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Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

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Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#61

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

> but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? It’s pretty clear Figma in 5-10 years could make photo and video editing products that outperform Adobe and Adobe can’t even make one web product as good as Fireworks was that they killed so yeah no Figma has no need for Adobe. Figma has an outstanding engineering team you can tell just by using the app, Adobes dev team it’s questionable how much of Photoshop and…

I still use Photoshop because I know how to do a lot of things with it but I'd really like to have a similar app which is designed entirely around linear light. (It's not like the 1990s when I was always editing indexed color images) They are still keeping it relevant because of the generative AI features which I often use to touch up photos (remove a spot of grout from a brick wall, then add a row of bricks to center the pictures)

I still use Photoshop to print things like

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/110607460518784045

(where I touched up the bricks) and have 99% control of printing photographic and non-photographic images (more than I can say for Lightroom) although I recently improved my workflow and now I have 100% control (specifically of margins) of printing the back side of my cards

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/110662093661611559

using a Python script and Epson's printing software.

I used to think the neural noise reduction in Lightroom was pretty hot but when I was having trouble w/ shooting indoors Volleyball other photogs told me to try DxO and it was like getting a whole new camera.

I like Premier and hypothetically I might want to make and edit a video but it never happens, so I suspect one of these days I am going to give up on Creative Cloud.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#62
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

Yeah but it takes quite a success story in IT to have a breakthrough product and not yield under all the millions thrown at you, especially when you know that 'competitors' might try to break your legs all the way if you decide to stay in the race.

It gets tough as the numbers start to get unreal fast. Patagonia and any physical product oriented business has a curve to ride, they grow in percentage not N fold. Someone registers a company and develops new technology, if he has the edge the company worth will skyrocket over night.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#63
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

There is still a fiduciary duty even for private companies

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#64

Killing Adobe XD because they couldn't buy Figma for $20 billion means to me that they would never have been a good owner for Figma. XD may have not had as many features as Figma, but it was still a decent program and could have been a very good competitor to Figma for far less than the cost of buying out that company. The buy-in of Adobe's subscription model was a compelling reason for my employers to provide only X…

This isn't the first time Adobe has taken a decent app w/ potential and run it into the ground: Dreamweaver did many things, not all of them well, but it was never actively terrible. Over time, its functionality got split out into more apps that didn't actually require people to write web code - a disappointment that shouldn't surprise as Adobe's heart was still w/ print production and never really committed to the d…

I want to believe in Dreamweaver but when I try it "just doesn't work" or it does work with a 5 second delay for the screen to update when I type. Webstorm doesn't promise as much but at least I can get stuff done with it.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#65

I still don't understand (as a DAW author) how there are so many more people doing various graphics tasks on computers, and relatively speaking so few significant apps to do them with, whereas there so many fewer people doing stuff with audio and more than a dozen serious contenders for the toolbox.

DAW is easier because images and video involve more data?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#66
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

Patagonia is a unique corporate structure because it is a nonprofit that shovels all non-invested money into a 501c4.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/climate/patagonia-holdfas...

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#67
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staff likely fled teams working on XD as soon as the news surfaced around the acquisition. They probably have no one left who can move quickly with the product or the code base to catch up now.

Interesting guess, but citation needed.

Even if they didn't make business changes in anticipation of this...

Imagine you're one of the top employees working on a product, and that your company announces it's going to acquire a competitive product to yours for $20B and replace your product with that product, and this is looming for 15 months.

Are you still employed there in that group? Are you still an effective employee? How's morale?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#69
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

Not that I disagree, but in my experience the enshittification, or at least a lot of prominent examples are often services that never made money and now have to and ... yeah they can't so it goes bad.

The whole cycle of "free brings in users (and we users LOVE that) --> users bring in investors --> later you have to make money --> change the service to make money and now nobody is happy" is a whole other issue.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

There is still a fiduciary duty even for private companies

Private companies often have so few shareholders that you can simply talk to all of them, together.
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