[HN Gopher] Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
___________________________________________________________________
Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
Author : caoxuwen
Score : 1808 points
Date : 2022-09-15 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| andrewcl wrote:
| As much as folks may be unhappy Adobe is taking over Figma, I'm
| sure the team over at Figma are elated. It's a successful exit
| for a much loved company and I'm sure the hard working team that
| built such a fantastic product are being well rewarded by such a
| large acquisition.
| blacklion wrote:
| Why is exit so valuable? Ok, money, I understand, fair enough,
| if your goal is money, and not company and/or product. It is
| Ok.
|
| But I see contradiction between "much loved company" and
| "successful exit". Successful acquisition is death for "much
| loved company" or "much loved product" almost always.
|
| If your company/product is "much loved" (and created not
| because you are serial entrepreneur for whom exit IS THE goal,
| but because you want to create this exact product), acquisition
| is like selling you child to slavery, isn't it?
|
| Edit: grammar.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| This is why I won't use SaaS products or orient my career into
| products that use SaaS.
| kderbyma wrote:
| time.to leave....
| cornedor wrote:
| Please, Adobe, please don't add Figma to Creative Cloud. It would
| be great to keep using it, I'm not going to change my file system
| to case-insensitive.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Figma has a free tier, which doesn't exist under CC. On the
| other hand, Figma costs at least $12/$45/$75 per editor per
| month depending on the level, and they don't charge users
| without editing rights.
|
| Those prices are not far off CC plans, $20 for Photoshop, $55
| for the full suite of apps. If they keep offering the free
| tier, I am sure they can include a standalone plan for Figma
| around $20, and add it to the Suite without increasing the
| price, and they won't lose customers except from Adobe hate,
| which I totally stand behind because I prefer having a
| competitive market.
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| Adobe can't eat penpot!
|
| https://github.com/penpot/penpot
|
| https://penpot.app/
|
| https://help.penpot.app/technical-guide/getting-started/#sta...
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Penpot is written in clojure, front and back. I'm not competent
| enough to know if it's good thing or a bad thing.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| Cloud features are critical in an enterprise setting
|
| The UX in my org share all the figma designs through figma
| cloud, I can quickly provide feedback and this is important!
| All designs are stored in the cloud, I can quickly go back and
| refer them when necessary.
|
| I am not sure if the open source solution provides all these
| features yet, but a new startup can provide these.
| capableweb wrote:
| Penpot is also hosted on machines not run by you, as
| demonstrated by https://penpot.app/ so not sure what you're
| arguing against.
| bauripalash wrote:
| > Adobe can't eat penpot!
|
| That's the beauty of open source
| m12k wrote:
| It's kind of amazing to me that we've reached the point where
| using open source is not a matter of idealism, but rather
| risk management to guard against the threat of product
| regressions due to consumer-hostile takeovers.
| jcbrand wrote:
| Open source has been used for risk management rather than
| idealism for probably about 20 years now.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Open source has been used for risk management rather than
| idealism for probably since the beginning.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That has always been my selfish reason for using free/open
| source software. I agree with the principles of free
| software too, but even if I didn't I would be using it just
| so I can be in control of my own computing.
| Rantenki wrote:
| Not to be too inflammatory, but it's always amazing to me
| how people will ignore a threat as long as possible, then
| pretend it just appeared once they are forced to
| acknowledge it.
|
| Not a perfect XKCD match, but pretty close:
| https://xkcd.com/743
| acomjean wrote:
| Or if you want to run your software on Linux.
|
| Its amazing how adobe isn't porting anything to Linux,
| despite linux being starting to be used heavily now in the
| creative industries with the rise of blender and tons of
| work being done on render farms.
|
| Blender and Krita are really high quality stuff, so
| hopefully problem solved. But those teams are really small
| compared to adobe.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| It always has been, where do you think that idealism came
| from? :-P
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Same place but started out poor. Now there's money.
| archagon wrote:
| "Always has been."
|
| (Also: the threat of product pivots or discontinuations.)
| DC-3 wrote:
| Open source began because Xerox neglected to update their
| printer drivers. It's always been a blend of idealism and
| pragmatics.
| marcodiego wrote:
| You are mixing open source and Free Software.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Open Source is just a MBA friendly term for Free
| Software.
| contravariant wrote:
| Though can I just say that Free software is a _much_
| better term than Open Source (unless of course you only
| wish to say the source is publicly available).
| jansan wrote:
| I am really curious: What features of Figma are not available
| in Penpot?
| ringostarr wrote:
| Access to local fonts is missing
| capableweb wrote:
| I just signed up to Penpot right now and gave it a look.
| Seems at least there are a few things that are not in Penpot
| but in Figma:
|
| - "Components" implemented differently so requires you to hit
| "Update master component" before changes in instances are
| visible
|
| - Auto layout doesn't seem to exists
|
| Probably more stuff, since Penpot is relatively new and FOSS,
| while Figma is old by startup standards with huge investments
| and a large team behind it.
| monkin wrote:
| For the last 12 years I did everything to avoid Adobe at any cost
| (I used it from version 5). Creative Cloud was my biggest
| nightmare and single point of every crash of macOS and Windows
| that I had.
|
| It's a very sad day for designers.
| pantulis wrote:
| Adobe will use Figma as a bridge between Creative Suite and
| Experience Cloud for bigger creative/mkt agencies and
| enterprises. I doubt they will destroy Figma, but the focus will
| be different.
| satya71 wrote:
| I have had good luck with Lunacy [1]. I hope they get some users
| from this sale.
|
| [1] https://icons8.com/lunacy
| calibas wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of Adobe. Many years ago, I spent about $600 on
| their Creative Suite. A few months later I bought a new camera
| only to realize Photoshop didn't support the RAW format, and I
| needed to purchase an upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop
| that had just been released. $600 software that I purchased less
| than a year ago and it was already obsolete...
|
| That being said, I always wished Figma had the ability to
| import/export PSD files.
| not2b wrote:
| I hope the antitrust authorities take a good look at this one.
| Aeolun wrote:
| For once it would be nice if someone would value a world in which
| their baby isn't ruined by a big competitor, more than a world in
| which they have 20B in their bank account.
|
| But I've yet to see that happen.
| [deleted]
| elteto wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 1) Once you take VC money you probably can't say no to an
| opportunity like this. It's not entirely yours to say no
| anymore. Alternative is to retain control, but you don't get
| the cash infusion and have to grow slower and more organically.
| Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just a different path.
|
| 2) This is not a baby, this is a commercial product. If someone
| offers me 20B for something I created I will happily accept it.
| What greater reward for my work and my vision to create a
| product than someone valuing it in millions/billions?
| nakedgremlin wrote:
| Not sure how I feel about this. Figma is great and all their
| feature releases have been impressive, but I feel it was due to
| competition and worry about similar products coming in from big
| corporations (like Adobe XD). I feel this competition really push
| Figma hard.
|
| Now being part of the same owner, just makes it feel like any
| aggressive progress will just stall out.
| tolulade_ato wrote:
| veritas20 wrote:
| seeing lots of comments about concerns given adobe's position in
| the market and past acquisitions...you can raise a compliant
| here: https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center with
| references to The Clayton Act
| (https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you-0)
| mirzap wrote:
| This is really sad :( There are 2 tech companies that I really
| hate. Whatever they touch they ruin - Oracle and Adobe.
|
| On the other hand, there's now a lot of room for other startups
| to go Figma-way and try to capture market.
| npteljes wrote:
| I don't see how Oracle ruined Java or MySQL for example.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| use of Java has declined over the years. that's a sign.
| dexter89_kp3 wrote:
| Figma could have been much bigger than adobe in 5-10 years. Why
| not go public? Is the economic scenario so bad that they could
| not raise money?
| majani wrote:
| $20b is an offer nobody can refuse. Bird in hand and all that
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| For those interested in non-subscription, one-time payment
| alternatives, there are a few options:
|
| 1. Figma replacement - Sketch (1yr fee, updates optional, MacOS
| only)
|
| 2. Adobe Photoshop - Affinity Photo (Win/Mac)
|
| 3. Adobe Illustrator - Affinity Designer (Win/Mac)
|
| 4. Adobe InDesign - Affinity Publisher (Win/Mac) (I use this to
| create my indie magazine)
|
| 5. Adobe Animate - Tumult Hype (closest thing to Flash that we
| have today, replaces my need for After Effects + Bodymoovin, Mac
| OS only)
| gaws wrote:
| Don't forget alternatives for GNU/Linux, too.
| rchaud wrote:
| I only know about GIMP and Inkscape for Linux, and I wouldn't
| recommend them for work-related use. As free tools go
| however, they are both quite powerful and feature-filled.
| Just harder to use and can crash unexpectedly, which is why I
| didn't include them.
| bearmode wrote:
| Those options are all great for non-professionals. Absolutely
| go for those if you're not using them for your job. Have to see
| what Adobe does with Figma before abandoning it, though
| brikwerk wrote:
| After checking out Sketch, I don't believe they offer a one-
| time payment option any longer. They seem to have switched to a
| subscription service now?
|
| I don't use software like Figma or Sketch often enough to
| justify an ongoing subscription, so I suppose Penpot might be
| the next best alternative for users like myself?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > After checking out Sketch, I don't believe they offer a
| one-time payment option any longer
|
| You still can get it, but only after contacting support:
|
| _" We can still offer Mac-only licenses as new purchases to
| people who, for legal or security reasons, cannot use cloud-
| based products. However, they only offer access to the Mac
| app, and don't get all the other benefits of a subscription.
| Get in touch with us if you're a company with special
| requirements and would like a to use Sketch with only local
| storage."_ [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.sketch.com/docs/subscriptions/
| NicholasN wrote:
| 243 times their revenue? From what I can research: Figma took
| $332M in funding and has just $82M revenue for 2022. Adobe must
| be betting on Figma's 60% YOY growth and probably see them as
| existential threat.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's probably less the revenue they'd gain and more the revenue
| they'd lose to figma.
|
| Doesn't matter what figma makes if the customers they're losing
| are worth 20B in the long run. This is certainly a defensive
| position.
| askafriend wrote:
| It's 50x revenue.
|
| Figma will make >$400m in 2022.
| NicholasN wrote:
| You are right, thanks for pointing that out. I pulled up the
| wrong info. Indeed, $400M for 2022-impressive.
| parkingrift wrote:
| No acquisition of this size should ever be allowed. Hard cap at
| no more than $1 billion in 2022 dollars. If Adobe wants Figma
| users then Adobe should... compete for them.
| kadomony wrote:
| It's as if millions of design files screamed out and were
| suddenly silenced.
|
| Fuck Adobe.
| colmanhumphrey wrote:
| Can't begrudge anyone involved, but this feels kind of lame. I
| thought Figma really could compete long term with Adobe.
| margarina72 wrote:
| bad news of the day.
| faramarz wrote:
| I think Scott Belsky (bechance), Chief of Product, strongly
| influenced this acquisition! he's been the breath of fresh air
| and innovation that Adobe has needed over the years! As long as
| he's at Adobe, we're in good hands. Frankly, I'd be glad if my
| existing Adobe suite at $105/month covers Figma in the fold.
|
| I do wonder if this means sunset for Adobe xD, which I'm totally
| cool with. This whole market was Sketch's for the losing, and I
| suspect at some point a merger with Abstract and Invision makes
| sense for them.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| Just checked out Penpot, it's pretty good! Definitely usable for
| daily driving although I'm sure looking deeper there will be some
| features I miss. Going to try importing some Figma designs...
| Vinnl wrote:
| Link: https://penpot.app
|
| It's also open source! Discussed on HN before:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30407913
|
| Oh, and of course on the frontpage now:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262
| bokchoi wrote:
| And it's clojure!
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| downside: Adobe acquired yet another piece of software, one that
| even competes with Photoshop XD.
|
| upside: I now can roll out Figma anywhere we have adobe CC
| licenses without a rigamarole from management
| ramosu wrote:
| Sad news.
|
| Why don't Adobe just die already?
| [deleted]
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Anti-trust law, please.
| makobado wrote:
| that is too much
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Numbers lost all meaning...
| kybernetyk wrote:
| $20b? I guess hyper inflation is a thing. How long will they need
| to recoup the purchase? How many customers does figma have and
| how much do they pay to justify $20B?
| seydor wrote:
| OK now the field is open, just clone Adobe Figma, acquire $$$. Do
| they have particularly substantial patents?
| bears-n-beets wrote:
| As a current software engineer at Adobe, I was really
| disappointed when I got the internal email announcing this this
| morning. It's reminiscent of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior
| in the early 00s. Figma is the better product and Adobe knows it
| - but instead of using that to light a fire under them and work
| harder to create a better product, Adobe just used its deep
| pockets to make the problem go away. I was already planning on
| leaving the company for other reasons but this is the nail in the
| coffin for me.
| isnhp wrote:
| Adobe loses the game with their skill and use money to win it.
| Figma won the game with their skill but lose the money game.
| pcurve wrote:
| Yep. Everybody has a price.
|
| It's not that Figma was worth $20 billion.
|
| It's that Adobe was likely seeing subscription revenue take
| hit from customers that realized there's no need for creative
| cloud subscription.
| unstrategic wrote:
| > It's that Adobe was likely seeing subscription revenue
| take hit from customers
|
| While being pummeled by public markets, and being forced to
| make a move that might keep shareholders from calling for
| blood.
|
| This is certainly not the first time that Adobe has
| presented a number to Figma's board -- but it has to be the
| biggest number yet, by far.
|
| From Figma's position: take your chances on an IPO while
| the Fed is cracking skulls around inflation -- or flip the
| bit on that liability, and cash out to a desperate Adobe?
| majani wrote:
| Another interesting layer to this is that Adobe only has
| $5b in cash according to their balance sheet, so the
| overwhelming majority of this deal is probably in Adobe
| stock with a long vesting period. Also the deal being
| done in a downturn means that the difference between this
| and an IPO is academic in my view
| unstrategic wrote:
| > the difference between this and an IPO is academic in
| my view
|
| More theatrical than academic -- if both options have a
| risky short-term outlook, optimize for the story.
|
| Sold for $20B? Or lackluster IPO? As GP of a VC fund,
| which story is going to better-enable you to raise your
| next several funds?
| adventured wrote:
| Adobe got the money in the first place via skill. Photoshop
| has been the leading photo editing software for a generation.
| Hundreds of companies over decades, some with deep pockets,
| have tried to knock them off and have failed.
|
| Figma didn't lose the money game, they sold out specifically
| to reap the money. The owners of Figma - where the profits
| tend to go in a business - are extracting at an epic scale.
| They sold out at a valuation far beyond anything sane. They
| won the money game big time.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| They have not failed because they couldn't get a great
| product out. They have failed because so many people are
| trained on Adobe products an just use those.
| clcaev wrote:
| Yes. At an individual level, they ask the question:
| "Delay my deliverables a week or two in frustration as I
| retrain; or, pay $300". User by user, the decision is
| obvious: pay the ransom and move on with your life.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I did not mean it this way. The user will always ask the
| question: ,,Can i use another software for less
| money/more value". Those who can will turn their back on
| adobe as the company is greedy and lazy. Problem is: if
| your company/client is a large cooperation you dont have
| any choice. Never underestimate professional users.
| unstrategic wrote:
| Arguably, the money game is exactly what Figma was playing
| all along. Dylan's good at this game, as are the VCs he
| partnered with.
|
| Figma's flagship product was private equity. The design
| tool was secondary.
| auggierose wrote:
| Sigh of relief. That opens up a lot of room for new startups :-D
| hackitup7 wrote:
| So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat
| to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all
| of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers.
|
| Just goes to show that if you want an outsized exit multiple the
| best way is to put a gun to a $100B company's head.
| shabbatt wrote:
| This type of multiples is only possible when rates are low.
| Likely their last infusion of capital made their valuations
| possible but I reckon it is reduced as rates are ticking up
| fast.
| tempie_deleteme wrote:
| it's a bit counterintuitive that something can be good for a
| company (or companies) AND bad for the customers of said
| company...
|
| shouldn't something that is bad for a customer of a company be
| bad for the company too?
| duped wrote:
| Depends on the customer. The equity has customers too.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Generally, companies obtaining a monopoly position is bad for
| consumers.
| the_other wrote:
| I agree so hard that I rage posted the same idea with less
| polite wording. Sorry for not reading your comment first.
| agilob wrote:
| If a company fires all human customer service and leaves you
| only with bots to interact with, it's a great saving for
| them, it's the worst case scenario for human customers.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Only if there is active competition between similarly sized
| companies with the customers able to move unhindered between
| them.
|
| Antitrust regulators have long since been forbidden to use
| their diminishing powers to make that a reality.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| It's good for adobe and figma employees/shareholders, but bad
| for figma as a product / new sub-business
| colechristensen wrote:
| No, the interests of companies and customers are usually at
| odds with big mergers.
|
| Competition is good for customers, it means different things
| get tried so there's more diversity in products and pressure
| to compete on lower prices.
|
| Figma is not selling to gain any efficiency or benefit from
| being included in Adobe, people are just looking for a pay
| day.
|
| These kind of just payday mergers along with private equity
| profit by destruction mergers need a lot of regulatory
| backpressure because they simply aren't in the interests of
| anybody but the people profiting from them.
| cjsawyer wrote:
| Companies aren't your friends. They exist to maximize what
| customers will pay in exchange for the minimum effort on
| their part.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| This is super true. Also, the reverse relationship exists
| with the company and the workers, but we workers often
| imagine it's different.
| tempie_deleteme wrote:
| what's truly been mind-boggling is how companies ARE made
| out of people... people who may well be your friends; and
| yet, what you said remains true, that the company wont be
| your friend.
| the_other wrote:
| > So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious
| threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The
| losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers.
|
| It's utterly fucked up that "so smart for the companies: the
| losers are the customers" is baked into the system we use to
| transact culture.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Somehow, the dynamic where a company is an organization of
| humans to be used to further some human cause was reversed,
| so now humans are elements of a corporation to be used to
| further the cause of the corporation. We've gone from running
| companies in service of humans to running humans in service
| of companies.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Something is broken if a company like Adobe can hold its
| customers hostage by subscription.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Same with Nginx being acquired by F5 Networks. Nginx really ate
| their lunch and were rewarded handsomely for that
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Perfect summary. Nothing to add.
|
| I find it odd that sometimes, founders want only one thing, to
| be number 1. At first its a good thing, but if that doesn't
| work their goal is destroying their company. When you can sell
| your company for X billions instead of XX billions ... you
| succeeded in life.
|
| Show me one real thing that you can do with XX billions, that
| is not possible with X billions. Excluding a star destroyer ;-)
| h3daz wrote:
| Buying Figma, apparently
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > So smart for both Adobe
|
| The market aggressively disagrees with this assessment.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Acquisitions from the acquirer side always tank the stock,
| the acquired always get a bump. The down market and the $20B
| spend is why it is down.
|
| From an ADBE perspective, this actually is a good long term
| move and shouldn't be such a hit.
|
| From Figmas perspective, I am sure this was one of their
| hopeful outcomes.
|
| If people here don't like the outcome, then I wonder if they
| know what type of game they support. This is the game with
| VC/growth/exits.
| safdahfslh23s wrote:
| How can you tell what the market thinks about this decision
| when a company's stock price is a function of what is
| happening publicly at the company AND externally in the
| economy? How do you separate the 2 drivers?
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Compare stocks with the highest correlated log returns.
| Anything that's economic should impact the correlated group
| the same, if it's company specific then that company will
| stand out.
|
| Most correlated with ADBE (all have > 0.8 correlation) that
| I see with there price change today are:
|
| ANSS (-0.77%)
|
| INTU (-1.94%)
|
| CRM (-1.73%)
|
| MSFT (-1.77%)
|
| ADSK (-2.61%)
|
| As you can see none of these stocks are experiencing
| anywhere near the drop today that ADBE is, so you can
| pretty reasonably explain the drop as company specific.
| somebodythere wrote:
| Adobe posted earnings today.
| jayd16 wrote:
| A competitive product in an established, profitable market
| space? It's not a revelation but you're not wrong.
| akrymski wrote:
| Can someone plz enlighten me how Figma competes with Adobe?
| AFAIK Web/app designers use either Sketch or Figma, publishers
| use Illustrator and photographers use Photoshop/Lightroom. At
| least that's how it's been back in the day. Is that no longer
| the case?
| HellDunkel wrote:
| People are moving away from designing in photoshop to figma
| in large numbers hence the 20bn.
| akrymski wrote:
| But Photoshop is not a vector design tool? I thought this
| move happened in the 90s
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| The agencies I've worked at only started dumping
| Photoshop around 2015-ish, going for Sketch and XD.
| rjvir wrote:
| There are use cases where Figma and Adobe already directly
| compete:
|
| - Product wireframes/mockups
|
| - Memes/social media posts
|
| - Simple vector creation/editing
|
| And that list is only expanding.
| codeptualize wrote:
| That whole market was Photoshop and Illustrator for a long
| time. That changed because of better and cheaper alternatives
| (like Sketch).
|
| They have tried and failed to get it back and now seem to
| have given up on competing and just bought the competition
| instead.
|
| It's also not just UI. Figma is a very capable vector and
| general purpose graphic tool. Figma made a lot of common
| things much easier than they are in Illustrator and
| Photoshop. While being online and fully collaborative. It's
| really an amazing tool and imo Adobe was rightfully
| threatened by it as I don't believe they could deliver
| anything close. It would just continue taking over more use
| cases.
| akrymski wrote:
| While Figma is a great vector tool it doesn't hold a candle
| to Photoshop when it comes to image editing. There's a
| reason photographers use Photoshop for retouching photos.
| leodriesch wrote:
| Adobe has XD, which is a direct competitor to Figma as a
| vector based design tool that includes prototyping
| functionality.
| akrymski wrote:
| Thanks, I've never actually seen anyone use it in practice
| but turns out that Figma has a 31.73% market share in the
| Collaborative Design And Prototyping category, while Adobe
| XD has a 15.14% market share in the same space
| jiocrag wrote:
| Where are these stats from?
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| Oh man, can't wait to never be able to cancel my Figma sub now
| jdmdmdmdmd wrote:
| vlugorilla wrote:
| Time to go for penpot then: https://penpot.app
| nayroclade wrote:
| 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 and flows people love in Figma
| and Sketch were pioneered years earlier in Fireworks.
|
| After the acquisition, Adobe starved Fireworks of resources and
| marketing. They broke things, left major bugs and performance
| regressions unfixed, and eventually discontinued it altogether.
| I'd argue this wasn't simply negligence, but a calculated
| decision to kill an innovative product because it threatened the
| profits of their cash cows.
|
| As much as I hope otherwise, I believe the acquisition of Figma
| will go the same way. Once it's under the Adobe umbrella, the
| simple mathematics of profits from Photoshop and Illustrator vs.
| those from Figma will result in the latter being starved,
| stripped of functionality, and eventually left broken.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Fireworks
| cutler wrote:
| Adobe killed Fireworks hoping their competitor ImageReady would
| prevail.
| Spartan112 wrote:
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well
| on its way to matching Adobe's application suite - except
| Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and
| better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe
| would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I still use Adobe Animate (formerly Macromedia Flash), for
| simple vector drawings. For example, you can just draw a
| circle, draw a line through it, delete part of the circle
| that is bisected on the line, then click and drag the line or
| the remaining curve to curve those two segments. It's so much
| easier than using the pen tool or having to deal with vectors
| in Illustrator.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| Same here. I've never found a vector editing tool to be as
| intuitive as Animate/Flash.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better
| performance, and better integration with the web_
|
| Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia
| also made the pile of crap called Flash.
|
| And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of
| bugs under Macromedia too.
| xmonkee wrote:
| I never curse on HN, but screw you, man. Nothing in my
| programming life has felt the way making animations and
| scripting them felt with Flash. You either missed out, or
| got suckered by steve jobs into thinking it's bad. It was
| overused, sure, but that's true of every new technology
| that's accessible and powerful.
| rchaud wrote:
| Thank you! Somebody that gets it.
|
| Building something in Flash visually felt far more
| concrete and rewarding vs having to write lines of code
| for CSS keyframes or SVG animations.
|
| Flash also just made it possible for non-programmers to
| build cool stuff. Today, that is pretty much impossible
| if you're not a programmer.
|
| Programmers often aren't artists, so when they're playing
| around, they build something that may only be of interest
| to them. Taking HN as an example, I have seen tons of
| posts about people excitedly describing their favourite
| static site generator. Not much there for others to
| really dig into and enjoy.
|
| And that's what we lose when the tools of creation are
| limited to those whose interests lie entirely elsewhere.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, I don't curse on HN either, but fuck you too then,
| for all the time I've wasted on BS Flash intro pages and
| BS Flash navigation systems in the late-90s early-00s.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| It's pretty established now that for what we had at the
| time/the environment/and where the web was evolving, Flash
| was actually pretty damn good as far as UX for creators and
| the web has never regained that level of expression/ease
| yet. (despite all the technical problems and anti-open-web
| caveats)
| artursapek wrote:
| Flash itself was a work of art.
| mountain_peak wrote:
| It's a work of art because it was created by someone with
| a great sense of art - Johnathan Gay, who developed Dark
| Castle using tools that would end up becoming
| Flash/Director. [0]
|
| [0] https://quorten.github.io/quorten-
| blog1/blog/2019/05/18/sili...
| [deleted]
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Flash was an incredible accessible animation engine. There
| are dozens of "webtoons" that got their start as flash
| animations.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| I wouldn't have a career without it, that's for sure. I
| made a cartoon called The Pygmy Shrew which went round
| the world and led to me going to Monaco to record Roger
| Moore!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Indeed--however much it "sucked", there's literally no
| replacement. We've simply lost a certain kind of very-
| accessible creation tool for rich, animation-heavy,
| potentially-interactive content.
| coldtea wrote:
| How is Adobe Animate, for one, not a replacement? And it
| even exports native HTML/JS code.
| rchaud wrote:
| If you have a Mac, I suggest Tumult Hype, which works
| very similarly, and has no subscription. Exports to HTML,
| GIF, OAML and MP4
| coldtea wrote:
| It was accessible, but also insecure, and buggy.
|
| And aside from animations, it helped build the "landing
| page" nightmare - huge (for the download speeds of the
| time) pages, loading tons of assets, to do nothing.
|
| Or the even worse "flash-only website" which just showed
| some text and images, and had nightmarish navigation,
| slow download times, didn't use regular html widgets, and
| you couldn't copy and paste or take a bookmark of your
| position in it...
