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Omni Group Layoffs

286 points by keehun 7y ago

tinyhouse 7y ago
Is this the company behind omniGraffle? I love their product. I don't know what other products they have, but it doesn't sound like the current situation should have an effect on them, at least not yet. Sounds like they have been struggling regardless.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Yes, OmniGaffle is one of the many "Omni-" products they make.
  - thiagocesar 7y ago
    It’s an amazing product. I cannot afford the price tag. I wonder how many more people would buy it if it was just a little bit cheaper.
    - gowld 7y ago
      I assume that 30 years of research has taught them that they won't get double the customers at half of the price.
      - lozaning 7y ago
        Way easier to get away with finding half of your existing customers that can pay double than to cut your prices by half and double your entire sales funnel. Or at least this was the wisdom imparted on me by a long time sales manager for a large VAR.
        tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        Or segment your product so you can extract the most value out of your customers. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
    - tinyhouse 7y ago
      I know it's relative but I don't think their product is expensive since it's a one time fee. I think I paid $99 once but don't recall exactly. Especially if you intend to use it regularly. I think most updates you get for free. But maybe for major updates you need to pay extra. Not sure.
      - Scarbutt 7y ago
        omnigraffle pro is $250.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - rgovostes 7y ago
      I was saying the same thing earlier today. Most of their products are $100-200. I like OmniGraffle but I only need to make graphics a few times a year, and free alternatives like draw.io or even Keynote often suffice.
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        Yeah, I feel this. I strongly believe that the "App Store economy" has taught developers to underprice their work, and that $25, $50, even $100 isn't unreasonable. But Omni's stuff... it gets steep if you're a relatively casual user, especially if you want both Mac and iOS versions. While it's possible I'm an outlier, I can't help but wonder if a different pricing structure -- say, $49.99 for most Mac programs, $19.99 for most iOS ones, and a (gasp) subscription of $39.99 per year for upgrading to the Pro version that covered both iOS and Mac versions of the app -- would actually make them more money in the long run.
        ramses0 7y ago
        Same boat with Omni + SketchUp. I would happily pay $100, for "metered credits" to an online service. There's a big difference between using SketchUp for 40 hours total v. 40 hours a week.
      - teruakohatu 7y ago
        That is the issue. It is not that it isn't worth $250 for the Pro version if you use it everyday, but it isn't worth it if you only use it twice a year.
        markmark 7y ago
        I don't really know Omni or their products, but I wonder from reading some comments here that while the bottom end of their market has been eaten by cheaper/free alternatives, the pro market that will happily pay $250 for a great tool has been eaten by things like Figma with the online collaboration that has become essential for professionals.
    - Jtsummers 7y ago
      Yes. It is unfortunate. I’ve bought a couple of their products and recommended them to others. However, the price means that people (if their employers aren’t paying for it) have to plan it, and most won’t spend that amount on software.
    - blihp 7y ago
      Not nearly enough... that's the problem: the business models that produced products like that won't be around for much longer as the price gets closer and closer to 'free'. The economics of mobile are dismal for paid productivity software.
      - rhizome 7y ago
        To be fair, what mobile app is as good at what it does as Omni* is at theirs? Or, to short-circuit exceptions proving a rule, what is the proportion, or furthermore, how many segments of the mobile market has apps as good?
- bsimpson 7y ago
  OmniWeb was my favorite browser when it was around.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Which was originally the web browser on NeXT computers.
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      The title of the web browser on NeXT, however, must go to TBL's WorldWideWeb, world's first. [1]: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
j2bax 7y ago
Big Omniplan fan.
kbumsik 7y ago
I think Omni Group's locked down to Apple is a mistake. As a iPad Pro/iPhone user I wish to buy their products but as a Windows/Linux desktop user the lack of cross-platform support is a huge dealbreaker.
- keyle 7y ago
  Sometimes it's best to stick to what you do well and do it really well. The market for their product is very different on the Windows side.
  - ramraj07 7y ago
    How was this for the best when they had to lay off "usually off market" talent?
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      It worked pretty well for three decades.
  - kbumsik 7y ago
    I haven't used their products but how the market is different from the Windows side? Aren't they general productivity tools?
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Their USP is their integration into the platform.
    - tguedes 7y ago
      Non-Mac/iOS users generally don't pay for software/don't care enough about polish to pay a little extra for something. That's why the majority of developers develop for iOS first and release on iOS first even though Android has the far larger market share (https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-revenue-2018/ https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-reven...). The type of person who is willing to pay extra for the polish Mac/iOS has over Windows/Android, is usually also the type of who is going to be willing to spend more for a better app.
yaacov 7y ago
I discovered Omni yesterday when League of Legends dumped 20 gB of text logs on my brother’s old MacBook, eating up all available disk space and crashing it. He asked me for help. I didn’t know what was taking up all his disk space so I searched for a tool to help me and found OmniDiskSweeper. Unlike the MacOS builtin tools that try to hide the underlying file system, OmniDiskSweeper actually helped me understand the contents of the file system and discover what was eating up all the storage. If anyone who worked on that project is reading this, thank you.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  WinDirStat is similarly nice for those on Windows, or JDiskReport for cross-platform
- lozaning 7y ago
  I use WinDirStat for the same thing on windows. Lets you pick and then scan a drive and then gives you a graphical view where the bigger the file the larger its block is proportionally to the other files.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    Not sure if WinDirStat got updated to use a different method by now, but a few years ago many people switched to WizTree [0] as it is almost instant thanks to reading the data differently. [0]: https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/ https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-...
    - xeromal 7y ago
      WinDirStat is still slow as shit. I use it weekly. haha
  - binaryman1 7y ago
    I use Directory Report on Windows. It is faster than WinDirStat
navait 7y ago
I recently signed up for OmniFocus cloud, should I be worried? It’s a fantastic product.
thruhiker 7y ago
I'm sorry to hear this. In a subscription model world, Omni stand out in producing very high quality one time purchase software. I love OmniGraffle! Such a great product once you learn it.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  They seem to be moving to a subscription model: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/ https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Not really moving, more providing the option. Given that iOS and desktop are two separate versions, with new licenses required for upgrades...
- gkoberger 7y ago
  (Maybe not the point, but maybe there wouldn't be layoffs if it was a subscription)
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Unlikely. A few niche apps don't need development forever. Users have finite hours in a day, they don't have infinite appetite for more features. We are drowning in software.
