The greatest news for customers is that Adobe aren't the ones buying it RIP Macromedia Fireworks
I spent a lot of time in the early 2000 with Macromedia apps.. i miss Director
Apple acquires Pixelmator
311–320 of 597 posts
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doubtful. It might get worked into iPhoto or a new version of Aperture as part of their pro apps.
That would be a nice outcome. I’ve been missing a replacement for Aperture for years. I’m not a professional photographer, but I’ve got more than 30 years of photos inside of Apple Photos. Some old school scans or Photo CDs, some RAW from underwater (Photos does a poor job here), and a ton of iPhone photos. Bringing a more premium experience to Photos would be a great complement to how you can already shell out to Pi…
The big thing Aperture nailed though was photo-management workflows - it was never that great as an image editor. I don't see anything in Pixelmator that moves the needle in an Aperture/Lightroom-type direction by integrating photo management, which was the innovation Aperture and Lightroom brought back at their roughly similar original launch dates. Pixelmator is much more a photoshop alternative IMO.
I'd put money on this acquisition being used to improve the image editing experience in photos.app on iOS/macOS, just like Dark Sky was acquired and then used to improve weather.app, rather than any return of Aperture.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I still haven't found an app that's as good as Aperture used to be with my workflow in term of UX/convenience etc...
Never understood the logic of getting rid of it. I know a few people who actually switched to mac because of Aperture
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#314Is 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…
Another controversial one was Lala.com, if I recall right — they shut it down right away, but it had an avid user base.
I get why Apple wouldn't want to maintain two music services, so that engineering talent likely got absorbed into iTunes. It's yet another story where the competition was offering something really good / unique, drawing in customers interested in those differentiators, and it ended up disappointing a lot of people getting bought out.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk, Apple is just as likely to kill it.
Much, much more likely. The only acquisition I can think of that Apple has allowed to continue to exist is Shazam.
The only acquisition? Emagic, the original maker of Logic was acquired some 20 years ago and now Logic is one of if not the flagship software product sold by Apple
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#316Is 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.
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…
Really? Even though the company is in Lithuania? It seems like they’d probably keep on working on Pixelmator or something closely related since any other teams would be a long way away.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#317Anything that helps avoid Adobe is more than welcome.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#318Putting concerns about future states aside, congrats to the Pixelmator team. I've been using the app for years and it's a really great piece of software, well designed and well built. It's always been incredible value for the price, especially given that it basically replaces Photoshop for a wide swath of the market without compromising on UX (which is a problem for other competitors) at a price point that's like 1-2…
I can’t even remember how long have I been a Pixelmator and then Pixelmator pro user. I tried it once and I knew I would never go back to Photoshop again. An incredible bang for the price as well! Congrats to the Pixelmator team, and hoping for a bright future for their product. Fingers crossed though!
It’s up there along with Procreate, another amazing product by an independent studio
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#319Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#320Is 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…
> Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there.
Final Cut Pro was bought from Macromedia. And Logic from Emagic. And off the top of my head Astarte (iDVD), FileMaker (FileMaker Pro and Bento, though that was originally spun out or Apple in the first place), SoundJam (iTunes), Siri (Siri).
All of these were mildly- to hugely-successful products.