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The true neglect really started showing after Adobe
| bought the product. And your last paragraph could also
| apply to a lot of HTML5 apps, especially during the
| "AJAX" era. People didn't care about those things (and a
| lot of them still don't !) regardless of the technology
| used.
| rchaud wrote:
| Ah yes, the famously crap Flash.
|
| Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full
| developer team, myriad NPM packages, and an application
| deployment pipeline. All for a web page that won't even
| work in a few years' time when some script necessary for
| the page to work ends up getting removed from whatever
| template they're using.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a
| full developer team_
|
| Interactive experiences the kind Flash was used for, can
| now be done trivially without plugins AND be compatible
| with the rest of the page (e.g. history, copy paste,
| etc.). For some basic stuff Flash was used you can even
| do them in one line of CSS. You can even play video,
| sound, and trigger MIDI natively now, with just a few
| lines.
|
| More advanced stuff, you can it do with just canvas and
| at most a wrapper lib for higher level methods - no "NPM
| packages" or anything else required.
|
| For casual games or animation, there are tons of FOSS and
| even proprietary libs, with game-building templates and
| GUIs to do what Flash did, and even things Flash barely
| did, like 3D - and they all export to native web code
| running on all platforms - even mobile. And with lower
| resources that Flash did.
|
| So, yeah, the crap Flash.
| rchaud wrote:
| All I can say is, good luck navigating the Minesweeper
| field that are the caniuse.com tables for browser feature
| cross-compatibility. At least Flash worked everywhere,
| even on Android.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Adobe's direct competitor is Adobe XD, which launched with
| practically no features and was slowly developed only to
| dwindle to death as a rarely used cloud service, while everyone
| does the important work in Figma.
|
| The parent comment is spot-on. Antitrust legislation needs to
| be invoked to prevent this acquisition from happening.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It amazes me that people posting on a YC controlled board
| whose entire purpose for existing is to fund startups long
| enough to get an exit - statistically most likely through an
| acquisition by a bigger company - wants to stop acquisitions.
|
| The funding environment for startups would be a lot worse if
| investors thought that the only way they could recoup their
| investments is through exits. Look how few of YC companies
| actually go public.
|
| Even companies that do go public are often just surviving
| long enough to hopefully get acquired.
|
| The founders at Figma chose to be acquired. It's their
| product and their company.
| smilespray wrote:
| Many of us are current Figma users who actively avoid Adobe
| products because they are overpriced crap.
|
| Parts of the Adobe software suite has more than 30 years of
| technical debt, and it shows.
|
| What's so hard to understand?
| scarface74 wrote:
| I understand why people like Figma. But just because you
| don't like that Figma is selling _their_ company doesn't
| mean that the government should be involved.
|
| When a group of people thought they wanted a better
| operating system and databases that can't be acquired -
| they created an open source offering. They didn't depend
| on government intervention.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Did that group of people include Larry Ellison?
| scarface74 wrote:
| No but it did include the people who wrote MySQL (twice)
| and Postgres. It also included Linux and BSD.
|
| No one has ever said that they really wish _Oracle_ was
| open source and that they would jump at the chance to use
| it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| My point was he essentially used the CIA and the US
| government to basically steal some other company's
| software and slap the Oracle badge on it.
| ryder9 wrote:
| dasil003 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think that 100% market freedom ought
| to be this audience's primary index of importance. Many of
| us own or work for companies that will likely be negatively
| impacted by this. Antitrust has been systematically
| marginalized over the last 40 years, and despite prevailing
| narratives, this is not necessarily a net good for
| entrepreneurs.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's not the acquisition itself. It's what company acquires
| it. Adobe is the IBM of creative tools. (If not Oracle.)
|
| OTOH being acquired by a behemoth company always feels
| uneasy for the product. Imagine an acquisition by Google,
| or Facebook, or Microsoft, or even Apple. I bet people
| would start imaging how Firma were to deteriorate under
| their corporate governance.
|
| Ideally an acquired company is just left as is, and used as
| a cash cow, resulting just in the products becoming a bit
| more expensive for large customers.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Many of us think the VC approach to business has perverse
| incentives and is fundamentally broken, with large exits
| basically demanding megacorp purchases, who then hand large
| dividends back to the investors behind the scheme. No
| matter who loses, the house always wins. I post here in
| spite of YC and pg, who I both dislike equally very much.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Even though you don't like how VCs operate, you are
| taking advantage of a product (HN) that is funded by
| them. But yet, the founders of Figma shouldn't be able to
| maximize their returns?
| sofixa wrote:
| > wants to stop acquisitions.
|
| Who said that? The point is that anticompetitive
| acquisitions, like Adobe acquiring a direct competitor,
| hurt everyone but the acquirer, and should be tightly
| controlled.
|
| Nobody would care if Figma were getting acquired by GitLab
| or Salesforce or Atlassian or whatever. The fact that it's
| a direct competitor known for destroying acquisitions is
| the problem.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why would Gitlab want Figma? Could it afford it? I am
| sure the owners of Figma thought this was the best
| available option. It's their company - not yours or the
| governments. If they want to sell their property it's
| theirs to sell.
|
| Would Gitlab make it a better product if it was sold to
| them?
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| It's just an example of a non-monopolistic acquisition.
| There are other examples of larger companies that may be
| able to support it better, like Microsoft or Dropbox or
| Zoom or something.
| scarface74 wrote:
| DropBox isn't doing to well itself if you haven't
| checked. How well are their previous acquisitions doing?
| Would you rather have a company acquire Figma with no
| expertise in the area (MS)?
| etchalon wrote:
| I think everyone would prefer Figma to continue to be an
| independent business that challenges and competes with
| Adobe, forcing both products to be better.
| scarface74 wrote:
| "Everyone" but the people _who own the company_ , created
| the product, found investors, took the risk of starting
| their own company, the employees who all could have
| probably made more money during the intervening years by
| working for BigTech.
|
| _Their_ priorities and wants are a lot more important
| than yours.
| etchalon wrote:
| They're more important in that no one called me when they
| decided to do this, and there is nothing I can personally
| do to stop this.
|
| They are not more important in the sense of industry
| health, competition, and my worries as a consumer.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If you had an idea that attracted investor interest,
| convinced engineers to forego BigTech compensation and
| created a product that people wanted, I am sure your
| opinion would matter a lot more.
| sofixa wrote:
| The best for the acquirers and acquired isn't
| necessarily, and is in fact rarely, the best for the
| consumers at large. Unless you want to end up in an
| abusive relationship in all of your transactions,
| governments should intervene to keep things level,
| competitive and innovative.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Would you want the government telling you how to sell
| your company?
| sofixa wrote:
| Fuck yes. The government is there for everyone. I want to
| not be abused as a consumer by for instance having a
| single ISP, phone manufacturer, etc. etc. price gouging
| me and everyone else, and i practice what i preach.
|
| In a similar vein, i don't want trash on the ground, so i
| inconvenience myself by collecting my trash and throwing
| it at the appropriate places. You know, normal
| "sacrifices" one does as the cost of participating in a
| society.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Until the government is run by people with ideals that
| are not the same as yours...
| mr90210 wrote:
| Go read about history, maybe you'll be able to rethink
| about wanting the government involved.
| sofixa wrote:
| "history". Yes, that concise and short read that just
| _tells_ you government bad. Do you have anything in
| particular in mind?
|
| I really struggle to find an excuse for not wanting to
| involve government regulations in obvious cases like
| monopolies almost monopolies. Even some libertarians, who
| are far from being a logical bunch of people, agree with
| this (alongside safety regulations and sometimes even
| infrastructure). The free market cannot function properly
| when it concerns externalities, infrastructure with high
| upfront costs, monopolies/oligopolies.
| ipaddr wrote:
| There purpose for existing and our reasons for coming don't
| need to be the same. Very few readers/posters have a
| ycombinator startup. Stronger feelings towards YC ideals
| would be found on the private ycominator channel.
|
| The goal of facebook is some meta universe. Most users go
| on to write a friend..
| scarface74 wrote:
| How many readers and posters on HN do you think work for
| a startup where they are hoping their equity in a private
| VC backed company will be worth something? How many
| posters work for one of those "evil monopolist" where a
| great percentage of their livelihood is based on their
| RSUs doing well? Even if you do work for a private
| profitable "lifestyle business" that is profitable and
| was bootstrapped, I bet your company's owners would sell
| their company in a heartbeat if the right "monopolist"
| pulled up with a truck load of money.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Some people are more committed to a functioning society
| than market exploitation.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Are you employed by a for profit company?
| kristopolous wrote:
| Don't be insufferable.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I'm just calling out the hypocrisy of people tsk tsking
| those evil capitalist pigs while feeding from those same
| troughs.
| kristopolous wrote:
| There's a difference of degrees. Just because I draw a
| salary doesn't mean I should be worshiping every greedy
| bastard on the planet.
|
| We're all in a society that does things we want to
| change. We're not these atomic beings floating through
| space.
|
| Complex nuanced thought is the hallmark of intellect, I'm
| sure we can do this.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Sure you could, if you have the courage of your
| convictions you could have a pursued a career in public
| service and worked for a non profit. Did you do that?
| josefresco wrote:
| We still use Fireworks! I open it every day, and it remains a
| decent vector and simple image editor. Back in the day we used
| to create our web designs in Fireworks and then (before we knew
| better) "slice" them to HTML and export using Fireworks. Even
| after we transitioned to building by hand, we still used
| Fireworks for things like creating mouseover menus.
|
| Bad news for Figma.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Oh man, I totally forgot about the slice-into-HTML stuff.
| Back before everyone decided table-based layouts were
| "harmful".
| josefresco wrote:
| We used HTML tables for several years before fully
| transitioning to DIV based layouts. With CSS you could/can
| make tables flexible and that's all we needed for most
| responsive layouts.
| LeftCorner wrote:
| I still run a 22 year old copy Fireworks 4 because of Adobe's
| shenanigans. Just this morning I had to crop and resize a 1 MB
| image for display on a website and was able to do that in
| Fireworks in about 2 minutes resulting in 15k PNG and was on to
| my next task.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| You can open Fireworks PNG files in www.Photopea.com :)
| https://community.adobe.com/t5/fireworks-discussions/open-
| fi...
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, you can do that with almost any very lightweight app,
| including apps costing like $10 and having hardware
| acceleration and everything, like Acorn and Pixelmator
| (examples on the Mac side) and also "be on to your next
| task".
|
| You can even fully automate it (well, at least the resize,
| you'll still need to pick where to crop) with both.
| roddds wrote:
| Or you could use the myriad of free and/or open source
| software including but not limited to GIMP, ImageMagick,
| and photopea.com.
| peebeebee wrote:
| https://squoosh.app/ Web app that has much better encoders.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| A basic image viewer included in your OS can probably do that
| - and a lot quicker than two minutes! How does Fireworks make
| it so slow to open, resize, and close?
| LeftCorner wrote:
| Most of the two minutes was setting up Windows to select
| Fireworks as the editor.
|
| I have Windows 10. There is a program called Paint 3D. I
| opened it now and do not see guides or the option to turn
| on guides. I do not have an export option where I can
| preview different formats with different color palettes. If
| I had more time I could probably list other features
| Fireworks has that I have become accustomed to.
|
| Oh and Fireworks is consistent. I can trust when I have a
| task I can open it and it will have expected behavior and
| features. The way modern software removes and add features
| and add and hides options on every update makes using the
| software a task in of itself, before doing the business at
| hand. I'd rather make my images and be on about my day.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Almost everyone just uses full colour these days that's
| why modern editors don't ask you to preview reducing to a
| limited palette like that.
| bearmode wrote:
| There is absolutely zero need to keep a 22 year old copy of
| fireworks around just to resize and crop an image. None.
| Aeolun wrote:
| On the other hand, if you have it around anyway, there is
| no reason not to use it to resize an image.
| chillfox wrote:
| I don't think there's anything a 22 year old copy of
| Fireworks can do that can't be done in other newer apps,
| but I feel like that's kinda irrelevant. Some people would
| rather spend their time learning how to do something new
| rather than learning how to do the same old thing in new
| ways.
|
| I used Fireworks back in school and from what I remember it
| was a lot easier to use than Adobes products.
| chickenchicken wrote:
| I loved fireworks. I had the first version on my laptop and it
| was slow but amazing.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I used fireworks back in the day! Loved macromedia as a young
| fledgling tech person
| creativenolo wrote:
| How quickly did Adobe fold the Macromedia products into their
| own product eco-system?
|
| I ask because Adobe have been sitting on their Substance
| aqusition without making part of the Creative Cloud Suite.
|
| Hopefully they may leave it alone.
| johnfn wrote:
| How does this analogy make sense though? Fireworks was, to
| Adobe, some third-rate app that Adobe _had_ to acquire because
| they had acquired Flash, the thing they really cared about.
| Adobe certainly maintained Flash - anyone remember ActionScript
| 3?
|
| In this Figma acquisition, Figma is the main prize. They're not
| just going to leave Figma to languish, no more than they left
| Flash to languish. Eventually Flash did die, yes, but that was
| more Apple crushing it than a direct decision of Adobe.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| Adobe ran Flash into the ground. Flash was developing at such
| a rapid pace until it was acquired, and then quickly
| stagnated. Adobe too way too long to get Adobe Air performant
| and the tooling was abysmal.
|
| If Flash was in capable hands, it would have become a major
| player in the game development space, which is where most of
| its strengths were.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| And yet I still get jobs working in Flash, there's still no
| comparable program for frame-by-frame vector animation. A
| package that you can draw into but also rig puppets in. I'm
| rooting for Grease Pencil to catch up but really it's
| nowhere near in terms of fast usability.
|
| That's not so say they didn't run it into the ground - I
| still remember the nightmare of CS5.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| Indeed. I still build my game assets in Animate CC,
| export them with the Export Texture Atlas feature, and
| then have a custom built runtime play the animations in
| my game. It's quite simple to build such a runtime for
| immediate mode rendering engines such HTML canvas,
| Monogame, Kha.
| johnfn wrote:
| > If Flash was in capable hands, it would have become a
| major player in the game development space, which is where
| most of its strengths were.
|
| I don't understand what you mean here. Flash WAS a major
| player in the game development space. Flash games were
| dominant on the web for something like a decade, and a
| large part of that was post-Adobe acquisition.
|
| Yes, they missed the boat on mobile, but that was more a
| function of Jobs putting his foot down on anything vaguely
| Flash-related.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 'd argue this wasn't simply negligence, but a calculated
| decision to kill an innovative product because it threatened
| the profits of their cash cows._
|
| Well, that product was also theirs at that point, so it
| wouldn't be threatening anything (profits of its sales would go
| to them anyway).
|
| If you people people would stop buying Photoshop and
| Illustrator, then no, Fireworks was meant for other use case
| entirely (web mostly), and it had 1/10 the capabilities of
| Photoshop and Illustrator pertaining to their own domains (yes,
| many use just 10% of a program, but many must-have features
| included in that 10% differ from person to person, so Fireworks
| having that 10% wouldn't be enough).
| alberth wrote:
| This is an online collaboration / network effect acquisition.
| Not a tech acquisition.
|
| (This is like Microsoft acquiring Github due to GitHub network
| effect)
|
| While I too loved Fireworks and Dreamweaver, neither one had
| the network effect that Figma does (granted, SaaS software in
| the late 90s / early 00s was rare).
|
| Even if Fireworks were to have flourished while at Adobe, it's
| not entirely clear they would have successful made both the
| pivot to web AND also gained the network effect that Figma has
| created.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _This is an online collaboration / network effect
| acquisition. Not a tech acquisition._
|
| One could also make the argument that it's an acqui-hire.
|
| If one wanted to build a _real_ Photoshop, Illustrator,
| Lightroom, Premiere, etc. for the web, you 'd want the Figma
| team. Nobody else understands how to build desktop-like
| experiences using the latest web technologies (Wasm, etc.)
| better.
| denkquer wrote:
| photopea.com
| CharlesW wrote:
| I have nothing but praise for Photopea. Having used it in
| the past, it's great for things that I might otherwise
| use macOS Preview (or similar utilities) for.
|
| However, Photopea is at least a couple of orders of
| magnitude simpler than the Adobe apps I mentioned. It'd
| be interesting to compare to Photoshop 1.0 (1987),
| though!
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| But when these big corps buy and potentially kill products
| shrinking competition, where the hell is antitrust to be found?
| Like are the guys there sleeping well? Would they like a
| massage?
| collegeburner wrote:
| it hasn't yet passed that review. which is standard for deals
| like this, announce first then the regulators have their say.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| So there's hope :fingers crossed:
| pembrook wrote:
| They literally did the same thing with dreamweaver as well. And
| now dreamweaver is a fast growing business in the form of
| Webflow.
|
| It's the same story over and over again. Adobe acquires and
| then stifles innovation. 10 years later we realize what we were
| missing out on when a challenger eventually gets big enough---
| until Adobe kills that company too.
|
| I'd bet a nice chunk of money that Webflow is next.
| rchaud wrote:
| I don't think so. Webflow is all marketing and PR IMO.
|
| The issue with Webflow is that GUI-based web design that
| exports static HTML files doesn't fit with how most large
| websites are coded and deployed. It would be one thing if
| Webflow CMS and Ecommerce was gaining market share vs
| Squarespace and Wix, but I don't know if that's really
| happening.
|
| When I go on Twitter, I mostly see PR-type posts about
| Webflow. Lots of "Webflow experts" but few real companies
| that are willing to build large sites with it.
| pembrook wrote:
| They actually are gaining market share dramatically among
| high traffic (big company) marketing sites:
| https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/state-of-website-
| builders/
|
| Once static site generators + headless CMS's became all the
| rage among enterprise IT types, that opened the door to
| Webflow...since Webflow is basically a GUI-based static
| site generator + headless CMS.
|
| If you ask the engineering team, they'll build the
| marketing site into a complicated monstrosity on Gatsby +
| Contentful, and then never allow you to touch it again.
| You'll need to go through them to make any changes--and
| they'll be busy with real product work.
|
| If you build on Webflow, you're basically doing the same
| thing, but putting ownership of the marketing site squarely
| inside the marketing org (who likely has people who's time
| is less expensive able to do what you need in Webflow...and
| faster).
|
| There's limitations for sure (eg. multi-lingual sites,
| nested directory URL structure, etc), but within a few
| years I'm guessing those will be solved and the adoption
| will be even more dramatic.
|
| Although Webflow seems to be stupidly focusing on the whole
| "No code" Twitter circle-jerk with Logic/memberships, so
| they may get disrupted by Framer in the meantime however.
| rchaud wrote:
| > If you build on Webflow, you're basically doing the
| same thing, but putting ownership of the marketing site
| squarely inside the marketing org (who likely has people
| who's time is less expensive able to do what you need in
| Webflow...and faster).
|
| Fair enough. I still don't think Webflow CMS is going to
| make much of a dent in this market (even though I think
| their GUI is much better than Wix/Squarespace). The
| charts in the site builder report link, even being 2
| years old, suggest they're well behind even obscure
| platforms like Google Sites.
| magicink81 wrote:
| I would expect change in market share to be faster for
| design tools than CMS systems / web builders, as the
| barrier to adoption is lower for design tools, however,
| change does happen when innovation addresses under-served
| market needs and delivers greater value against those
| needs. Framer, Webflow, Jotform and others seem to be on
| a path to doing just that. Here's a chart that shows
| Figma's rise against competitors: https://miro.medium.com
| /max/1400/1*gdeNbC57BJKydbYQjNdqOg.pn...
| omnimus wrote:
| Every webflow site means paying customer (and
| professional setting). It's pretty expected that free
| builders like Google Sites will have more websites. The
| question is how many of them are high quality.
|
| If you look at the 2 year old data - Webflow already had
| more sites in top 1 milion websites than WIX.
| omnimus wrote:
| Maybe it depends on country but Webflow has massive
| adoption around here. Every agency is becoming webflow
| agency because they can teach their designers to create
| small to medium sized websites without coding. You can't
| create custom unique branded websites without coding with
| any other tool. It got to a point where clients themselves
| require webflow because it means easy, cheap, fast visual
| changes. Wix had to rush to create their Editor X which is
| direct Webflow competition.
|
| Yes it won't replace big sites that require complex CMSes
| and publishing flows. But it certainly has a niche.
|
| TBH i think it will be super interesting if somebody made
| some kind of more open webflow style html/css editor that
| could be integrated to current CMSes and workflows. Like
| sections of pages that are handcrafted like this. Or your
| header/footer and blog are CMS but landing page is this
| super visual html/cms editor.
| oooofigma wrote:
| Making 9 sliced graphics for the web is obsolete though.
|
| That said Flash also supported a bunch of innovation for its
| time, and it too was obsoleted.
|
| Maybe 9 slice graphic were already dead at Fireworks' peak.
|
| Figma is officially way more overrated than this stuff ever
| was.
|
| Does anyone know a person who's like, bonafide smart, using
| Figma? I feel like everyone I know who does "Figma" day to day
| is doing negative ROI shit. It's like anti-R&D. It's the
| ultimate bullshit job for non engineers.
| pembrook wrote:
| One of the top users of Figma by time-spent-in-app in its
| early days was the founder of a little tool called Notion.
|
| So apparently spending your days in Figma can result in
| negative ROI shit like designing a billion dollar product.
|
| But hey, I used to have the same gut feeling...that anyone
| who does something different to what I do all day is
| worthless. Then I got older and learned my model of the
| world, with me at the center of it, was naive and incorrect.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Well if your definition of bonafide smart is that they're an
| engineer, then there are pretty few. If you think design and
| visual communication has any value whatsoever, then yeah,
| lots of people are using it, some of whom are very smart.
| That's why they're worth $20B after all.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I like the community here overall but there are far too
| many discussions tainted by the implicit assumption that if
| (royal) you see yourself as valuable then others value is
| synonymous with their similarity to you.
| sophacles wrote:
| Hey, at least they kept flash alive...
| rcarmo wrote:
| There's a recent comment of mine someplace about how much I
| miss the _genius_ of Fireworks as a combined pixel/vector art
| tool that saved everything to standard PNG files - which anyone
| could read since the additional data was inserted using PNG
| tags.
|
| That and it being very fast and effective for Web design (miles
| ahead of Photoshop at the time).
| [deleted]
| papito wrote:
| Ah, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Geocities. I miss the days when the
| Internet was full of magic and wonders, and not dumpster fires.
| mudrockbestgirl wrote:
| I miss those days too. Built so many sites in Dreamweaver +
| Fireworks. But it's probably not the internet that has
| changed, but you. It's not magical anymore because we're no
| longer kids and because it has become normal to be online.
| After having to deal with 56k modems for years, every moment
| of being continuously online felt special.
| cutler wrote:
| Pre-WordPress.
| drchopchop wrote:
| These tools aren't interchangeable. Photoshop is for editing
| images. Illustrator is for editing vector graphics.
|
| Figma is a multiplayer layout tool, which can be used for web,
| print, or anything else. The main use cases for enterprise are
| a) it's web-accessible, and b) the realtime
| collaboration/revision/commenting tools.
|
| The smart thing would be to just sunset Adobe XD and replace it
| with Adobe Figma.
| oangemangut wrote:
| Pretty sure that's the long term plan.
| aldous wrote:
| I remember Fireworks very well and completely agree it was
| exceptionally well optimised for UI. As well as the ability to
| easily edit both bitmaps and vectors, the combination of frames
| and layer sets nested within the frames allowed for super rapid
| iterations on layouts. The export features were super optimal
| too at the time. Rather irrational of me, but I took the slow
| death of it rather personally and never forgave Adobe.
| GordonS wrote:
| I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple
| to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use.
|
| As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I _knew_ they would
| shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I _knew_
| other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a
| similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to
| _kill it_ feels so wrong :(
|
| I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a similar fate, but I
| do think it's going to get progressively more expensive, harder
| to use, buggier, and generally be more user-hostile.
| markdown wrote:
| > I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff
|
| I _still_ use it as my primary web /ui design tool and in
| fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye
| to it forever if I upgraded.
| ssharp wrote:
| I thought I was one of the last Fireworks users and I gave
| it up a few years ago in favor of Sketch!
|
| Once I learn a tool well enough to suit my needs, I really
| hate giving it up so it was a difficult transition.
| Probably why I never bothered abandoning Sketch in favor of
| Figma.
| erickhill wrote:
| I've used all of these tools as well. Recently I was
| clinging to the side of Sketch with white knuckles while
| bringing over stuff from photoshop and illustrator and
| exporting to zeplin. The process was cumbersome but
| created excellent results. But I finally forced myself to
| check out figma.
|
| Within about two weeks I never looked back.
|
| For me, figma was just SO much better. Some of the
| behaviors are so head-smackingly, "Oh my god, why doesn't
| Illustrator do that?!" it's nuts.
|
| I still need PS and Illustrator on occasion, but for
| embracing Figma I was able to dump 2 programs
| (Sketch/Zeplin) and actually improve my company's overall
| design consistency and brand like never before. And I use
| the Adobe products - which I've used for over 30 years -
| so much less, it's stunning.
|
| I must sound like an advertisement, but figma has been a
| total life/career-changer. The news of the acquisition
| this morning slapped me hard. I fear the unknown. I
| remember what happened to Macromedia, too.
| erik_landerholm wrote:
| Can you use a virtual machine?
| bezier-curve wrote:
| I still use Fireworks CS6 for one-off mockups. I don't
| specialize in design myself, but I think that's exactly why
| I like using it - its UI is intuitive and simple. I've
| tried newer/maintained vector editors like Inkscape and
| Krita, and still feel like there's a void left by Fireworks
| for casual users like myself.
| shedside wrote:
| I'm in exactly the same boat. It's such a shame that AFAIK
| nothing can import .fw.png files and keep them editable;
| I'll need to manually export everything to .psd before I
| eventually have to upgrade my OS.
| bardan wrote:
| Getting a Windows version and running it under wine can be
| good for situations like that.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Sketch is ideal Fireworks replacement. I clinged to
| Fireworks for years after it was abandoned, and when I
| found Sketch, I never looked back. Every little thing that
| ever bothered me in Fireworks, they made _just right_.
| wwweston wrote:
| Same boat. Wondering what it takes to either VM Mojave or
| get a windows license and VM that. And this whole episode
| has made me _definitely_ appreciate the merits of Windows
| backward compatibility as a feature...
| pantulis wrote:
| Die-hard Fireworks user, I salute you!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I 'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a similar fate_
|
| I strongly suspect not. It's in a lot more use than Fireworks
| (which was cool -I used it- but was always a bit "niche").
|
| If they play their cards right, they can use it to leverage
| their way back into many designers' good graces (who had been
| leaving the Adobesphere for the Figmasphere). They would
| probably add ways to leverage their cloud storage and other
| apps.
|
| That said, it's pretty much a textbook "buy the competition"
| move, and the kind of thing that's getting a lot of scrutiny
| from regulators, these days.
|
| But $20B is a lot of yachts. I don't blame the Figma people
| for selling out.
| GraphenePants wrote:
| Please stop breaking the site rules by incorrecting assuming
| malice when incompetence is sufficient.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Nothing in the rules say anything about malice or
| incompetence. The most charitable interpretation I could find
| for your assertion is this line:
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| Of course, the subject of this is a user's comments, _not_ a
| corporation. I suggest you read the rules a little more
| thoroughly before accusing others of breaking them.
| darkwater wrote:
| I guess you are being ironic, but if not, that applies to
| individuals commenting here, not companies acquiring other
| businesses.
| larrik wrote:
| That rule certainly doesn't apply to Adobe.
| [deleted]
| mrandish wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure anything will be similar to
| Adobe->Macromedia. That was 17 years ago and Adobe is a _very_
| different company today operating in a different competitive
| environment with a different business model. Also, Adobe 's
| competitor to Figma isn't PS or AI, it's a newer tool called
| Adobe xD. Adobe has sunk a lot of effort into getting xD
| "right" but so far failed to make it competitive. This massive
| acquisition is Adobe admitting that the xD effort failed and
| giving up.
|
| In recent years, Adobe's approach to mega-sized acquisitions
| has been to put the newly acquired company's management in
| charge of the relevant business unit, not the other way around.
| The users who should be worried by the news are those who love
| Adobe xD vs Figma (I assume there must be some). If the post-
| acquisition integration goes well, I'd estimate the chances at
| better than 50% that in a couple years former Figma management
| end up running Adobe's creative professional segment entirely
| (ie PS, AI, etc).
|
| (note: none of this means you personally will prefer whatever
| the impact of that may be in any particular product.)
| thiscatis wrote:
| I can't believe Fireworks is already considered "once upon a
| time software". It's what got me into webdesign, together with
| Dreamweaver.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I still keep a copy of CS6 installed just for Fireworks. It was
| the first design tool that made sense to me as a programmer
| that wanted to think of everything in terms of pixels and
| object groups. I should probably move on at this point but it
| still does what I need it to do.
| jeremycarter wrote:
| I reluctantly moved on to Affinity Designer. I still miss
| Fireworks but I knew I had to get off it cold turkey.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Don't forget Freehand, which was, in many ways, superior to
| Illustrator.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Was looking for this comment. I loved Freehand. It was so
| much better than Illustrator. Don't get me wrong, Illustrator
| today has come a long way. But I can only imagine what
| Freehand in 2022 would be like.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I used to always check out new releases of Illustrator to see
| if they had caught up to CorelDraw circa 1999... behind those
| cheesy vector and free-font CDs was a vastly superior vector
| editor. (to be fair, they seem to have mostly caught up
| around 2010-ish?)
| nneonneo wrote:
| Ah, Fireworks brings back good memories. I used Fireworks way
| back in high school to design websites - you could throw
| together a basic multi-page website with a clickable/hoverable
| image navbar in literally minutes, no code required. And it
| looked good too, at least by the standards of the early 2000s.
|
| Later, I did the vast majority of the visuals I used throughout
| my PhD in Fireworks CS6, long after it had been abandoned by
| Adobe. It was fast, faster than Photoshop or Illustrator is
| today. The shape libraries meant that doing diagrams and
| illustrations was a breeze - these days I do most of that in
| Keynote/Powerpoint, with much poorer bitmap editing support.
| Photoshop and Illustrator are simply too big and slow for
| quick-and-dirty editing tasks.
|
| The thing that ultimately killed Fireworks for me was that it
| crashed more frequently every time I updated macOS, to the
| point where it simply would no longer launch. For a couple of
| years I maintained a set of binary patches to Fireworks CS6 to
| work around startup crashes and such, but that ultimately got
| to be too time-consuming to keep up with.
|
| I don't think I've ever been as productive in any other image
| editing software. Photopea gets surprisingly close for me -
| despite being a Photoshop clone, it's both faster (just a web
| app!) and has a few of the nice features I miss from Fireworks.
| zx2c4 wrote:
| I too really loved Fireworks (and Dreamweaver) back in the
| Macromedia days. As a kid then, it was really very intuitive to
| do all sorts of odd creative projects easily.
|
| Riding on nostalgia fumes, I went searching for screenshots and
| in the process amusingly found: https://askubuntu.com/a/244128
| - a Linux user still running Fireworks 8 in WINE. I'm almost
| tempted to try the same...