- leadingthenet 7y ago
  > one time purchase software Probably exactly what brought them to this point.
KingOfCoders 7y ago
I have been an OmniGraffle user from the very beginning (~2000). I love OmniGraffle. But I've seen Sketch come (and go) and there have been no significant updates for OmniGraffle for a very very long time. Omni only added to their iOS offerings and totally forgot about desktop. I understand that mobile "is the future" but, there is a significant need for desktop design applications. And although I still use OmniGraffle I would no longer buy updates.
- blub 7y ago
  OmniGraffle is not their only software. I use several of their desktop apps and they continue to support them, they have not forgotten about them.
- asciimike 7y ago
  I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest of the mobile app dev business, since we did mocks in OmniGraffle), but I'm curious what else Graffle really needs to be useful. I think historically there has been enough net new customers to not need to provide all that much upgrade incentive. - In 2013 the codebase was a beast, and this was like v4 or v5... I can only imagine adding major new features to it.
  - KingOfCoders 7y ago
    I would wish for some features of Sketch actually yes - then I wouldn't have had the need to buy Sketch (and next switch to Figma). Also some better/easier integrations with Powerpoint/Keynote would be nice, I draw 50% (in the past >90%) of diagrams in OmniGraffle that I use in PP/Keynote. I agree that the basics are excellent (alignment, copy & paste, sizing, ...) and still best in class.
    - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
chrisfrantz 7y ago
I used to love Omni Graffle. But after spending a bit of time reading about their current product lineup, I can’t stop wondering why they didn’t transition to web apps years ago. Notion, Figma and Whimsical are eating their lunch. They have a far less robust feature base, but they’re fast, built for teams, simple to use and the pricing scales well. On the other hand, Omni is almost entirely native apps, bloated feature sets and pricing that spent make sense in a team environment. I’d love to see them rethink a few core apps with a fresh coat of paint and a better pricing scheme, developing web first. It’s definitely not too late.
- cageface 7y ago
  Agreed. The future of productivity apps is on the web. Pretty soon the only category of apps that will have to be native is heavy multi media apps like video editors and digital auto workstations.
  - blub 7y ago
    That was supposed to happen any moment now for the past 10+ years. The reason it didn't is because web apps are clunky and less dependable.
    - cageface 7y ago
      It's happening right now as the original article shows. Web apps are eating native's lunch with a few exceptions and that list of exceptions just keeps getting shorter. The web is good enough now to build most of these apps and getting cross platform support more or less for free along with making it much easier to build in collaboration features turns out to more important than the advantages of any particular native toolkit might be for most cases. The only native app I use anymore is a digital audio workstation. Deny it all you like but the trend is unmistakable. Even Sketch has been sidelined by Figma where I work now.
      - blub 7y ago
        The original article shows that one company let some people go and a couple more developers have been affected by the current crisis. For some apps collaboration or centralized control are important and those lend themselves well to web technologies. For others (like the Omni apps), said collaboration and getting mediocre cross platform for free are not as important.
diebeforei485 7y ago
Omnifocus Pro 3 user here. Totally worth every penny.
musicale 7y ago
I thought the Omni group mostly worked remotely; it's too bad that they don't have the cash reserves to pay people to keep working at home, because it's a good time to crank out some code!! I like their products and Omnigraffle in particular, though they still seemed to have old-school high pricing.
- danieldk 7y ago
  I like their products and Omnigraffle in particular, though they still seemed to have old-school high pricing. I guess they have done their market research and concluded that lowering the prices does not add enough users. I like OmniGraffle a lot as well and recommend it to others. But I don't think anyone else has bought it on my recommendation. If you are the type of person (like me) who draws graphs maybe 10 or 20 times a year, the pricing is very steep, and people will just use something like draw.io. I strongly dislike subscription pricing, but I think it might work in their case. They would be able to extract more money from existing customers + the barrier to entrance is lower for the occasional user. I have tried to use the other Omni products, but the never really resonated with me. OmniFocus has quite a strict and focused GTD-driven model. I found it constraining and switched to Things. Though all these tools break down in a team setup, because they do not really support team sharing of tasks. OmniOutliner always felt too complex as a replacement for e.g. Markdown or org-mode and too limited to compete with the likes of notion.so.
- asciimike 7y ago
  Unless things changed dramatically, Omni has no remote folks, it's entirely Seattle based. As for pricing, they charge a fair price for their software given the audience (mostly professionals who are willing to pay a premium for high quality software). It's never been the cheapest, but it always had a large enough userbase to pay folks a good wage, have great perks, retain great talent, and enable incredible work/life balance. Source: worked @ Omni in 2013
abinaya_remote 7y ago
Remote Leaf[1] founder here, I would like to offer a free month of Remote Leaf membership to people who lost their job during this crisis, that might help you land a remote job. We hand-pick thousands of remote jobs from tons of job boards and only sends the ones that apply to you. Just ping me on Twitter(@abinaya_rl) and send me an email to avail this :) [1] - https://remoteleaf.com https://remoteleaf.com
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_pmf_ 7y ago
I'd spend a lot of money for an Android version of OmniOutliner (and OmniGraffle); 100 EUR/year would be no problem. Sad they bet on a failing platform. Incredibly focused, well rounded products that are unmatched.
- asciimike 7y ago
  Curious why you consider iOS to be a failing platform when the App Store consistently generates 2-3x more revenue than the Play Store even with considerably lower volume (and iOS developers can typically charge more for their apps). Fragmentation in the Android ecosystem makes it considerably more costly to develop and the lower average cost of apps mean you're required to hit significantly higher scale in order to generate the same revenue as a developer. Omni's business model (small number of incredibly loyal customers paying top dollar for the software) likely wouldn't have survived on Android.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Sad they bet on a failing platform. Mac sales aren't growing much but it's a stretch to say it's a failing platform.
snickmy 7y ago
I would love to hear more how the COVID19 has exacerbated the business down period. I naively thought that enterprise software would not see a strong impact from COVID19 in the first 2-3 months.
- asciimike 7y ago
  Honestly, I don't know how much of this was COVID and how much was just a slowing of the business over the past few years and this is an inevitable consequence of that. I think the business has always more or less run on fairly thin margins (again, it's mostly designed to fund a lifestyle of building awesome Apple apps, not get the founders rich at the expense of employees/customers/VCs/etc.), and so even fairly minor disruptions could cause that to become a big issue.
- jpwgarrison 7y ago
  99% of all businesses are planning on at least two really bad quarters coming up. Very few have cash reserves to cover shortfalls. If you’re planning out the rest of the year, and you were already in a little trouble, you have to cut expenses immediately. I’m not sure Omni is as tied to quarterly planning/reporting; but for those who are, and are on the regular calendar schedule, this all happened just in time for a lot of the potential Q1 end of quarter sales to dry up as everyone tightened up.
