So, another subscription service?
Apple acquires Pixelmator
461–470 of 597 posts
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny how they were selling the Linux version for $2000 more.
OH MY GOD ! I would bet a million bucks that Jobs put that price in because he basically said well if they buy the Linux version we're down one Mac sale from them so charge them our profit margin on a Mac Pro .
To be fair, I think they just left the Linux version at the same price it was when they bought it, but greatly reduced the price of the Mac version.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#463Well done team Lithuania! Remember hearing Pixelmator founders giving a speech ~12 years ago. They were very vocal and repeated this many times: "Our marketing strategy is to just focus on the product". Not sure I agree with that statement, but they sure seem to followed it thoroughly. Congrats on the acquisition!
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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#464My initial assumption is that this is more about Photomator than Pixelmator (ie. their Lightroom alternative rather than their Photoshop alternative).
Photomator has shown that you can add a lot of professional-level editing control to an Apple-Photos-like interface without making it difficult to use.
Their ML team also seems quite good — for instance, their spot/object removal tool was often more reliable for me than the one in Lightroom, despite being from a far smaller team than Adobe.
(I also feel that Photoshop has reduced in cultural significance in recent years, and that Lightroom is the more significant tool going forward, but that could reflect my own bubble)
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think the crucial different is Workflow was targeted at what Apple should have been doing from the start. I see it the same way Karabiner, BarTender or QuickSilver (DropBox?) improve the OS experience in ways the platform owner would ideally could have figured out on their own.
Those fundamentally tend to butt against the OS limitations and benefit from becoming a blessed first party utility or feature.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#466Is 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 question usually goes "can this go better ?"
Pixelmator was a successful team with a polish product and happy customers. What Apple brings to the table is money I guess, but was that a critical issue the company was facing ?
The talent could bring a lot of good to other Apple products, but I guess Pixelmator as a product has reached its peak at this point.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#467Earlier 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.
I bought their previous software "RAW Power", because it was a one-time perpetual license. Then they rewrote the app (it's worse now BTW), rebranded as Nitro, and stopped updating the previous one to be able to charge again.
The Pixelmator team did the same thing with "Pixelmator Classic".
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#468Great timing. I _almost_ bought a perpetual license last week. Now I know I'll wait.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, "nothing" is rarely true. When I've had to learn a tool that operated in a different way, I've often come away realizing that I could think about a common task differently, or that there are capabilities I didn't realize I wanted. I this case I'm thinking of domain-specific tools meant for creation or curation, like an IDE, image editor, word processor, etc. That wouldn't apply to bureaucratic paperwork-type…
Yes, I agree, “nothing” won’t always be true. But I felt like the idea came across and that having to overly explain and nitpick my own clarification was unnecessary.
Didn’t mean to nitpick, just pointing out a small silver lining.
Edit: and was trying to tie back to the original “Exploring is not wasted. Fretting is wasted.” comment.
Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep same here, tried it for a while but Adobe's idea of UI just does not work for me. I reluctantly went to Photos, mainly because of ease of use on the phone for family members, but still I miss full tagging and smart album support.
> I miss full tagging and smart album support Yes! And plugins are great, but the experience is not smooth, and quickly annoying when working with many photos. Also, switching libraries is not good. I wish it were more integrated because on paper, a photo management app combining the features of Affinity, DxO, and others sounds fantastic.
Someone here mentioned Gentleman Coders Nitro and it looks great so might try that for tagging and smart albums.