| speeder wrote:
| I actually do that myself. I also use Fireworks 8 on windows
| when possible. I am yet to find a software that actually
| replaces it.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I just did, since I have WINE installed to run music
| software. It runs _perfectly_, although with early 2000s era
| UX conventions (i.e., very small fonts, some pixelated).
| Edits seem very fast, although it is hard to say on my
| hardware (Ryzen 7). As a curio, it's a fun experiment, but
| being a bit less nostalgic and more realistic now, I'd
| quicker reach for GIMP or Krita on Linux (on the Mac, I use
| Pixelmator Pro and Affinity Designer for the semi-advanced
| editing I need)... Although I do love this thing.
|
| FYI, the download of version 8 was available to use as a
| 30-day trial, which seems legal enough today, if only for
| experimentation, and I actually have a license of MX
| someplace from my G4 Mac days.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Those two pieces of software were undoubtedly the thing that
| got me into websites, which led to building computers, which
| led to my current career.
|
| Incredible stuff.
| jmacd wrote:
| 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 came in to prominence.
|
| The closest thing I have had to that feeling again was when a
| friend of mine did some design for me and shared it in Figma.
| What I thought were bitmaps were vectors!! I had so much fun
| bringing that in to my site (which I ended up doing in Webflow,
| because apparently I haven't kept up with the times enough to
| hand code reasonably quickly).
|
| I've used the latest and greatest Adobe products, they
| definitively do not have this feeling. There is really no
| delight to be found. I know they are incredibly powerful and
| near and dear to many people, but for the young and restless
| they are boring.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| I was part of the first wave of animators who found Flash and
| mucked around in it - I made a cartoon early on that went
| viral before that was a thing. An exe file as an attachment
| to an email, that went round the world. Crazy days.
| conductr wrote:
| The only hope is that since Figma is subscription revenue, they
| will immediately feel the pain of neglecting the product. I'd
| imagine it's a mature enough, well known enough product that
| you could say it's already stolen as much share as it would
| from adobe's cash cows. Potentially it's the place users get
| started nowadays and adobe could leverage it by making it
| easier for those users to explore adobe's other products.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >The only hope is that since Figma is subscription revenue,
| they will immediately feel the pain of neglecting the
| product.
|
| I honestly haven't observed this to be the case with
| subscription software. They will continue making cash because
| people want to continue to use it. Meanwhile, if it were
| individual sales, they would actually have to maintain and
| improve it to get people to buy new versions.
| vldx wrote:
| I was heavy user of Fireworks back in the day. Looking back --
| it had enormous influence over where I'm now today. I still
| can't get over what Adobe did to it. It's like Microsoft or
| some other behemoth buying JetBrains and then slowly killing it
| in favor of its own IDEs.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yeah, there's _still_ nothing as good as fireworks at what it
| did. Figma is better in some ways with autolayout, etc. But
| fireworks also had excellent bitmap editing support.
| briandon wrote:
| Microsoft bought GitHub years ago and announced the
| "sunsetting" of the Atom editor (a GitHub-company project)
| and its official ecosystem a few months ago. The archiving of
| Atom and all related projects will occur on Dec. 15th, 2022:
| https://github.blog/2022-06-08-sunsetting-atom/.
| dimmke wrote:
| Yeah but we will still have Sketch, which rules. Nobody uses
| Illustrator and Photoshop to do web design anymore.
| neovive wrote:
| I have such great memories of Fireworks prior to the
| acquisition by Adobe. It was my go to tool for 90% of all web
| graphics: simple to use, no need to fuss with layers for
| selections, vector + bitmap in one app, easy exports, and
| everything editable within a PNG file. Such a wonderful tool! I
| truly hope Figma doesn't suffer the same fate. Hopefully the
| $20B price tag, justifies resources.
| petercooper wrote:
| I notice the overall sentiment is negative here, but Adobe is one
| of few companies I can think of that seems to acquire solid
| companies with solid products and a view to keep and develop them
| over time. Macromedia's stuff fitted into the Adobe ecosystem
| very well, as did the stuff from Behance, Fotolia, Aviary and
| Mixamo. As a long time Adobe customer, I'm feeling very positive
| about this move.
| boraoztunc wrote:
| why why why
| nkotov wrote:
| Good acquisition for Adobe, terrible for the end users.
| lioeters wrote:
| I don't understand how this acquisition is not anti-competitive
| behavior. It was such a joy to see Figma's growth and technical
| innovation, and now it will just get eaten by the established
| power.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Inc.#Anti-competitive_pr...
| nicoburns wrote:
| It is. Unfortunately our laws against anti-competitive
| behaviours are very weak.
| oyeanuj wrote:
| thankfully, there is also Europe!
| nicoburns wrote:
| Unfortunately I am European! IMO our anti-competition laws
| are weak even here.
| javajosh wrote:
| I don't think "the government" does anything unless someone
| complains. In this case, the process is to send a letter
| requesting a "Business Review" [1]. It's probably a "fill out
| this simple 30 page form, wait 2.5 years (max!) and then have
| your review request politely declined" situation, but I suppose
| it's foolish to complain before trying. It _feels_ like one of
| those processes that costs lawyer money that another business
| would usually pay for; however it 's not clear what business
| would pay for this - maybe a heavy user of Figma? But then even
| if you 'win' and stop the sale, doesn't that alienate you from
| the founders?
|
| 1 - https://www.justice.gov/atr/business-reviews
| lvzw wrote:
| This is not correct. There will almost certainly be a second
| request issued by the FTC or DOJ in this matter, and my guess
| is that it will almost certainly get challenged by one of
| those agencies. [1] In building their case, the agencies will
| reach out to users and competitors of the companies. Adobe
| and Figma know that this merger will certainly be contentious
| on antitrust issues, and I bet there is a large breakup fee
| that Adobe would have to pay for Figma if the merger was
| blocked for this reason.
|
| [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
| fblp wrote:
| Anyone here can lodge this simple form. If you think this
| merger will substantially lesson competition and stifle
| innovation lodge a complaint:
| https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation
|
| At a minimum, they will investigate this and make inquiries
| (typically within months) if they see a high volume of
| complaints.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
|
| "Some mergers change market dynamics in ways that can lead to
| higher prices, fewer or lower-quality goods or services, or
| less innovation.
|
| Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers and
| acquisitions when the effect "may be substantially to lessen
| competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." "
| mkaic wrote:
| Just filed a complaint! I didn't know this form existed, as
| I've never genuinely wanted to file an antitrust complaint
| before, but there's a first time for everything and I
| _despise_ Adobe so it gets the honor of being in my first
| FTC complaint.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| Acquiring a competitor isn't going to automatically trigger
| antitrust laws. For one, web design is so far from critical
| infrastructure that it's just unlikely to be on their radar.
| And secondly, there's still a ton of competition. Even if Adobe
| and Figma are the two leaders, there's still loads of
| alternatives available. You can still use Sketch or Canva or
| any of the all-in-one beginner tools like Squarespace.
| cj wrote:
| Congrats Dylan. I remember riding caltrain with you from south
| bay to SF, watching you sit on the floor of the train coding a
| "photoshop alternative" thinking your idea was crazy!
| asciii wrote:
| That's a neat throwback. Great to see his dedication pay off in
| the world.
| sklargh wrote:
| A lot of antitrust sentiment here. If you care to cajole the feds
| into action - here is the public service email for reporting
| antitrust concerns to the FTC - antitrust@ftc.gov
| lprd wrote:
| I was burned by Adobe for the last time a few years ago. Since
| then, I avoid them like the plague. I loved Figma, but now I will
| be searching for an alternative. Adobe ruins everything they
| acquire, and its only a matter of time before Figma follows suit.
| city17 wrote:
| Figma's blog post title [0] being 'A collaboration with Adobe',
| when it's really an acquisition seems like a warning sign.
|
| [0] https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
| CharlesW wrote:
| Agreed, that is very strange positioning. Clearly they
| understood how Figma users would take this news, but trying to
| obfuscate or spin it is a mistake.
| [deleted]
| seangp wrote:
| Looks like I'll be returning to Sketch.
| pavlov wrote:
| Adobe's PR includes the price:
|
| "...approximately $20 billion in cash and stock"
|
| Apparently it's roughly half in cash according to other news
| reports.
|
| Adobe stock is down 8% premarket, so seems like the market thinks
| they overpaid. (Personally I disagree -- this is a good
| acquisition for Adobe)
| pessimizer wrote:
| The market is caught up in the long-term value of Figma, but
| it's worth it to Adobe even if they bought it to run it into
| the ground.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| How is this not anti-trust? I'd be surprised if it doesn't get
| caught in anti-trust issues in the EU.
| log101 wrote:
| Noooooooo!
| t3estabc wrote:
| This does not surprise me.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Adobe and Figma says that Figma will remain autonomous. I think
| if this acquisition is treated the same way as the MS / Github
| model then things will be fine. Im a little surprised at the
| timing. This deal must have been in the works for quite awhile.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| C'est de l'Adobe.
| kbos87 wrote:
| If I had to pick a single product that I thought could upend an
| entrenched competitor, this was it. Congrats to everyone who
| benefitted, but it's a bit of a letdown to see them go this route
| and give up the opportunity to build a lasting company.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Surprised to see all the "hate" for Adobe. They provide an
| awesome suite of products only $55 per month. I've had nothing
| but good experiences with them. Is it wrong to pay for software
| when you get a truckload of value out of it? No other creative
| software even comes close.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Figma doesn't come close - it blows Adobe out of the water. I
| don't need a "suite", I need to design software. Figma lets me
| do that for $15 per month, and, from experience, is miles ahead
| of Adobe XD.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Okay, I doubt that is going to change. If anything you will
| probably start paying less per month
| builtmighty wrote:
| Paid endorsement?
| silent_cal wrote:
| No, I just use the software and like it. What's wrong with
| that?
| doomlaser wrote:
| Adobe consolidates. Where is the Blender equivalent for
| Photoshop? I don't think GIMP is the answer, but it seems like
| Photoshop is ripe for an open source competitor in the category.
| I just don't know of any realistic candidates.
| jasonjamerson wrote:
| It was photopea.com, but he went to a subscription model too.
| Free with ads, but they're pretty distracting to me.
|
| Affinity products are decent, but they're not free, it's a one
| time purchase.
|
| There's Krita, which is good, but I really want something that
| mirrors the traditional tool layout of Photoshop. Both affinity
| and Krita do their own thing which is tough when you've been
| using Photoshop for 25 years.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| For image manipulation is, nonen omen, GIMP.
|
| For drawing I would say Krita.
| i386 wrote:
| This is an irrelevant comment.
| greymalik wrote:
| So is this.
| i386 wrote:
| The original comment is the kind of comment that just
| derails actual conversation about the topic. Try to stay on
| topic.
| elisvent wrote:
| Use Keynote with a custom canvas size. You can do literally
| anything in Keynote.
|
| https://vimeo.com/100377108
|
| To repost their comment:
|
| " In my work, there's constant discussion about which is the
| best and hottest new design tool to use. I've tried many of
| them, but in the end I still keep coming back to Keynote. It's
| easy to learn and use, swapping assets is a breeze (using media
| placeholder), and most complex animations can be tested with
| Magic Move (the secret sauce to it all). Producing animations
| can span a range of fidelities; I can produce all the assets in
| Keynote, or I can copy out of Illustrator or drag and drop from
| Sketch (how seamless this works puts a smile on my face every
| time). As an interaction or visual designer, if you're not
| using Keynote to test and bring your work to life, then I think
| you should start now! At least I hope this little experiment
| inspires you to try."
| [deleted]
| brailsafe wrote:
| $20B is hard to say no too. Is that the new Unicorn? One piece of
| software basically being worth more than some first world cities?
|
| Thankfully I never tried it, so I don't know what I'll miss when
| it's destroyed.
| solardev wrote:
| Figma is really pretty revolutionary as far as web apps go,
| both from the design side (collaborative, beautiful, and easy
| to use) and from the dev side (realtime multiplayer, fast
| stateful graphics with undo/redo, incredibly complex UI, built
| in a combination of WebGL, WASM, and Workers).
|
| For a while before it, Sketch was the dominant UX/UI tool, but
| then Figma came outta nowhere and surprised the world by
| showing what could be accomplished with a web app, using a
| freemium model, developed by a previously unknown company.
|
| As far as unicorns go, I can't think of many startups that have
| delivered similarly amazing value (maybe Cloudflare and
| Vercel?), and certainly none in the design space. Like Canva
| and Draw.io etc. are alright, but Figma is really
| technologically impressive (and beautiful, and usable!).
|
| If you ever see a complex UI that you enjoy using... chances
| are very high Figma was used for some part of it.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Sketch was the dominant UX/UI tool, but then Figma came
| outta nowhere and surprised the world by showing what could
| be accomplished ...
|
| I use both frequently and Sketch is far better than Figma.
| But Figma had one thing _really_ going for it: it works on
| every platform with a browser, while Sketch is (sadly) Mac
| only. Every designer and his dog might have a Mac in the US,
| but the rest of the world is a different story.
|
| Lately, Sketch does show that it is moving in the direction
| of a cloud, but I doubt that we'd see a web editor from them
| anytime soon.
| Tomte wrote:
| A win-win situation:
|
| Figma founders get money.
|
| Figma competitors get a huge developed market to sell to when
| Adobe inevitably only sells Figma as part of their hellish
| subscription model.
|
| Okay, Figma users lose. But that was a given.
| CharlesW wrote:
| https://twitter.com/ShitUserStory/status/1570389286121250819
| srameshc wrote:
| I want to be happy for everyone who made Figma happen and their
| success but at the same time it makes me sad to see Adobe buying
| it. I am hoping Adobe won't mess up with Figma in future.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| It's a shame that the competition authorities don't seem to have
| any interest in these type of acquisitions which destroys
| competition and harms consumers. Same thing happened with
| Architecture software eg when Autocad bought Revit - end result
| is extortionately priced software that many architects cannot
| afford because they are paid so poorly. Same will happen for
| graphic designers.
| buovjaga wrote:
| > Same thing happened with Architecture software eg when
| Autocad bought Revit - end result is extortionately priced
| software that many architects cannot afford because they are
| paid so poorly.
|
| Architects rolled up their sleeves and are solving the problem
| by writing open source software: https://osarch.org/
| nashashmi wrote:
| I rolled up my sleeve too. And found it completely
| impractical. Especially for non technical experts to
| undertake such a massive project.
| detritus wrote:
| > Same will happen for graphic designers.
|
| I'm not so sure about that, I know quite a few graphic
| designers who've either reverted to the pirating ways of their
| youthful years, many years ago - or have moved over to
| Affinity's offerings.
|
| The latter's still a bit rough around the edge - I can't work
| with Designer (I've been using Illustrator for too many decades
| to), but I've stopped paying for old rope and nixed my once-
| beloved Photoshop as it's frankly a waste of cash. Affinity
| Photo's got some quirks and has a wholly different workflow
| that I struggle with, but it does the trick in the end.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| As an amateur who didn't have extensive use of
| Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign, Designer/Photos/Publisher
| have been godsends. Relatively cheap, quality usable
| software.
|
| Could not praise Serif enough for what they've done. I gladly
| paid the license on Mac and windows.
| zippergz wrote:
| The point is, if Affinity gets too good or competitive, Adobe
| will acquire them too.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| This kinda highlights the real solution. Instead of
| investing in a product which will eventually get bought up
| by some monopoly and used to hold the users hostage, people
| should be donating to FOSS tools and/or paying for support
| contracts with FOSS companies.
|
| Eventually the FOSS alternative becomes competitive and
| then outright better. It happened quickly in the SW space
| given that SWEs could dogfood the tools but it's slowly
| happening in almost every other industry as well. Blender
| is probably the best example while Krita (raster drawing),
| QGIS(GIS), Qflow(HDL synthesis tooling collection),
| FreeCAD(2D/3D CAD), KiCAD(EDA), Darktable(RAW editor,
| photography tooling) and Ardour (Audio mixer and nonlinear
| editor) are all catching up in their various spaces.
|
| And there's a reasonable chance that some industries won't
| be able to develop their own FOSS tooling for whatever
| reason. In those cases it may be worthwhile for governments
| to step in and fund open source tooling (like the EU does)
| to protect their industries from the whims of a foreign
| company.
| detritus wrote:
| But they're a British company! British companies NEVER sell
| out to forei... oh.
| quest88 wrote:
| Let's reword it: The founders may want a payout and sell to
| Adobe too.
| RunSet wrote:
| > Same thing happened with Architecture software eg when
| Autocad bought Revit - end result is extortionately priced
| software that many architects cannot afford
|
| I only hope Macromedia's story doesn't repeat itself: Adobe
| buying the superior offering just to take it off the market.
| pier25 wrote:
| You mean Freehand, right?
| toxican wrote:
| I don't know what specific piece of software you're referring
| to, but I think of Fireworks. It was never a 1:1 replacement
| for Photoshop, but for my uses (as a web developer, during
| the era of slicing up designs) it was leaps and bound better.
| skizm wrote:
| Meanwhile FTC blocking Meta from buying a VR fitness app and
| gif keyboard lol.
| bredren wrote:
| I think that the fitness app is more strategic than figma by
| far.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| The company is Autodesk, the product is Autocad.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Is this level of pedantry needed? Even without the
| clarification, everyone knew what the parent comment meant.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| VCs have just been given 20B new reasons to fund a new startup
| in this domain. Could result in a cornucopia of new startups.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I actually think we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more
| proactive when it comes to super-massive companies like Adobe.
| Such companies have learned to be much more cunning when it
| comes to get around existing laws, and plus they have much more
| money than ever.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more proactive_
|
| Bingo! Adobe has a _de facto_ monopoly on vector and bitmap
| editing software tools, and it would make total sense for
| this acquisition to be stopped by the government on that
| basis. "The government" in this case would be the DoJ's
| antitrust division headed by Jonathan Kanter [1]. Looks like
| the process is to send a letter requesting a "Business
| Review" [2]. It's probably a "fill out this simple 30 page
| form, wait 2.5 years (max!) and then have your review request
| politely declined" situation, but I suppose it's foolish to
| complain before trying.
|
| 1 - https://www.justice.gov/atr
|
| 2 - https://www.justice.gov/atr/business-reviews
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| But why? What is stopping competitors from coming out and
| beating them?
| ratg13 wrote:
| A 10 year development cycle and the exact same
| monopolistic practices we are discussing here.
|
| This isn't the first time Adobe has done this and won't
| be the last.
| legitster wrote:
| >a de facto monopoly
|
| This isn't a terribly meaningful distinction. There are a
| dozen+ editing tools out there, most of them are pretty
| good and free. If Photoshop/Illustrator have 90% of the
| market because they are superior products, I'm not sure how
| much the government could/should do.
|
| Apple controls something like 90% of all mobile phone
| profits across the entire industry. I'm not sure how
| breaking them would actually provide any consumer benefit.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Apple controls something like 90% of all mobile phone
| profits across the entire industry._
|
| Profits don't have anything to do with it though. Apple
| has sub-50% market share. Competition in the mobile space
| is _so competitive_ there are few profits to be had.
| legitster wrote:
| If profits have nothing to do with it, then there's even
| less case to call it a monopoly. They nowhere near match
| the install base of all the free editing softwares (GIMP,
| Inkscape, Paint.net, etc).
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| I used to like Freehand.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >wait 2.5 years (max!) and then have your review request
| politely declined" situation >2 -
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/business-reviews
|
| "3. The Division may, in its discretion, refuse to consider
| a request. "
| snarf21 wrote:
| No, we just need to fund the SEC and FTC and let them do
| their job. We also need to enforce consumer protection not
| simply maximize shareholder value.
| capableweb wrote:
| Doesn't current laws require harm to competition to have
| already been made in order for them to enforce anything?
|
| So Adobe acquiring Figma isn't unlawful, until it is proven
| to have a bad effect on consumers.
|
| I think what parent is saying, is that we should adjust
| laws to be more pro-active, that if there is a
| possibility/high-risk of the acquisition to have a bad
| effect on consumers, it should maybe be considered a bit
| more than usual.
| lvzw wrote:
| Current antitrust laws do not require harm to have
| already occurred to challenge a merger. Once an intent to
| merge has been filed, the FTC/DOJ has a certain amount of
| time to issue a 'second request'. [1] If the FTC/DOJ
| finds during their review of the materials turned over
| from the second request that the merger is likely to be
| anticompetitive, they will sue to block the merger. This
| merger in particular would likely be mostly scrutinized
| according to the horizontal merger guidelines, given the
| parties' overlap in a specific product/market. [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui... [2]:
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/horizontal-merger-
| guidelines-081...
| scarface74 wrote:
| What do you think happens to VC investments when it's harder
| for companies to be acquired?
|
| If you were a founder and wanted to sell your company, would
| you want the government telling you that you can't sell it
| for the best price?
| bmitc wrote:
| It's a problem that the MO of venture capitalism is just
| pump and dump. The only thing VC investments optimize for
| are exit strategies and not creating actual value. So I
| wouldn't see it as a bad thing that such investments are
| diminished.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So who are you going to get to take their place?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What's the point of VC investment if the innovative
| products that are funded are snuffed out by large
| companies? Might as well not bother and save everyone some
| time.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The point of VC investments by the VCs is to invest in
| companies and make a healthy return when the company
| exits.
|
| You didn't think they were doing it for the good of
| society?
|
| Once any founder accepts VC funding, all of the talk
| about "vision" and "impact on society is also null and
| void"
| merubin75 wrote:
| I thought it was "to make the world a better place." ;)
|
| https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso
| gretch wrote:
| They did make the world a slightly place. Ppl use their
| tools and are happy.
|
| What's the better alternative? That it never existed?
| krferriter wrote:
| They can make a healthy return even if the company isn't
| sold off and gutted in an acquisition.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Who are you to tell the company how much they "should"
| make? The company was valuable to Adobe because of
| "synergies".
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Of course not, I would be selfish and want the billion
| dollars. But maybe a culture of creating small companies
| out of VC capital only to be acquired by megacorps is not
| the best way forward for society. I also don't like paying
| taxes, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any.
| randomdata wrote:
| What would the alternative be? There will always come a
| day when founders and investors want to move on.
| Retirement age comes faster than you might think. Even if
| you deny an exit strategy, the principals are still going
| to stop eventually, and the product will still come to an
| end at that time. Allowing a sale at least provides an
| opportunity for the product to live on, even if there can
| be no guarantees about how the next guy decides to treat
| it.
|
| Traditionally, when a product doesn't want to be lost,
| the customers will pool their resources together and
| offer a buyout. That seemingly didn't happen, so Adobe
| probably is the next best thing. Adobe is a public
| company, so the public still has the ability to shape its
| future.
| anders_p wrote:
| > What would the alternative be?
|
| Your imagination can't be this limited?
|
| Are you really not able to come up with any other
| scenario than "bought up by your biggest competitor"?
|
| Like...they could go public, or sell to a new owner that
| isn't already the biggest in the field, etc.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The "public" doesn't give a rats ass about how good the
| product is and are very short term focused. The minute
| the company goes public, you are then at the mercy of
| "activist investors" not interested in the core product.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Like...they could go public_
|
| That's the option that has been chosen. That is not an
| alternative. The product will soon be in the hands of the
| public. That's also the worry as the public doesn't care
| about the product and thus won't put the product's
| interest in mind.
|
| _> or sell to a new owner that isn 't already the
| biggest in the field_
|
| That's not really an alternative either with respect to
| the discussion about the new owners potentially letting
| the product languish or die. It is different, but still
| reaches the same outcome, potentially. You are still
| risking that the owner doesn't care about the product.
|
| As discussed, selling to the customers would mitigate
| this, as they have reason to care about the product, but
| we already established that they didn't express interest.
| We would never want to force someone into owning it.
|
| _> Your imagination can 't be this limited?_
|
| It is. Hopefully someone with an imagination will come
| along at some point. I'm quite interested to hear about
| alternatives.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| There are always options besides selling the whole
| company to a giant competitor, the difference is just
| that you won't get as high of a return if there are fewer
| bidders in the marketplace.
|
| A company like figma could have always just gone public
| if the founders/investors just wanted to get out.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> A company like figma could have always just gone
| public if the founders /investors just wanted to get
| out._
|
| The company _has_ gone public (or will shortly) and is
| now at the mercy of the public shareholder. Which is
| specifically the concern here. The worry is that the
| public shareholders, who aren 't necessarily users and
| are only shareholders out of interest in profit, will see
| more value in squashing the product than carrying on.
|
| The users pooling resources would have been the logical
| buyer, to keep out of the general public with competing
| interest's hands, but seemingly they didn't want the
| company, so...
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I suppose I just don't understand you original point
| then?
|
| > What would the alternative be? There will always come a
| day when founders and investors want to move on.
|
| Going public means you can move on and sell your shares
| at any time on the open market, they never needed Adobe
| to buy them out except to get a higher valuation.
|
| Your original comment implied that if companies like
| Adobe weren't able to buy out smaller competitors, the
| products would just die, which, obviously isn't even the
| case here.
| randomdata wrote:
| I guess I don't understand yours. There is no functional
| difference between offering shares to the public directly
| or offering shares to the public by proxy through Adobe.
| Either way the public controls the company and gets to
| decide the fate of the product. If they see value in
| continuing it, they'll do so. If there is more value in
| letting it die, they'll do that instead.
|
| The problem with shareholders made up of the general
| public is that they aren't interested in the product
| itself. It it goes by the wayside, oh well. They never
| used it in the first place. This doesn't serve to protect
| the offering in the manner the customer expects. It might
| work out, but often it doesn't. Adobe's products
| themselves are a prime example of what happens when the
| general public has more say than the users. No user-
| controlled company would play those shenanigans, but the
| general public doesn't use Adobe products, so they don't
| feel the pain. They only see the profit pleasure.
|
| This is why, traditionally, customers who want to ensure
| that a product remains aligned with their expectations
| pool their resources and enact a buyout before it reaches
| the hands of outsiders with other ideas. This allows them
| to put priority on the product itself, not competing
| concerns like profitability. But there is no evidence
| that happened here, so they decided it was okay to let it
| go to the whims of the rest of the world.
|
| It's a tradeoff. Such is life.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I'm making my comments in the context of the thread:
|
| >we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more proactive
| when it comes to super-massive companies like Adobe
|
| > What do you think happens to VC investments when it's
| harder for companies to be acquired?
|
| > maybe a culture of creating small companies out of VC
| capital only to be acquired by megacorps is not the best
| way forward for society
|
| > What would the alternative be? There will always come a
| day when founders and investors want to move on
|
| > A company like figma could have always just gone public
| if the founders/investors just wanted to get out
|
| The whole point was that anti trust should be stepping in
| more, and then people were making over the top claims
| about there being no alternative.
|
| The whole point is that it is _not_ up to the public
| shareholders to sell to whoever they want if the
| government will block the sale.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> then people were making over the top claims about
| there being no alternative._
|
| Nobody said such a thing. I did ask what the alternative
| is. Going public isn't an alternative. That's what is
| happening. Figma is being transferred into a public
| trust. And that is the worry expressed with respect to
| its future, because the general public has no reason to
| care about the product and will not act in the interest
| of the product.
|
| Anti-trust could, in theory, do more to prevent the
| general public from not caring about the product they
| control. The problem is that laws (where Figma and Adobe
| are located) are prescribed by the very same general
| public, so you have to convince them its a good idea. And
| if you've done that, the law becomes largely superfluous
| because at that point they're already on board and will
| act as such on their own accord.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > What would the alternative be? There will always come a
| day when founders and investors want to move on.
| Retirement age comes faster than you might think. Even if
| you deny an exit strategy, the principals are still going
| to stop eventually, and the product will still come to an
| end at that time. Allowing a sale at least provides an
| opportunity for the product to live on, even if there can
| be no guarantees about how the next guy decides to treat
| it.
|
| This is what you wrote in response to the idea that anti
| trust should be used to block these kinds of buy outs.
|
| > The problem is that laws are prescribed by the very
| same general public, so you have to convince them its a
| good idea. And if you've done that, the law becomes
| largely superfluous because at that point they're already
| on board and will act as such on their own accord.
|
| That is frankly an absurd oversimplification.
| Shareholders are a miniscule subset of the general
| public.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Shareholders are a miniscule subset of the general
| public._
|
| You mean shareholders of Adobe? Sure. But the rest of the
| population see how it applies to their own shareholdings.
| According to Gallop polling earlier this year, 58% of
| Americans own stock. I speculate you'll find even more
| owning stock indirectly (pensions, etc.).
|
| Or do you mean in other countries? America certainly
| ranks much higher than many other countries with regards
| to what portion of the general public are interested in
| such matters. Which is no doubt why it is more relaxed
| about such things. This probably wouldn't fly in many
| other countries, but those countries are not where this
| is taking place.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Setting aside the fact that your own measure means that
| 42% of Americans own _zero_ shares, meaning that it is
| already not representative. The fact that 58% of
| Americans own _a share_ does not imply that they are
| shareholders of every single one of the ~6,000 companies
| listed on the public markets in the US. Further, 10% of
| Americans hold 89% of the stocks in the US, and therefore
| as many voting shares.
|
| So yes, I do mean the US. I'll reiterate: it is absurd to
| imply that "the public" in reference to shareholders is
| somehow synonymous with "the public" in reference to
| voters in America.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> 42% of Americans own zero shares, meaning that it is
| already not representative._
|
| You don't need it to be representative, just to form
| majority. 51% is more than sufficient. 58% provides a
| healthy margin.
|
| _> The fact that 58% of Americans own a share does not
| imply that they are shareholders of every single one of
| the ~6,000 companies listed on the public markets in the
| US._
|
| Should it imply it? I don't see the relevance.
|
| _> Further, 10% of Americans hold 89% of the stocks in
| the US, and therefore as many voting shares._
|
| Fun fact, I guess. I don't see the relevance here either.
|
| Unless you're suggesting that 10% of the population is
| more likely to speak to representatives on the regular,
| not hide behind a computer on HN all day while assuming
| their representative is a mind reader, thus being
| disproportionally represented? I could definitely see
| that being true based on my anecdotal observations,
| although I lack the data to confirm.
|
| _> it is absurd to imply that "the public" in reference
| to shareholders is somehow synonymous with "the public"
| in reference to voters in America._
|
| If you make the false assumption that the public requires
| 100% support to do anything. Back in the real world...
