14 ms·

Adobe XD, where did it go wrong?

166 points by achow 5y ago

svilen_dobrev 5y ago
well, there also was FrameMaker, one of the parents of most later desktop-publishing things.. decades before (and it even was kind-of-programmable), and then they bought it, and killed it as well. only Their thing or no thing.
petepete 5y ago
In one team I work on the designer uses XD. Receiving designs feels like jumping back to the early 00s when I'd often work from .psd files. The other teams go from a very rough sketch (often in Excalidraw) to a HTML prototype. Everything about this approach is better. Being able to put the prototypes in front of users for research is worth its weight in gold.
FormFollowsFunc 5y ago
It seemed to me that the XD team was always quite small. I found it interesting that Adobe never put that much resources into UI design. Maybe the market isn’t very profitable. You would think it would be huge because so many companies need to design UIs.
- Bombthecat 5y ago
  Companies don't see the value. There should be almost always a ui/ux designer, but it's basically at the bottom of the list.. Hence, not much money to be made.
- Adrig 5y ago
  Probably a business model issue. Since the software is sub-par, and they were late to the party, they are forced to give it for free to even be considered. I also suspect XD don't bring many synergies with other Adobe products like Illustrator does. Given this, it might be difficult to justify a proper budget to compete with the market leaders
samwillis 5y ago
It seems to me Figma is the market leader on this now, at least from what I can see online. What are other people impressions? I still wish Adobe hadn’t killed Fireworks when they purchased Macromedia. It was such a brilliant package, by far the best ui design tool at the time.
- Adrig 5y ago
  I feel the same, but I've been talking to other designers who still prefer sketch for its way of handling design systems and jump into XD for prototyping or vision setting. Despite its little quirks, I believe Figma has the best dynamic of this space. I also can't be happier to ditch an Adobe product for a valid alternative.
  - jjcm 5y ago
    Product manager over at Figma - would love to know the quirks you mentioned!
  - culturestate 5y ago
    Sketch + Framer is my go-to combo these days, with Zeplin for documentation and handoffs. For some reason, Figma has just never felt right to me.
    - Unbeliever69 5y ago
      Complete opposite experience. Dropped Sketch for Figma and never looked back.
- open-source-ux 5y ago
  "It seems to me Figma is the market leader on this now" This is my impression too. Adobe XD has always been in 'catch-up' mode to rivals Sketch and Figma. I was sceptical a complex, feature-rich design tool could be possible in the browser, but Figma proved me wrong. Not only that, Figma has proved to be serious competition to rival Sketch which is a native desktop Mac-only app (with all the speed and functionality advantage of a native app.) Both Sketch and Adobe XD are also hampered by the fact that sharing designs or collaborating with others is harder compared to Figma. Sketch and Adobe XD were designed with the focus on single-user desktop app use, not the multi-user (cross-platform) collaboration scenario common today. Both Sketch and XD allow you to share designs by uploading screenshots or files to their 'cloud' or hosting services. But editing is still required in the desktop app - unlike Figma where the browser is the app (although there are Figma Electron desktop apps for offline use). Adobe XD has a feature called 'co-editing' where multiple users can edit a file at the same time - but each user must have the XD app installed. Figma is even encroaching on the territory of other online tools like Miro. For example, Figma can be used as a digital whiteboard - ideal for a mixed team of developers, managers, designers and any other stakeholders. This is simply not possible in Sketch or Adobe XD.
robertlagrant 5y ago
I still prefer Balsamiq for designing functionality and user flows. So nice to use.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Same here, don't need anything more complex.
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  Comparing lo-fi prototyping to UI design tools is comparing compilers to virtual machines. They are used at different stages of the process and can actually be used together by the same team.
- cloudking 5y ago
  I found a tool that has similar functionality, but a better free tier. Check out MockPlus https://mockplus.com https://mockplus.com
gherkinnn 5y ago
It was the name xD Its dependency on that malware AdobeCloud didn’t help either. You can’t delete it, you can’t turn it off, and it randomly maxed out the CPU. Adobe has good products but their business practices disgust me and they need a kicking.
- ffritz 5y ago
  There is an uninstaller for the cloud client available. It does what it says actually.
  - smilespray 5y ago
    Can you use the installed products after uninstalling CC? Because you need CC to install the products.
  - gherkinnn 5y ago
    Back when I last used it was harder than it should have been. One of the Cs in CC must stand for the clap.
- pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  > It was the name xD As if "Figma balls" were any better…
fxtentacle 5y ago