- techslave 7y ago
  i wouldn’t think so either but in no way is omni in the category of enterprise software.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  In times like now, new sales of premium niche software are one of the first things to vanish. Better diagramming isn't my core concern right now
asciimike 7y ago
Was one of the first interns @ Omni back in 2013. I'm really sad to hear this, and I have only good things to say about Ken, Tim, and the whole Omni team. Most folks are highlighting what feel like obvious flaws in the business model: - "They charge too much for their software" - "'Apple only' meant limited distribution" - "SaaS apps are making desktop software obsolete" Those all may be true; however, I think these miss the point as they aim for something that wasn't really Omni's goal. Omni succeeds because it builds amazingly high quality software targeted at a specific group of users, and charges a fair price for it (vs the vast majority of software that is of questionable quality and heavily subsidized by VCs and/or your attention). There are (were?) still enough people in the world willing to buy high quality software at that price point to sustain the company. I think the other point missed is that, unlike what I feel like a lot of SV memes portray, Omni was designed to be an infinite game, "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play"[1]. The company isn't trying to blitzscale its way to a billion dollar valuation and let the founders cash out after five years--it's designed to be the best place for the best indie MacOS/iOS devs to have fun building great apps for as long as possible. They've succeeded for a long time, and I have no doubt that even with the downsizing there is still room for the company to succeed in that goal If you're looking for awesome macOS/iOS devs, these really are the best of the best, and you'll be lucky to have them. Given that a big chunk of the team was also support and QA, there are likely a few of them available as well, and definitely check them out if you're in the market for those. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games Fun story: the first Omni app I ever shipped was OmniKeyMaster, which let you swap your Mac App Store license key for an Omni App Store license key. Within an hour of submission, Apple pulled it from the App Store (for obvious reasons). Always fun to have your hand slapped a week into an internship! Second fun story: speaking to the nature of the company... as part of the internship offer, Omni agreed to pay for our housing, and ended up renting the five of us a house in Wallingford. Turns out the house ended up being a scam (we all showed up to move in and someone else was living in it), and so they put us up in the Residence Inn in South Lake Union for two weeks until they got us furnished apartments right next door to the office. It probably cost them a hell of a lot, but to them it was the right thing to do and they take care of their employees (even though they had just hired us). This company does its best to do right by its people, so I know this must have been an incredibly difficult decision for them to make.
dman 7y ago
Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into electrical, woodworking or automotive take a deep pride in the tools they own. Many of these fields pay a fraction of what SW dev does. I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting.
- ac29 7y ago
  > I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting. Don't we spend on software, though? Software spend is surely in the billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions a year. As consummate consumers of software, I'd think software engineers are more likely to spend money on software than the general public (and more likely to use open-source software as well).
  - dman 7y ago
    Worth thinking about the number of companies globally that make a living writing software in the following categories of development tools a. Debuggers b. IDEs c. Querying Tools d. Text editors e. Source control tools f. Build systems The market for development tools does not look particularly vibrant based on the above.
    - leoedin 7y ago
      I work in the embedded space and so I have used a few proprietary debuggers/IDEs/build systems. They've still got a lot of market share. The huge problem with them is that they're proprietary. They don't have the wide usage of the open source equivalents, so debugging problems is hard. If you want to develop at home, at work and on a PC in a lab, you have to navigate licensing issues. If you want to do a build and test as part of your CI process, you have to navigate licensing issues. Then you move jobs and they've bought into a different, incompatible proprietary system and you have to learn it all over again. The open source options are actually good enough, and the advantage of being able to have the entire build system on a new computer after running a few apt-gets and downloading some free software is huge. The skills persist across jobs, I can use them at home for my own projects, I never have to worry about licenses expiring.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Brent Simmons seems to be keeping pretty good spirits—the last paragraph of his blog post made me chuckle. Good for him, he seems like a lovely person. https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work > The hard part of all this: normally everyone would get together for a happy hour for a few drops of encouragement and friendship. These rituals are nice, and they matter to me. > But — (gesturing again at this fallen world) — nope.
twarge 7y ago
In my experience their stuff has a surprising amount of friction. It also used to be buggy, but it's not that anymore. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels a little like they're just not getting the basics right. Just one example: In omnigraffle, pinch to zoom has all kinds of janky jumpiness that is simply disqualifying. And they only got it to this point very recently.
DavideNL 7y ago
It's sad to see apps full of ads/tracking and ridiculous subscriptions thrive, while quality software like this gets into trouble. I've been happily using Omnifocus for a long time; - Single purchase, no subscription - e2e encrypted syncing between devices (+ server storage) - 0 tracking, ads etc.
- alain_gilbert 7y ago
  I don't think subscription is that bad. Development and support is never ending. Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies. At some point the market is not infinite.
  - rubidium 7y ago
    “ Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies.” This is a lie perpetuated by the saas industry. If you compare saas companies shutting down “services” to prior product companies stopping updating versions you don’t see much difference. Also, sw engineers used to care about designing something well. So when you used something the first time it was occasionally delightful. Now it’s just “launch and we’ll worry about that in our next sprint”.
    - alain_gilbert 7y ago
      I'm not saying the product can or cannot be good on first release... But the world is ever changing. Let say you build a UI for database. In a few years, a new version of mysql or postgresql will be released, and you have to update your software as well to use the new features. What I'm saying is that almost whatever you are building, the development will never be done.
      - DavideNL 7y ago
        It's not relevant, because then the developer can release a new major version and require a new payment. The user will know exactly what changes this new major version has, and can decide whether he wants to pay for it or not. With subscriptions however, this all becomes hidden/vague. You're always paying, but it's no longer transparent what exactly it is you're paying for. Which is obviously very bad for the user. (Of course it's a an entirely different story for services like Netflix, AppleTv+, Spotify, etc.)
rdslw 7y ago
I would, and I'm actually considering, to offer them $2000 just to compile me Omnifocus 1 (latest of v1 branch) as 64bit app, as it's currently 32bit and can't work due to CatalinaCurse. Omnifocus 2 was a joke in any category, while I have mixed fealing about 3 (speed, ergonomics, features). Anyone want to chip in? :)
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Have you looked at Things, I've been using it for the last year and am really pleased with it.
