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Apple acquires Pixelmator

pixelmator.com

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#341

Post by 1123581321 »

93po wrote: post #326
SupremumLimit wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: make everyone an incredible offer Step 2: get them all hired away from your competitor who is now out of business Step 3: in a year or two, restructure all these people out (or just fire them if your jurisdiction allows) Step 4: your competitor is gone, and all it cost was a year or two of salaries. Seems like a great way to help out budding monopolies.

it seems like you can just prevent this by providing incentives for your employees to not get poached, and also companies that mass-hire-mass-fire would get reputations for doing so, and people wouldn't fall for it. making it illegal instead of requiring businesses to actually pay for retention and loyalty in a free market way is so silly

When a mass employment offer is made to steal or destroy another business, it's usually something ridiculous. For developers it might be a million a year each, for example. It's not an amount intended to be paid perpetually so it can be larger than the defending business can be paying to retain.

It is not illegal to do general hiring at good rates and shop for employees at a particular company. That wouldn't have the same results as buying a company. Plus, you wouldn't own their creations; you'd have to rebuild or clean room steal it.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#342

Post by hotgeart »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #165
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…

There’s a great Tumblr that tracks this exact phenomenon https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney

How can I read this without making an account?

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#343

Post by ChadNauseam »

no_wizard wrote: post #337
thenberlin wrote: post #187

Putting 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 suspect this move is due to behind the scenes Adobe / Apple relations souring over the years. Adobe used to be one of their biggest supporters and helped winning over users to the Mac platform. This has diverged significantly over the years, and I think Apple is looking at Adobe and their business model and realizing that it both lucrative for them to have software that fills into this market to round out their cre…

Creative software and macbooks are complement goods. i.e., demand for macbooks goes up when creative software gets cheaper, and vice versa.

This is a case where mergers are expected to make prices go down. As opposed for substitute goods, like macbooks and dell laptops, where a merger would probably make prices go up.

In both cases you have a prisoner's dilemma between vendors - with vendors producing substitute goods, the "defect" option is to lower your price. (This makes you more money, but costs the other vendor more money than you made.) For substitute goods, the "defect" option is to raise your price (this makes you more money, but costs the other vendor more money than you made.)

So mergers of vendors of substitute goods are usually bad, and tend to be blocked, because once merged the companies can coordinate to raise prices. But of complement goods are usually good, and tend to not be blocked, because once merged the companies can coordinate to lower prices.

All this to say that I think this move makes sense for apple regardless of whether their relationship with Adobe has soured.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#344

Post by giobox »

dialup_sounds wrote: post #340
giobox wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some time ago they split off Photomator as a more Aperture/Lightroom app.

Ah interesting, hadn't seen Photomator before. That does appear to indeed bring a more Aperture type experience to the editing process.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#345

Post by adastra22 »

newsclues wrote: post #272
adastra22 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from what I said?

It would be a different name or form but it would not be dead.

Incorporating some features into an already existing product of their own is still killing the acquired product line.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#346

Post by chaoskanzlerin »

stego-tech wrote: post #160

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 t…

For what it's worth: a friend of mine has extracted the Fuji LUTs from the "official raw converter" and has been using them in darktable happily ever after ;)

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#347

Post by 1123581321 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #226
lowkey_ wrote: post #81

I'd never heard of Pixelmator before (congrats to them on the exit), and: WOW their website already looks like an Apple website. The colors, the font, the logo with the same colors as Apple Photos, all the images that show a Mac window, the shade of red in the top right, the "machine learning" section that almost looks like Notes, and I scrolled down and it's all about how great Mac is. It seemed inevitable that Appl…

Pixelmator has also been app store-only, and I prefer Mac apps that are downloadable from the company's website. This is probably another example of them posturing themselves for acquisition by Apple. It's also the reason I use the Affinity suite rather than Pixelmator.

They've been in the Mac app store for 13 years.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#348

Post by rad_gruchalski »

adastra22 wrote: post #248
wlesieutre wrote: post #216

The greatest news for customers is that Adobe aren't the ones buying it RIP Macromedia Fireworks

Idk, Apple is just as likely to kill it.

Why would they kill it? Is Apple in the graphic design business today?

If I was to place a bet: they are looking for the next graphics killer app for ipad and macos. They purchased Pixelmator because Pixelmator owns the intellectual property for all their code and Apple found it more convenient to buy complete IP rather than reinventing the wheel.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#349

Post by chipweinberger »

wow, something I know a lot about. I used to work on the Photos Edit team at Apple.

I’m both surprised and not surprised.

The built in edit tools evolved steadily every year, and the infrastructure was quite solid, having been rewritten from the ground up years prior.

But as we’ve seen ML and competitors like google adding so many more features, I kept having the same thought “wow the Edit team must be super busy right now”.

I’m curious what features in Pixelmator they most wanted.

But since it already integrates into Photos as a plugin, it will be extremely natural to integrate into the codebase.

Cool move. Must be a fun time to be working on Edit!

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#350

Post by luuurker »

judge2020 wrote: post #289
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from the perspective of a non-DarkSky user, the DarkSky acquisition added tons of value for me. Apple's iOS Weather app is better than it's ever been in terms of accuracy and feature-breadth. It seems that Apple made things worse for the (small number of) DarkSky users while improving things for (a huge number of) default-app users. I hope they do the same thing with Pixelmator.

I've heard that Apple Weather is much less reliable nowadays outside of the U.S., but I agree that it's super accurate for me on the East coast of the states.

Apple Weather isn't as accurate as DarkSky used to be for me here in Europe, especially rain prediction.
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