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Ah yes, so according to you, in the "real world",
| shareholders interests and the interests represented by
| the government are functionally equivalent. This must be
| why we have no minimum wage laws, worker protections, nor
| does the FTC ever block any mergers.
|
| > If you make the false assumption that the public
| requires 100% support to do anything.
|
| You're sitting here complaining about not being perfectly
| understood over and over and yet here you claim I said
| 100% support is required. I said one group isn't
| representative of the other, ie it's interests are not
| reflective of the pother groups interests.
|
| > You don't need it to be representative, just to form
| majority. 51% is more than sufficient. 58% provides a
| healthy margin.
|
| Assuming 88% of that 58% are in actually in agreement.
|
| > Should it imply it? I don't see the relevance.
|
| You made the argument that the shareholders of one public
| company are somehow functionally equivalent to the public
| at large:
|
| > Anti-trust could, in theory, do more to prevent the
| general public from not caring about the product they
| control. The problem is that laws (where Figma and Adobe
| are located) are prescribed by the very same general
| public, so you have to convince them its a good idea. And
| if you've done that, the law becomes largely superfluous
| because at that point they're already on board and will
| act as such on their own accord.
|
| Your position is basically: we already live in an anarchy
| capitalist society with extra cruft.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> This must be why we have no minimum wage laws, worker
| protections, nor does the FTC ever block any mergers._
|
| Uh huh. The public that directs the government have jobs
| and have to live in society, so they are quite concerned
| about these things. The public _might_ also be concerned
| about the future of Figma, but other comments suggest
| that they won 't be. And I tend to agree as it is a
| fairly niche product. If something like
| Microsoft/Windows, which almost everyone uses, was being
| sold to Adobe it might draw more questions from the
| public.
|
| _> Assuming 88% of that 58% are in actually in
| agreement._
|
| For sure. They often don't agree. Just as we are only
| speculating that Figma is destined to disappear here. The
| public that holds control might decide it's the greatest
| thing since slice bread and make it Adobe's flagship
| product. The future is uncertain. I'm surprised you
| didn't already know that.
|
| _> You made the argument that the shareholders of one
| public company are somehow functionally equivalent to the
| public at large_
|
| You must be replying to the wrong person. Careful which
| button you press.
|
| _> Your position is basically: we already live in an
| anarchy capitalist society with extra cruft._
|
| Quite the opposite. The public very much coordinates
| centrally. We just got finished talking about 51% being
| significant because of that centralization... Replying to
| the wrong thread confirmed. I hope you find your way back
| to where you wanted to be.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Until a billionaire or a Bain capital comes along and
| tries to do a hostile takeover.
|
| If _anyone_ can buy stock in a company, that means any
| entity can come along with deep enough pockets and buy a
| controlling interest unless the founder has enough clout
| to keep a majority of voting shares.
| scarface74 wrote:
| LinkedIn didn't "need" to be acquired as a public
| company. But they did
| scarface74 wrote:
| Going public also leaves you to the short sightedness of
| the public market. There is a reason that public
| companies are taken private when they need to make long
| term changes.
|
| Also, Adobe can invest money in a product without going
| to the public markets for more money or taking out loans.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| You can argue whichever is better for society, more anti
| trust, more big corp acquisitions. My point is only that
| the idea that without big corp acquisitions, founders
| would have no options besides walking away and letting
| their product die is _preposterous_.
| randomdata wrote:
| So preposterous, in fact, that not a single person even
| tried to say such a thing. What purpose does this straw
| man serve?
| joshmanders wrote:
| > What would the alternative be?
|
| Donate it to the Earth.
| https://www.patagonia.com/ownership/
| robbiemitchell wrote:
| Figma turned ~$330M in investments into a $20B outcome
| and gave countless companies a better way to do their
| work. How is this a bad path for society?
| afavour wrote:
| Because now that it's owned by Adobe they no longer have
| competition for their XD product. They will likely merge
| both, resulting in an inferior product. They'll then jack
| up the price, hurting countless companies that have
| gotten used to a better way to do their work.
|
| But I'm very glad they generated income for their
| shareholders.
| krferriter wrote:
| I would prefer the investors just get paid back plus ROI
| using the value and revenue the company generates,
| instead of the standard being just merging the company
| into a larger one.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, if you would like that, you are free to start your
| own company, find the talent and the like minded
| investors and take the prerequisite risks to create a
| company that meets your ideals. But Figma is a private
| company and the founders get to choose who they sell to.
| geodel wrote:
| Yeah, exactly right. People here are saying "I pay 20
| dollar a month for something, now whole universe must
| stay same forever lest that 20 dollar thing disappear"
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I think the problem with VC that GP means is more a
| systemic one - it's not specific or even applicable to
| Figma, but for _other_ large VC projects.
|
| It's fine if a company like Figma takes VC to build a
| good product that fills a niche that hasn't been explored
| before and uses the VC to grow and eventually exit to the
| general public market so that the investors get their
| return.
|
| It's _not_ fine if larger companies like Adobe can simply
| swoop in and pay billions to get rid of a competitor,
| although that one should be dealt with by anti-trust
| agencies anyway.
|
| It's _not_ fine if a company like Uber uses cheap VC
| money to price-dump against essential services - and yes,
| taxis _are_ essential for those without a car, and the
| anti-discrimination frameworks make sure that access to
| them is fairly available to everyone, no matter why they
| would need a taxi for. Uber, in contrast, routinely got
| associated with everything from wage dumping over racism
| [1] to extorting people with excessive surge charges [2].
|
| It's _not_ fine if a company like AirBnB uses cheap VC
| money to wreak havoc on local rental markets [3][4] or to
| run effectively hotel-like operations in residential
| zones, while conveniently ignoring things such as fire
| codes [5], neighbors ' quality of life [6], taxes [7] or
| that people (both guests and hosts) were and are randomly
| banned for "background checks" [8][9], a return of ages-
| old banned housing discrimination.
|
| Society definitely needs a hard regulation on anything
| where VC is involved.
|
| [1] https://venturebeat.com/ai/researchers-find-racial-
| discrimin...
|
| [2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
| business/...
|
| [3] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/ferienwohnungen-
| stehen-le...
|
| [4] https://travelnoire.com/the-airbnb-effect-on-an-
| already-high...
|
| [5] https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-
| and-medi...
|
| [6] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/living-next-to-
| airbnb-sharin...
|
| [7] https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-
| state/airbnb-...
|
| [8] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotli
| ght/201...
|
| [9] https://www.airbnbhell.com/banned-from-airbnb-over-
| backgroun...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Those taxi companies that are their "for the poor"
| routinely wouldn't go into "poor" neighborhoods or pick
| minorities up.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/
| 23/...
|
| If a company could bootstrap their company and grow
| organically, they wouldn't need VC funding. By definition
| any company that is using VC funding is pricing their
| product less than it takes to make it - ie "price
| dumping".
|
| There are already laws about zoning that should keep
| AirBnB in check. I'm doing the digital nomad thing
| starting next year. I am specifically avoiding AirBnbs
| and staying in hotels - mostly mid range extended stays.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Those taxi companies that are their "for the poor"
| routinely wouldn't go into "poor" neighborhoods or pick
| minorities up.
|
| There's no reason to replace an already poor service with
| one that's even _worse_ and requires a smartphone and a
| bank account, which adds a further layer of
| discrimination as about 5% of US households don 't even
| have a bank account, much less a credit card, and 24-13%
| of poorer classes don't have a smartphone [2].
|
| In contrast, a taxi can (at least by law) be used by
| anyone with cash, and the data about your travel is not
| available for police or anyone else to abuse [3].
|
| > By definition any company that is using VC funding is
| pricing their product less than it takes to make it - ie
| "price dumping".
|
| IMO, there's a difference between using VC money to
| provide funds for growth (aka, a high-risk loan) and
| using VC money to intentionally provide a service at
| below-cost - five euros for half a hour taxi ride is
| _not_ sustainable, it won 't even pay for the working
| time of the driver.
|
| > There are already laws about zoning that should keep
| AirBnB in check.
|
| Yes, _now_ after years and years of issues and
| complaints. AirBnB could only grow as large as it did by
| following the "better ask for forgiveness than
| permission" lifestyle and blatantly breaking all kinds of
| laws.
|
| [1] https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-
| survey/index.html
|
| [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2021/06/22/digital-div...
|
| [3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbqq7y/is-uber-doing-
| enough-...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Cell phone penetration in the US is above 85%. Cell phone
| penetration has been higher in developing countries for
| years.
|
| At least I as a minority don't have to worry about a taxi
| cab bypassing me when I take an Uber.
|
| Taxi companies have been breaking laws for decades
| against discrimination and don't get me started about the
| government monopoly in regards to the medallion system in
| major cities.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Cell phone penetration in the US is above 85%. Cell
| phone penetration has been higher in developing countries
| for years.
|
| Taxis should be available for _everyone_ , not just the
| 85% that own a smartphone and don't end up banned by the
| app out of random [1].
|
| That existing taxi companies don't follow up to the
| regulations is a different problem (and one where the
| government definitely has to step up), but Uber and
| friends aren't even _required_ to follow the same rules,
| that is the whole point of why these kind of services are
| so dangerous for society!
|
| [1] https://www.johnnyjet.com/got-banned-uber-fix-
| problem/
| scarface74 wrote:
| Taxis aren't available "to everyone" they don't go into
| "dangerous neighborhoods" or pick up minorities
| mschuster91 wrote:
| To repeat myself in a bit more detail: _by law and
| regulations_ they are available to everyone. Non-
| discrimination is a criteria in almost all medallion /
| license contracts, not to mention certain laws (e.g. the
| ADA [1]).
|
| These laws and regulations _are_ , I admit that, often
| sparsely enforced and most people don't complain anyway,
| which makes the problem worse as it isn't quantified and
| shows up on the statistics that politicians and activist
| groups use either. A lack of data is the single biggest
| issue in fighting discrimination!
|
| The solution however is _not_ to promote apps like Uber,
| to which taxicab regulations do not apply at all (or
| severely restricted) and which just a few weeks ago
| entered a multi-million dollar settlement for over 65.000
| cases of discrimination because they violated the one law
| that actually is enforced [2].
|
| [1] search for "taxi" on
| https://www.ada.gov/enforce_current.htm
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/uber-commits-changes-
| and-pays...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, we have an existence proof. The government that you
| wanted to depend on didn't in fact do it's job, a private
| company did. But you believe that the government will get
| it right next time?
| m3at wrote:
| I think you misread, the parent agree with you that Figma
| created value, the issue is the acquisition by Adobe that
| might stop or slow this.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| Perhaps you misunderstand that Figma was motivated to
| create value. A large part of the motivation for many
| startups is an exit plan wherein they get bought out by
| established competitors.
|
| If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major
| factor in creating the value to begin with.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| The point of the stock market is to trade and build
| wealth. Yet we have agreed insider trading should be
| illegal, because it ruins the game for everyone.
|
| Anti-trust laws are similar.
| bmitc wrote:
| What are you are are describing are bad motivations. It's
| like wanting a salary when volunteering. One doesn't
| actually care about value if the only motivation to
| create said value is to get obscene amounts of money.
| scarface74 wrote:
| They weren't creating a company for the "good of
| mankind".
|
| Most non profits have plenty of paid staff.
|
| In fact, there is a Ted Talk about non profits and why
| their employees should get paid well.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_a
| bou...
| bmitc wrote:
| > They weren't creating a company for the "good of
| mankind".
|
| I feel most VC blurbs disagree with that, although of
| course that's not their actual motivation.
|
| I don't see how non-profits are relevant other than as
| examples of companies/organizations that do actually
| provide value in lieu of massive gains and profit.
|
| And I think you missed my point as I was responding to:
|
| > If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major
| factor in creating the value to begin with.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And you believe what the VCs say?
| anders_p wrote:
| > Perhaps you misunderstand that Figma was motivated to
| create value. A large part of the motivation for many
| startups is an exit plan wherein they get bought out by
| established competitors.
|
| > If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major
| factor in creating the value to begin with.
|
| You're basically saying that they wouldn't have made
| Figma if they'd only been able to sell it for 15 billion.
|
| Same tired argument as the "unless you lower taxes on the
| wealthiest even more, they'll stop creating jobs!" (Even
| though the taxes haven't been lower in history than they
| are right now).
|
| People do stuff even though there are anti-trust laws
| limiting how many tens of billions they get out of it.
|
| As long as there's insane profits to be made, there'll
| still be an incentive.
|
| Selling out to the market leader, creating a virtual
| monopoly that harms the consumers in the long run, isn't
| the only way to make money on a start-up. Far from it.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's exactly what stock exchanges are for!
|
| Going public should be the norm, not being bough by a
| monopolist, otherwise the entire premise of what makes
| capitalism desirable is broken.
| scarface74 wrote:
| As a point of reference. How many companies has YC
| invested in? How many have gone public? How many of those
| are profitable?
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| The FTC and other regulatory bodies could still move to block
| this, it's not final in any way.
| bearmode wrote:
| I used to be a graphic designer, have my degree in it etc
| before I switched to development.
|
| Adobe's pricing is more than fair. At least compared to what it
| used to be, where you'd have to shell out a couple of grand
| every 2-3 years to keep up with major releases. For me, it
| worked out a bit cheaper now than it did back then, but I also
| got a massive, high-quality font library thrown in as well as a
| bunch of other newer programs like Dimension.
|
| They already have a functional monopoly in the industry and the
| prices aren't too bad.
|
| Also Figma was a rival to Adobe XD, which was already actually
| cheaper than Figma was/is.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Yeah, i don't get this. Seems like textbook anti-competitive
| behavior to me. Doesn't Adobe already have their own version of
| Figma (XD)?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| They do, but it's not nearly as popular (or as valuable) as
| Figma.
|
| In the last couple of years Figma has essentially overtaken
| Adobe and Sketch in terms of designer mindshare and usage. I
| don't know a single designer (I know hundreds), that doesn't
| use Figma. Of course, I'm focused 100% on software, so I'm
| strictly talking about product, UI/UX design. Not print or
| graphic design.
|
| The way I see it, Adobe had to buy Figma.
| exodust wrote:
| > had to
|
| Or didn't have to, instead improving what they already
| have.
|
| I wonder if their aim is to own the designer's pipeline,
| from raw concepts to sharing finished work, nudging price
| hikes over time? All within Adobe walls and everyone
| agreeing to Adobe terms. I'm sure it's all fine and not
| creepy at all.
|
| A designer recently sent me XD links to review, and for the
| most part it was a smooth experience to preview those
| assets and designs. She seemed to like XD.
|
| Other times I get Figma links, and it's gonna be weird if
| they're both Adobe.
|
| For me I can find one criticism of Figma. It's loose. Gets
| messy when there's lots of pieces spread out. Sometimes I
| want an anchoring page, latched, not zoom slippery... just
| constrained for my viewing control. Figma doesn't want you
| doing such things, it wants you hovering above a carpark
| looking down at the free and occupied spaces. That said, I
| haven't spent a huge amount of time in Figma, I log out
| quickly.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The way I see it, Adobe had to buy Figma.
|
| It's so fucked up though. Just because Adobe has existed
| for a long time and managed to squeeze their existing
| customers enough, they been able to stop innovating. And
| instead of innovating enough to be able to beat their
| competition (Figma), they'll just buy the competition and
| continue doing the same thing. Until another competitor
| appears, rinse-and-repeat.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I'm definitely less anti-acquisition than most of HN. I
| think bigger companies buying new startups and smaller
| companies is a fine growth strategy.
|
| However, in this case, I have to agree. Adobe buying any
| product is essentially the death of said product.
| lvzw wrote:
| Announcing an intent to acquire a company is not against any
| competition law. The merger has not been finalized or even
| officially announced by the parties it seems. The FTC or DOJ
| will review this merger and if they deem it anticompetitive,
| they will challenge it.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Fam - we can't even make climate change laws without oil
| lobbies paying lawmakers off...what makes you think that yet
| another corruptible organization in govt is going to help?
| legitster wrote:
| Anti-trust laws were written to address certain _perceptions_
| of how businesses operated back in the late 1800s. They were
| not particularly grounded in reality, and as such they are hard
| to actually implement as written in most situations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Anti-trust laws were written to address certain
| perceptions of how businesses operated back in the late
| 1800s_
|
| Source? First I've heard of Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting
| being a grandiose PR campaign.
| bmitc wrote:
| It sort of was in the sense of Taft, Roosevelt's successor,
| being much more aggressive and effective in actually
| bringing anti-trust lawsuits to fruition.
| legitster wrote:
| Trusts in particular (cooperation agreements between
| competitors) were entirely a fad of businesses in the
| 1800s, particularly amongst more progressive-leaning
| Chairman. It is doubtful they would have had long term
| success even without government intervention.
|
| https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2...
|
| We also know that things like predatory pricing and trying
| to undercut businesses to acquire them was somewhat of a
| myth. If Standard oil sold for less than you, it was
| because their operation costs were lower because they were
| bigger.
|
| http://www-
| personal.umich.edu/~twod/oil/NEW_SCHOOL_COURSE200...
|
| The enforcement of the Anti-trust act mostly relied on
| companies suing each other for grievances. But most
| companies never brought grievances about being acquired.
|
| It was a PR campaign! But for protective tariffs: https://t
| imesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1890/10/01/103...
| Sherman himself was pretty open that he wanted to blame
| rising costs on businesses when a new round of tariffs was
| passed into law.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Fair enough. If the claim is that antitrust measures were
| in the long run ineffective, not that they were
| dishonestly pursued, you have solid ground to stand on.
| frozencell wrote:
| Good, Figma wasn't a good Photoshop alternative anyway.
| marcofiset wrote:
| Figma is an alternative to XD, and it blows it out the water.
| Not sure what you're trying to say.
| mikefallen wrote:
| Signed up for adobe trial to use a feature of it that was not
| included in the free version. Forgot to cancel during free
| period, tried to cancel subscription they wanted a 120$ early
| cancellation fee. Charged it back on my cc and blacklisted adobe
| from charging my cc ever again. Sad say for sigma users have
| always heard really good things from friends that use it.
| addicted wrote:
| This is a blatant effort at maintaining a monopoly.
| 542458 wrote:
| Yeah, as a Figma and Adobe consumer this feels like an
| intentional effort to limit my choice and enable Adobe creative
| cloud to continue to be more-or-less the only realistic option
| for design work.
|
| I'm perennially frustrated that I live in an era with nearly-
| dead antitrust.
| heyyeah wrote:
| Adobe will be facing an existential crisis trying to maintain
| this monopoly vs AI generated content, AI augmented content
| generation tools and cheap image and layout apps.
| knicholes wrote:
| Adobe has an excellent team of machine learning experts who
| are very well aware of what's going on. I attend their ML
| lecture series regularly and see speakers from FB, Google,
| OpenAI, universities, etc, especially on recent advances in
| large language models and their application to zero-shot
| learning and text to image generation.
| smilespray wrote:
| Adobe should have died a decade ago.
| hmcamp wrote:
| I don't believe this will be good for the market. I feel Adobe is
| doing this to kill a potential threat to their XD and other
| design tools.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| I think XD is about to be killed.
| raoultwasright wrote:
| andsoitis wrote:
| I read mostly disappointment here that Adobe will harm/destroy
| Figma.
|
| We have to remember, though, that Figma leaders think
| otherwise...
| w-j-w wrote:
| It's pretty easy to see the bright side of a deal that makes
| you incredibly wealthy.
| beardedman wrote:
| I honestly miss Adobe from 10 - 15 years ago. It feels like they
| were a product company back then, as opposed to an upsell-
| advertising company (they are now). I don't use their products a
| lot these days, but when I do; I am always surprised by the
| slowness & bloat.
|
| I'm not too sure why the Figma people decided this was a good
| idea - but makes me grateful for Affinity & Sketch still being
| available.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| You mean _that_ Adobe that recently aquired Macromedia and
| killed off Dreamweaver and Fireworks?
| shafyy wrote:
| > _Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating
| autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to
| David Wadhwani._ [0]
|
| "autonomously". There, I fixed it for you :-) More seriously, I
| do hope that this will become an exception to the rule, but I'm
| not getting my hopes up.
|
| 0: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
| greyhair wrote:
| Adobe is to software as Nestle is to water.
| jawadch93 wrote:
| https://www.beecracked.com/reviversoft-security-reviver/
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| RIP in Peace Ligma, I won't miss you at all, you sack of shit.
| rykuno wrote:
| This is an extremely sad sellout and a poor and obvious effort to
| monopolize. The fact we all know whats coming is a sign Adobe
| should not exist as a company anymore with the way they can treat
| end users/products and still get away with it.
|
| I'm sure the people at Sketch are currently throwing a party that
| can be seen halfway across the world though.
|
| Fuck Adobe.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| FFS now they're going to ruin it.
| hazzamanic wrote:
| CEO of figma, Dylan Field, has a thread on Twitter about it:
| https://twitter.com/zoink/status/1570385551517437952
| cromulent wrote:
| Where software goes to die.
|
| Can someone remind me of a product that came from Adobe, rather
| than an acquisition?
| nemrem wrote:
| achow wrote:
| Oct 2020 Figma was valued at $2.05 billion.
|
| _Here 's how the CEO of Figma went from a computer science
| intern to the head of a $2 billion company that's challenging
| Adobe for the love of designers across Silicon Valley - Oct 2020_
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/figma-ceo-dylan-field-design...
| swyx wrote:
| 10b in Aug 2021
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/08/10/how-figma...
|
| covid was so huge for Figma. literally 10xed in value in 2
| years
| crecker wrote:
| Ahh, Adobe.. they have earnings for billions and billions and
| they can not improve their software suites on performance..
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Why improve your software when Apple can just release better
| hardware? \s
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, kind of wonder what would have happened had Adobe instead
| pulled a pair of engineers aside and said, "Hey, we want you
| two to create a Figma rival. You'll have no directives from up
| above, have all the freedom to write the app how you want. You
| can work where you want, when you want ... if you need more
| specific expertise on the team you can take who you like. The
| first version you roll out doesn't have to have Figma parity,
| just has to be something you're proud of. We'll put it out as
| beta ... it can stay beta for as long as you feel it needs to
| be. We're hoping you can get us to have a Figma-like presence,
| maybe Figma-parity within three years or so?"
|
| I suspect Adobe are too behemoth these days. A scrappy start-
| up/skunk-works within Adobe might have been able to pull off
| some nice code and for a lot less than $20B.
| vitaflo wrote:
| They basically did exactly this with XD and it started with
| some good ideas and then basically just fizzled out.
| ssrubin wrote:
| My understanding, pieced together from conversations over the
| years with Adobe employees, is that they do try to do this,
| and they don't have success with it. I have no idea if
| they've done something like this with a Figma-like goal,
| though.
| someonesthere wrote:
| That money's not for the code...
| Supposedly wrote:
| What's Figma?
| jrgd wrote:
| wow great they will kill it in so many ways
| deepzn wrote:
| tomaskafka wrote:
| > By bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe's imaging,
| photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technologies into
| the Figma platform, we can benefit all customers involved in the
| product design process, from designers to product managers to
| developers. Figma's community will ultimately have a continuous
| user experience across ideation, screen layout, interaction
| design and content editing, allowing product designers and their
| stakeholders to operate at a whole new level.
|
| Adobe's clueless middle managers are already adding "push my
| useless pet feature to keep my chair busy" into their OKRs.
|
| Basically, they are an orc army to be unleashed to destroy one of
| Adobe's few viable competitors. Like mafia thugs with a baseball
| bat.
| swyx wrote:
| for what its worth @zoink says they'll still be autonomous
| https://twitter.com/zoink/status/1570385560312909826 and he
| doesnt seem like the kinda guy to lie about it (even if this
| might change 1-3 years down the road)
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, lets see what happens. But it doesn't bode well when
| Adobe is saying they'll add features for photography (wtf?)
| into Figma, when that's not what the tool is about at all.
| gaws wrote:
| > for what its worth @zoink says they'll still be autonomous
| ... and he doesnt seem like the kinda guy to lie about it
| (even if this might change 1-3 years down the road)
|
| Dylan's tweet is bullshit. You know it. We know it. $20
| billion (with a B) is a _very_ good chunk of money, and Dylan
| has a golden parachute prepared when Adobe, "1-3 to years
| down the road," cannibalizes, rebuilds, and rebrands Figma
| into an overpriced and bloated monstrosity.
| aliqot wrote:
| Every founder says that, then suddenly you're saying Aaron
| Swartz wasn't a cofounder and that you're not to be
| considered the "bastion of free speech".
| enumjorge wrote:
| Everyone always says this. They should ask the Instagram
| founders [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-07/zucker
| ber...
| MisterSandman wrote:
| To be fair, Instagram isn't nearly as Bloated as Facebook
| ever got. WhatsApp has also only had some annoying
| additions.
| esskay wrote:
| I dare say they will be autonomous for a year. Then Adobe
| will want some ROI and start slapping creative cloud crap
| into it.
|
| I'd imaging it'll be added to the CCX launcher pretty quickly
| and made the only way to download it. Thankfully because it's
| electron it shouldn't be too hard for a 3rd party client to
| be made.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| That's the promise almost all acquisitions get.
|
| Even if it holds for a couple years, there's still the
| corrosive effect it has on morale and productivity as the
| surrounding company's broken culture seeps in and most of the
| high quality employees just either rest & vest or flee the
| vacating ship.
|
| The founders will stick around and play middle mgmt until
| their agreements run out, then leave ASAP. You know it's
| really bad if they leave before those agreements are done.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Honestly my disappointment in the Figma team will be immeasurable
| if they sell out to Adobe.
|
| You took us all to a great place and threw us to the lion. Could
| have had customers for life but I'll be canceling as soon as you
| transition over to Adobe.
|
| What pains me the most is they could have easily been the ones to
| make Adobe obsolete if they had vision and values. In 10 years it
| would be a Nokia VS iPhone situation with us asking how Adobe
| became Nokia.
| tamade wrote:
| If you can't beat them, buy them
| baggiponte wrote:
| That's so uncompetitive
| seasnake wrote:
| No mention of Penpot[0] yet?
|
| [0] http://penpot.app
| janlukacs wrote:
| This will be interesting too once they launch:
| https://www.expressivesuite.com/ (web based motion graphics + a
| vector tool).
| trymas wrote:
| a reply to the top comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32850953
|
| TIL of penpot from that comment - seems great tool!
| seasnake wrote:
| Oh, tried to find it on the page but must have hidden the
| comment. I've never worked in it, but played around with it
| for a few minutes and it certainly seems capable enough for
| solo or small team use. It's also the only open source
| prototyping tool I've found yet.
| drikerf wrote:
| (types www.sketch.com into browser)
| rvz wrote:
| In at least less than 1 year or two, Dylan Field will leave Adobe
| / Figma.
|
| This is the entire operation of how companies with tons of VC
| capital just work.
|
| Now I see commenters complaining about 'anti-trust', 'anti-
| competition', etc. Given that you are now doing this, why not
| also complain about the very practises that violate anti-trust
| laws and anti-competition laws regularly done by Big Tech in
| general by blocking those deals and giving massive fines in the
| billions which will deter these sort of acquisitions and anti-
| competitive behaviour, like what happened to Plaid and VISA for
| example and the up-coming investigations into the Microsoft,
| Activision-Blizzard acquisition, etc.
|
| We should not turn a blind eye on this and do nothing because it
| is Amazon, Google, Microsoft, VISA, or even Adobe or any other
| company that is part of Big Tech and does acquisitions like this.