- edwinyzh 7y ago
  Is is Omni Focus 1, right? (https://www.macworld.com/article/1132832/omnifocus1.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1132832/omnifocus1.html) I don't use it, But I'm curious as to what are the major changes of v2 which disappoint you? I like the v1 interface as shown in the above mentioned article.
watersb 7y ago
Really good people. :-( Been a customer since their web browser for NeXt. Dang.
devin 7y ago
I’m slightly confused. What about the current pandemic changed their business so much? Do people suddenly have less need for their apps? That seems unlikely. It seems like this has been coming for awhile. OmniGraffle missed the online diagramming collaboration wave, and OmniFocus missed the same thing on the project management side.
- biztos 7y ago
  While I'm sad to hear they're suffering, I agree about OmniGraffle. I am a paying customer and I use it for my job... but if I'm doing anything at all I expect other people might need to edit, I can't use it. Because the other people won't have licenses, or won't have Macs. So I use it for a lot of quick and dirty diagramming but don't really ever invest the time to take advantage of its power features, because anything that complex needs to be available for editing, even if it's less nice.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    The Mac solution for that is to buy more Macs and Mac software licenses.
joeberon 7y ago
Unfortunately Omni's software is pretty old and bloated at this point, although I've only used OmniFocus and OmniGraffle. The former is very powerful but this is a blessing and a curse, in that the UX is very cluttered and quite intimidating. I honestly think that Things has exceeded it now, being less customisable but also capturing the essence of what makes OmniFocus good without getting bogged down in too much customisation and verbosity. OmniFocus is the opposite of a productivity tool to me, it keeps you in the app for too long configuring and setting things up just right, instead of getting out of the way OmniGraffle is great, and probably the best diagramming tool I've used, however it feels like it hasn't had a really significant update in a very long time and it's starting to show frankly
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  The flip side of it is that OmniFocus needs to be so customizable because the defaults are not great. (I feel the same about the default styles in OmniGraffle.) I was a die-hard OF1 user, but they've completely lost me with the OF2 redesign. Large checkboxes on the right stress me out on mobile (that's where my scrolling finger rests), and it took months before there were layouts in OF2 for Mac that had the same information density as in OF1. I haven't even tried OF3.
  - ubermonkey 7y ago
    Hard same. The redesign for OF2 drove me away completely; I eventually landed in orgmode, where I control everything and don't have to worry about seasonal / fashion oriented redesigns.
  - ken 7y ago
    Planning and scheduling tools are weird. Everybody has their own system already. So software is either simple (and doesn’t work for most people) or incredibly complex (and requires massive customization). Or they say “just redesign your whole life around our app!” I’m not even sure which one OmniFocus is trying to be.
  - m463 7y ago
    I had the same experience with OF2, but honestly think it wasn't entirely their fault as ios 7 sort of pulled the rug out from under the world. that said, even with stupid round checkboxes of2 runs my life, which would be much more chaotic without it.
indymike 7y ago
Oh, man. Hate to see this. I used to use OmniGraffle for UX wireframes and diagrams. Very good software. I left the employer that held the license, and honestly, haven't found a replacement that is as fast... especially for diagrams.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  You could buy a license?
  - indymike 7y ago
    If I were doing wireframes monthly, I'd buy in a heartbeat. At present I do so sporadically, and my daily driver is no longer a Mac.
veidr 7y ago
This seems a good thread to memorialize OmniWeb — for a few years there, it was the best web browser of all time. When was that? 2002-2005 ish?
JackPoach 7y ago
Omni has a great product (products, really) but not launching them as a SaaS was a big mistake. Hopefully, not all is lost and they can still do this. Also, they need to embrace freemium model when it comes to project management like Bitrix24, Trello and Asana have done. That's why they are undisputed leaders right now.
nstart 7y ago
Oof. This is a little upsetting to me. Inessential has been on my RSS feed forever and I've enjoyed reading it for a long time. Makes me feel somehow connected to what's going on with Brent because he's written about his work at Omni so much. Hope he finds a company to work with soon. Tough times :(
uNmas 7y ago
It's sad to see this happening. I was using OmniGroup software for probably 10 years now. But, their stack was just outdated. OmniFocus 3 still looks like Windows 95 in comparison to Things 3. Their web version is a step in the right direction. But it took them ages to adapt to a faster development cycle, and the web version is still not usable for me. I don't see it as a subscription vs. one-time pay problem. I am happy to pay for good software, but to be honest, OmniGroup still lives in the past. When I visit their website now, and look at the screenshots they present, boy... I wouldn't buy these tools if I wouldn't know that they are actually so good.
time0ut 7y ago
What a shame. I rely on Omnigraffle every day. Some aspects of it are showing their age, but it is still the best tool on MacOS.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
...can someone please give me an excuse to go buy Omnigraffle? I want to, but I need a reason. What would I be able to use it for in my daily life as a layperson doing layperson things?
- 1123581321 7y ago
  I use it for UX wireframing, mind/node mapping, and visualizing processes and data flows. Personally, we’ve used it to figure out some household organization but it’s more of a professional tool.
meesterdude 7y ago
I use omnigraffle every day. Recently tried to create penrose diagrams but discovered you can't create custom open-ended shapes; and modifying any of the few open ended shapes they have closes them. Guess I can't hope for any improvements any time soon. OG is probably the main reason I'm still on a mac. Nothing else comes close. I hope they can rethink their plans and create a more sustainable & successful business. Their other apps are pretty good too. Easily the best software shop for mac.
0xff00ffee 7y ago
OmniGraffle is the best substitute for Visio that I've found in 25 years, that is affordable (US$100). They are also extremely responsive to bug sightings.
submeta 7y ago
Just recently I took over a very rapidly evolving project, and I realized that OmniFocus for iOS (as much as I love it with all the custom „perspectives“ I created) is way to slow in quickly capturing and organizing new tasks & projects. That‘s why I temporarily switched to a paper based approach and than rediscovered Things3 (which I used prior to OmniFocus). Now after a week or two I realize how much lighter and quicker Things3 is compared to OF. And how impractical OF on iOS always felt. OF for Mac is fine. Although I must admit - after using Things3 for a week or two - that OF feels like overkill, interface-wise. Other Omni products feel like from distant past: OmniOutline (orgmode feels way lighter, better), OmniGraffle was super cool several years ago, but it hasn‘t evolved much. I feel very sorry for this company because several years ago their products were so unique and typical for the Mac experience. Things have changed.
regulation_d 7y ago
OmniOutliner is one of my favorite pieces of software. The idea of hierarchical organization of knowledge is, to me, a really powerful one. I started using it when I was in law school, and it helped me stay organized as I was changing careers and learning how to write software. Even today, where my employer uses Jira and spreadsheets to stay organized, I use an outline as well, which despite being additional effort still provides a lot of value to me. I've heard really good things about notion, and I may try it out one of the days. But for me, OO has been a particularly effective organizational tool in my arsenal.

