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Apple acquires Pixelmator

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#351

Post by reaperducer »

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…

Pixelmator + parts of the Affinity suite got me out of their clutches

I haven't used Pixelmator, but currently use Affinity as a replacement for Photoshop for my personal projects. Unfortunately, Affinity isn't yet good enough to replace Photoshop for work.

Are you able to outline how Pixelmator stacks up against Affinity Photo?

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#352

Post by DidYaWipe »

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…

Shake was a big one. Apple loved to put Lord of the Rings and King Kong on its homepage, but Jobs always seemed pissed that they couldn't dumb Shake down. Artists at Weta, ILM, Etc and others were not about to tolerate a gimped product.

Unfortunate side note: Apple was going to open-source Shake, but abandoned the idea after realizing it would face an endless parade of patent trolls if people were able to scour the entire codebase line by line.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#353

Post by 1123581321 »

handsclean wrote: post #167
ozten wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say Affinity sold out?

They sold to Canva, which is strictly subscription based. As far as I know there haven’t been negative changes yet, but we’re still in the period before we’d see them.

Did you see the statement from Canva and Serif after those kinds of rumors started circling? They made a strong statement that they aren't making Affinity apps subscription or dissolving the teams on those apps. It's not the usual silence on post-acquisition plans.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#354

Post by [deleted] »

tigeroil wrote: post #40
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…

Logic is a weird one. It has really truly excellent included instruments (such as Alchemy) and effects, but the app itself feels rather outdated. The mixer, whilst having had some nice features added since Logic 9, is in dire need of an update.

[deleted]

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#355

Post by strangemonad »

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…

If that’s the case, why not just buy Affinity

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#356

Post by DidYaWipe »

askafriend wrote: post #194
jbverschoor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way Apple can build this. Their human interface people all seem to be gone on the desktop. So many things work so bad these days when they migrated to the new ui framework.

Logic Pro for Mac is regarded very well. When they make a focused effort in professional software, Apple can deliver.

At the time Apple bought eMagic, Logic's UI sucked. It actually had dialogs that told you to "reboot the dialog for changes to take effect."

Given how well-regarded Logic is today, it must be drastically improved. I haven't looked at it lately, but am considering the bundle with Motion and FCP.

One piece of software Apple built in-house is Motion. While it suffers from a few UI gaffes, it was an innovative product that still has no competitor in the motion-graphics space.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#357

Post by kstrauser »

strangemonad wrote: post #355
no_wizard wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If that’s the case, why not just buy Affinity

Maybe Canva doesn't want to sell.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#359

Post by dahart »

tiahura wrote: post #279
dahart wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

Unethical by whom? The now richer employees? Or the salty cheapskate?

Investors and founders to name two. Taking over a company via mass poaching would absolutely invite lawsuits.

The government for another. Hiring all the employees of another company is regulated, and it could be seen as anti-competitive behavior.

You’re thinking of individual poaching, not whole company poaching.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#360

Post by stu2b50 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #205
zarzavat wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/satur…

Eh, I don’t think it’s the same thing. The gulf between “photos user” and “pixelmator” user is quite high, much more so than “weather app” and “weather app but better”.

In particular, if you have the average user Pixelmator, they’d be worse off. The same isn’t really true with weather or darksky - they really just do the same thing.

We still have iMovie and FinalCut, GarageBand and Logic. Apple has kept two different product lines before.

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