Glyphs…

Thanks, interesting data point! For what it's worth, I'm interested in selling products myself where "smaller teams, slower pace and just OK profits" sounds great to me, so I'm very curious how to price products for niche markets. It's also frustrating how Adobe lock-in and similar can block you from creating and selling certain design products.

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

#225

Post by vegadw »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #146
PaulHoule wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a time when I listened to CDs that were ripped and then compressed to 128kbps MP3. One day I had the CD and just listened to it straight on the computer through headphones and was blown away by how much I was missing on the MP3. My take is 192kbps MP3 is a lot better and 320kbps is basically transparent. I got a really great set of Yamaha speakers at our reuse center and, similarly, found a whole new world in s…

Even at 128, not many people can pass a double blind test. And yes, almost everyone struggles once you get somewhere in the range of 256/320.

Doing a bit of research, it looks like a majority - ~60% across studies - prefer the better quality in double blind tests at 128. At 256/320 it drops off dramatically, yes.

I know I personally have sought out better copies of some songs because the high end sounds awful, witch each hi-hat splash being a crinkly-codec failure.

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

#226

Post by mlyle »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #223
mlyle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd stick around until when the Figma team is expected to replace you, and not take any proactive steps to better your situation in the meantime? And you'd work just as hard, too?

> And you'd work just as hard, too? I never said that .

Well, this is why groups in this situation struggle to make forward progress.

People are uncertain of their jobs (even with promises) and look for work elsewhere.

And even if they stay, they feel their work doesn't matter, and it's hard to work under those circumstances.

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

#227

Post by 93po »

weaksauce wrote: post #154
TylerE wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is anecdotes like this that make me think that the public shareholder model is fundamentally flawed and a large part of why many American companies are struggling to truly build long term value, and many once great companies have been destroyed by beancounters to bleating calls of shareholder value.

we don't need shareholder growth capitalism as it stands... we need sustainable capitalism that is in it for the long term. no clue how to achieve that as it stands though and ceos have short term goals/bonuses tied to short term profits.

We should have capitalism but where humans and human interests come first and companies work to support a society where everyone is housed, fed, educated, and healthy. Also we shouldn't have a thousand companies all competing to do the same thing - people should work collaboratively instead of the same work getting done a thousand times over. Given the community focused nature of this system, maybe the name of it can reflect that.

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

#228

Post by asoneth »

scarface_74 wrote: post #220
asoneth wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Many of those companies have made choices that trade reputation and/or relationships built up over years to increase a quarterly profit margin. Whether that is sacrificing product quality, sunsetting well-loved products/services only to spin up similar efforts in the future, treating long-term employees poorly, burning through developer goodwill through high fees or API churn, etc. When I think about the value o…

Out of the companies I named - Apple is over 45 years old and is still creating new market defining products - Microsoft has been around for 45+ years and didn’t stay one of the most valuable companies for 25 years by not thinking long term - Amazon Retail is a nothing burger as far as profitability . The future is AWS. (Former AWS employee. I have no love for the company). They have also invested in the long term an…

I agree that public companies can be successful, have long-term plans, or satisfy stakeholders so evidence of success or longevity or happy customers is not a counterargument.

But think of recent decisions that Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or Tesla have made recently. Are they generally made with the best interests of employees, customers, users, partners, developers, and regulators in mind? Or do they only satisfy those other constituencies insofar as doing so increases profits for shareholders?

Ultimately the trust and goodwill they build up is just another asset to leverage to make more money for shareholders. If tomorrow they run the numbers and conclude that the most profitable course of action is to spend down some of that goodwill and screw over employees, customers, users, partners, developers, and/or regulators in exchange for slightly higher profits then they will do that.

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

#229

Post by zigzag312 »

tamimio wrote: post #222
zigzag312 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been looking for a replacement for XD. I decided to try Lunacy instead of Figma and my first impressions are really positive.

I have never heard about Lunacy, looks promising from their website! How does it compare to XD and can you import XD designs? I will have to try it now XD is abandoned, thanks!

No, it doesn't support directly importing XD files. I plan to keep using XD for existing XD projects.

https://community.icons8.com/t/conversion-of-adobe-xd-files-...

Core experience feels similar to XD, but I didn't do deeper dive into it yet, so I cannot say what (if anything) is missing.

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

#230

Post by chrisfinazzo »

kccqzy wrote: post #140
chrisfinazzo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the first time Adobe has taken a decent app w/ potential and run it into the ground: Dreamweaver did many things, not all of them well, but it was never actively terrible. Over time, its functionality got split out into more apps that didn't actually require people to write web code - a disappointment that shouldn't surprise as Adobe's heart was still w/ print production and never really committed to the d…

Adobe just didn't manage the pivot to web design very well. Dreamweaver had been run into the ground. So was Fireworks. And look at where Flash is.

> Adobe just didn't manage the pivot to web design very well.

I'd argue they didn't manage it at all. Almost all of the web focused apps that people think of were acquired as opposed to being developed in-house. Adobe (correctly) recognized that the web was becoming more important and they could play in that space, but the mindset for what these apps were designed to address missed the mark.

A web-focused IDE as opposed to a designer's tool that writes things for you are vastly different in terms of what these apps do and how they work.

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