Adobe burned all bridges with their customers when they introduced CreativeCloud, that universally hated DRM app that randomly maxes out your CPU. Also, before, companies, schools, and universities could purchase a few perpetual licenses and use those for teaching. Now, they would need to spend much more on person-bound license rentals. So I'd say XD never had a chance because it launched after the customers left. I'm still being held hostage by them to access my old files, but for every new project, I go out of my way to avoid using any Adobe-specific file format. If others do the same, then XDs only chance is a truly open file format that other apps can also use. EDIT: If I remember correctly, I released my first self-developed plug-in for Photoshop 5 around 1999. So I've been using Adobe products for a long time. Back then, plugins for hobbyist power users were a big market. Nowadays, that market is dead. All the hobbyists went to Gimp and Inkscape. Similarly, the Substance3D communities became a ghost town more or less overnight when Adobe purchased the company and then removed Indie pricing. It went from $99 one-time on Steam to $49/month (min 12 months, so $588 annually) as part of Creative Cloud. Suddenly, Marmoset - their long-term competitor - became very attractive at a one-time $119 for students for a perpetual license. I also lost access to my old files there.
- csmpltn 5y ago
  Can anybody recommend an Audition alternative that does not require a monthly subscription to use?
  - naskwo 5y ago
    Try Audacity?
    - Hendrikto 5y ago
      I don‘t think Audacity is a great option anymore [0][1]. You might want to consider one of the forks (e.g. [2]). [0]: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/13/muse-group-continues-tone-deaf-handling-of-audacity/ https://hackaday.com/2021/07/13/muse-group-continues-tone-de... [1]: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-audacity-how-to-wreck-an-open-source-project-and-anger-a-community/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-audacity-how-to-wre... [2]: https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
grenoire 5y ago
Less fluff more buff is something I experience in a variety of products, and the one I interact with a lot on a daily basis (a cloud accounting tool) has this exact problem. I was just thinking, as a part of the compensation issues of PMs (release feature, get promoted), are we killing the 'back end' teams in favour of 'front end' teams, because they are more visible? It seems like requests on core and productivity improvement/power user features are always just forgotten about. Not because they're 'harder to implement' or whatever, but because back end doesn't get the resource and manpower they need?
Bombthecat 5y ago
Wait, for real? There are no bullet points /lists? This is just sad..
lf-non 5y ago
Unrelated to the primary topic, but I have been trying out a new free (as in beer) app called lunacy [1] for prototyping and the experience has been great. I am not a UX professional so can't comment on feature parity with Figma etc. It was however interesting to discover that the native cross platform app was powered by dotnet core & the open source Avalonia framework[2]. It looks quite polished and the framework seems to have come a long way since I tried a few years ago. [1] https://icons8.com/lunacy https://icons8.com/lunacy [2] http://avaloniaui.net/ http://avaloniaui.net/
- luckyshot 5y ago
  Looks really nice actually! How do they fund development? Nagging about their icons8 subscription?
  - lf-non 5y ago
    It is integrated with their catalog of stock illustrations, many of which are paid. I think in future they also intend to charge for collaborative features or cloud storage.
- Unbeliever69 5y ago
  Thanks for the the tip on a new product! Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of free products become paid products over time. It's nearly impossible to sustain growth without income. That being said, I gladly pay for Figma. It's that good.
- redindian75 5y ago
  At first glace it doesnt work from browsers - AFAIK, only PenPot[1] does, that too only 60% of Figma features. [1] https://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/
drewrbaker 5y ago
We use XD with our design team and they all love it. On the dev team we’ve been given Figma prototypes and I think XD’s are significantly better. And the last few updates to XD have been really helpful (hover state toggles being the one that the dev team appreciates the most).
Bellamy 5y ago
What would people here suggest as the alternative software?
- tjpnz 5y ago
  You can go a long way with pen and paper + Google Drive or email.
  - smilespray 5y ago
    Bold statement to make on HN.
- batperson 5y ago
  Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Pay once, own forever.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  Alternative to XD? Figma for ux/ui design + basic prototyping, Framer for slightly advanced prototyping.
nikanj 5y ago
Having any Adobe app on my computer means permanently sacrificing a large chunk of resources to CreativeCloud. I'm happy with Photoshop eating ram&cpu when it's running, but the 24/7 background DRM daemon is absolutely unacceptable. Too bad Adobe has grown so large that the technical people have lost all power. It happens to all companies: they build marketshare and reputation with technical excellence, but eventually reach some sort of singularity where every single reasonable dev departs. The only thing left for a company at this point is maximizing revenue from enterprise/government contracts, and usually dwindling out after a private equity reverse takeover/merger with a company you've never heard of. Management is in a tough spot, because changing their ways might decrease revenues, which would hasten their demise. Imagine the reaction from Adobe's shareholders if they announced they're cutting prices to a third and dropping all DRM..
- deleted 5y ago
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- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  Is it not possible to close the daemon while not running Adobe software and only start it when using them?
sarora27 5y ago