286 points by keehun 7y ago

Is this the company behind omniGraffle? I love their product. I don't know what other products they have, but it doesn't sound like the current situation should have an effect on them, at least not yet. Sounds like they have been struggling regardless.

saagarjha 7y ago
Yes, OmniGaffle is one of the many "Omni-" products they make.
- thiagocesar 7y ago
  It’s an amazing product. I cannot afford the price tag. I wonder how many more people would buy it if it was just a little bit cheaper.
  - gowld 7y ago
    I assume that 30 years of research has taught them that they won't get double the customers at half of the price.
    - lozaning 7y ago
      Way easier to get away with finding half of your existing customers that can pay double than to cut your prices by half and double your entire sales funnel. Or at least this was the wisdom imparted on me by a long time sales manager for a large VAR.
      - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        Or segment your product so you can extract the most value out of your customers. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
  - tinyhouse 7y ago
    I know it's relative but I don't think their product is expensive since it's a one time fee. I think I paid $99 once but don't recall exactly. Especially if you intend to use it regularly. I think most updates you get for free. But maybe for major updates you need to pay extra. Not sure.
    - Scarbutt 7y ago
      omnigraffle pro is $250.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rgovostes 7y ago
    I was saying the same thing earlier today. Most of their products are $100-200. I like OmniGraffle but I only need to make graphics a few times a year, and free alternatives like draw.io or even Keynote often suffice.
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      Yeah, I feel this. I strongly believe that the "App Store economy" has taught developers to underprice their work, and that $25, $50, even $100 isn't unreasonable. But Omni's stuff... it gets steep if you're a relatively casual user, especially if you want both Mac and iOS versions. While it's possible I'm an outlier, I can't help but wonder if a different pricing structure -- say, $49.99 for most Mac programs, $19.99 for most iOS ones, and a (gasp) subscription of $39.99 per year for upgrading to the Pro version that covered both iOS and Mac versions of the app -- would actually make them more money in the long run.
      - ramses0 7y ago
        Same boat with Omni + SketchUp. I would happily pay $100, for "metered credits" to an online service. There's a big difference between using SketchUp for 40 hours total v. 40 hours a week.
    - teruakohatu 7y ago
      That is the issue. It is not that it isn't worth $250 for the Pro version if you use it everyday, but it isn't worth it if you only use it twice a year.
      - markmark 7y ago
        I don't really know Omni or their products, but I wonder from reading some comments here that while the bottom end of their market has been eaten by cheaper/free alternatives, the pro market that will happily pay $250 for a great tool has been eaten by things like Figma with the online collaboration that has become essential for professionals.
  - Jtsummers 7y ago
    Yes. It is unfortunate. I’ve bought a couple of their products and recommended them to others. However, the price means that people (if their employers aren’t paying for it) have to plan it, and most won’t spend that amount on software.
  - blihp 7y ago
    Not nearly enough... that's the problem: the business models that produced products like that won't be around for much longer as the price gets closer and closer to 'free'. The economics of mobile are dismal for paid productivity software.
    - rhizome 7y ago
      To be fair, what mobile app is as good at what it does as Omni* is at theirs? Or, to short-circuit exceptions proving a rule, what is the proportion, or furthermore, how many segments of the mobile market has apps as good?
bsimpson 7y ago
OmniWeb was my favorite browser when it was around.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Which was originally the web browser on NeXT computers.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    The title of the web browser on NeXT, however, must go to TBL's WorldWideWeb, world's first. [1]: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html

j2bax 7y ago

Big Omniplan fan.

kbumsik 7y ago

I think Omni Group's locked down to Apple is a mistake. As a iPad Pro/iPhone user I wish to buy their products but as a Windows/Linux desktop user the lack of cross-platform support is a huge dealbreaker.

keyle 7y ago
Sometimes it's best to stick to what you do well and do it really well. The market for their product is very different on the Windows side.
- ramraj07 7y ago
  How was this for the best when they had to lay off "usually off market" talent?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    It worked pretty well for three decades.
- kbumsik 7y ago
  I haven't used their products but how the market is different from the Windows side? Aren't they general productivity tools?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Their USP is their integration into the platform.
  - tguedes 7y ago
    Non-Mac/iOS users generally don't pay for software/don't care enough about polish to pay a little extra for something. That's why the majority of developers develop for iOS first and release on iOS first even though Android has the far larger market share (https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-revenue-2018/ https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-reven...). The type of person who is willing to pay extra for the polish Mac/iOS has over Windows/Android, is usually also the type of who is going to be willing to spend more for a better app.

yaacov 7y ago

I discovered Omni yesterday when League of Legends dumped 20 gB of text logs on my brother’s old MacBook, eating up all available disk space and crashing it. He asked me for help. I didn’t know what was taking up all his disk space so I searched for a tool to help me and found OmniDiskSweeper. Unlike the MacOS builtin tools that try to hide the underlying file system, OmniDiskSweeper actually helped me understand the contents of the file system and discover what was eating up all the storage. If anyone who worked on that project is reading this, thank you.

paulryanrogers 7y ago
WinDirStat is similarly nice for those on Windows, or JDiskReport for cross-platform
lozaning 7y ago
I use WinDirStat for the same thing on windows. Lets you pick and then scan a drive and then gives you a graphical view where the bigger the file the larger its block is proportionally to the other files.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Not sure if WinDirStat got updated to use a different method by now, but a few years ago many people switched to WizTree [0] as it is almost instant thanks to reading the data differently. [0]: https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/ https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-...
  - xeromal 7y ago
    WinDirStat is still slow as shit. I use it weekly. haha
- binaryman1 7y ago
  I use Directory Report on Windows. It is faster than WinDirStat

navait 7y ago

I recently signed up for OmniFocus cloud, should I be worried? It’s a fantastic product.

thruhiker 7y ago

I'm sorry to hear this. In a subscription model world, Omni stand out in producing very high quality one time purchase software. I love OmniGraffle! Such a great product once you learn it.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
They seem to be moving to a subscription model: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/ https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/
- Karunamon 7y ago
  Not really moving, more providing the option. Given that iOS and desktop are two separate versions, with new licenses required for upgrades...
gkoberger 7y ago
(Maybe not the point, but maybe there wouldn't be layoffs if it was a subscription)
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Unlikely. A few niche apps don't need development forever. Users have finite hours in a day, they don't have infinite appetite for more features. We are drowning in software.
leadingthenet 7y ago
> one time purchase software Probably exactly what brought them to this point.

