Apple acquires Pixelmator • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#471

Post by strogonoff » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 5:38 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #334

judge2020 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s worthless in Thailand. I was checking it last week with a Thai friend here in Bangkok. The forecast was clear skies while in fact we had an epic monsoon storm. This is typical here.

A fun fact about ITCZ is that you will simply not find a reliably correct weather forecast. In places like Bangkok or (depending on the season) Hong Kong locals normally know to use the weather radar.

Once going on a hike with a friend we got stuck amid torrential rain which for 40 min pretty much affected a less than 1x1 km area centred on the bench (with a roof) where we sat down. We knew it from the radar, since all apps showed mostly sunny weather. I didn’t bring the umbrella since it was supposed to be sunny and estimated cumulative precipitation was insignificant—who knew it would all fall directly on our heads!

The radar won’t give you a forecast, but (if you are lucky to not get hit by weather developing on top of you) show you an animated map of where in town all hell is breaking loose now vs. where it was 15 min ago and you make your own conclusions. Newer versions of Weather app include a mini map of precipitation in some areas but I assume not all local radars agree to feed it their data, and even if some do the extra moving parts involved in getting and processing the data introduce too much of a lag for real-time weather developments. I doubt optimising that is Apple’s priority.

I enjoy a good poking fun at weather apps (back then Dark Sky, now Weather) as much as the next guy, which is exceedingly easy while you are in ITCZ, but the reality of fluid dynamics on this big rotating ball is such that some places worry about a cold front they can see coming days in advance while others live in weather that may develop within minutes right there and then. Guess in which of the two do most paying customers live!

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#472

Post by krick » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 5:44 AM UTC

Why is this big news? What exactly is Pixelmator? What I've been able to gather is that it's basically Photoshop, but I didn't get if it's just "yet another Photoshop" or if it has some very unique niche where it's popular or something.

And why would Apple even want it? It's not like they buy every successful image editing (or otherwise) software out there, they have their self-contained ecosystem and I'd assume any new purchase would strive to enhance that.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#473

Post by 0x38B » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 5:58 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #274

kstrauser wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you use it for?

Some of my favorite Shortcuts do things like:

- toggle the white point setting on or off to warm and dim the display for nighttime,

- present a menu that makes and displays QR codes for my contact (from vCard text), Wifi info, and more,

- turn off Wifi and cellular at the same time (this one's on my homescreen),

- upload a .torrent file to qBittorrent's watch folder via SSH.

I use Shortcuts at work, too, like sharing a Wifi network with visitors - easier than fiddling with settings and they can take a picture of the QR code to share with others in their party.

My favorite and most handy Shortcut took a picture of an order form, OCRed it, applied a regex to find the order #, and finally showed a QR code I could scan with my scanner; This was at a job where customers would come to pick up, and would often have their order email on their phone or as a printout. The Shortcut meant I could snap the photo first thing and then chit-chat in the time it took the Shortcut to run, instead of them passing their phone to me or reading out the number.

Shortcuts is one of the things that keeps me on iOS.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#474

Post by thenberlin » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:12 AM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #322

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 used to use Pixelmator when I was on a mac. Its great for what it does, but its much much more limited than photoshop. Frankly most people don't need Photoshop. The UI is intuitive enough. I'm on linux now but missed that "preview" app for format/size conversions. (It has a fun mosaic tool that lets you take a bit of an image and tile it real time which is really fun). >Adobe must not be stoked about this news Prob…

I don't know how long ago that was, but I've been a Pixelmator user for at least a few years, and it's leaps and bounds ahead of where it was when I started with it. Coupled with Photomater -- its cousin app -- they're certainly starting to give Photoshop a real run for its money in many ways. Of course, not all ways, at least not yet, but I have personally used it for everything from photo touchups to marketing collateral to art elements later incorporated in a range of things including print layouts and videos. Once in a while I bump my head on a missing or incomplete feature that I was surprised to find not yet implemented, but its getting rarer by the month.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#475

Post by dainiusse » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:16 AM UTC

Valio lietuviams!

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#476

Post by ezst » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:19 AM UTC

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…

Bet Apple eyes at the rent that Adobe extracts out of all those subscriptions and wants the same thing for itself. Apple has been in the market of renting out content for decades (starting with iTunes) and this move means people will have less options, not more.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#477

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:20 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #413

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…

Not to mention Apple's challenge with 30% AppStore tax for subscription revenue. My guess was that Apple is okay with Apps from third parties that tithe 1/3 of their subscription revenue but aren't willing to make a place for them if they don't "sing for their supper" as my Grandfather used to say.

macOS has no such restrictions as it does not require the App Store.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#478

Post by jmb99 » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:39 AM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #150

blihp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Logic and and Final Cut were bought and developed since. Pixelmator fills the open Photoshop space in an Apple way, and will plausibly go the same way — no vague pessimism required.

The (almost) direct counter example is Aperture. That was the “Pro” photo application and it was killed for seemingly no reason with no notice. It’s fairly reasonable to be pessimistic about this acquisition given that history.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#479

Post by 59nadir » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:42 AM UTC

DidYaWipe wrote: post #448

codazoda wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share references for their refusal to fix and their excuses?

Here are a few threads from the forums; there are probably more. The first seems the most extensive. To be fair, I'm not sure if there are employee responses in there or just eager apologists ignoring evidence and blaming other users for the defective behavior: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/53609-merg... https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/185759-sto... https://forum.affinity.serif.c…

The first thread is large, for sure, but is it relevant? Why do all of these have to do with pixel art, which is something you probably should do in a pixel art editor (Aseprite[0] is great, cheap and deserves your support)?

If this is indeed an issue overall it would be very ironic because the Affinity suite of products are (as far as I understand) way more focused on and enable a non-destructive workflow than Photoshop and its related products. I think it's a big "if", though, no offense intended.

0 - https://dacap.itch.io/aseprite

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#480

Post by 59nadir » Sat, Nov 02, 2024, 6:52 AM UTC

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.

I think it's more relevant to ask "Is there any way this can end well?". Unless a company is basically down and out an acquisition, especially by a mega-corp, is basically never going to make things better.

When Microsoft bought GitHub it actually seemed like GitHub started working more on developing their product, but this quickly turned into essentially starting to do the same busywork every other big tech company does with lack of quality control, pointless reshuffling of UI components in places, embarrassing deficiencies in what should be obvious and exposed places.

So, on a long enough time frame even (observed positive) promising acquisitions seem to turn into bad deals.