Former Adobe employee here. IME, most folks at Adobe don’t really care about listening to customers, providing a great customer experience, or putting the customer first. Most of the organization was highly political with different BUs fighting each other for “status”, budget and promotions. Can’t blame them though. The photoshop money machine keeps going brrrr so why bother.
- nikanj 5y ago
  People who cared about those things vacated the premises years ago.
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    When? In the 90s? I remember this was the common perception of Adobe in the mid 2000s when they bought Macromedia. Photoshop was a cash cow then that was more known for being industry standard than being high quality.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > The photoshop money machine keeps going brrrr This makes me wonder. Who is actually using Photoshop today and why? In the past, these were graphics designers and photographers. The latter already migrated to Lightroom, Capture One etc. Designers have so many tools to choose from, why would they use Photoshop? I understand for long-time users it's just inertia, but new users are spoiled for choice.
  - FrozenSynapse 5y ago
    Photographers have advanced retouching workflows which are not possible in Lightroom. Lightroom is like a point and shoot, Photoshop is like a DSLR
    - anotherboffin 5y ago
      Nitpick: they’re complementary. LR has cataloguing/sorting/filtering/metadata handling features that PS doesn’t have, and has an “edit in Photoshop” option for the more complicated workflows you mention. Not many people would enjoy using Bridge and PS to sort their photos.
tomduncalf 5y ago
Slightly off topic, but as soon as there’s a Lightroom competitor which can sync photos and edit between iOS and Mac, and has most of the fundamental editing features, I’m done with Adobe. I don’t mind a subscription model necessarily but their prices are too high and I hate that every year I have to barter with their support to get a cheaper price. If such a tool already exists please let me know! I love being able to edit photos on my iPad or Mac without having to worry about manually syncing anything, and Apple Photos is a bit too basic.
- deleted 5y ago
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- SSLy 5y ago
  For sync you can just leverage iCloud, for editing two macOS/iPadOS apps come to mind: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/darkroom-photo-video-editor/id953286746 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/darkroom-photo-video-editor/id... https://apps.apple.com/app/pixelmator/id1444636541 https://apps.apple.com/app/pixelmator/id1444636541 Of course both don't have every Lightroom feature, but that might be a boon to many like me.
  - tomduncalf 5y ago
    Do the edits sync? Like I can start editing a picture on my iPhone, continue tweaking it on my iPad, then do final edits on my Mac, all using iCloud? Super cool if so
- donatzsky 5y ago
  Haven't tried it personally, but Darktable is supposedly about on par with Lightroom. Stronger in some areas, weaker in others. For syncing you can use your favourite cloud storage. Edit: Of course, it's not available for iOS...
- matwood 5y ago
  Affinity is supposed to be working on the DAM aspect that is missing from all the competitors/options others will likely post. I look every year before re-upping my LR sub and nothing comes close. Being able to pick up any device from my iPad, iPhone or Mac and work on photos from where I left off is pretty awesome. The closest thing is Photos.app, but then I'm missing all the LR advanced functionality.
kossTKR 5y ago
Adobe is a horrible company that scams customers and organisations that wants to use their software - can't wait until they sink. That said it's incredible to me how many huge organisations have ticket systems with age old and easy-to-fix backlogs with issues that just doesn't get fixed - like the team has completely left the building. I'm thinking Google and Apple here in particular. After doing full stack agile development i know it can be difficult and complex - but not that difficult to check forums and fix various issues each month.
- karamanolev 5y ago
  It's not that difficult or complex. But imagine a team of 5, 10, 100 devs - each one has a family to feed and a job to keep. No one goes to those orgs as a dev because they aspire to change the world. You have to do what the product managers say the hot topic of the day is and it's never "go to the forums and fix issues" or "choose the most upvoted bugs and work on them". It's always the latest hype and headline-grabbing feature to work on that will get people promoted and some products off the shelves. Real users care about real issues, but they're already onboard.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    This is a problem with agile processes, which leave no room for ownership or "extra curriculum" work without micromanager approval.
- Unbeliever69 5y ago
  Not going to happen. I feel the same way about AutoDesk. Both horrible monopolies that prevent users from escaping their ecosystems.
Joeboy 5y ago
People use Adobe apps because they're integrated (in terms of licensing and workflow) with other Adobe apps, and because they need to collaborate with other people who use Adobe apps. I guess none of that is much of a selling point for XD.
tsywke44 5y ago
Most likely reason for such fall from grace in update speeds? They lost the savant senior dev (or two) keeping their project together.
- siscia 5y ago
  I came here to make this exact same comment. It really seems like they lost the few key people that were holding the whole thing together, either to another company or just to the void due to bad management. I would love to understand more about this change. The more I mature as an engineer, the more I see the value of few engaged Individual Contributors that behind the scenes are driving the product and steering management decisions.