| icu wrote:
| RIP Figma, I've been trying to avoid Adobe products since they
| charge the earth for their products and free open source options
| are solid alternatives. I'm expecting Adobe to eventually price
| gouge us to the point where we are forced to find a Figma
| alternative.
| jacooper wrote:
| There is penpot
| toastal wrote:
| Post C6, I was 100% out and only FOSS as well. Dedicating time
| to those tools have proven more than acceptable and on occasion
| I got to file a bug too. Of them, darktable and Hugin have been
| my favorites.
| icu wrote:
| Gimp and Inkscape are incredible PhotoShop and Illustrator
| alternatives. I'll have to check out Hugin, thanks for the
| tip!
| akagusu wrote:
| This acquisition is anticompetitive and should be blocked by
| government.
| solardev wrote:
| Oh noooooooooooo!!!! They're going to bloat it up, make it slow,
| roll it into Creative Cloud, and add obnoxious DRM :( :( :(
|
| Boooooooooooo.
| punkpeye wrote:
| What are alternatives to Figma?
| solardev wrote:
| There's that open-source one also mentioned on HN today:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262
|
| Sketch, Balsamiq (for simpler wireframes), Adobe XD
| psteinweber wrote:
| Sketch
| headelf wrote:
| In light of this sad news- who's working on a NON-Adobe version
| to take its place?
| slantedview wrote:
| Adobe is not buying Figma to keep its prices the same. There are
| a lot of ways this could play out, but that much is true.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I was _just_ looking at Figma open positions and was wondering
| why they 've been on a hiring spree while most other companies
| aren't.
|
| I guess I know now.
| asciii wrote:
| This is not the news I wanted to wake up to today. Come on Figma!
| How bad did you need it?
| Dimidium-07 wrote:
| Hopefully Figma won't go under the CC and then there won't be a
| free version anymore.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Why I gotta update my software once a week just to read pdfs?
| uptown wrote:
| Adobe's statement: https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/intent-to-
| acquire-20220915...
| replygirl wrote:
| > By bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe's imaging,
| photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technologies into
| the Figma platform, we can benefit all customers involved in
| the product design process, from designers to product managers
| to developers. Figma's community will ultimately have a
| continuous user experience across ideation, screen layout,
| interaction design and content editing, allowing product
| designers and their stakeholders to operate at a whole new
| level.
|
| smart objects and cloud libraries, just kill me now
| bigfish24 wrote:
| Incredible product, journey, and financial success. Nevertheless,
| I bet this was not an easy decision. Losing independence even
| with all the other great aspects isn't ideal. Just a guess, but I
| bet the prospect of doing layoffs compared to selling played a
| role. Gitlab/Monday are public comps and currently worth less
| than Figma's last valuation.
| yuchi wrote:
| If true, congratulations for Figma founders, and a bad day for
| designers that were looking for a way to escape from Adobe.
|
| I don't think that in the long term this will give Figma as an
| ecosystem any benefit -- unless Adobe will keep it separate from
| the main Creative Cloud.
|
| This reminds me of the Trello acquisition.
|
| As a loyal Figma user I'm pretty sceptical of the future. Hope to
| be wrong.
|
| UPDATE: Looks like it is indeed true...
| https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...
| yuchi wrote:
| UPDATE n. 2: Dylan Field (CEO of Figma) has addressed these
| kind of concerns on their public disclore of the fact:
| https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
|
| Citing him:
|
| > Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating
| autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to
| David Wadhwani.
|
| As others have said, there's really a missing OSS version out
| there that can compete feature-by-feature with Sketch / Figma /
| XD. Layout engine capabilities are the biggest missing feature
| in competitors.
| Zealotux wrote:
| >[ACQUISITOR] is deeply committed to keeping [STARTUP]
| operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO,
| reporting to [NEW OVERLORD]
|
| You won't believe what happens next.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Phew, I was worried for a second, because of [NEW
| OVERLORD]'s persistent track record of killing babies. So
| glad to hear that [STARTUP] CEO thinks it's going to be
| fine, in a public statement nonetheless! More than anyone,
| he must have done his due diligence.
| _fn wrote:
| It's like there's some sort of playbook on this
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| same thing happened to us, our ceo also sent us a similar
| email. He bounced 3 months later to enjoy his billions i
| guess.
| yencabulator wrote:
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
| politelemon wrote:
| This is amazing, thanks for sharing it. Also quite
| disheartening.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Every time one of these "statements" happens I'm reminded of
| what Palmer Luckey said about Oculus when Facebook bought
| them, or what Jan Koum said about WhatsApp. How long before
| Dylan leaves to "spend time with family"?
| knicholes wrote:
| I hear "take time off for health" often.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Exactly, he is contractually obligated to keep the status
| quo for the time being.
|
| After some years and the clauses have lapsed and Adobe have
| done what they always do, the criticism will come.
|
| I'm sure he knows it as well, but hundreds of millions of
| dollars will shut anyone up for a period of time.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I'm just going to assume he'll leave Adobe in one year to
| move on to his next adventure.
| esskay wrote:
| He must know his statement is pointless. How many times have
| we seen big aquisitions with promises not to mess with
| things, only for it to happen a year or two down the line.
|
| You don't drop 20bn on something to let it sit at it's
| current level.
|
| They'll be integrating creative cloud and making it part of
| the subscription. I dare say they'll close the loophole on
| the free plan as well that lets you have unlimited designs.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Like many of you, I grew up using Adobe software and it was
| a critical part of my personal creative journey.
|
| Yes, it was the part of your journey that made you realize it
| was a company that made bad design software, and you devoted
| your life to making an alternative to it. For me, it was the
| part of my journey I was happy to leave behind to use your
| alternative.
|
| I think it's okay if he wants to make $20B, but don't spin
| it! A blog post like this makes me lose trust, it doesn't
| reassure me.
| torton wrote:
| I'm a long time user of Trello. After the acquisition,
| Atlassian foisted their login system on Trello users, but
| otherwise didn't substantially degrade the product.
|
| The integration with other Atlassian services improved. There
| is a variety of plug-ins now, and new ways to display the data
| for paid plans.
|
| Do you feel different? Any specific examples of what became
| worse?
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Big win for the Figma team. Big loss for consumers who have
| benefitted from the competitive market. I really hope this
| incentives Krita, Ink, Gimp or other OSS to focus more on UI
| design features.
|
| I think there is a value for Adobe to add Figma to CC,
| Photoshop can fully focus on photo manipulation while Figma
| (perhaps merged with XD?) will be target UI designers.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > I really hope this incentives Krita, Ink, Gimp or other OSS
| to focus more on UI design features.
|
| A comment in another thread mentioned Penpot
| https://penpot.app/
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Yeah I just saw a new post for the tool. It's currently #1
|
| Never heard of it before, but I'll explore it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| As others will no doubt call out, Affinity have been my main-
| stay graphics apps for some years now. Affinity Design, Photo,
| Publisher....
|
| I refuse to pay a monthly fee for something I use on a
| scattershot basis.
| coldcode wrote:
| Me as well, I refuse to give Adobe any money if I can use
| Affinity's products.
| [deleted]
| mukadul wrote:
| Like Oracle. Buy nice things because you can and you hate
| colourful light shining through te windows of your dull offices.
| Paint it gray and resell it.
| artemkubatkin wrote:
| Oh no :( Unbelievably sad news.
| royandre wrote:
| https://royandre.medium.com/goodbye-adobe-4f26fa48e28a
|
| Let's hope Figma doesn't become the next Dreamweaver.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Here's hoping Amy Klobuchar and the FTC and anyone else who wants
| to see competition blocks this sale.
| kgbcia wrote:
| good purchase.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Good for Figma founders, they'll make a lot of money, bad for
| Figma users and design authoring tool in general suffering from
| the lack of competition in the space for the last 25 years.
|
| I've seen what happened to Macromedia products after Adobe
| bought them.
| 542458 wrote:
| Yeah, over the last five years illustrator has added no
| useful new features (at least for my use cases) and XD has
| wandered around with no clear direction. Meanwhile Figma has
| been a rocketship of features that massively improve
| workflows. I'm worried they'll sink into the Adobe pit of
| complacent mediocrity if they're bought out.
| noizz wrote:
| As much as I LOVE to shit on Adobe (they leaked my CC info)
| they surprised me recently with one new feature I've been
| begging for years - bullet points and ordered lists in text
| fields. Ever since Illustrator became an alternative to
| InDesign for smaller print jobs, it's been my core missing
| feature.
|
| Although, in the grand scheme of things, Illustrator has
| been really left behind and apps like InDesign or XD have
| seen next to zero updates in years.
| te_chris wrote:
| I bet the Adobe PMs are salivating at the thought of
| 'improving' figma.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| They do, that's what the press release said:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851038
| leetrout wrote:
| Exactly
| zander312 wrote:
| Adobe is a nasty, predatory company. They charged me like $200
| just for the ability to cancel my Adobe subscription. Caught me
| with some fine print.
|
| Will never touch Figma now.
| vic-traill wrote:
| 'Adobe acquires Figma for $20B using revenue from years of price
| increases e.g. [0]
|
| [0] 'Adobe has more than doubled the price of Creative Cloud in
| Australia since 2014 (2017)'
| https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/05/reminder-renew-your-ad...
| chadlavi wrote:
| They're gonna fucking ruin the only good web design app. Very
| disappointed about this.
| shishy wrote:
| Gah, I love Figma. Heres to hoping it doesn't go downhill.
|
| $20B price is interesting, Canva was valued at $25B recently and
| does way less.
| alphabetting wrote:
| Lmao Meta can't even buy a VR fitness app. The current FTC
| leadership is an absolute joke.
| homarp wrote:
| The Story Behind My Investment In Figma (2015) -
| https://semilshah.com/2015/12/06/the-story-behind-my-investm...
| admn2 wrote:
| I always felt Google would buy them to add a design tool to
| Google Drive's suite of offerings. Guess this make more sense.
| pc2g4d wrote:
| Feels anticompetitive, and maybe even bad for Adobe as they
| prioritize acquisition over organic development.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Every designer I know moved away from XD to Figma and now Adobe
| are effectively forcing people into XD as Figma is dead in the
| water now.
|
| I suppose this leaves Sketch? I imagine they are over the moon at
| this news.
| noizz wrote:
| XD had a great start, tons of updates, good team communication,
| I really liked where it was going 3-4 years ago. Then, for the
| past 2 years+, a total radio silence. Barely any new features,
| just crash fixes to make paying customers shut up. At least I
| now know the reason.
| bamboozled wrote:
| $20 billion dollars for Figma? What the actual f...?
| [deleted]
| lwn wrote:
| Ugh, I'm still sad about what happened to Macromedia Fireworks
| after Adobe takeover. Have been boycotting their products ever
| since.
| afhammad wrote:
| Same here, best design software i've ever used, especially for
| web stuff. Sketch came close, although I haven't used it in a
| while.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Sketch actually surpassed Fireworks in _every_ aspect. After
| many many years with Fireworks, I was astonished by Sketch
| how they fixed every little thing that bothered me in
| Fireworks, and did it _just right_.
| alexhackney wrote:
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| This is Aldus Superpaint all over again...
| pembrook wrote:
| I'd put the odds at about 95% that Adobe will ruin Figma with
| bloat, 14 different "Creative Cloud" background processes, and
| hostile pricing models within 5 years.
|
| This is huge news for Sketch.
|
| However, to be honest, this is the type of acquisition that
| should be blocked IMO. Adobe is literally acquiring a direct
| competitor here.
|
| To me the consumer harm is pretty clear. Instead of a more
| competent org (Figma) growing further to disrupt more of Adobe's
| business, we're going to be stuck with Adobe forever.
|
| Great outcome for the founders and investors in Figma, terrible
| outcome for consumers.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I'm betting they will leave it alone, at least for a while. I'm
| sure the C suite at adobe is not blind to their reputation and
| they know that if they start tacking on "Adobe" features to
| Figma, user growth will stall out.
|
| Everyone is referencing the Macromedia purchase but I would
| argue that it was a very different kind of purchase. With that
| Adobe spent $3.4B acquiring them, in Figma's case they paid
| $20B. I could see how Adobe is willing to throw away $3.4B to
| kill their competition but I'm not sure they would be willing
| to do that to a $20B purchase.
|
| If anything they keep is exactly the same, kill Adobe XD, and
| rename Figma to Adobe XD.
| neilk wrote:
| Big company executives do not see the world the way you do.
|
| Creative Cloud alone has at least 5x the users of Figma. I
| have no idea how to even calculate all the users of all Adobe
| products. I guarantee that a lot of people at Adobe see Figma
| as just _adorable_ , but not really, you know, a product.
| Some people at Adobe get it and are hoping to revolutionize
| their company with new blood, but... they probably won't
| succeed.
|
| At big companies that have captured a large portion of the
| market, they are usually not interested in "disrupting"
| themselves. Steve Jobs was a rarity. There are far more
| attainable revenue and careers to be made optimizing the
| existing revenue streams.
|
| If killing Figma entirely made Creative Cloud revenue go up
| by a few percentage points that would be worth it for them.
| Even if the acquisition has _negative_ value the people who
| pioneered it have more influence in their company, and an
| achievement that advances their career narrative.
|
| They may tell themselves they're going to integrate Figma,
| and some people are going to definitely try, but if that
| doesn't work out that's probably fine.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Oh sure they would. Have you ever dealt with the stupidity in
| the C-suite of a large corporation?
| knicholes wrote:
| I'm an Adobe employee, and I think that this is most likely
| what will happen. I think maybe the transition to web-first
| wasn't going as planned. I think that Adobe's going to move
| their features into Figma (integration with creative cloud
| assets, easy importing/exporting to other programs,
| collaboration workflows) and close out XD.
| baggiponte wrote:
| Totally agree I don't get why antitrust gave the okay to
| this...
| dbbk wrote:
| They haven't decided anything yet
| nicoburns wrote:
| Probably because anti-trust enforcement only seems to get
| involved when two already huge companies are involved.
| pavlov wrote:
| Nah, they just have different rules for different huge tech
| companies.
|
| FTC is blocking Meta's acquisition of Within, the maker of
| a VR fitness app - an extremely niche product. Meanwhile
| Microsoft and Adobe seem confident that they can close on
| deals to buy Activision and Figma.
| kylemh wrote:
| can antitrust prevent public companies from acquiring private
| companies?
| atestu wrote:
| yes. Whether they're public or private doesn't change
| anything about how competitive they are.
| fblp wrote:
| Anyone here can lodge this simple form and I'd encourage you
| to do so. Especially if you think this merger will
| substantially lesson competition and stifle innovation lodge
| a complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-
| antitrust-violation
|
| At a minimum, they will investigate this and make inquiries
| (typically within months) if they see a high volume of
| complaints.
|
| See https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui... For more info on the relevant law :)
| dawsmik wrote:
| 1. Here is the email:
|
| antitrust@ftc.gov
|
| 2. It should include something similar the following (maybe
| a lawyer here, could help):
|
| a. Adobe acquiring Figma may violate anti-trust laws. b.
| These are the 2 dominate players in web design apps. There
| is very little competition elsewhere. c. I am a user and
| once they merge there is no viable competitor.
| vgel wrote:
| Sent, thank you. I also made sure to mention the
| "consumer harm" (keyword) of forcing consumers to engage
| with Adobe's predatory pricing model ("annual
| subscription billed monthly" bs)
| Someone wrote:
| Did they? Typically, the intent to merge comes before any
| anti-trust investigation.
| lvzw wrote:
| The antitrust agencies in the United States (FTC and DOJ) do
| not proactively give approval for companies to merge. After
| official merger filings have been made (which they have not
| in this case), the FTC or DOJ have a process in which they
| gather evidence and determine whether they have grounds to
| challenge the proposed merger. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Sketch only works on macOS, though.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Good news for Apple too.
| bithavoc wrote:
| Yeah, I feel Apple should acquire Sketch
| ideamotor wrote:
| Haven't thought of that and you are 100% right.
|
| That said, knowing Apple, they probably have a great long
| term vision on graphical UI/UX design tooling that will
| either be great when it finally comes into being in 8
| years, like M1, or we'll never see it at all.
| isnhp wrote:
| I think it will happen, to combine with new Freeform.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Sketch cloud displays sketch designs quite well. I wonder if
| they'll be able to turn it into a web editor eventually...
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _This is huge news for Sketch._
|
| Why, do they have an online editor yet?
|
| As a cto/admin/manager/hiring person: Sketch is worthless _for
| me_ because I don 't have a Mac. But because of that, my
| company does not use it: despite designers working on macOS, if
| I can't run it to look at their work and actively
| comment/collaborate with them, it's not a useful workflow.
| Therefore instead we hire people familiar with Figma (sadly,
| because I wanted to avoid giving Adobe money. Well, fuck, eh?)
| tomovo wrote:
| They are hiring for people with WASM/Emscripten experience so
| I'd say there's something planned, even if only a more
| sophisticated viewer...
| scrollaway wrote:
| Let's hope. Sketch always seemed to be amazingly well-
| crafted software. I'd love an online version.
| ktta wrote:
| https://www.sketch.com/docs/subscriptions/benefits/
|
| Looks like viewing in a browser is already available?
| [deleted]
| scrollaway wrote:
| Interesting, I was not aware, I guess it's kinda new. Has
| anyone here used it and can give feedback on it?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > Why
|
| Because statistics. If you make one option less appealing
| (which is the presumption) all competitors will indirectly
| benefit, statistically, for various reasons, none of which
| might resonate with your specific personal needs.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > if I can't run it to look at their work and actively
| comment/collaborate with them, it's not a useful workflow.
|
| But you can do that though:
|
| https://www.sketch.com/docs/browsing-web-documents/
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I don't understand US anti-trust enforcement protocol. Is this
| before or after anti-trust process?
|
| I think there will be more than one person against this.
| random3 wrote:
| As an ex-Adobe employee (not a fanboy, no inside information
| whatsover) and a Figma addicted I'm happy for Adobe and Figma.
|
| I also believe this was a logical ending. I was wondering and
| actively discussing what Figma means to Adobe and happy to be
| right on my expectation on the number. This is Adobe's largest
| aquisition (its Whatsapp moment).
|
| Congrats to both. I wasn't the happiest employee, but I believe
| it's a great company for the creative kind and I wish both a good
| journey.
| _jnc wrote:
| In cases like this I always wonder, what stops another startup
| from basically just spinning up a figma clone from scratch?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Oh well, so dies an amazing product to be locked up behind a
| massively customer-unfriendly organization.
|
| I'd even rather it have been acquired by Google where it could
| end up being graveyarded, there at least it would, if it
| survived, have been more easily available. I consider it for
| practical purposes no less survived now than if Google had killed
| it.
|
| Is there anyone who could have acquired them that would have been
| a better custodian for such a great product?
| Zealotux wrote:
| I apologize in advance for breaking the usual rules of HN when it
| comes to quality of discussion.
|
| Fuck.
| geodel wrote:
| Yeah, M&A are _joining of forces_. So it might well be what you
| said.
| iamgopal wrote:
| How can a 15B$ Revenue company can buy 20B$ company ?
| swyx wrote:
| because youre conflating stock and flow. adobe is worth $170b.
| geodel wrote:
| Taking loan? That's how people with $50K income by $500K homes
| collegeburner wrote:
| companies never buy with straight revenue. first it's half
| stock, so that becomes 10. second adobe had about $5b cash on
| its balance sheet. third they may have issued commercial paper
| or bonds to finance it, not in front of a bloomberg atm so i
| can't check issuances but it's pretty likely.
| flykespice wrote:
| Adobe on the run to ruin another amazing software.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Adobe engages in all kinds of bad faith shenanigans and dark
| patterns, feeling free to abuse their position. They need
| competition and this should be blocked by the FTC.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| > In addition, when used in this communication, the words "will,"
| "expects," "could," "would," "may," "anticipates," "intends,"
| "plans," "believes," "seeks," "targets," "estimates," "looks
| for," "looks to," "continues" and similar expressions, as well as
| statements regarding our focus for the future, are generally
| intended to identify forward-looking statements. Each of the
| forward-looking statements we make in this communication involves
| risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
| materially from these forward-looking statements.
|
| Indeed.
| jchw wrote:
| There is literally no direction this can go but down.
|
| If there wasn't enough evidence before, this seems to strongly
| suggest your only salvation from user-hostile corporate monoliths
| is community open source projects. So... Anyone want to build a
| multiplayer design tool? :)
| margarina72 wrote:
| you mean like PenPot?
|
| Check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262
| jchw wrote:
| I assumed something like this didn't exist so hard that I
| never bothered to look. That's awesome.
| ezekg wrote:
| Well, back to Sketch I guess.
| pratikch1253 wrote:
| Any open source alternatives ? I know Framer is an option but is
| it as good as Figma ?
| mathgladiator wrote:
| Well, mediocrity will create an opportunity for a new thing to
| emerge. I'm currently building my own figma for board games, so
| perhaps I'll focus on it sooner rather than later.
| pilingual wrote:
| Show HN 10 years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4744877
| O__________O wrote:
| CEO of Figma also commented in the past on HN that they were
| able to start Figma with support of the Thiel Fellowship:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448538
| capableweb wrote:
| 6 comments, not a lot... Should show people that successful
| Show HN isn't the end-all be-all that some believe.
|
| Here is some more interesting submissions with 30+ comments:
|
| - Launch of Figma, a collaborative interface design tool -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685407 - 135 points|7
| years ago|40 comments
|
| - Introducing Vector Networks: Generalized path editing for
| graphics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070600 - 198
| points|7 years ago|30 comments
|
| - Figma 1.0 - Collaborative interface design tool -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12597915 - 340 points|6
| years ago|58 comments
|
| One interesting comment made ~6 years ago
|
| > I hope they'll eventually choose this route. I also hope they
| won't be as greedy as Adobe. vladdanilov on Sept 28, 2016 -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12599444
| rchaud wrote:
| End of the line for Adobe XD if this happens?
|
| I like Figma a lot, but I'm glad I have an old copy of Sketch to
| fall back on. Adobe and its forever subscription model will
| eventually get applied to Figma.
| cj wrote:
| > Adobe and its forever subscription model will eventually get
| applied to Figma.
|
| Figma is already a "forever subscription". It's a SaaS
| subscription.
| rchaud wrote:
| I meant the free tier.
| wolfparade wrote:
| Don't do it Figma. You can beat Adobe.
| rglover wrote:
| This shouldn't surprise anyone. Figma followed the typical path
| for a company/product taking on massive amounts of venture
| capital.
|
| If you _are_ shocked by this, please take note and stop investing
| in products and services (no matter how good) that are investment
| vehicles, not real businesses.
| yalogin wrote:
| How is this the first time I am hearing about a design firm that
| is worth $20 billion?
| blairanderson wrote:
| here to complain about bloomberg.com - couldn't find any content
| to read on that page.
|
| https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/EawX9
| zander312 wrote:
| Adobe is a disgusting company. I remember they charged me $150
| just to be able to cancel my fucking accidental subscription to
| their awful creative cloud.
|
| R.I.P Figma
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Whoa, $20b seems like an eye watering amount for a tool like
| this.
|
| I guess it goes to show how little I know about all of this, but
| surely a company with Adobe's resources and prestige could just
| engineer something like this for less themselves?
|
| Seems crazy to me. I guess it's mostly about removing competition
| and giving people less options to not use an adobe product rather
| than the product itself that has value?
| didibus wrote:
| They have Adobe XD which is a desktop app, and my UX designer
| friends tell me it's actually a bit better than Figma in terms
| of features, but the allure of a cloud based Web tool like
| Figma that really promotes easily sharing and collaboration as
| the designer work is why Figma is more popular.
| sxg wrote:
| I'm dismayed by this acquisition but glad to see the near-
| universal dislike towards Adobe in this thread. How can a $150B+
| company exist with this much disdain for its business practices
| and products? I'm guessing Adobe's primary customer base is large
| corporations who don't care rather than individual users?
| NeveHanter wrote:
| HackerNews represents just a part of the customers that use
| products like Adobe suite, so that's pretty normal that
| majority of people give shit about such things and just use
| what they were given.
|
| By the way, changing processes and software in corporations is
| very hard thing to do as there's so much
| management/staff/human/distribution issues on the way.
| paulpan wrote:
| Adobe is the new Oracle or Intuit. Somehow it escapes the
| antitrust scrutiny that other Big Tech companies are subject
| to. Buying up smaller competitors left and right.
| apozem wrote:
| A product line can be useful, longstanding and industry-
| standard without being friendly, easy-to-use or cheap.
|
| I don't love Photoshop's long startup times, huge RAM usage and
| non-native Mac UI, but I appreciate what it lets me do. And I'm
| not even, for example, a graphic designer working with other
| people who expect me to submit Adobe assets.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For one, Photoshop & Illustrator have a significant history and
| feature advantage on most competitors.
|
| But for two: _" How can a $150B+ company exist with this much
| disdain"_ -- Have you looked at Oracle lately?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I should add that Adobe _used to_ be loved by us nerds. They
| always had management issues, I think, and developed a
| reputation as a software sweat shop I think; but back up
| until the mid or even late 90s they were seen as a high
| quality software maker with innovative products. Photoshop &
| Illustrator were untouchable, and they were seemingly
| inspired by and made best on the Mac so helped make the Mac
| kind of a hip "creator" platform.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| How does Oracle staff its engineering department with such a
| bad reputation?
|
| I once got an email from an Oracle recruiter, and I did not
| waste the opportunity to tell him how I feel about Oracle.
|
| Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Oracle or Larry
| Ellison.
| metadat wrote:
| Oracle is not homogeneous, there are cool teams and
| projects alongside the terrible ones. Don't mistake Larry
| Ellison as representing all of the 200,000 people employed
| by Oracle.
| manquer wrote:
| Sure there are cool teams in every org. What is the
| probability I will join one of them if they are very
| small % of workforce, even if you do join a such a team
| with great manager there is higher probability that will
| not last in orgs with bad reputation.
|
| Also while teams have variances org culture is rarely so
| different. Toxic cultures , red tape bureaucracy, or how
| performance is evaluated is typically mostly global not
| localised.
|
| That's isn't to say nobody should in such places, there
| are plenty of people who just want a paycheck and don't
| care where they work or what their work environment is
| like, these orgs are perfect for them.
|
| If you are passionate about your work and environment,
| and compensation wise squeezing your current value
| immediately in cash is not your priority then most big
| orgs especially ones like Oracle are bad place for you
| metadat wrote:
| No doubt, fully agree with you! I'm only proposing to
| keep an open mind, because you never really know until
| you connect with the people.
|
| I used to say so many nevers, "I'll never work for X,
| fuck them!", etc. As I've gotten older, I regret this
| manner of thinking my young self did. Always better to
| keep an open mind while still sticking to your guns.
|
| At the same time, don't ignore red flags!
| manquer wrote:
| Being idealistic is part of being young even when wrong
| that is good part of being young I think.
|
| I am more regretful I can no longer make those kinds of
| decision anymore, older you are there is more
| responsibility and you are forced into pragmatic approach
| to life and let go principles and ideologies you fought
| for and deeply believe in .
| pessimizer wrote:
| In my opinion, largely because they own a bunch of industry
| standard formats, so any competitor would be forced to start by
| cloning one of their products. Once you've successfully done
| that, congratulations, you've conquered 4% of the market, in
| that one area (let's say a photo editor), and your software
| still seems broken (although it's faster, bugs get fixed
| quicker, and the UI wasn't designed by a crazy person or filled
| with 30 year old cruft) because it doesn't seamlessly integrate
| with the rest of their suite.
|
| Affinity seems to have made some penetration by
| copying/innovating on an entire range of their products, but
| that's a huge up-front investment to grab a tiny piece of the
| pie.
|
| This is really a job for antitrust, but modern antitrust is
| just a circa mid/early 20c legend we tell children so they
| aren't scared that capitalism could get out of control and eat
| them.
| missedthecue wrote:
| How would anti trust apply here?
| kumarvvr wrote:
| It exists because some of its products are productivity
| monsters and are enterprise staples.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think one of the reasons I hate Adobe so much is that I
| genuinely like a lot of their software. They make great (if
| bloated) products but they make terrible managerial
| decisions. They're one of the few companies I think are evil
| to the very core. They employ dark patterns at every turn.
| It's not about providing a product or even a service to
| customers; it's only about extracting as much money from
| every customer as they possibly can.
| brennvin wrote:
| I'm surprised Figma is worth that much. For a while I was
| considering bootstrapping a business in this space and I was
| never very impressed with what I saw of Figma. Does not look that
| hard to compete with or replicate.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| "Does not look that hard to compete with or replicate"
|
| Then why haven't you? Seems like a good opportunity to make a
| few billion now that Adobe has set a price.
|
| I hear this all the time on HN. And yet, this rhetoric never
| seems to follow through.
| brennvin wrote:
| > Then why haven't you?
|
| I found another product opportunity that will be faster and
| cheaper to build. That I believe I could out-compete Figma
| were I rich does not mean I _am_ rich.
|
| Thanks for the down vote.
| yellowpencil wrote:
| Just my opinion, but your original comment comes off as
| comically dismissive of what Figma has done.
|
| Adobe, a company with literal billions in cash and
| thousands of engineers, wagers 20 BILLION dollars that it
| is not easy to compete or replicate what Figma has done. In
| fact, they attempted to compete with Adobe XD and "lost".
|
| The founders of Figma started working on the beginnings of
| it in 2012 (perhaps indirectly) and launched in 2016. They
| also raised 330+ million in VC money to make it happen.
|
| I'm a bootstrapped at heart and love the idea of small
| companies outmaneuvering giant elephants but suggesting one
| could outdo Figma, with relative ease, just doesn't sound
| likely.
|
| All that said, if you truly feel like you can, get out
| there and do it! Theres billions of dollars waiting for
| you.
| phailhaus wrote:
| You'd never be able to compete because the design is the
| product. You'd just be stuck copying them, always one step
| behind.
|
| Their interface's responsiveness is also a consequence of
| writing a rendering engine in WASM, so you'd have to figure
| that out too. [1] Plus the real-time collab. I don't know why
| you pretend as if these aren't difficult engineering problems
| to solve.
|
| [1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-
| time-...
| [deleted]
| patchorang wrote:
| With Figma's memory and performance issues lately, it feels like
| Adobe bought them a year ago.
| jjcm wrote:
| (figma employee)
|
| Unrelated to the news, would love to know what memory/perf
| issues you're facing. Do you have files where you're hitting
| the memory caps?
| tolulade_ato wrote:
| kgc wrote:
| Time to find a Figma alternative.
| paradite wrote:
| Blogpost from figma: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-
| collaboration-with-adobe/
| brundolf wrote:
| So what I'm hearing is there's a market opportunity to go rebuild
| Figma, just without being owned by Adobe
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Can the Figma founder do that ... eventually?
| habitue wrote:
| Yes!
| obert wrote:
| long life to PenPot https://penpot.app/
| saos wrote:
| Fair enough. Preferred to stay clear of Adobe and their trash
| subscription model so naturally I feel some resentment. Was
| enjoying the competition and thought Figma was well ahead of
| Adobe to be honest.
|
| I hope the deal fall through NGL
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Was enjoying the competition and thought Figma was well
| ahead of Adobe to be honest."
|
| They _were..._ That 's _why_ Adobe bought 'em.
| phaedryx wrote:
| Time to renew my Sketch license?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Not a fan of Adobe and not really a fan of Figma but they are
| things. Alot of people talking about Macromedia Fireworks and
| Dreamweaver etc in here is a bit curmudgeonly-old HN. That's
| _forever_ ago now as far as web /design. Yes it was sad/and Adobe
| made a mess, but alot has changed since then that lead to the
| environment where Figma rose. Not to mention probably most of the
| audience of users that are really into Figma weren't even born
| when all the golden era Flash and stuff was going on. The
| youngins don't understand big business Adobe, and they probably
| don't like the 'vibe', but they also aren't totally against it if
| they can keep using the product they owe a lot of their career
| to. They will be fine I think.
| joshe wrote:
| 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 been so happy to have Adobe out of my life these last 10
| years. I never even cared about the cost.
|
| And figma has been so admirable, one of the best browser based
| apps. Always squeezing incredible performance out of the web with
| their crazy c++ engine. And their fast pace of delivering new
| features, often reworking ui just for the craft of it. It's been
| fun to just read the release notes.
|
| https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
|
| Perhaps the silver lining will be the talent scattering, moving
| to and founding other companies, but for today this sucks.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Only open and free software can defeat the likes of Adobe.
|
| Can't wait for the dominance of Photoshop to be ended by gimp
| and ffmpeg, I've found that they work fairly well for whatever
| editing I need. Maybe open source variety of Figma also exist?