KingOfCoders 7y ago

I have been an OmniGraffle user from the very beginning (~2000). I love OmniGraffle. But I've seen Sketch come (and go) and there have been no significant updates for OmniGraffle for a very very long time. Omni only added to their iOS offerings and totally forgot about desktop. I understand that mobile "is the future" but, there is a significant need for desktop design applications. And although I still use OmniGraffle I would no longer buy updates.

blub 7y ago
OmniGraffle is not their only software. I use several of their desktop apps and they continue to support them, they have not forgotten about them.
asciimike 7y ago
I have a few theories on this: - Lack of macOS staffing meaning that it's very much in maintenance mode (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently), which parallels general pushes from Apple on iOS and iPadOS. - Lack of need for new features: I think Omni could have pivoted towards Sketch/Figma style "export to mobile" (which would have actually probably meshed really well with the rest of the mobile app dev business, since we did mocks in OmniGraffle), but I'm curious what else Graffle really needs to be useful. I think historically there has been enough net new customers to not need to provide all that much upgrade incentive. - In 2013 the codebase was a beast, and this was like v4 or v5... I can only imagine adding major new features to it.
- KingOfCoders 7y ago
  I would wish for some features of Sketch actually yes - then I wouldn't have had the need to buy Sketch (and next switch to Figma). Also some better/easier integrations with Powerpoint/Keynote would be nice, I draw 50% (in the past >90%) of diagrams in OmniGraffle that I use in PP/Keynote. I agree that the basics are excellent (alignment, copy & paste, sizing, ...) and still best in class.
  - whywhywhywhy 7y ago

chrisfrantz 7y ago

I used to love Omni Graffle. But after spending a bit of time reading about their current product lineup, I can’t stop wondering why they didn’t transition to web apps years ago. Notion, Figma and Whimsical are eating their lunch. They have a far less robust feature base, but they’re fast, built for teams, simple to use and the pricing scales well. On the other hand, Omni is almost entirely native apps, bloated feature sets and pricing that spent make sense in a team environment. I’d love to see them rethink a few core apps with a fresh coat of paint and a better pricing scheme, developing web first. It’s definitely not too late.

cageface 7y ago
Agreed. The future of productivity apps is on the web. Pretty soon the only category of apps that will have to be native is heavy multi media apps like video editors and digital auto workstations.
- blub 7y ago
  That was supposed to happen any moment now for the past 10+ years. The reason it didn't is because web apps are clunky and less dependable.
  - cageface 7y ago
    It's happening right now as the original article shows. Web apps are eating native's lunch with a few exceptions and that list of exceptions just keeps getting shorter. The web is good enough now to build most of these apps and getting cross platform support more or less for free along with making it much easier to build in collaboration features turns out to more important than the advantages of any particular native toolkit might be for most cases. The only native app I use anymore is a digital audio workstation. Deny it all you like but the trend is unmistakable. Even Sketch has been sidelined by Figma where I work now.
    - blub 7y ago
      The original article shows that one company let some people go and a couple more developers have been affected by the current crisis. For some apps collaboration or centralized control are important and those lend themselves well to web technologies. For others (like the Omni apps), said collaboration and getting mediocre cross platform for free are not as important.

diebeforei485 7y ago

Omnifocus Pro 3 user here. Totally worth every penny.

musicale 7y ago

I thought the Omni group mostly worked remotely; it's too bad that they don't have the cash reserves to pay people to keep working at home, because it's a good time to crank out some code!! I like their products and Omnigraffle in particular, though they still seemed to have old-school high pricing.

danieldk 7y ago
I like their products and Omnigraffle in particular, though they still seemed to have old-school high pricing. I guess they have done their market research and concluded that lowering the prices does not add enough users. I like OmniGraffle a lot as well and recommend it to others. But I don't think anyone else has bought it on my recommendation. If you are the type of person (like me) who draws graphs maybe 10 or 20 times a year, the pricing is very steep, and people will just use something like draw.io. I strongly dislike subscription pricing, but I think it might work in their case. They would be able to extract more money from existing customers + the barrier to entrance is lower for the occasional user. I have tried to use the other Omni products, but the never really resonated with me. OmniFocus has quite a strict and focused GTD-driven model. I found it constraining and switched to Things. Though all these tools break down in a team setup, because they do not really support team sharing of tasks. OmniOutliner always felt too complex as a replacement for e.g. Markdown or org-mode and too limited to compete with the likes of notion.so.
asciimike 7y ago
Unless things changed dramatically, Omni has no remote folks, it's entirely Seattle based. As for pricing, they charge a fair price for their software given the audience (mostly professionals who are willing to pay a premium for high quality software). It's never been the cheapest, but it always had a large enough userbase to pay folks a good wage, have great perks, retain great talent, and enable incredible work/life balance. Source: worked @ Omni in 2013

abinaya_remote 7y ago

Remote Leaf[1] founder here, I would like to offer a free month of Remote Leaf membership to people who lost their job during this crisis, that might help you land a remote job. We hand-pick thousands of remote jobs from tons of job boards and only sends the ones that apply to you. Just ping me on Twitter(@abinaya_rl) and send me an email to avail this :) [1] - https://remoteleaf.com https://remoteleaf.com

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

_pmf_ 7y ago

I'd spend a lot of money for an Android version of OmniOutliner (and OmniGraffle); 100 EUR/year would be no problem. Sad they bet on a failing platform. Incredibly focused, well rounded products that are unmatched.

asciimike 7y ago
Curious why you consider iOS to be a failing platform when the App Store consistently generates 2-3x more revenue than the Play Store even with considerably lower volume (and iOS developers can typically charge more for their apps). Fragmentation in the Android ecosystem makes it considerably more costly to develop and the lower average cost of apps mean you're required to hit significantly higher scale in order to generate the same revenue as a developer. Omni's business model (small number of incredibly loyal customers paying top dollar for the software) likely wouldn't have survived on Android.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Sad they bet on a failing platform. Mac sales aren't growing much but it's a stretch to say it's a failing platform.

snickmy 7y ago

I would love to hear more how the COVID19 has exacerbated the business down period. I naively thought that enterprise software would not see a strong impact from COVID19 in the first 2-3 months.

asciimike 7y ago
Honestly, I don't know how much of this was COVID and how much was just a slowing of the business over the past few years and this is an inevitable consequence of that. I think the business has always more or less run on fairly thin margins (again, it's mostly designed to fund a lifestyle of building awesome Apple apps, not get the founders rich at the expense of employees/customers/VCs/etc.), and so even fairly minor disruptions could cause that to become a big issue.
jpwgarrison 7y ago
99% of all businesses are planning on at least two really bad quarters coming up. Very few have cash reserves to cover shortfalls. If you’re planning out the rest of the year, and you were already in a little trouble, you have to cut expenses immediately. I’m not sure Omni is as tied to quarterly planning/reporting; but for those who are, and are on the regular calendar schedule, this all happened just in time for a lot of the potential Q1 end of quarter sales to dry up as everyone tightened up.
techslave 7y ago
i wouldn’t think so either but in no way is omni in the category of enterprise software.
lonelappde 7y ago
In times like now, new sales of premium niche software are one of the first things to vanish. Better diagramming isn't my core concern right now