- LennyWhiteJr 5y ago
  Yup, this exactly. It is often under-appreciated how much an active corporate engagement model is due to 1 or 2 highly motivated employees. Once they leave, engagement drops because it wasn't something being driven from management or PMs.
chupchap 5y ago
Figma has a lot of features, but it just isn't snappy and a very frustrating experience a lot of times. For this reason alone, I prefer XD. I spend less time fighting the tool.
- sdflhasjd 5y ago
  I'm a developer, so I'm mostly viewing the designs rather than making them, but I also find Figma to be clunky and awkward. I much prefer Zeplin and XD. And with as much bullshit as Adobe throws at you with creative cloud, at least you can export .xd files.
  - wx196 5y ago
    You can export .fig files as well.
  - _fat_santa 5y ago
    > I'm a developer, so I'm mostly viewing the designs rather than making them, but I also find Figma to be clunky and awkward. I much prefer Zeplin and XD. Also a dev and I also found Figma to be kind of clunky at first compared to other options. It has gotten much better though, they will never be on the level of Sketch but at the same time the biggest obstacle that Sketch has is that it's a Mac only desktop app. Figma might be clunky, but I found it's flexibility to be a massive benefit over other tools.
    - Unbeliever69 5y ago
      To me that clunkiness was just not understanding/utilizing the true power of the tool. Once you work past that uncomfortable phase there is a eureka moment when it all snaps into place and you can't imagine doing it any other way. There is not a single Sketch feature I wish I had in Figma.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  Interesting. I’ve switched from Sketch to Figma, because Sketch was unbearably slow.
chefgoldbluum 5y ago
Adobe offered me a reduced rate subscription over the phone after I cancelled my subscription. No qualifications mentioned. I accepted. A year and a half later I noticed I had been charged 3-4x the reduced rate each month for the last 6 months. I tried to get my money back, they refused. I cancelled my subscription and vowed never to touch Adobe products again. I was in a position at my company to end our use of XD and immediately move to Figma. We've grown 3x since and Figma's been great. For personal work I prefer Sketch it looks and feels like a native app.
- prismatix 5y ago
  Figma is great, but I do want to note that Adobe XD is free (or at least it was last time I checked).
  - chefgoldbluum 5y ago
    It was free in the early days but over time teams and individuals were funneled into paying. At least in my region, you can still get a 7 day trial, but beyond that you have to pay.
HatchedLake721 5y ago
I love Photoshop. Their hotkeys are a muscle memory in my brain for 10+ years. I hate CreativeCloud. It eats resources and I found gigabytes of random trash logs it writes. I wish I could download and use Photoshop on its own. When I get a new laptop, I won’t install CreativeCloud. Has anyone got recommendations for photoshop alternatives? For graphic/web design only stuff, editing, cropping, adjusting pixels and stuff like that.
- HlessClaudesman 5y ago
  Find a copy of Photoshop CS6. Newer features are not worth the CC grief.
  - eropple 5y ago
    If all you need is Photoshop, that's true. But, IME, nothing steps to Premiere and After Effects, particularly in combination. And modern Premiere is worth paying for, for performance if nothing else. Going back to the scary old days of stuff like Voukoder--no thank you. (No, definitely not Resolve.)
    - uxcolumbo 5y ago
      Why do you think Resolve is not up to the job?
      - eropple 5y ago
        It's not Premiere. That might sound flip, but Premiere is a learned skill and I have yet to discover really compelling reasons beyond price (which isn't actually that expensive) to use Not Premiere. From a feature perspective its workflow options are sub-par; for example, it doesn't directly interface with After Effects. AE Live Templates in Premiere alone has saved me hours of time rendering out of After Effects. And AE, too, is not optional; while I like AE a lot less than I do Premiere, it sticks because--and there's a theme here--nothing else really does what After Effects does while integrating into an NLE. The ecosystem matters. I think Resolve is fine if you don't know other tools or your needs are small. I've used it in a pinch before when I didn't have any other options, it's totally usable. And there are some tools (grading, obviously) which are absolutely top notch, and if you are in an all-Blackmagic recording stack I can definitely see some benefits to ease-of-use when, say, pulling video recorded from an ATEM Mini and some Blackmagic cameras. But it's a limited editor with limited compatibility with everything else in my workflow and those of the folks I know.
noduerme 5y ago
>> I just couldn’t believe how reactive the XD team were at releasing new features. Yeah, this pretty much sums up the disappointment for anyone who's still paying for Adobe these days. Everything they have feels like legacy software. There's no one at the helm. They are hanging on and their stock price is still going up, purely because of inertia and the effect of their monopoly on photoshop. [edit, I just checked and it's finally going down. Hooray.] Adobe is no longer in a position to compete with anything new that comes along. They're going to ride their current software and locked-in users to the grave. They're currently at what, almost $500 a share? There has never been a company more over-extended and overpriced. They're fucking doomed, and the sooner they go down the better for everyone in the creative industry.