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _Can 't wait for the dominance of Photoshop to be ended by
| gimp_
|
| Hah, good joke, I've been hearing it for years now.
| zeruch wrote:
| Decades.
| Aperocky wrote:
| But you're not laughing at ffmpeg.
|
| Progress comes in bits and pieces, maybe gimp isn't it,
| just like GNU Hurd continues to suck, but something will be
| there eventually.
| robotbikes wrote:
| The one thing I know about is Penpot see https://penpot.app/
| which is by the team that designed Taiga.io - It's fully
| open-source and I think tries to solve some of the same
| problems but it's still in beta. I'm not much of a designer
| but yesterday started to teach myself Figma only to find this
| acquisition happening. I've resisted installing creative
| cloud for years and hearing various people's experiences with
| Adobe makes me feel like this was a wise decision.
| creativemonkeys wrote:
| Photopea has been pretty good at replacing Photoshop for my
| needs (non-designer).
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| For a large company, they also have pretty shady pricing. Like
| their "annual plan, paid monthly". You'd think you're just
| paying for the monthly subscription, but they hide the fact
| that you have to pay a penalty for early cancellation in the
| fine print.
|
| Dishonest, expensive, slow.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| My wife tried to cancel her subscription but the agent on the
| live chat just quickly and out of the blue gave her 4 months
| of free subscription. Not sure if this is unusual or part of
| their playbook.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Dishonest, expensive, slow.
|
| And depending on your use case, bloated. In all the features
| Photoshop has gained since 6.0, 7.0, and CS1, only a tiny
| handful add anything of value for my usage. If 7.0 or CS1
| were ported to modern operating systems they would fill my
| needs well and then some.
|
| This is another reason why alternatives such as Affinity
| Photo and Pixelmator are increasingly enticing; their core
| feature sets have reached near-parity with that of Photoshop
| for many and so Photoshop offers very little extra value.
| arcticfox wrote:
| That pissed me off so much when it got me. I can count the
| number of dark patterns I've ever fallen for (well, and
| eventually found out about) on one finger.
|
| It's so stupid too, I'm happy paying subscriptions for things
| and happy paying a fair price but being tricked into doing it
| - never again, Adobe. They target their own customers with it
| to scrape a few more dollars into the current quarter, I
| guess. Probably some executive bonus targets or something.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| There are dark patterns in Adobe's pricing plans up the
| wazoo. And each year it seems that they change their UI just
| a little more to try to lock your data into their Creative
| Cloud. Photoshop now tries to save your files to the Creative
| Cloud (instead of your computer) by default.
|
| I think the concern has definitely gone to an anti-trust
| level. Adobe packages Lightroom for _free_ with Photoshop,
| probably with Capture One directly in their sights. Anti-
| trust definitely needs a reinvigoration.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Well if it's any consolation the market also feels sad about
| this [0]. ADBE is down 15% as of this writing.
|
| My guess is because, given the current market, you don't really
| need to spent money acquiring potential competitors. As rate
| hikes continue (and likely will for the foreseeable future) I
| suspect many of the non-ipo's non-profitable startups will just
| die on the vine. No reason to spend $20 Billion to make sure
| they're not a threat, this isn't 2018.
|
| 0.https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADBE
| skinnymuch wrote:
| That's because of earnings too. Which includes past and
| future possible performance.
| munificent wrote:
| Every single one of these corporate consolidations makes me
| sad. Competition and heterogeneity are critical for capitalism
| to function and everyone one of these mergers reduces it.
| bearmode wrote:
| >the difficulty in canceling a subscription
|
| Never had an issue with this tbh, it's always very easy. Manage
| account > cancel plan.
|
| Hell, if you subscribe but then cancel within the same day,
| they give you a full refund. I've abused this a few times if I
| just need to do something quick - sub, use it for a few hours,
| cancel, and it doesn't cost me anything.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I'm paying via Paypal so I've just cancelled the adobe
| subscription through their subscription management panel. Is
| there any reason why this might be a bad idea?
|
| PS I just remembered that I forgot to cancel the subscription
| and they want to charge me 40 quid for the rest of the year.
| I even had a reminder set, but I missed it. So annoying.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| > Is there any reason why this might be a bad idea?
|
| Due diligence? Don't get into adobe without an adequate
| escape plan.
|
| ..."but I missed it".
|
| Given the amount of information regarding adobe being a
| bunch of cntz over the last many years, you got anyone you
| actually want to blame?
|
| And PS40? You got a write-off procedure?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > Given the amount of information regarding adobe being a
| bunch of cntz over the last many years, you got anyone
| you actually want to blame?
|
| I was asking for advice, so I'm a bit confused about your
| comment.
|
| I've been using them since photoshop 5 and generally had
| a positive opinion for most of that time. I learned about
| the whole annual sub/weekly payments issue last year.
|
| Come to think of it, I do blame them for dark UX and
| making the process unnecessarily difficult (which has
| worked in my case perfectly).
| rchaud wrote:
| I did the same with my newspaper subscription (NYT) and
| they just marked my subscription as inactive once the pay
| period passed. No issues.
| ryeights wrote:
| Their "yearly plan, billed monthly" with early termination
| fees is blatantly anti-consumer.
| bosie wrote:
| how can you terminate it early?
| filoleg wrote:
| By paying an early termination fee, which is 50% of the
| subscription cost of the remaining months[0].
|
| 0. https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/creative-
| cloud-...
| isodev wrote:
| To cancel a yearly plan, you must a) talk to their
| support staff (not available as an option in the portal)
| and b) pay the remainder of the period anyway.
|
| The only time you can freely modify your subscription is
| one month before your renewal date.
|
| It's borderline illegal!
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Just playing devil's advocate, why would someone pay the
| standard monthly price if they could get the annual price
| discount and cancel after a month?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Adobe could eliminate this loophole by simply charging
| the difference (between what they actually paid and what
| they would have paid on a monthly play) when they opt
| out.
|
| Presumably the current arrangement is some kind of
| creative accounting exercise though, and such a pro-
| customer policy might blow it up.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| I do this because I specifically assumed using Adobe
| there would be some maniacal dark pattern they wouldn't
| really let me cancel sooner than a year despite what the
| main text stated. Seems like I was correct, reading this
| thread.
| knicholes wrote:
| You can disable auto-renew any time.
| [deleted]
| nabaraz wrote:
| I did a trial of Creative Suite on my mac. When it was time
| to uninstall, I couldn't do that using Creative Cloud
| Uninstaller. Because, apparently I have to uninstall
| photoshop and other softwares from Creative Cloud App before
| uninstalling CC. I couldn't uninstall photoshop etc. because
| my login to CC App didn't work. So, I contacted Adobe, there
| was some issue with getting 2FA to my email for some reason.
| I had to reset my mac just to get rid of Adobe spywares.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| Yep. And that's why I permanently uninstalled Adobe
| software in favor of Photopea and similar alternatives.
| barkingcat wrote:
| Adobe pioneered the "click cancel plan but we will offer you
| some stuff that you don't care about in order to stop you
| from cancelling your plan" dark pattern.
|
| Then on the support call they will straight up pretend that
| none of their systems work in order to stop you from
| cancelling.
| bearmode wrote:
| I have literally cancelled (and later re-obtained)
| subscriptions to CC at least 15 times. It hasn't been an
| issue, and I've never needed to call anyone.
|
| They do offer you things, but those things tend to be free
| months. Not random stuff you won't care about.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Still running Creative Suite 6 in a virtual machine (for
| security isolation and compatibility) as I only use the product
| 2-3 times a year and refuse to give in to Adobe's rent-seeking.
| Lorin wrote:
| They ruined Macromedia as well. Fireworks was a fantastic
| hybrid vector/bitmap editing tool perfect for web work.
| neosat wrote:
| Agree. Macromedia products were amazing for their time.
| Dreamweaver, Flash (Creating flash apps including
| ActionScript), Fireworks with vector + bitmap, were all very
| cool until Adobe acquired them
| timeon wrote:
| Macromedia Freehand was also nice.
| 8note wrote:
| I still see shockwave/director apps around. Still running
| off of CDs
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| The largest Pictionary-like web app for the good part of
| a decade or so (early 2000s to early 2010s) was a
| Shockwave/Director app. Newer clones are yet to match its
| amazing features. Unfortunately _isketch.net_ got too old
| for the newer generations to pick it up. I can only guess
| what happened to the site. The technical debt must have
| been too great to port it to a newer platform, or perhaps
| the devs /maintainers moved on.
| derefr wrote:
| Always wondered why an indie app developer hasn't just
| decided to work their image-editor app up as "the new
| Fireworks."
|
| Many other image-editor apps do now take Fireworks' same non-
| destructive hybrid editing approach... _kind of_. But they
| 're always missing one thing or another. Either:
|
| 1. they aren't multiplatform (can't get "standard" adoption
| like Fireworks if you're macOS-only)
|
| 2. they don't go far enough with the vector editing
| capabilities (e.g. Fireworks allows you to apply arbitrary
| gradients/textures/other image assets as the stroke and fill
| of vector shapes)
|
| 3. they don't go far enough with the non-destructiveness
| (e.g. Fireworks applies filter-effects to both vector _and_
| raster layers, as non-destructive "filter layers" bound to a
| parent layer -- effectively "functional lenses" for images;
| can edit the base layer "underneath" these transformation
| layers, and see the transformed output change as a result. Of
| course, you can always "flatten" the transformations into the
| layer, to then edit the post-transformed version of the
| layer. Though IMHO this could be taken even further, with
| "brush modifications" being just another kind of
| transformation layer!)
|
| 4. they use project file formats that consist of entire
| directory bundles, or file formats opaque to the OS preview
| mechanism. Fireworks just stored projects as an extension
| chunk of a PNG file; and every OS knows how to preview PNG
| files. (And, if you didn't care about the project, you could
| just treat the PNG file _as_ a PNG file, putting it through
| ImageMagick or MSPaint or whatever, which would strip the
| optional chunks, thus "exporting" the project to PNG without
| needing the program that created it!)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Sketch is the new Fireworks.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I've had the same question for years! There are a few tools
| that have tried over the years, but nothing that has stuck
| around.
|
| And I get that the pixel-perfect design and slicing from
| the Fireworks era isn't as useful in today's world of
| responsive design and multiple screen sizes and variable
| screen densities, where CSS and JavaScript plays a much
| larger role, but I still wish we had a successor.
|
| Because as you said, although most apps now do the hybrid
| vector/faster thing, nothing really matches what we had
| with Fireworks.
|
| RIP Macromedia.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| The only program I ever used that felt like it was really
| gunning for Fireworks was, weirdly, a BeOS-exclusive app
| called e-Picture. It was a little buggy, but still
| terrific. (That last sentence sums up the entire BeOS
| ecosystem circa 1999, granted, which was tiny yet still
| bigger than I suspect most people know.)
| Tagbert wrote:
| Affinity Designer is a good vector/bitmap combo app. It
| closely parallels Illustrator features but adds in basic
| bitmap editing. If you pair it with Affinity Photo you get
| most of the Photoshop features. The same files can be
| shared with both without any loss of fidelity.
| girvo wrote:
| I adore Affinity's tools, but none of them are a
| replacement for Fireworks.
| Lorin wrote:
| I think the next big thing will be SVG tooling - so much
| untapped power.
| alcover wrote:
| Very interesting. I also regret FW fondly. Your post
| scratches an itch in me and I may be tempted to work on
| that.
|
| Sorry for my laziness to look it up but could you explain
| "Fireworks just stored projects as an extension chunk of a
| PNG file" ?
| nicoburns wrote:
| PNG format has a space for arbitrary metadata. Fireworks
| stored their proprietary save format inside this, and
| also rendered the file to flat PNG on save, meaning that
| you could preview fireworks files in anything that could
| read PNGs (although the file size would be huge).
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| To me, Sketch is a spiritual successor of Fireworks.
|
| I loved Fireworks, but it had far too many quirks that
| weren't improved, and when I discovered Sketch I was amazed
| how many thing that did bother me a lot in Fireworks were
| made _just right_ in Sketch.
| zeruch wrote:
| Fireworks was truly brilliant in its day (and probably still
| usable now TBH, but I like using archaic tools sometimes for
| purely artistic reasons).
|
| What happened with Macromedia was tragic.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| This was already basically Sketch years and years before
| Sketch even existed. They killed it because Adobe as a
| company has a complete lack of vision and even understanding
| of the tools they own.
| evanmoran wrote:
| This is 100% right. Fireworks was Sketch with better
| bitmap/filter/styling support. Removing it was a cost
| saving move right as Sketch/Figma were coming to own UI
| design.
| vyrotek wrote:
| Indeed. I started using Fireworks during the Macromedia era.
| I still regularly using my CS6 Fireworks.
| scrozier wrote:
| This. Fireworks was my go-to tool for years. Hit the perfect
| sweet spot for a semi-professional user. I've not yet
| recovered from this loss.
| animex wrote:
| I still use my copy of Fireworks for everything graphics
| related that I need. Yes, it doesn't do everything as well
| compared to modern suites but the UI was just so easy for a
| developer to use. Even Homesite is still better than most
| editors I've ever used.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| This genuinely hurts. Not only is Figma an excellent product,
| it demonstrates what can be achieved on the web as a platform.
| jawadch93 wrote:
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I sympathize with you and agree with everything except this:
|
| > the stasis in their ... ui
|
| I look for that in products I use a lot over long periods of
| time. I can't stand when companies are constantly
|
| > reworking ui just for the craft of it
| victornomad wrote:
| I feel the same :(
| seemaze wrote:
| This, and every acquisition Autodesk has ever made.
| tristanb wrote:
| I considered putting Adobe in a VM because i didn't want the
| 30,000 extra processes running when I install it. Its
| embarrassingly fragmented and bad. I absolutely dread the
| moment when I need to install CS on my new machine.
| joshe wrote:
| Maybe 15 years ago I ended up fencing the CC stuff off with
| firewall rules because it was the fastest way to deal with
| its awfulness.
|
| With the next computer for half a year it was always this
| queasy, i should probably install illustrator now, but once I
| do I can never go back. Maybe I can hold out another few
| weeks. This is for a corporate paid for version that would
| make my work easier. Eventually I buckled and it ruined
| another computer.
|
| 10 years free though!
| ukyrgf wrote:
| I went a step further, or maybe backward, and I have a
| separate computer that I connect to with AnyDesk and it has
| all the Adobe crap installed on it.
|
| Also, our company credit card got replaced, and the process
| of updating the card and re-activating Creative Cloud took
| two weeks. It got canceled August 29 and only yesterday,
| September 14, was I able to launch Illustrator without a nag
| window. I hate Adobe.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| How the hell did Photoshop get so bloated? The featureset
| hasn't changed all that much since CS3 era, and yet CS3 ran
| at half the memory and at twice the speed. What the hell
| happened?
| jawadch93 wrote:
| dforrestwilson wrote:
| Now would be a good time for the regulators to acknowledge that
| yes, Adobe is a monopoly, and to block this.
| alwillis wrote:
| It's not illegal to be a monopoly; it's illegal to use your
| monopoly to profoundly disadvantage your competitors.
|
| An example was Microsoft threatening to cancel HP's Windows
| license if they bundled Netscape Navigator instead of
| Internet Explorer back in the browser war days.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| 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 on with Lightroom, thinking that so long as
| Adobe still had competition in that market, they'd keep it a
| one-off license. Then, one day, upon discovering some
| compatibility issues with the latest MacOS and the version of
| Lightroom I was using, I thought I'd check what the latest
| version of LR had to offer - and discovered it had gone
| subscription-only as well, meaning my entire photo library
| would now be trapped on my old laptop unless I paid a monthly
| fee forever.
|
| It was painful researching and trialing alternatives,
| ultimately migrating my library over to Capture One, but it
| turned me so completely against Adobe that I've actively
| requested employers not assign me a Creative Cloud license (the
| tools fortunately only being tangential to my role).
| lenkite wrote:
| Kinda weird complaining about Adobe subscription pricing in a
| Figma thread when Figma also has the subscription pricing
| model.
| skyfalldev wrote:
| Figma doesn't have Adobe's predatory cancellation fees
| AFAIK.
| redler wrote:
| Hold my beer. -- Adobe
| lenkite wrote:
| What are these predatory cancellation fees ?
| pandemicsyn wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/qg1tyr/ad
| obe...
| ortusdux wrote:
| 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 marketing people, and they end up running the
| companies. And the product people get driven out of the
| decision making forums, and the companies forget what it
| means to make great products. The product sensibility and the
| product genius that brought them to that monopolistic
| position gets rotted out by people running these companies
| that have no conception of a good product versus a bad
| product.
|
| They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required
| to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they
| really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about
| wanting to really help the customers."_
|
| Creatives build companies, and if you are not careful, sales
| will destroy them.
| oblio wrote:
| Creatives also destroy companies. See NeXT or whatever the
| weird letter casing was.
| hosh wrote:
| Arguably, NeXT lives on in Apple.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| It's interesting to consider how Apple and NeXT were both
| nearing collapse in the late 1990s, and yet combining the
| two resulted, over the next 20 years, in perhaps the most
| successful tech company of all time.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Apple needed Steve Jobs back then. It needs another Steve
| Jobs now as well. Under Tim Cook, Apple has been great in
| terms of stock-market price and profitability, but the
| company clearly lacks a unifying vision for the future.
| They've bought themself time, but sooner rather than
| later, we'll see Apple decline and it won't look good.
| mvhooten wrote:
| Considering airpods alone are a massive company. I think
| Apple will be ok. https://jonahlupton.medium.com/what-is-
| airpods-was-a-company....
| samatman wrote:
| "NeXT bought Apple for negative $400 million" is a great
| quip.
| lelandfe wrote:
| The kind of creatives we're talking about, kind of by
| definition, do things differently (not to ape Apple's old
| slogan too much). That's AKA risk, and, yes, sometimes it
| will lead to ruin.
|
| But it's also the only way to move the area forward.
| revscat wrote:
| To echo the sibling comments, this is incorrect. NeXT
| lives on today in every Mac, iPhone, iPad, and every
| other Apple device. When Apple bought NeXT they used it
| as a foundation for OS X, which went on to power every
| device Apple makes or has made.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is true, to be fair .. anyone remember "Xaos Tools"
| (video effects), Audion or when Marc Cantor became so
| personally offensive that the business people paid him to
| leave? it is true.. end of innocence stories here
| alwillis wrote:
| Ironically when Apple acquired NeXT, it was essentially a
| reverse take over, since almost every significant
| executive and technical position of the merged company
| was from NeXT.
|
| It was NeXT that saved Apple with their tools (including
| Interface Builder and the use of Objective-C) that gave
| Apple the technological lead that allowed them to grow
| into the company they are today.
|
| Scott Forstall was the NeXT guy that headed the iOS (nee
| iPhone OS)team and we know how that turned out.
| hosh wrote:
| I think BeOS was a serious contender as the next
| generation MacOS. But BeOS didn't have Steve Jobs. Buying
| NeXT meant bringing Jobs back at the helm of Apple.
|
| It could have gone the other way too, like how Boeing's
| purchase of McDonnell Douglas, and McDonnel Douglas's
| takeover of key Boeing positions ended up eroding
| Boeing's culture of engineering excellence.
|
| It was also market timing too. The iPhone was not
| Forstall's first attempt at a device like this. He was
| part of the team that was trying to develop something
| similar back in the era of the Apple Newton in the late
| 90s. And all of that were seeded from two of the three
| form factors (tab, pad, and board) that Xerox Parc
| experimented with back in the 70s, along with the mouse,
| the GUI, and OOP.
| simondotau wrote:
| Compared to NeXTStep, BeOS was a wildly incomplete tech
| demo of a relatively incremental improvement to the
| classic MacOS formula. It was only a "serious contender"
| in the media and in the headcanon of Apple's fan base.
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| Btw. Newton wasn't too bad for it's time. It had
| handwriting recognition etc
| ROTMetro wrote:
| It's a great quote for what has happened to the USA in
| almost every single area, industry, government, education,
| religious thought, political thought.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I recently found out MARS yes the candy company has
| become the largest owner of Veterinarian offices in the
| USA. It really is palpable how everything is on a runaway
| train and we can all see it yet are powerless to stop it.
| somishere wrote:
| Also cat food. They invest in a reef conservation
| technique too, and named a reef in Indo - where they were
| trialing said technique - after one of their catfood
| brands. The logo says "more coral today, more fish
| tomorrow" and there's a picture of a cat.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/johannaread/2021/05/05/the-
| sheb...
| TheCondor wrote:
| MS's Office collaborative cloudish stuff is a _prime_
| example of this.
|
| I don't know how many times my team has ganged up on a
| document in Google Cloud and collaboratively banged it out.
| Likewise, I can only remember a couple times I've done it
| with Office and not ended up with n different copies of the
| doc that we had to manually merge back together, if we even
| could.
| nradov wrote:
| You must have been using an old version of MS Office, or
| had it improperly configured. We use Office for real time
| collaboration on documents all the time. You can put a
| file on SharePoint, then have multiple users edit live
| using a mix of desktop, mobile, and web applications. The
| changes are immediately visible and this doesn't create
| different copies.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Office on the web actually does this really well now. The
| desktop app is a little more glitchy, but Google doesn't
| even have one of those. I really like tracked changes in
| Word on the web. Microsoft has come a real long way in
| the last three years.
| 8jy89hui wrote:
| Does this include products like Word Online? Because that
| product is awful.
|
| The visual bugs are annoying and the document-syncing
| with multiple editing people feels like 2005. As of last
| year, it couldn't even render a .docx file properly. It
| tried to render input fields as images. LibreOffice
| Writer opened the doc better than /Word/ Online.
|
| I am a student who has access to office online and have
| tried to encourage my peers to use it for group projects
| so that we don't have to use Google. However after
| repeatedly having to make up excuses for their neglected
| product, I have given up and just request anonymous
| editing links for Google Docs.
| patcon wrote:
| > discovered it had gone subscription-only as well, meaning
| my entire photo library would now be trapped on my old laptop
| unless I paid a monthly fee forever.
|
| I empathize, but isn't all this the reason they would fork
| out so much for figma?
|
| I mean, people hated them for going subscription with the
| tools that used to be desktop, but they absolutely adore
| figma that has never been anything but subscription. It's
| confusing psychology at play here...
| mortenjorck wrote:
| _> people hated them for going subscription with the tools
| that used to be desktop, but they absolutely adore figma
| that has never been anything but subscription_
|
| I think a big part of it is exactly that, that Figma's
| value proposition as a subscription was always clear from
| the beginning, that it's not just a design tool but a real-
| time, collaborative design environment. Sketch was always
| the better choice for solo, side-project work, because it
| was a one-off purchase with no need for a cloud component
| (its more recent direction to try to become a cloud-first
| service has unfortunately only served to highlight its
| shortcomings versus Figma).
|
| Creative Suite never had a value proposition as a
| subscription apart from becoming a predictable cost center
| for businesses. Tacking on an inferior version of Dropbox,
| making the whole suite subscription-only, and calling it
| Creative Cloud did a pretty decent job of alienating those
| who didn't fall into that "predictable cost center" market.
| altacc wrote:
| A lot of amateur photographers used Lightroom and were
| willing to pay a one off purchase price whereas a monthly
| cost for something you might hardly use in a month is too
| expensive. Figma has a high percentage of users who use it
| regularly as part of their paying jobs. It also has online
| features, which you expect to pay continuously for.
| Lightroom Classic had no online features.
|
| I still use Lightroom 6, the last standalone version, so I
| haven't found anything else with such good combination of
| library organisation & editing. But no way I'll ever pay a
| monthly subscription for the current, slightly better
| version or the less capable cloud version.
| c0mptonFP wrote:
| > but they absolutely adore figma that has never been
| anything but subscription.
|
| Doesn't Figma have a free tier? That changes everything.
| ifaxmycodetok8s wrote:
| I use figma for personal projects and I've never forked
| out a dime.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _free tier? That changes everything._
|
| Does it? To me, that just says "Locking my data in a
| platform that can suddenly decide to charge me for
| functionality."
| c0mptonFP wrote:
| Yup, better get rid of your GitHub account then as well
| bsder wrote:
| You said this sarcastically, but it is _really_ good
| advice.
|
| Note that Microsoft now has _two_ controls on your
| digital identity. Login with Office365 and Login with
| Github.
|
| If they pull a Google and disconnect you, you're in a
| world of hurt if you don't have otherwise.
|
| Tech folks should have never allowed GitHub to become the
| monopoly it did.
| killerdhmo wrote:
| So do many adobe products, including XD; their Figma
| competitor
| supertofu wrote:
| XD was actually their Sketch competitor. What makes Figma
| remarkable is the ability to use it on the web. I wonder
| if Adobe will keep this aspect.