asciimike 7y ago

Was one of the first interns @ Omni back in 2013. I'm really sad to hear this, and I have only good things to say about Ken, Tim, and the whole Omni team. Most folks are highlighting what feel like obvious flaws in the business model: - "They charge too much for their software" - "'Apple only' meant limited distribution" - "SaaS apps are making desktop software obsolete" Those all may be true; however, I think these miss the point as they aim for something that wasn't really Omni's goal. Omni succeeds because it builds amazingly high quality software targeted at a specific group of users, and charges a fair price for it (vs the vast majority of software that is of questionable quality and heavily subsidized by VCs and/or your attention). There are (were?) still enough people in the world willing to buy high quality software at that price point to sustain the company. I think the other point missed is that, unlike what I feel like a lot of SV memes portray, Omni was designed to be an infinite game, "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play"[1]. The company isn't trying to blitzscale its way to a billion dollar valuation and let the founders cash out after five years--it's designed to be the best place for the best indie MacOS/iOS devs to have fun building great apps for as long as possible. They've succeeded for a long time, and I have no doubt that even with the downsizing there is still room for the company to succeed in that goal If you're looking for awesome macOS/iOS devs, these really are the best of the best, and you'll be lucky to have them. Given that a big chunk of the team was also support and QA, there are likely a few of them available as well, and definitely check them out if you're in the market for those. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games Fun story: the first Omni app I ever shipped was OmniKeyMaster, which let you swap your Mac App Store license key for an Omni App Store license key. Within an hour of submission, Apple pulled it from the App Store (for obvious reasons). Always fun to have your hand slapped a week into an internship! Second fun story: speaking to the nature of the company... as part of the internship offer, Omni agreed to pay for our housing, and ended up renting the five of us a house in Wallingford. Turns out the house ended up being a scam (we all showed up to move in and someone else was living in it), and so they put us up in the Residence Inn in South Lake Union for two weeks until they got us furnished apartments right next door to the office. It probably cost them a hell of a lot, but to them it was the right thing to do and they take care of their employees (even though they had just hired us). This company does its best to do right by its people, so I know this must have been an incredibly difficult decision for them to make.

dman 7y ago

Nothing signals to me that the market for high quality software is utterly and completely broken than this piece of news. Sad to hear this - if the Omni folks are having difficulty what hope do other small shops have. I am always amazed at the creativity SW folks show when coming up with reasons/excuses for not paying for tools - the culture around this is very saddening. On the other hand my friends who are into electrical, woodworking or automotive take a deep pride in the tools they own. Many of these fields pay a fraction of what SW dev does. I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting.

ac29 7y ago
> I never fully understood why we do not have the "a good tool saves me x hours, and makes me happy while doing my work so I should pay for it" culture. SW engineers are pretty well paid and companies themselves have decent margins so this penny pinching tendency is upsetting. Don't we spend on software, though? Software spend is surely in the billions, if not tens or hundreds of billions a year. As consummate consumers of software, I'd think software engineers are more likely to spend money on software than the general public (and more likely to use open-source software as well).
- dman 7y ago
  Worth thinking about the number of companies globally that make a living writing software in the following categories of development tools a. Debuggers b. IDEs c. Querying Tools d. Text editors e. Source control tools f. Build systems The market for development tools does not look particularly vibrant based on the above.
  - leoedin 7y ago
    I work in the embedded space and so I have used a few proprietary debuggers/IDEs/build systems. They've still got a lot of market share. The huge problem with them is that they're proprietary. They don't have the wide usage of the open source equivalents, so debugging problems is hard. If you want to develop at home, at work and on a PC in a lab, you have to navigate licensing issues. If you want to do a build and test as part of your CI process, you have to navigate licensing issues. Then you move jobs and they've bought into a different, incompatible proprietary system and you have to learn it all over again. The open source options are actually good enough, and the advantage of being able to have the entire build system on a new computer after running a few apt-gets and downloading some free software is huge. The skills persist across jobs, I can use them at home for my own projects, I never have to worry about licenses expiring.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

Brent Simmons seems to be keeping pretty good spirits—the last paragraph of his blog post made me chuckle. Good for him, he seems like a lovely person. https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work > The hard part of all this: normally everyone would get together for a happy hour for a few drops of encouragement and friendship. These rituals are nice, and they matter to me. > But — (gesturing again at this fallen world) — nope.

twarge 7y ago

In my experience their stuff has a surprising amount of friction. It also used to be buggy, but it's not that anymore. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels a little like they're just not getting the basics right. Just one example: In omnigraffle, pinch to zoom has all kinds of janky jumpiness that is simply disqualifying. And they only got it to this point very recently.

DavideNL 7y ago

It's sad to see apps full of ads/tracking and ridiculous subscriptions thrive, while quality software like this gets into trouble. I've been happily using Omnifocus for a long time; - Single purchase, no subscription - e2e encrypted syncing between devices (+ server storage) - 0 tracking, ads etc.

alain_gilbert 7y ago
I don't think subscription is that bad. Development and support is never ending. Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies. At some point the market is not infinite.
- rubidium 7y ago
  “ Single purchase, you also get "single development", and then it dies.” This is a lie perpetuated by the saas industry. If you compare saas companies shutting down “services” to prior product companies stopping updating versions you don’t see much difference. Also, sw engineers used to care about designing something well. So when you used something the first time it was occasionally delightful. Now it’s just “launch and we’ll worry about that in our next sprint”.
  - alain_gilbert 7y ago
    I'm not saying the product can or cannot be good on first release... But the world is ever changing. Let say you build a UI for database. In a few years, a new version of mysql or postgresql will be released, and you have to update your software as well to use the new features. What I'm saying is that almost whatever you are building, the development will never be done.
    - DavideNL 7y ago
      It's not relevant, because then the developer can release a new major version and require a new payment. The user will know exactly what changes this new major version has, and can decide whether he wants to pay for it or not. With subscriptions however, this all becomes hidden/vague. You're always paying, but it's no longer transparent what exactly it is you're paying for. Which is obviously very bad for the user. (Of course it's a an entirely different story for services like Netflix, AppleTv+, Spotify, etc.)

rdslw 7y ago

I would, and I'm actually considering, to offer them $2000 just to compile me Omnifocus 1 (latest of v1 branch) as 64bit app, as it's currently 32bit and can't work due to CatalinaCurse. Omnifocus 2 was a joke in any category, while I have mixed fealing about 3 (speed, ergonomics, features). Anyone want to chip in? :)

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Have you looked at Things, I've been using it for the last year and am really pleased with it.
edwinyzh 7y ago
Is is Omni Focus 1, right? (https://www.macworld.com/article/1132832/omnifocus1.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1132832/omnifocus1.html) I don't use it, But I'm curious as to what are the major changes of v2 which disappoint you? I like the v1 interface as shown in the above mentioned article.