- Unbeliever69 5y ago
  I'm so grateful that I paid for a copy of the Master Collection back in 2010ish. When I need to do design the older software still does everything I need.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I did too, but I have to pull out old hardware to use it. It won't run on an M1 Mac.
deleted 5y ago
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sandebert 5y ago
Some months back somebody, in a HN thread, posted a link to an Adobe forum post where Adobe linked to an older version of Photoshop that was free and legal to download. It didn't require their cloud solution, and they also provided a serial number for it. I've tried several times to find that link again, but always failed. Does this ring a bell with somebody?
- ffritz 5y ago
  Yip, does ring a bell. I believe it was the CS2 version. I also remember downloading it some 6-7 years ago on Windows.
  - sandebert 5y ago
    Amazing, so it's not my brain playing games with me. Any chance you would be able to find the link, I don't seem to have the skills.
    - mostafas 5y ago
      Perhaps this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636
      - sandebert 5y ago
        Yes, that is it, thank you so much! However, reading it now I'm not entirely sure if it's still possible to install this...
        _fat_santa 5y ago
        Question. How does CS2 and CS3 compare to Gimp nowdays?
        sandebert 5y ago
        After reading all the links from that HN post, I've come to the conclusion that it's not possible to use download and install CS2/CS3 anymore. Thanks to all that helped, much appreciated.
xaedes 5y ago
Really? Dark cyan on light pink? Where did the colors go wrong? It does reduce readability a lot. Why do people feel the need to make websites barely readable by going for low contrast?
josefrichter 5y ago
I’ve never heard anyone say “I like Adobe”. It’s seems to be universally hated, and rightly so.
seltzered_ 5y ago
It's probably worth noting the history. I think Tom Krcha ( https://twitter.com/tomkrcha https://twitter.com/tomkrcha ) led initial work of Adobe XD and is long gone from there. I could argue XD has it's place in enterprise environments where it's more painful to purchase outside of Adobe and it's good enough to do basic UX visioning/mockup.
scottbelsky 5y ago
Speaking on behalf of a group of more recent leaders at the helm of creative products at Adobe, this thread is obviously frustrating and hard to read but also motivating. Many fair criticism and suggestions, and many of these are now (finally) being addressed. We have undertaken a massive effort to deliver web apps that are deeply collaborative, cloud services that are resilient, and are rearchitecting many of our apps (some decades old!) to be more performant (less memory hog) and incorporate some pretty mind-blowing ai capabilities that save tons of time in creative workflows. The policy stuff is being updated and redesigned for clarity, and our daily challenge is to innovate and build next generation experiences while not tampering with the muscle memory of our legacy customers. Admittedly, this has slowed development of certain products in the past. But as I look around the team these days, people are here for the mission and determined to do the hard work. The shift to subscription was before my time, but modern apps are cloud enabled and we see a ton more ways to leverage this model for customer value (including today’s 20k+ fonts, stock, ai tools computing in cloud, collab, web apps…). Ultimately, my hope is that the next generation of creative will work together better than ever (interoperability, dev ecosystem will be important across many of the point solutions emerging), enable new forms of collaboration, and unlock new possibilities (via ai, new approaches to democratize 3d creation, new mediums emerging like AR/VR). But it is up to the Adobe team to absorb the feedback and show rather than tell.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > modern apps are cloud enabled and we see a ton more ways to leverage this model for customer value (including today’s 20k+ fonts, stock, ai tools computing in cloud, collab, web apps…) I think the average consumer doesn't care about this and it makes sense from corporate strategy standpoint - this is your bread and butter. It generates enormous cashflows. But you're not going to get good reception on HN - we wan't none of these features. We want 2008 version of Adobe products. Install. Get the job done. Close it. We're happy to pay for that. Also, let's cut to the chase, Adobe's advertisement platform is where its shareholders wants it to go: https://business.adobe.com/products/advertising/adobe-advertising-cloud/products.html https://business.adobe.com/products/advertising/adobe-advert...
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shwoopdiwoop 5y ago
I just can’t shake the feeling that whenever I have to use Adobe software, it’s trying to do its hardest to make my life miserable. Creative Cloud is the worst piece of software ever conceived. And why do I have to update the updater to then update creative cloud before I can update an app that refuses to open otherwise? It’s just pure madness and I really wish the market would finally put an end to this and just refuse to engage with Adobe’s malicious pricing and subscription policies. Figma on the other end, feels like a good friend that has my best interests in mind. Hope it’s going to stay like this for a while.
lifeplusplus 5y ago
I find XD has better performance than figma but CC cloud is cancer so i dont recommend it
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I don't get this. He used XD for YEARS without bullets or pages or some other features? How does a professional front end developer manage to do that?