| killerdhmo wrote:
| Sketch... competes with Figma. They're UI/UX tools. What
| makes Figma great was their collaboration first element,
| which they will be keeping. Adobe was going down the web
| path as well
| https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/10/26/creative-
| cloud-...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _has never been anything but subscription_
|
| Because that's not the same as a bait-and-switch, and
| because they provided value to subscribers in the form of
| continuous innovation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I used to beta test for them. A few months back I took at
| look at the current version of Audition to see what I'd been
| missing out on since the days of CS6 nearly a decade ago.
|
| Three things have changed. It now includes one third-party
| plugin (that anyone could purchase) offering an alternative
| volume meter - the equivalent of a slightly different color
| histogram for photo/video software. It offers some new
| presets with friendlier names, for a feature that already
| existed. And they unified version numbers with other
| products. EDIT: Also some bug fixes, but poorly documented
| and tbh pretty rare edge cases. I still use CS6 in production
| and bugs are not a source of worry.
|
| That's it. Anyone who has been paying a subscription for this
| has been getting ripped off wholesale. The product is great -
| but it was great before Adobe acquired it (when it used to be
| called CoolEdit) and Adobe actually removed functionality
| from it along the way, like dumping MIDI support because they
| didn't want to cater to musicians.
|
| Any designers/engineers that understand or use the product
| left long ago. A standout example of this in their playlists
| feature - you can select a bunch of marked regions in a
| waveform or project and add them to a separate list, where
| you can rearrange their playback order freely - very useful
| if you are structuring a radio program or a podcast.
| Except...once you've found an arrangement you like, you can't
| do anything else with it. You can't render the audio to a new
| file, generate a new project, export it, save the list to a
| text file, or copy it to the clipboard, or anything else.
| They started building it 10 years ago and then never bothered
| to finish it.
|
| I don't really think of Adobe as a software company any more.
| They're IP landlords who spend the bare minimum on
| integration and maintenance of their properties while
| continuously jacking up the rent.
| amatecha wrote:
| CoolEdit! haven't heard that name in a while. Yeah, Adobe
| used to be ultra-respected, especially in the 90's as
| Photoshop took the world by storm. These days, as you can
| see, the response to "X acquired by Adobe" is met with
| universal disappointment (except by those who have Adobe
| stock, I guess).
| ebertucc wrote:
| Even those with Adobe stock are not happy; Adobe's shares
| are down over 15% since the announcement.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Incidentally, the acquisition was about 10% of Adobe's
| market cap
| qwertox wrote:
| SoundForge was the better option, cracked, just like
| Microsoft used it, of course. That was in the Radium
| days.
|
| It went over to Sony and is now at Magix.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Acid 2.0 was for loops and basically a DAW vs the
| SoundForge sound design angle. I made some wicked tracks
| in Acid back in the day. Also became a Sony product,
| still works pretty much the same.
| [deleted]
| softfalcon wrote:
| I feel this in my very soul. Adobe used to be so cool and I
| loved the maturity and capability of their products.
|
| Then subscription subsistence reigned supreme and now I avoid
| Adobe products like the plague.
|
| Happily using DxO PhotoLab while I continue to avoid a
| Lightroom subscription.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > 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 Adobe and their
| subscription model.
| pkulak wrote:
| DxO destroys Lightroom, as far as I'm concerned.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| "Which tools have been surpassed? "
|
| Davinci Resolve is, for my use case, just as good as
| Premiere and Afx.
|
| It's also free.
|
| I wish gimp was as good as Ps.
| zeruch wrote:
| I gave up GIMP for Krita years ago and have yet to see a
| reason to change (I still use Adobe as well, but for FOSS
| tools, Krita has stayed at the top for me)
| emanuelez wrote:
| Disclaimer: Capture One employee here. That being said I
| invite anyone to try out the free trial and confirm or dis-
| confirm my claims.
|
| In my opinion Capture One best features are:
|
| 1) image and color quality 2) tethering capabilities 3)
| workflow customization and optimization
| medion wrote:
| I want to move to Capture One... Is it a nightmare from
| Lightroom? Is there any migration automation?
| base698 wrote:
| I'm not a designer full time, but have dabbled over my
| career and in my youth used Photoshop and Premiere heavily.
| I'd say Pixelmator and Sketch were more approachable,
| discoverable and had better workflows. This made the combo
| of being easier to pick up than Adobe tools and more
| powerful for professionals. I was able to use Figma
| productively in my first day of using it. The added
| collaboration features with Figma's App preview mode and
| collaboration in the tool made me never look at anything
| else when I needed to design something.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Capture One and Lightroom are definitely fighting in the
| same class. Both are true pro-grade tools. Some people and
| some workflows will prefer one of the two, but that's how
| preferences work.
|
| It's basically Coke versus Pepsi.
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher have been a breath
| of fresh air for the last few years. They have you pay
| once, not a subscription. The features keep coming at a
| great pace while retaining a very sensible UI.
| alwillis wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
|
| Reminds me of the early days when pro Mac software was
| well designed and reasonably priced; not the bloatware we
| get from Adobe and Microsoft today, for example.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually I'm using Darktable with great success for post
| processing my raw files on Linux and Mac. On the paid side
| Affinity & CaptureOne provide great alternatives.
| ajgrover wrote:
| I've been a Capture One user for several years and it's a
| more powerful tool than Lightroom for sure. Layer
| capability removes the need to go to PS for most simple use
| cases. Their color tools were much better previously as
| well but LR has some major recent updates. I also like
| their session catalog model, but that's optional and mostly
| personal preference. It's not as well designed IMO, a bit
| more of a power user tool where you can tweak the UI to
| your liking, but in terms of functionality it's as good or
| better than LR.
|
| Affinity Photo is also on the same level as PS, I don't
| know about "surpassed" but Adobe is no longer the clear
| leader.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I can't agree more. I still use an ancient version of
| photoshop/illustrator sometimes and lemme tell you, the
| difference in responsiveness is STARK.
|
| The problem is largely the entire concept of SaaS, but some
| stronger anti-trust anti-monopoly laws couldn't hurt either.
| slantedview wrote:
| The laws are there but regulators are hesitant to enforce
| them.
| mekkie wrote:
| I can't believe I'm not the only one. Something similar
| happened to me with one of their iPad painting apps. They
| told me it would be completely free for artists. Went to save
| my files and put them on my computer for printing, only to
| learn they were locked within the adobe cloud cage of despair
| kolbe wrote:
| Adobe's stock is down 17% on the news. So, it's bad for
| consumers. Bad for Adobe. Probably only good for the ego of a
| few executives and investment bankers.
| paloaltoasshole wrote:
| good for figma employees, founders and investors
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Well, good for the founders and investors anyways, who
| knows how many employees had meaningful holdings that
| outweigh the hurt of being integrated into Adobe
| karaterobot wrote:
| My guess is there are a lot of Figma employees who would
| rather not be working for Adobe, regardless of whatever
| incentives they get in the deal. It's hard to overstate how
| little regard software designers have for Adobe.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| It gives me whiplash to see Sean Parent's deeply
| technical public talks on Adobe's experiences with C++,
| and Adobe's disdain for customers (and presumably other
| programmers' disdain for Adobe).
| e-clinton wrote:
| I'm sure they'll totally fine with in as they cash their
| massive checks.
| kolbe wrote:
| Why do you assume they all get massive checks? Why do you
| assume they're as materialistic and indifferent to the
| quality of their work as you?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Well they wont all be massive now that mostly VCs and
| sometimes founders soak up all the benefits from an
| acquisition before the regular employees get much.
| kansface wrote:
| 50x revenue would be plenty to go around, no?
| andruby wrote:
| 17% is huge. That means the market values Adobe as worth 26B
| less than yesterday [0], which is more than the acquisition
| price of 20B.
|
| They also released quarterly earnings today, but those beat
| the market's expectations. What's going on?
|
| [0] market cap = 144B * 17% = 26B
| dubcanada wrote:
| There is a lot more to earnings than market expectations,
| mostly guidance. And it was fairly bad.
|
| Also this is being reacted too negatively, they are paying
| a HUGE price for a company that only has a AAR of 400
| million a year.
| qorrect wrote:
| They lowered their forecast.
|
| Also just a horrible and desperate play.
| flashgordon wrote:
| RIP I wonder if every company Adobe buys is a signal for soon
| to be hole in the marketplace that might need to be filled?
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I have an adobe subscription, I never heard of Figma. I am sure
| their product is great, but it is a niche product. Figma is not
| worth 20B as a standalone company. Adobe will integrate Figma's
| technology into Adobe's suite of products and will make it
| available to the masses. I say it is a good thing that Adobe is
| acquiring Figma.
|
| Change is hard; As a Figma consumer you are probably
| uncomfortable with the change, but Adobe acquiring is better
| than Figma going shutting down due to lack of mass adoption.
| papichulo4 wrote:
| Heads up, then, it's the de-facto standard in UX / UI design
| these days. There are alternatives, but this is the go-to
| tool people are training on, using at work, etc. It's not
| some unknown tool that's being saved by Adobe out of
| obscurity.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _Change is hard; As a Figma consumer you are probably
| uncomfortable with the change, but Adobe acquiring is better
| than Figma going shutting down due to lack of mass adoption_
|
| Hilariously bad take. Figma has very strong adoption. Lacking
| the same scale as Adobe doesn't mean it has bad adoption.
| bbx wrote:
| > Never heard of Figma
|
| > Says it's a niche product not worth $20B
|
| You're definitely not aware of how Figma changed the game and
| how essential it is to web design today. Whether you're a
| solo designer, a freelancer, a startup, a tech company, a UX
| team in a major company... Figma just works. And just makes
| sense. Their velocity is fantastic. They launch features
| every few months. The performance is incredible. The ease of
| use is phenomenal. The collaboration capabilities are
| perfectly integrated. Even developers use it and love it.
|
| They have taken the market by storm. And it's a huge market.
|
| You don't seem to be part of that target market, and that's
| fine. But saying Figma joining Adobe is a plus just shows how
| little you know about Figma and the web design world in
| general.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| The thing about Adobe is that their products are used by
| common people and professionals. I edit 10 of my personal
| photos a year, still I have an Adobe subscription which
| includes Photoshop and Lightroom.
|
| Had Figma been part of the Adobe Suite I would have at-
| least downloaded it and tried it. As great as Figma is,
| reach of their product is limited, Adobe is giving Figma's
| technology the reach they would have never gotten as a
| standalone company.
| radley wrote:
| Figma is free to use. It's cross-platform, web-based, and
| multiple people can edit at the same time.
|
| Limited reach is probably the last way to describe Figma.
| It's just an awareness thing, which is totally fine.
| skeaker wrote:
| Tell that to Adobe who disagrees with you to the order of
| 20 billion dollars.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I said Figma is not worth 20 billion as a standalone
| company. It might be worth 20 billion to Adobe. Adobe can
| do to Figma what Facebook did to Instagram, Facebook took
| a relatively small startup Instagram and made it into a
| global juggernaut worth hundreds of billions in value.
|
| Similar story with ByteDance and Musically, how many of
| you have used Musically before Bytedance bought it and
| re-branded it as TikTok.
| yonz wrote:
| Tried to run away from Adobe and they still got me, RIP... Will
| have to move again once they ruin Figma with feature overload.
|
| Simplicity is so hard to achieve with design and Figma has done
| a great job striking the balance with feature set and
| simplicity. All the while delivering a super responsive
| platform.
| Sakos wrote:
| Really? I pretty much hate the idea of tech acquisitions
| entirely now. It generally ends up in the loss of innovation
| and competition on the market.
| esalman wrote:
| Our university subscribes to Adobe Products Suit- when all of
| their functionality can be replicated with FOSS. They sent out
| a survey about this before they started the subscription and I
| answered negatively to that, to no avail. So that's where our
| tuition/grant/loan/savings money are going.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Unless some stuff has changed in the past few years gimp is
| not a suitable replacement for adobes products.
| spookie wrote:
| There are a lot more FOSS tools than GIMP. Also, don't
| criticize the tool for a lack of understanding. You also
| had to learn adobe tools, after all.
| loudmax wrote:
| University students should be learning the craft, not the
| tool.
| prepend wrote:
| > This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made
| me sad.
|
| For me, it was... Atlassian buying HipChat Salesforce buying
| Tableau Salesforce buying Slack Microsoft buying GitHub (sort
| of) Alteryx buying Trifacta Oracle buying Cerner
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > Salesforce buying slack
|
| I'm a very heavy slack user for work and personal workspaces
| and haven't seen anything bad yet, though I also don't pay
| the bill for those organizations. Im sure over time it may
| get worse, but for the meantime this seems to be one of those
| rare acquisitions where the child company is doing so well
| the parent may be afraid to touch it (rightfully so).
|
| > Microsoft buying Github
|
| This one haunts my dreams. Microsoft is drawing a huuuuge
| moat around the developer experience. I have to imagine they
| will tighten the noose within the next 5 years. Ditto for
| Gaming as they now own half the games industry: EA,
| Activision/Blizzard, Obsidian, and many many more.
| magicink81 wrote:
| + Atlassian buying Trello, IMO
| ngrilly wrote:
| I'd say the GitHub acquisition is the exception in that list.
| It seems to go well from my perspective as a user.
| prepend wrote:
| I'm not terribly upset because I think it could be worse if
| others bought them, but I think they've stagnated and had
| lots of stability problems since the purchase.
| chirau wrote:
| I don't agree on the 'stagnated' part. A lot has come out
| of Github since that acquisition. I am actually impressed
| how it has managed to mature into a fully enterprise
| grade ecosystem yet somehow maintaining its allure and
| user friendliness that smaller developer teams enjoy.
| biztos wrote:
| Oracle buying Sun?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Sun_Microsystem.
| ..
|
| Has more real value ever been destroyed in the service of
| paper value?
|
| Arguably yes, though I am including DEC in this equation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq#Acquisition_by_Hewlett-.
| ..
| prepend wrote:
| That was a hit and they basically obliterated Sun.
|
| But if you're looking at lost value, AOL buying TimeWarner
| (and the Sun parts of Netscape).
| chasd00 wrote:
| don't forget Salesforce buying Heroku. and i say that as a
| guy who makes his living with Salesforce.
| ljm wrote:
| Heroku has stagnated massively in the face of upstart
| competitors like Vercel, Fly and Render.
|
| Even their new public roadmap shows little of significance,
| it might as well be in maintenance mode.
| cyco130 wrote:
| Cool Edit Pro was one of my favorite programs ever. Adobe bought
| it and renamed it to Audition. I still can't believe how fast it
| went down after that.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design
| work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of
| design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma.
| When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing
| a miracle. Software like this _doesn 't exist_. It was the first
| design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years).
|
| And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.
| apozem wrote:
| I don't think Figma is going to die. It'll be bundled as part
| of the Creative Suite. It'll add buttons to quickly export your
| designs to PhotoShop or Illustrator or whatever. It'll probably
| get slower and clunkier.
|
| Not death, just... Adobe.
| afavour wrote:
| So a slow death, then.
|
| I'm old enough to remember when Adobe acquired Macromedia.
| They slapped some new icons on Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash
| etc. then completely neglected them until people abandoned
| them. I pray Figma fares better.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| In this case, I think it will. Adobe has been trying to
| build their own version of Figma for like 5 years. If
| anything, this probably means the end of XD and maybe their
| web versions of Photoshop. The Macromedia acquisition was a
| little different - Fireworks was an inferior Photoshop
| competitor, Freehand an inferior Illustrator competitor,
| Dreamweaver was outside of their core business, Flash
| actually got decent support until the world itself moved on
| from it (and Adobe mistakenly believed it could survive as
| closed source), and the rest of the portfolio didn't have
| much value. In Figma's case, it's actually a superior
| competitor to XD and even Photoshop in a lot of use cases,
| and it's figured out the web-based design environment that
| Adobe has tried repeatedly to do with mixed results.
|
| I'd be surprised if they decided to shutter Figma. Now...
| ruin it by adding a bunch of crap nobody wants like Adobe
| does with every other product? Pretty likely. But I don't
| think they'll do what they did to Macromedia. I could be
| wrong, though.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Fireworks was completely focused on web graphics, and
| Photoshop couldn't hold a candle to it for that use case.
| I used photoshop for touching up photos and generating
| things, then fireworks for cutting up and exporting the
| graphics, in a time before browsers could take
| practically anything and CMSes would autogenerate
| versions for different uses.
|
| Also, Dreamweaver was heads and shoulders above GoLive or
| whatever that app was Adobe was pedaling for web page
| design at the time. It lost its edge once Adobe adopted
| it as their main web page editing app.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Adobe is a fate worse than death. For software, at least.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > It'll be bundled as part of the Creative Suite
|
| I can promise you it wont. None of their recent acquisitions
| have. Allegorithmic Substance is extra money on top of CC now
| they've bought it. Figma will probably remain an extra
| subscription too.
| munbun wrote:
| If it gets slower or clunkier, it will die.
|
| High chance Adobe increases pricing & wastes a year of
| engineering resources on integrating Figma with their Adobe
| Cloud over building useful features.
| apozem wrote:
| Figma will likely slow down.
|
| In the short term, they've got to lay off redundant folks,
| join the new healthcare plan and learn how to work with
| lots of new stakeholders. All that comes before the actual
| engineering work of integrating into Adobe Cloud. That's a
| lot of organizational chaos, not great for shipping.
|
| In the long term, I'd guess there will be a cultural shift
| away from speed. Startups are fast because if they're not,
| they die. Large corporations don't do that. Large
| corporations have enterprise customers and people who worry
| about liability and lots of politics. It's just a different
| mindset and set of pressures.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| You should try out Affinity Designer, the one time fee of 40
| euros is a no brainer. I use it since 2017 for my UI designs.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've tried Designer and I just hate how it handles groups.
| Illustrator seems to be the only vector software that does
| groups right these days.
| roflyear wrote:
| Adobe is a shit company. It is criminal how hard it is to
| cancel a subscription.
| apollokami wrote:
| Figma was really one of a kind. Back to Sketch I suppose.
| rchaud wrote:
| Yep. Sketch can feel limited compared to Figma (I hate that
| they need iOS Mirror app instead of being able to access
| interactive prototypes on the web), but I love that they are
| a desktop app and you don't have to keep paying forever.
| Wintamute wrote:
| You've been able to play Sketch prototypes on the web for a
| few years already, also they just released a new iPhone app
| that lets you preview prototypes and docs. Their iOS Mirror
| app is pretty much deprecated now I think
| rchaud wrote:
| Last I checked, I couldn't access the prototypes on a
| mobile device that wasn't iOS.
|
| I just need Sketch to publish the prototype to a publicly
| accessible web URL like Figma does. When I needed to do
| usability testing, I had to use a third party service
| called Marvel that imports the mockups and publishes them
| to a web page on their domain.
| rchaud wrote:
| See, if this was local software that you could buy once and
| keep forever, an event like this would not have felt so full of
| foreboding.
|
| On cloud-based web apps, there is no opt-out short of ceasing
| use of the program entirely. Don't want their new features? Too
| bad, we're going to roll them out anyway, and there is no
| turning back after that.
|
| I'm still puttering along just fine on a copy of Office 2010,
| so my opinions may not be representative of the majority.
| tgv wrote:
| Well, I can't quite get my Word 5.1a to run anymore. It was
| the best version of Word to ever have lived. Unfortunately,
| it only runs on 68k and PPC macs (on the latter even under
| emulation, IIRC). Software has a limited lifetime,
| unfortunately. Bit rot may be metaphorical, but it does
| happen.
| rchaud wrote:
| True, and Office 2013 on MacOS does not work on newer
| versions of the OS (Intel chip).
|
| At least Windows 10 has backwards compatibility, but even
| that is ending with Windows 11.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I still run Mac classic using SheepShaver, so there is
| always still a way.
| tstrimple wrote:
| If this was local software, you'd lose out on most of the
| collaborative benefits that Figma provides. That
| collaboration, especially with guest accounts is one of the
| reasons for the explosive growth and popularity. If this was
| a buy it once tool that required IT support for collaboration
| it wouldn't have nearly this growth trajectory or industry
| adoption.
| shaan7 wrote:
| You can make local software with collaboration support. It
| is possible to make Figma so that you can do your design
| locally even if your Internet is kaput.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > You can make local software with collaboration support
|
| You still need to have someone maintain the central
| server that serves as the single source of truth.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| The central server only needs to handle shared data - and
| we already have plenty of protocols for that so that
| there can be multiple companies that provide that service
| or, if you prefer, allow you to self host.
|
| URLs can handle the rest, this is why they exist after
| all.
| itronitron wrote:
| I never understood the appeal of Figma, or even it's use case.
| Can someone explain it to me?
| nlh wrote:
| If you're a UI designer and you work on a remote team, Figma
| makes it incredibly easy to both build and share your designs
| with your teammates. It runs entirely in a browser and was
| built from the start for sharing, so you can jump into a
| design file and see and share the latest work in real time.
|
| It is to design as Google Docs or Sheets was to Word or
| Excel. No more passing around files - everything just works
| in the browser.
| smilespray wrote:
| And it's fast and doesn't come with 30 000 features you
| don't need, like support for print design.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Yes, Figma's appeal is that it was not owned by Adobe.
| cush wrote:
| Looks like Adobe is getting you back for pirating their
| software for 18 years
| jansan wrote:
| What is the great feature of Figma? I tried to use it for
| illustration and it did not feel great at all compared to
| software like Affinity Designer. How were you using it that it
| feels like such a great loss to you?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Product (software specifically) design is where Figma shines.
| Auto layout, prototyping, etc. are second to none. Sketch had
| all of these features for years, but Figma's implementation
| and depth of execution is unrivaled.
| nobleach wrote:
| Figma's biggest strength is in UI design. Open illustration,
| while possible is not so great. (I still love Illustrator for
| this purpose, others may disagree or have other favorite
| tools). Figma allows UX/UI designers to speak a congruent
| language with UI developers. A design system or component
| library can be mutually understood. Things like, "we're using
| our 80% gray button here" can be very easily communicated.
| That's not at all impossible in other tools, Figma just takes
| it to a very nice level.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Not illustration - design (UI design, specifically). It's
| fantastic for maintaining styles/themes, collaborating,
| iconographic design, flows, and especially
| composable/configurable/modular UI components. The components
| are one of the standouts for me, as compared to other
| software. They are more powerful, and yet somehow less
| confusing/complex than in other software. In general, I
| always run into some kind of limitation or bug or confusing
| behavior in other software - Figma has by far given me the
| least trouble. They obviously have both enormously talented
| designers and enormously talented engineers in charge. Also,
| they appear to actually think about what the team-based UI
| design pipeline looks like in practice.
|
| Edit: As others have pointed out, it's not so much the
| existence of a feature that's _missing_ from other software -
| it 's the design and implementation of features.
|
| Edit: Their autolayout implementation is incredible. And
| their tutorial videos! My god, they're incredibly
| discoverable and informative and SHORT. I'm going to stop
| because I could keep coming back and adding edits to this
| comment all day.
| jansan wrote:
| Thank you (and the others). I seem to have completely
| missed the whole purpose of Figma.
| digitalengineer wrote:
| Things like this make us SUPER valuable and fast:
| https://www.uiprep.com/
| rchaud wrote:
| Figma is mostly used for website and app prototyping. It's
| very popular because it allows for multi-user collaboration,
| like a Google doc. Older prototyping tools like Invision or
| Sketch did not have this, and it was a major differentiator.
|
| You can create different screens and set up click points,
| such as a button. Clicking the button navigates you to
| another screen in your design. This is called "interactive
| prototyping".
|
| Figma puts these interactive prototypes on the web, so
| designers can create a visual prototype that can be tested on
| mobile and desktop devices. It's more realistic than simply
| looking at pictures of mockups. The biggest advantage is that
| it does not require developers to write working code and
| deploy a whole app just to click around and test it out.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Since this is a thread of Adobe and some people might know this:
|
| In the late 80s and 90s many of the window managers were based on
| PostScript. Sun News was an extension of PostScript and Next was
| based on Display PostScript.
|
| How did licensing work back then. Could Sun have OpenSource News?
| I mean it did implement PostScript but my understanding is they
| were not using actual Adobe code.
| hedgehog wrote:
| I don't know specifically but it was bad enough that Apple
| decided to rework OS X before they shipped.
| grishka wrote:
| Is it even possible to license a standard? Not a particular
| implementation, but the standard itself, like a file format or
| a network protocol.
| [deleted]
| m88m wrote:
| Nice. I guess it's about time to check what Sketch has been up
| to...
| butterlesstoast wrote:
| Brace yourselves for Figma to be the next Magento like monolith
| that Adobe has no idea how to support : (
| aluminussoma wrote:
| Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation
| organically (To their credit, their stock price soared through
| financial engineering). Adobe has instead augmented its
| capabilities through acquisitions. Today's acquisition of Figma
| is no different.
|
| And maybe that is fine. Adobe is not alone. Many big companies
| can only expand their capabilities through acquisitions. Those
| big companies are doing fine.
|
| Specific to Adobe, the acquisition of Macromedia was a huge
| success in part because it injected a lot of talent into Adobe
| that stayed and succeeded. Maybe Figmates will be able to do the
| same.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation
| organically..._
|
| In-house innovation is not the problem1. What Adobe _hasn 't_
| been able to replicate with XD or Illustrator is Figma's
| success with network effects related to collaborative editing
| and review.
|
| https://research.adobe.com/research/
| aluminussoma wrote:
| In house innovation is certainly a problem on the product
| side. What new Adobe products have come out in the last
| decade? Every new product or service is from an acquisition.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > their stock price soared through financial engineering
|
| Not disagreeing with your point, but they can kindly fuck off
| piggy-backing on the good reputation of _engineering_ , which
| is about building things, not rent-seeking and gate keeping. It
| would be like saying Intuit is innovating "political
| engineering". Or calling an unpaid internship at Goldman Sachs
| "volunteering". I have similar thoughts about "growth hacking",
| btw.
| metanonsense wrote:
| When you listen very, very carefully, you can still here the
| champagne corks popping in the Sketch headquarters.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| Interesting context on this deal from a month ago:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/figma-growing-inside-microso...
| kundi wrote:
| In America, greed eats purpose
| yashasolutions wrote:
| this is seriously sad. It is so hard to build a great product,
| and so easy to f things up. Given Adobe track record, there is
| litterally more chances to see things going south for figma
| homarp wrote:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/pitdesi/status/157046798711905075...
|
| What investors first paid for @Figma , which @adobe buying for
| ~$40.20 per share:
|
| $0.088: @dannyrimer/@IndexVentures , Jacobsen/OATV
|
| A $0.199: @johnolilly /@GreylockVC, @semil
|
| B $0.332: @mamoonha/@kleinerperkins
|
| C $1.098: @andrew__reed/@sequoia
|
| D $4.619: Peter Levine/@a16z $21.29:
| @henryellenbogen/Durable
| auscompgeek wrote:
| From Adobe's end: https://news.adobe.com/news/news-
| details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...
| gardaani wrote:
| The founders of Figma must be very happy: "Adobe announced it
| has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire
| Figma, a leading web-first collaborative design platform, for
| approximately $20 billion in cash and stock."
| [deleted]
| dawsmik wrote:
| Is it possible that this runs into anti-trust issues?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Surely this is terrible for competition?
| sirjaz wrote:
| Screw all of this SaaS needs to die a horrible death. All of
| these webapps/SaaS products are just data collection apps that
| can lock you out at any moment. We need to get back to owning our
| data and installing locally.
| gdubs wrote:
| Wild to me that they are getting bought for $20B yet didn't think
| they could make it through this macroeconomic environment. Or
| maybe just too hard to turn down that amount?
|
| Figma is one of the most vibrant platforms I've seen in recent
| memory -- genuinely it goes well for all involved, including the
| users.
| ilmiont wrote:
| Well that's the end of Figma then. It was fantastic while it
| lasted.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Although it's still great software I'm stopping usage today
| because a) I refuse to support adobe and b) I'm confident the
| software will progressively get much worse, so any investment
| today is a waste of time I should spend finding and learning
| something else.
|
| Is there a blender of tools like this?
| notaboredguy wrote:
| Inkscape, penpot and/or maybe gimp afaik.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Common things are so obtusely buried in these applications.
| It's extraordinary the decisions they make.
|
| Maybe there should be a telematics tool for gtk that tracks
| when a user is clicking around looking for something and
| treats it like a bug report after a program crash.
|
| Some Non-Obtrusive (very important) dialog says something
| like "looking for something? Tell us what and where you're
| expecting it so we can add it".
|
| There's no reason at all things can't be in 2 or 3 places
| instead of like View / Interface Options / General /
| Advanced / ... or wherever the hell someone decided to
| place it.
| iddan wrote:
| Inkscape is unusable sorry. It can't support any of my
| workflows. The only real alternative for Adobe at the time
| being is Affinity
| asutekku wrote:
| None of these solve the same problems and they have the
| usual problems of free software. Grandious ideas but
| godawful UX and no interest to fix them.
