Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

Post by vyrotek » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

Lorin wrote: post #486

joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

They ruined Macromedia as well. Fireworks was a fantastic hybrid vector/bitmap editing tool perfect for web work.

Post by yummybear » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

connor11528 wrote: post #537

According to the FTC the law states that mergers are illegal when the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition or to tend to create a monopoly." Pretty positive this would lessen competition in design software and restablish Adobe as a monopoly. This merger should be blocked. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Post by bayindirh » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #577

mortenjorck wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of any other company to which my relationship as a customer has swung so completely as Adobe. In the 2000s, their tools were unsurpassed, and I was happy to pay the premium prices they asked (though I'd skip versions to save money). When Creative Suite was discontinued, that was a pretty abrupt turn, as I had no interest in a subscription for software I only used for personal projects. And yet, I stayed…

> their tools were unsurpassed Why the past tense? Which tools have been surpassed? Have Photoshop been surpassed? I am genuinely curious here. I take note of Capture One, but is it an "acceptable yet technically inferior alternative that I picked because I don't agree with Adobe business practices" (which I think is a valid reason) or a viable alternative even for someone who doesn't have a problem dealing with Adob…

Post by klondike_klive » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

jmacd wrote: post #162

nayroclade wrote: post #54

Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…

I remember how Fireworks *felt* to use. Just seeing that name written again gave me warm fuzzy feelings. Fireworks came about at a time when web design was almost entirely something you did in HTML. The workflow to go from bitmap to web was really bad, so most of us just did things natively. Fireworks was the first tool that allowed you to draw, but maintain the constraints (and portability) of HTML and CSS as it cam…

Post by hosh » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #693

ortusdux wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself coming back to this Steve Jobs quote more and more: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketin…

Creatives also destroy companies. See NeXT or whatever the weird letter casing was.