166 points by achow 5y ago

well, there also was FrameMaker, one of the parents of most later desktop-publishing things.. decades before (and it even was kind-of-programmable), and then they bought it, and killed it as well. only Their thing or no thing.

petepete 5y ago

In one team I work on the designer uses XD. Receiving designs feels like jumping back to the early 00s when I'd often work from .psd files. The other teams go from a very rough sketch (often in Excalidraw) to a HTML prototype. Everything about this approach is better. Being able to put the prototypes in front of users for research is worth its weight in gold.

FormFollowsFunc 5y ago

It seemed to me that the XD team was always quite small. I found it interesting that Adobe never put that much resources into UI design. Maybe the market isn’t very profitable. You would think it would be huge because so many companies need to design UIs.

Bombthecat 5y ago
Companies don't see the value. There should be almost always a ui/ux designer, but it's basically at the bottom of the list.. Hence, not much money to be made.
Adrig 5y ago
Probably a business model issue. Since the software is sub-par, and they were late to the party, they are forced to give it for free to even be considered. I also suspect XD don't bring many synergies with other Adobe products like Illustrator does. Given this, it might be difficult to justify a proper budget to compete with the market leaders

samwillis 5y ago

It seems to me Figma is the market leader on this now, at least from what I can see online. What are other people impressions? I still wish Adobe hadn’t killed Fireworks when they purchased Macromedia. It was such a brilliant package, by far the best ui design tool at the time.