| monax wrote:
| Penpot is foss afaik
| rapnie wrote:
| MPL 2.0 licensed. See: https://github.com/penpot/penpot
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| We have ,,figma for xyz" but more often it should be
| ,,blender for xyz"
|
| Would be awesome if all software tools were gravitating
| towards the non-profit financed-by-big-stakeholders model
| like blender is.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| Not open source like Blender but the Affinity suite is pretty
| cheap and does a fairly good job at these sort of things.
|
| Ok it is the multiple user editing that people liked so much
| about figma. Ok that makes sense. Ignore me.
| pembrook wrote:
| It's not free, but Sketch is a fantastic (also MacOS native)
| alternative.
| capableweb wrote:
| I love Sketch but macOS is no longer the OS I spend the
| most times in, which is Linux and Windows. I'd love for
| Sketch to be cross-platform, I'd buy one license per year
| just to support them.
|
| So my only option was Figma and now... Now what? Damn this
| sucks.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| This ^ is what's lead my small sample size of companies
| to move from Sketch to Figma. The focus on cross platform
| and ease of use that Figma had really helped drive
| adoption across a wide range of company sizes which is
| probably why this is such a logical acquisition for
| Adobe.
| hbosch wrote:
| Check out Framer. It's actually a really nice UI/UX and
| prototyping tool, but is pretty opinionated in how you
| set up your file (IMO). I used it a lot when I was
| freelancing because it gave me a little more power than
| Sketch did, at the time, and was more mature than Figma.
| They are the one product I know of currently that has
| web, Windows and Mac clients.
| gadders wrote:
| Great news for Invision. They must be stoked.
| nytesky wrote:
| How is that good news? Their biggest rival is now part of a
| monopolistic Goliath? Or do you mean the valuation helps boost
| their value?
| gadders wrote:
| There biggest rival is going to fall apart under the dead
| hand of Adobe.
| tekkk wrote:
| Boo. How come the big American mega-companies are always allowed
| to buy out the upcoming competitors? I thought you guys were all
| about free-market? Although I guess that's what complete free-
| market does. Oh well. For sure prepare for price hike.
|
| But it'll be interesting to see what they'll do with the cutting-
| edge web app know-how they'll acquire from Figma.
| chresko wrote:
| How does this acquisition conflict with a free market? Figma
| isn't being forced to sell i.e. this isn't a hostile takeover.
| Figma is free to continue to compete. There's not a 100% clear
| antitrust case although the $20B buyout could be viewed as
| anticompetitive behavior (perhaps contradicting my previous
| statement).
| tekkk wrote:
| Now they aren't forced, but you wonder does this
| consolidation of assets/companies benefit customer in any
| way. For Figma this is probably a great move to become part
| of the biggest design/image/video/whatever editing company -
| you get your pay-day as well join the winning team in the
| market. To me it just seems less competition for them, higher
| prices for customers since there aren't really options (eg
| photoshop, Figma for collaborative design).
|
| But if FTC says this is cool, I guess we'll just have to live
| with it.
| thrillgore wrote:
| I just hate Adobe and Autodesk so much for pricing me out of
| affordable alternatives and software that's actually good.
| redocecin wrote:
| Just realize that Evan had left Figma before
| https://madebyevan.com/figma/
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Noooooooooooooo surprise
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| They paid 20 billion for Figma?
| :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
| hanselot wrote:
| laundermaf wrote:
| No antitrust case yet?
| blue_light_man wrote:
| Obviously not.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Too big to be regulated I guess.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| It was a good run lol.
| spyremeown wrote:
| Not a frontend dev or designer, but I've seen people doing
| amazing things with Figma and it seemed loved all around.
| Counting the days for Adobe to completely wreck it.
| skilled wrote:
| Okay, this is awesome - I literally had the thought of _" Figma
| is so fucking awesome, what the hell would I do without it?"_ pop
| into my head multiple times today!
|
| And now I know now why... Fuck! I mean, I am happy for the entire
| Figma team and everything they have accomplished, and everything
| they've given to the designer and the Internet-at-large
| community. But I fear this might be gradual end of it, hence my
| brainwaves going all crazy about it.
|
| I signed up to Figma the day it was released, and it immediately
| became the tool I use for creating and editing vector graphics.
| Since then I have written well over 1,000 articles, and I can say
| with confidence that for 80% of those articles - all my visuals
| were created, edited or improved with Figma.
|
| I have never spent a single dollar on the product. That was also
| one of my thoughts today - like holy shit, I can actually enjoy
| this fast interface, greater features, and insane amount of
| community resources for no cost?
|
| Yeah, these guys did it right.
|
| Let's see how the story unfolds.
| city17 wrote:
| Really hope they won't force you to use Creative Cloud, but it
| seems inevitable in the long term as that's Adobe's core business
| model.
|
| I don't even really dislike their software that much (although it
| is somewhat antiquated), I just hate the extreme bloat of CC and
| the poor integration between their apps. It's really 2000s legacy
| software. Instead of bringing Figma into the Adobe system, they
| should make Photoshop etc. more like Figma.
| recusive_story wrote:
| Time start an alternative startup because figma is soon gonna
| stagnate once it is acquired.
| binthere wrote:
| I remember when they acquired Allegorithmic, Substance Painter
| went down hill since then.
| nelsonic wrote:
| Sad times. Figma could/should so easily have stayed independent.
| Clearly some VC needed a payday to buy a new yacht.
| hartator wrote:
| Nooo. Remember Macromedia. Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, etc.
| Such a sad graveyard of great products.
| micheljansen wrote:
| This is huge. Adobe was asleep at the wheel while Sketch ate
| their lunch. Now they are definitely back.
| nailer wrote:
| To be fair Sketch was also asleep at the wheel while Figma ate
| their lunch.
| micheljansen wrote:
| Very true!
| arctics wrote:
| This is normal for endgame capitalism, big fish eats small one.
| pym4n wrote:
| I also hate Adobe with all my heart! Had the displeasure to work
| there for a few months and the company is super lame. They don't
| build anything at this point and just sell overpriced
| subscriptions. I basically ran from there... not for me.
| baron816 wrote:
| Someone call the DOJ.
| cwkoss wrote:
| crap
| hn2017 wrote:
| I think it's hilarious how many libertarian-minded people want
| government to step in with an anti-trust lawsuit but in
| everything else, they want no involvment with government. hmm..
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| edotrajan wrote:
| WOW
| Mobius01 wrote:
| You know who should be celebrating? Sketch and InVision. Sketch
| has signaled a desire to go multi platform, which has been a
| problem for large corporate customers with mixed platforms.
|
| InVision failed to standup their own UI design tool, but the
| collaboration suite is still good and they were starting to death
| spiral. This would be an immense opportunity for both to become
| the only viable immediate alternatives to the Adobe threat.
| diimdeep wrote:
| $20B for graphics editor in browser - there is no inflation in
| US. World does not make any sense.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Adobe is worth 10 times that and technically just makes "photo
| and video editors for PC."
| guggleet wrote:
| Collaboration is an interesting choice of words
| unstrategic wrote:
| Figma was never on track to change the world. They were an Adobe
| clone from the beginning, out-executing them, but fundamentally
| exactly as anti-innovative.
|
| Not that $20B is anything to shake a stick at -- but real
| innovation in this market will be worth one to two orders of
| magnitude more. Figma was scratching at this with their "whole
| org collab" vision and FigJam, but they lacked the vision to
| crack it, and their execution has been faltering since their
| early talent started jumping ship. Selling to a desperate Adobe,
| distressed by public markets, is the perfect chance to "fail up."
|
| Why am I disappointed in Figma? Because they could have been so
| much more. Because in effect, they have held the creative world
| back by doubling down & cashing in on Adobe's corruption of
| design tooling. Play Adobe games, win Adobe prizes. It's just a
| shit game, and peanuts compared to latent opportunity in this
| space.
| duped wrote:
| > but real innovation in this market will be worth one to two
| orders of magnitude more.
|
| 200 billion, maybe. $2 trillion? Maybe with 10% inflation for a
| few more years.
| unstrategic wrote:
| Sure, $2T -- a fundamental innovation in how we "design and
| build" software has implications as far-reaching as the World
| Wide Web itself. Google IS the World Wide Web -- they have
| previously broken a $2T market cap.
| zinglersen wrote:
| Figma literally changed my world so I couldn't disagree more.
|
| Today I have +800 users and +100 editors in my Figma system;
| copy writers, ux, ui, ur, pm's, analysts, bizz, everyone, is
| collaborating like I have never seen in any Adobe setup.
|
| Adobe hasn't even been a contender, meanwhile Figma won over
| Sketch and Invision as well. So while I agree that they are
| still missing some features, especially for shared design
| systems, then I don't understand your view, care to elaborate?
| unstrategic wrote:
| jjcm wrote:
| "but fundamentally exactly as anti-innovative."
|
| Would love to hear more about this thought. Disclaimer: figma
| employee.
| unstrategic wrote:
| When Adobe acquired Macromedia, they extinguished an entire
| paradigm of design tool: "design tools that create software."
| Back in the booming 90's, this paradigm was _the future_.
|
| Through that acquisition, Adobe shoe-horned the world into a
| paradigm of "hand-offs," and Figma's leadership (namely, Sho)
| doubled down on the "hand-off" vision. "Play Adobe games."
|
| The future for collaborating on software design & build looks
| more like Flash, and less like Photoshop (though obviously,
| not quite like either.) "Exactly as anti-innovative."
| crakhamster01 wrote:
| This felt like a lot of words with little substance. What
| is the "hand-off" vision?
| unstrategic wrote:
| "Hand-off" describes a paradigm of designer/developer
| collaboration where a designer creates a mock-up or
| prototype, then "hands off" that picture to a developer
| who then creates the "real thing."
|
| Hand-offs are wildly inefficient, and the fidelity of
| creativity & artistic expression gets largely butchered
| on its way into the final medium.
|
| Contrast with a design tool like Webflow, Flash,
| HyperCard, or Visual Basic, where the product of the
| design process is production software. Figma could have
| gone down this route -- a harder route, admittedly, but
| ripe for innovation -- and they chose not to.[1]
|
| Good for them: $20B. Bad for the world.
|
| --
|
| [1] Sho's vision is that design _should_ live in a
| separate world, and that hand-offs are the ideal form of
| collaboration -- because they enable design to be
| unfettered by the constraints of production software. I
| would call this a failure of imagination: it is quite
| possible to explore free-form design ideas within and
| around production software: c.f. Macromedia Flash.
| est wrote:
| Will get bloated and overpriced in no time.
| kkirsche wrote:
| That's too bad. Good for the individuals and groups benefiting
| from it, I am happy for you, but I expect Adobe will ruin this
| product for users. Especially since this is an anti-competitive
| acquisition.
| gffrd wrote:
| Well, it was fun while it lasted!
|
| See you in the dark ages ...
| throwoutway wrote:
| Announced officially
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32850591
| mym1990 wrote:
| It says a lot about the current state of the tech ecosystem when
| almost every acquisition is seen to be a death sentence for a
| product. What would a world look like where people rejoiced at
| these kinds of things? Well...we will probably never know, sadly.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Oh hell no. Adobe is where software goes to die. Which is big
| shame because Figma has been great, and had serious potential to
| turn into the first WYSIWYG tool that would actually generate
| code you'd want to use. But Macromedia software was also great,
| and now it's mostly non-existent. I'd love for this to turn out
| different, but I have very low expectations.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > Adobe is where software goes to die.
|
| After EA acquiring Westwood, Macromedia is the second biggest
| let-down of a sale in the software industry in my book. Perhaps
| Skype comes close.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Are there any examples when an acquisition actually led to
| improved value for the users rather than ruined or straight
| killed the product?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Does YouTube count? I know it's had it's controversy but
| it's still miles better than if it hadn't been acquired.
| dagw wrote:
| Powerpoint, Google Earth and Android are three that I use
| all the time and instantly spring to mind.
|
| edit: Hotmail can arguably be on that list. Revit should
| probably also qualify
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Github. Apple buying Workflow to build it into the OS as
| Shortcuts.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Why should they? Acquisition today means: you have managed
| to become a threat to us, so we buy you so that this threat
| disappears.
|
| I just hope Adobe doesn't buy Affinity.
| esskay wrote:
| Buying Afilinity would 100% lead to antitrust.
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| Github gained actions, sponsors etc. and keeps getting more
| new features. Whatsapp got E2E chats and group video calls
| and handles communications for a huge amount of people.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| WhatsApp also got significantly worse over time: copycat
| features like stories which add bloat in an effort to
| boost "engagement", businesses using WhatsApp for the
| thing we all knew was eventually going to happen i.e. ads
| over WhatsApp, and the new privacy policy and deeper
| integration with facebook _nobody_ asked for.
| sph wrote:
| LOL I use WhatsApp daily and I completely forgot about
| Stories. I just checked, just one of my hundred contacts
| on there had a recent story update. What a load of
| nonsense.
|
| Then Facebook tried to do the same with Instagram.
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| Stories is in a separate tab. I just ignore it most of
| the time and never post anything myself.
|
| Accessing businesses on Whatsapp is kinda nice and
| convenient. I can enter a restaurant's phone number and
| see their menu easily. I also use Whatsapp to access bank
| statements which is super fast and easy compared to the
| bank's own app.
|
| As for the privacy policy, it's like WinRAR. You just
| close the popup and forget about it. I've been closing
| the policy popup since months and don't even notice it
| much.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| You're just lucky that business haven't started using
| WhatsApp to send you unsolicited ads. This is becoming
| more and more common in India - I received no less than
| three messages this month from businesses I've never
| used.
| njovin wrote:
| I think Github has held up pretty well.
| creshal wrote:
| Compared to anything bought by Adobe, sure, but it's not
| really doing all that impressive compared to Gitlab.
| sofixa wrote:
| I disagree. GitLab is a lot better and has many more
| features, but GitHub has managed to close the gap
| significantly. Before MS bought them they weren't even
| close to being close and had stagnated for years, and now
| there's a bunch of major new features (mostly playing
| catch-up, the only differentiator they have is Copilot),
| at the expense of stability.
| javajosh wrote:
| MS's acquisition of Github seems to be going okay, and has
| arguably increased user value. It's hard to say what MS is
| getting out of the deal, though; the mistrust of MS runs
| deeply given its history, so the biggest strikes in this
| deal are speculation about what MS is doing with the
| massive trove of Github developer and code-over-time data.
| IMHO the longer MS owns Github without hurting or
| exploiting its users, they are restoring lost trust with
| devs, but there are lots of devs who can/will never really
| trust MS or anything it touches (which TBH is a pretty safe
| bet).
| missedthecue wrote:
| Minecraft. Ring doorbells.
| mckirk wrote:
| And here I was, having a good day, when you had to remind me
| of EA's atrocities...
|
| Kane Lives!
| egeozcan wrote:
| Not many people can believe this (How many C&C gamers are
| on HN after all?) but I'm still pissed about it to this
| day. I could replace even the Google Reader, but not the
| fun I had playing the games from Westwood Studios.
| mckirk wrote:
| I completely understand; C&C and Need for Speed were an
| important part of my youth and to see them treated so
| badly has left me with quite the poor opinion of EA. But
| for some reason, their shitty way of running the game
| business seems to work out, and they just keep going. I
| just hope they won't kill Battlefield as well, though
| with recent installments they certainly seem to be
| trying.
| creshal wrote:
| IMO, Skype was on the way out either way. The P2P model it
| used only really made sense on desktop computers running most
| of the day with unmetered cable broadband, which is a very
| limited market, vs. the increasing percentage of mobile (and
| laptop, and desktop-but-4G/5G-connected) users that were a
| net negative on Skype's resources.
|
| So Skype was looking at a major rewrite, and building up
| massive server infrastructure, both of which needed lots and
| lots of cashflow that Skype's business model just couldn't
| generate.
|
| I doubt any other company taking over Skype could've avoided
| ruining it.
| egeozcan wrote:
| They could have kept the UI the same, also the device
| ecosystem.
|
| Why does software industry feel a heavy need to update the
| front-end when the back-end changes? That defeats the
| purpose of separating them!
| shafyy wrote:
| On the flipside, this opens up the space for a new upstart with
| an innovative take on design tooling, just like how Figma came
| up.
| replygirl wrote:
| with figma's adoption as a standard, we gave up cyclical
| innovation for continuous improvement, and have a trade where
| technical skills are highly transferrable and highly
| teachable. the cost of bad stewardship of figma won't just be
| the loss of a tool, it'll be the breakdown of a whole layer
| of the digital design practice.
|
| seeing that adoption of framer has been so poor they have to
| lean on web export as a selling point, i don't think we'll
| get another tool as powerful as figma that young designers
| are as willing to spend five years mastering and collectively
| adopt as a standard---more likely the design tools ecosystem
| will look like the front-end frameworks ecosystem.
|
| do you remember what it was like in the field ten years ago?
| even with promising upstart sketch in play, it was unlike
| anything i deal with today, and it sucked
| jbverschoor wrote:
| All
|
| Development
|
| &
|
| Operations
|
| Became
|
| End-of-life
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It sounds like a "market opportunity" for someone with graphics
| coding skills. I hear if your app gets big enough, there's $20B
| waiting for you.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Adobe is where software goes to die.
|
| AFAIK Corel has the same reputation. What is the problem with
| design software companies?
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| As a long time Figma champion, this breaks my heart. Every time I
| am forced to go back to an Adobe product I find it worse off than
| I left it. I worry that I will no longer see rapid updates and
| features that benefit me as a user and not the grater "cloud
| ecosystem".
| FractalHQ wrote:
| Same here. This is going to do tangible damage to my daily life
| as someone who opens Figma daily. I also spend time hunting
| rogue Adobe spyware processes in activity monitor daily. Adobe
| destroys everything they touch and Figma was finally innovating
| despite them. I hope we get real anti trust laws someday.
| [deleted]
| shabbatt wrote:
| but are you willing to walk away from your current job where
| your employer won't share your sentiments? Are they going to
| switch to a Figma alternative because of ideology and
| emotions tied to the change in ownership? Isn't it more
| likely that the product will work as is and businesses won't
| face any direct interruption because owner changed?
|
| I think Adobe made a smart decision, businesses are locked in
| and unlikely to switch once something is deeply integrated to
| their application design workflows.
|
| "Corner the market, and raise the price." In this case,
| outsource the former and in-house the latter.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I know Adobe is not really included in the typical anti-
| competitive criticism like some of the entrenched FAANG's, but
| this amounts to nothin less than what they do to stifle
| competition: Point to upstarts like Figma to justify an argument
| that "No, see? Competition is still possible!" But then buy out
| that competition to create a metastable state of:
| 1) dominance w/ noncom practices 2) -> disruption by a
| slight threat arises to threaten #1 market share 3) ->
| buyout of #2 4) -> return to to the desired state of #1
| ido wrote:
| Oh no...Well, I guess it was good while it lasted!
| nemrem wrote:
| "Dark patterns" will be coming to Figma soon with this. I'd
| suggest anyone running an Adobe product to check your outgoing
| connections while running one and then trying to block them. It's
| not just isolated to their products. PMS doing "market research"
| for their products have led students on to do work for them
| without paying them. (For anyone skeptical on the accuracy of
| anything here, feel free to email me at the address in my bio,
| I'm happy to provide evidence)
| flyingkickass wrote:
| And here I was thinking of switching to figma after getting
| frustrated with adobe, sigh...
| yabqk wrote:
| mikece wrote:
| And now all of the Figma users are saying "Oh [crap]... now I
| need to find a new tool to use." When is the last time Adobe
| acquired something and it improved? They destroyed Fireworks and
| Dreamweaver when they acquired Macromedia (which they only did
| because they wanted Flash). At this point I'm tempted to swear
| off Adobe products entirely -- except that the combo of Lightroom
| and Photoshop are the industry standard for photography.
| kderbyma wrote:
| I try to avoid them like the plague. Affinity while not nearly
| as supported and feature rich....it doesn't stab and bleed me
| monthly for the privilege of bloatware...
| jansan wrote:
| How is Affinity Designer less feature rich? It has great
| features like corner rounding and interactive path offsetting
| that I cannot find in Figma? Also, Last time I looked Figma
| did not even allow skewing of objects.
| detritus wrote:
| Well, for a start, you can't set a stroke width less than
| 0.1mm, which may sound like a useless edge-case, but makes
| it useless as a single-point tool for designs to be sent to
| Lasers or CNC machines that run off a print driver.
|
| Also, the workflow's quite clunky.
|
| Still, I've bought it and Photo, just because I want them
| to one day better Illustrator and Photoshop.
|
| - ed Sorry - 'less than 0.1pt', not 0.1mm. Samediff
| ultimately.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| I agree. It depends on what you do with the program as to
| how it compares to Illustrator. From a prepress
| perspective where I would use it to rip apart and fix
| graphic files so they print properly, Affinity Designer
| has a long way to go. For designing it's not too bad and
| slowly catching up. It is also the only one I have found
| so far that supports Pantone....
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm not enough of a power user to use a lot of the more
| advanced & unique features of photoshop, but a few years back I
| switched to Gimp & Inkscape for managing product photos & wire
| diagrams of things I need to laser cut. It's a bit more clunky
| and too a few weeks to learn the differences enough to get done
| what I needed to, but by now I have no need for any paid
| product much less one from a corporation that was a nightmare
| to deal with.
|
| For anyone looking for an alternative I'd highly recommend
| checking out these alternatives. Especially with the devoted
| communities that provide a wide range of plugins it's possible
| to map a lot (not all) use cases onto these alternatives.
|
| I'm not sure there are similar alternative to things like
| lightroom & after effects, and it may be that Adobe's ability
| to have a tight integration of the production pipeline through
| these produces can't easily be duplicated. But if your needs a
| little simpler, check these out.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Premiere and After Effects are also industry standards for
| video, Illustrator is the industry standard for illustrators,
| and I'm sure there's more I don't know about. As far as
| producing industry-standard products in the creative sphere,
| who is better than Adobe?
| carlosdp wrote:
| Davinci Resolve is quickly eating up Premiere/After Effects
| in VFX/film. Currently getting popular in small studios, but
| that's how it starts. Just like Blender is now a real
| competitor in 3D.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I prefer Affinity Designer a thousand times.
| marpstar wrote:
| On the audio side of things: Cool Edit Pro 2 became Adobe
| Audition, which was single-license but of course has since been
| SaaS-ed. It was never as popular as Pro Tools, Cubase, etc but
| it was my goto DAW (as a hobbyist) for a long time.
|
| Apple's work in last few years on Logic Pro has it lightyears
| ahead of Audition, and I wouldn't even call Apple the most
| popular product in that space right now (oh hi, Ableton)
| huslage wrote:
| They have continued to let frame.io flourish since they bought
| them. I wonder if this will follow a similar model. Let's hope.
| cmelbye wrote:
| I give it a year before they dip their toes into Creative
| Suite integrations.
| whiddershins wrote:
| In contrast to the negativity here, I am optimistic that Adobe
| won't screw this up. The past acquisitions are not necessarily an
| indicator of the future.
|
| Adobe consistently upgraded Photoshop even when they had
| virtually no competition. Their CC subscription pricing is
| actually an incredible vaue if you use it as a professional.
| Figma has a huge user base, and a team that is excelling where
| Adobe is struggling - collaborative cloud-first design software.
|
| It is very possible that a 20B acquisition is in part Adobe
| investing in talent to address a gap in their expertise. This
| isn't 20 years ago, it is now.
| recardwe wrote:
| Agree with @tambourine_man Adobe will KILL Figma just like
| Freehand. Adobe is a predatory borg that will kill innovation.
| connor11528 wrote:
| 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...
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Considering the instant response on HN was to upvote the open
| source competition and the fact many people are probably going
| to leave to go to a competitor because they hate Adobe. It
| probably doesn't lessen competition but increases it since a
| lot of competitors are getting sign ups right now.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| The argument "but there are competitors" - that the very
| existence of other players in a market should preclude the
| blocking of acquisitions - is flawed and misleading.
|
| For competition to strengthen a space, it needs to be
| meaningful competition. The goal for regulators should not be
| "more than one player in every category." It should be
| diverse product expression, improved customer utility, and
| most of all ZERO winner-take-all effects.
|
| That last item (winner-take-all) is crucial to understand,
| and I'm sad that it is no longer a major part of economic
| discourse (as it once was when systems-thinking was more
| common). Winner-take-all effects often occur without an
| explicit monopoly, yet devastate the category and its
| adjacent categories.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > For competition to strengthen a space, it needs to be
| meaningful competition.
|
| There are meaningful competitors to Adobe's design tools.
| There are quite a few applications like Figma with a decent
| amount of traction. The fact they will be receiving an
| uptick in users will increase their meaningfulness which
| means Adobe acquiring Figma is not lessening the
| competition.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Why do you think that other companies will see an uptick
| in users from this? Most companies are not going to
| renegotiate contracts, update all their processes and
| tools, and retrain all their users just because this got
| bought by Adobe (which they are probably already paying
| for other tools). This absolutely reduces competition.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Why do you think that other companies will see an
| uptick in users from this?
|
| Because the number of people who are saying "Adobe is
| going to ruin Figma".
|
| While companies aren't going to renegotitate, freelancers
| and designers doing personal work will just switch to
| another freemium tool. And tools end up in the work
| toolchain by the employees using them and suggesting.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Miro and Canva are really similar to Figma, no ?
| samsolomon wrote:
| Not at all close to the design tool--features like autolayout
| and performance are significantly better than anyone else on
| the market.
|
| Both of those are pretty close to FigJam, Figma's.
| whiteboarding tool. It's a nice tool, but that's not why
| anyone uses Figma.
| killerdhmo wrote:
| Not... really. Sketch is what is most analogous.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Sketch is perhaps most analogous, but I remember a couple
| years ago where designers left Sketch _in droves_ to move
| to the better features of Figma.
|
| If Adobe thought Sketch was a competitive risk, they'd be
| buying them instead.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Sketch is locked to MacOS which limits its applicability
| azinman2 wrote:
| They have a pure web version.
| [deleted]
| noelsusman wrote:
| The FTC uses the Consumer Welfare Standard to decide antitrust
| cases, which means they have to show that a proposed merger
| would cause tangible harm to consumers. If "reducing
| competition" was the standard then all buyouts/mergers would be
| illegal since they all necessarily reduce competition.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Why did you elide the "substantially" clause?
| oyeanuj wrote:
| That's what they have used in the past, and are not bound to
| it. If you read any of Lina Khan's work, it's clear that
| they'll take a more holistic view of the impact of lack of
| competition.
| noelsusman wrote:
| That's a good point, it's important to note the current FTC
| chair is working to change the standards that are used. I'm
| excited to see how that pans out. I think the lack of
| antitrust enforcement in recent decades is a really
| underrated problem in American governance.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Consumer welfare is stupid, but all these SAAS rent-seeking
| makes me feel like you could actually make a case.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Did they use the Consumer Welfare Standard to block Visa's
| acquisition of Plaid? Seems like the main reasoning they used
| was because it was a strategic buy rather than a financially
| sound one. (and the finances of this deal pretty much mirror
| Plaids)
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| With Lina Khan running the FTC, I definitely expect more
| scrutiny of this proposal than it would likely have
| received in the past.
| kblev wrote:
| I have been thinking about this the other day, and I think
| buyouts and mergers should be illegal.
| yummybear wrote:
| The key word is "substantially" - there are plenty other
| competitors.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There may be "plenty" of other competitors, but I think it's
| pretty undeniable that Figma is the "up-and-coming" (or maybe
| it already got there) market leader among "design tools for
| web design". I also think it's pretty apparent that Adobe
| _knows_ this and that 's why they want to buy them.
|
| This is the exact same pattern as Facebook buying Instagram,
| and heck the same as some of Adobe's previous acquisitions,
| where large corporations buy out competitors that could
| potentially overtake them.
|
| If antitrust means anything it should block these types of
| acquisitions.
| kriops wrote:
| There is probably a triple-digit number of legitimate
| competitors out there.
| azinman2 wrote:
| For sure not triple digit legitimate competitors. To be
| legitimate competitor means some very mature software /
| service. I can think of Sketch and Adobe XD, maybe Balsamiq
| but not quite the same. What are these 100 extra well formed
| alternatives?
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| How much is this enforced though? Wouldn't this make most
| mergers illegal?
|
| I guess it all comes down to who defines what 'substantially
| lessen competition" means
| airstrike wrote:
| The rule of thumb is if there are still at least 3
| competitors left in a market, it is not "substantially"
| lessening competition
| mtgx wrote:
| Insanity wrote:
| Man, that is bad news for news for consumers. But also seems like
| Figma could have gotten more money? $20B is a _ton_ of money but
| it's the only real competitor in Adobe's space I think. Or at
| least the only threat.
| kehrin wrote:
| Can't help but feel incredibly betrayed by Figma. Well, we had a
| good run.
| Bishonen88 wrote:
| I wonder how long before Figma and XD become one product then?
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