watersb 7y ago

Really good people. :-( Been a customer since their web browser for NeXt. Dang.

devin 7y ago

I’m slightly confused. What about the current pandemic changed their business so much? Do people suddenly have less need for their apps? That seems unlikely. It seems like this has been coming for awhile. OmniGraffle missed the online diagramming collaboration wave, and OmniFocus missed the same thing on the project management side.

biztos 7y ago
While I'm sad to hear they're suffering, I agree about OmniGraffle. I am a paying customer and I use it for my job... but if I'm doing anything at all I expect other people might need to edit, I can't use it. Because the other people won't have licenses, or won't have Macs. So I use it for a lot of quick and dirty diagramming but don't really ever invest the time to take advantage of its power features, because anything that complex needs to be available for editing, even if it's less nice.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The Mac solution for that is to buy more Macs and Mac software licenses.

joeberon 7y ago

Unfortunately Omni's software is pretty old and bloated at this point, although I've only used OmniFocus and OmniGraffle. The former is very powerful but this is a blessing and a curse, in that the UX is very cluttered and quite intimidating. I honestly think that Things has exceeded it now, being less customisable but also capturing the essence of what makes OmniFocus good without getting bogged down in too much customisation and verbosity. OmniFocus is the opposite of a productivity tool to me, it keeps you in the app for too long configuring and setting things up just right, instead of getting out of the way OmniGraffle is great, and probably the best diagramming tool I've used, however it feels like it hasn't had a really significant update in a very long time and it's starting to show frankly

gurkendoktor 7y ago
The flip side of it is that OmniFocus needs to be so customizable because the defaults are not great. (I feel the same about the default styles in OmniGraffle.) I was a die-hard OF1 user, but they've completely lost me with the OF2 redesign. Large checkboxes on the right stress me out on mobile (that's where my scrolling finger rests), and it took months before there were layouts in OF2 for Mac that had the same information density as in OF1. I haven't even tried OF3.
- ubermonkey 7y ago
  Hard same. The redesign for OF2 drove me away completely; I eventually landed in orgmode, where I control everything and don't have to worry about seasonal / fashion oriented redesigns.
- ken 7y ago
  Planning and scheduling tools are weird. Everybody has their own system already. So software is either simple (and doesn’t work for most people) or incredibly complex (and requires massive customization). Or they say “just redesign your whole life around our app!” I’m not even sure which one OmniFocus is trying to be.
- m463 7y ago
  I had the same experience with OF2, but honestly think it wasn't entirely their fault as ios 7 sort of pulled the rug out from under the world. that said, even with stupid round checkboxes of2 runs my life, which would be much more chaotic without it.

indymike 7y ago

Oh, man. Hate to see this. I used to use OmniGraffle for UX wireframes and diagrams. Very good software. I left the employer that held the license, and honestly, haven't found a replacement that is as fast... especially for diagrams.

lonelappde 7y ago
You could buy a license?
- indymike 7y ago
  If I were doing wireframes monthly, I'd buy in a heartbeat. At present I do so sporadically, and my daily driver is no longer a Mac.

veidr 7y ago

This seems a good thread to memorialize OmniWeb — for a few years there, it was the best web browser of all time. When was that? 2002-2005 ish?

JackPoach 7y ago

Omni has a great product (products, really) but not launching them as a SaaS was a big mistake. Hopefully, not all is lost and they can still do this. Also, they need to embrace freemium model when it comes to project management like Bitrix24, Trello and Asana have done. That's why they are undisputed leaders right now.

nstart 7y ago

Oof. This is a little upsetting to me. Inessential has been on my RSS feed forever and I've enjoyed reading it for a long time. Makes me feel somehow connected to what's going on with Brent because he's written about his work at Omni so much. Hope he finds a company to work with soon. Tough times :(

uNmas 7y ago

It's sad to see this happening. I was using OmniGroup software for probably 10 years now. But, their stack was just outdated. OmniFocus 3 still looks like Windows 95 in comparison to Things 3. Their web version is a step in the right direction. But it took them ages to adapt to a faster development cycle, and the web version is still not usable for me. I don't see it as a subscription vs. one-time pay problem. I am happy to pay for good software, but to be honest, OmniGroup still lives in the past. When I visit their website now, and look at the screenshots they present, boy... I wouldn't buy these tools if I wouldn't know that they are actually so good.

time0ut 7y ago

What a shame. I rely on Omnigraffle every day. Some aspects of it are showing their age, but it is still the best tool on MacOS.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

...can someone please give me an excuse to go buy Omnigraffle? I want to, but I need a reason. What would I be able to use it for in my daily life as a layperson doing layperson things?

1123581321 7y ago
I use it for UX wireframing, mind/node mapping, and visualizing processes and data flows. Personally, we’ve used it to figure out some household organization but it’s more of a professional tool.

meesterdude 7y ago

I use omnigraffle every day. Recently tried to create penrose diagrams but discovered you can't create custom open-ended shapes; and modifying any of the few open ended shapes they have closes them. Guess I can't hope for any improvements any time soon. OG is probably the main reason I'm still on a mac. Nothing else comes close. I hope they can rethink their plans and create a more sustainable & successful business. Their other apps are pretty good too. Easily the best software shop for mac.

0xff00ffee 7y ago

OmniGraffle is the best substitute for Visio that I've found in 25 years, that is affordable (US$100). They are also extremely responsive to bug sightings.

submeta 7y ago

Just recently I took over a very rapidly evolving project, and I realized that OmniFocus for iOS (as much as I love it with all the custom „perspectives“ I created) is way to slow in quickly capturing and organizing new tasks & projects. That‘s why I temporarily switched to a paper based approach and than rediscovered Things3 (which I used prior to OmniFocus). Now after a week or two I realize how much lighter and quicker Things3 is compared to OF. And how impractical OF on iOS always felt. OF for Mac is fine. Although I must admit - after using Things3 for a week or two - that OF feels like overkill, interface-wise. Other Omni products feel like from distant past: OmniOutline (orgmode feels way lighter, better), OmniGraffle was super cool several years ago, but it hasn‘t evolved much. I feel very sorry for this company because several years ago their products were so unique and typical for the Mac experience. Things have changed.

regulation_d 7y ago

OmniOutliner is one of my favorite pieces of software. The idea of hierarchical organization of knowledge is, to me, a really powerful one. I started using it when I was in law school, and it helped me stay organized as I was changing careers and learning how to write software. Even today, where my employer uses Jira and spreadsheets to stay organized, I use an outline as well, which despite being additional effort still provides a lot of value to me. I've heard really good things about notion, and I may try it out one of the days. But for me, OO has been a particularly effective organizational tool in my arsenal.