Adrig 5y ago
I feel the same, but I've been talking to other designers who still prefer sketch for its way of handling design systems and jump into XD for prototyping or vision setting. Despite its little quirks, I believe Figma has the best dynamic of this space. I also can't be happier to ditch an Adobe product for a valid alternative.
- jjcm 5y ago
  Product manager over at Figma - would love to know the quirks you mentioned!
- culturestate 5y ago
  Sketch + Framer is my go-to combo these days, with Zeplin for documentation and handoffs. For some reason, Figma has just never felt right to me.
  - Unbeliever69 5y ago
    Complete opposite experience. Dropped Sketch for Figma and never looked back.
open-source-ux 5y ago
"It seems to me Figma is the market leader on this now" This is my impression too. Adobe XD has always been in 'catch-up' mode to rivals Sketch and Figma. I was sceptical a complex, feature-rich design tool could be possible in the browser, but Figma proved me wrong. Not only that, Figma has proved to be serious competition to rival Sketch which is a native desktop Mac-only app (with all the speed and functionality advantage of a native app.) Both Sketch and Adobe XD are also hampered by the fact that sharing designs or collaborating with others is harder compared to Figma. Sketch and Adobe XD were designed with the focus on single-user desktop app use, not the multi-user (cross-platform) collaboration scenario common today. Both Sketch and XD allow you to share designs by uploading screenshots or files to their 'cloud' or hosting services. But editing is still required in the desktop app - unlike Figma where the browser is the app (although there are Figma Electron desktop apps for offline use). Adobe XD has a feature called 'co-editing' where multiple users can edit a file at the same time - but each user must have the XD app installed. Figma is even encroaching on the territory of other online tools like Miro. For example, Figma can be used as a digital whiteboard - ideal for a mixed team of developers, managers, designers and any other stakeholders. This is simply not possible in Sketch or Adobe XD.

robertlagrant 5y ago

I still prefer Balsamiq for designing functionality and user flows. So nice to use.

pjmlp 5y ago
Same here, don't need anything more complex.
ivan_gammel 5y ago
Comparing lo-fi prototyping to UI design tools is comparing compilers to virtual machines. They are used at different stages of the process and can actually be used together by the same team.
cloudking 5y ago
I found a tool that has similar functionality, but a better free tier. Check out MockPlus https://mockplus.com https://mockplus.com

gherkinnn 5y ago

It was the name xD Its dependency on that malware AdobeCloud didn’t help either. You can’t delete it, you can’t turn it off, and it randomly maxed out the CPU. Adobe has good products but their business practices disgust me and they need a kicking.

ffritz 5y ago
There is an uninstaller for the cloud client available. It does what it says actually.
- smilespray 5y ago
  Can you use the installed products after uninstalling CC? Because you need CC to install the products.
- gherkinnn 5y ago
  Back when I last used it was harder than it should have been. One of the Cs in CC must stand for the clap.
pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
> It was the name xD As if "Figma balls" were any better…

fxtentacle 5y ago

Adobe burned all bridges with their customers when they introduced CreativeCloud, that universally hated DRM app that randomly maxes out your CPU. Also, before, companies, schools, and universities could purchase a few perpetual licenses and use those for teaching. Now, they would need to spend much more on person-bound license rentals. So I'd say XD never had a chance because it launched after the customers left. I'm still being held hostage by them to access my old files, but for every new project, I go out of my way to avoid using any Adobe-specific file format. If others do the same, then XDs only chance is a truly open file format that other apps can also use. EDIT: If I remember correctly, I released my first self-developed plug-in for Photoshop 5 around 1999. So I've been using Adobe products for a long time. Back then, plugins for hobbyist power users were a big market. Nowadays, that market is dead. All the hobbyists went to Gimp and Inkscape. Similarly, the Substance3D communities became a ghost town more or less overnight when Adobe purchased the company and then removed Indie pricing. It went from $99 one-time on Steam to $49/month (min 12 months, so $588 annually) as part of Creative Cloud. Suddenly, Marmoset - their long-term competitor - became very attractive at a one-time $119 for students for a perpetual license. I also lost access to my old files there.

csmpltn 5y ago
Can anybody recommend an Audition alternative that does not require a monthly subscription to use?
- naskwo 5y ago
  Try Audacity?
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    I don‘t think Audacity is a great option anymore [0][1]. You might want to consider one of the forks (e.g. [2]). [0]: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/13/muse-group-continues-tone-deaf-handling-of-audacity/ https://hackaday.com/2021/07/13/muse-group-continues-tone-de... [1]: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-audacity-how-to-wreck-an-open-source-project-and-anger-a-community/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-audacity-how-to-wre... [2]: https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity

grenoire 5y ago

Less fluff more buff is something I experience in a variety of products, and the one I interact with a lot on a daily basis (a cloud accounting tool) has this exact problem. I was just thinking, as a part of the compensation issues of PMs (release feature, get promoted), are we killing the 'back end' teams in favour of 'front end' teams, because they are more visible? It seems like requests on core and productivity improvement/power user features are always just forgotten about. Not because they're 'harder to implement' or whatever, but because back end doesn't get the resource and manpower they need?

Bombthecat 5y ago

Wait, for real? There are no bullet points /lists? This is just sad..

lf-non 5y ago

Unrelated to the primary topic, but I have been trying out a new free (as in beer) app called lunacy [1] for prototyping and the experience has been great. I am not a UX professional so can't comment on feature parity with Figma etc. It was however interesting to discover that the native cross platform app was powered by dotnet core & the open source Avalonia framework[2]. It looks quite polished and the framework seems to have come a long way since I tried a few years ago. [1] https://icons8.com/lunacy https://icons8.com/lunacy [2] http://avaloniaui.net/ http://avaloniaui.net/

luckyshot 5y ago
Looks really nice actually! How do they fund development? Nagging about their icons8 subscription?
- lf-non 5y ago
  It is integrated with their catalog of stock illustrations, many of which are paid. I think in future they also intend to charge for collaborative features or cloud storage.
Unbeliever69 5y ago
Thanks for the the tip on a new product! Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of free products become paid products over time. It's nearly impossible to sustain growth without income. That being said, I gladly pay for Figma. It's that good.
redindian75 5y ago
At first glace it doesnt work from browsers - AFAIK, only PenPot[1] does, that too only 60% of Figma features. [1] https://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/

drewrbaker 5y ago

We use XD with our design team and they all love it. On the dev team we’ve been given Figma prototypes and I think XD’s are significantly better. And the last few updates to XD have been really helpful (hover state toggles being the one that the dev team appreciates the most).

Bellamy 5y ago

What would people here suggest as the alternative software?

tjpnz 5y ago
You can go a long way with pen and paper + Google Drive or email.
- smilespray 5y ago
  Bold statement to make on HN.
batperson 5y ago
Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Pay once, own forever.
josefrichter 5y ago
Alternative to XD? Figma for ux/ui design + basic prototyping, Framer for slightly advanced prototyping.

nikanj 5y ago

Having any Adobe app on my computer means permanently sacrificing a large chunk of resources to CreativeCloud. I'm happy with Photoshop eating ram&cpu when it's running, but the 24/7 background DRM daemon is absolutely unacceptable. Too bad Adobe has grown so large that the technical people have lost all power. It happens to all companies: they build marketshare and reputation with technical excellence, but eventually reach some sort of singularity where every single reasonable dev departs. The only thing left for a company at this point is maximizing revenue from enterprise/government contracts, and usually dwindling out after a private equity reverse takeover/merger with a company you've never heard of. Management is in a tough spot, because changing their ways might decrease revenues, which would hasten their demise. Imagine the reaction from Adobe's shareholders if they announced they're cutting prices to a third and dropping all DRM..

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andrei_says_ 5y ago
Is it not possible to close the daemon while not running Adobe software and only start it when using them?

sarora27 5y ago

Former Adobe employee here. IME, most folks at Adobe don’t really care about listening to customers, providing a great customer experience, or putting the customer first. Most of the organization was highly political with different BUs fighting each other for “status”, budget and promotions. Can’t blame them though. The photoshop money machine keeps going brrrr so why bother.

nikanj 5y ago
People who cared about those things vacated the premises years ago.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  When? In the 90s? I remember this was the common perception of Adobe in the mid 2000s when they bought Macromedia. Photoshop was a cash cow then that was more known for being industry standard than being high quality.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> The photoshop money machine keeps going brrrr This makes me wonder. Who is actually using Photoshop today and why? In the past, these were graphics designers and photographers. The latter already migrated to Lightroom, Capture One etc. Designers have so many tools to choose from, why would they use Photoshop? I understand for long-time users it's just inertia, but new users are spoiled for choice.
- FrozenSynapse 5y ago
  Photographers have advanced retouching workflows which are not possible in Lightroom. Lightroom is like a point and shoot, Photoshop is like a DSLR
  - anotherboffin 5y ago
    Nitpick: they’re complementary. LR has cataloguing/sorting/filtering/metadata handling features that PS doesn’t have, and has an “edit in Photoshop” option for the more complicated workflows you mention. Not many people would enjoy using Bridge and PS to sort their photos.

tomduncalf 5y ago

Slightly off topic, but as soon as there’s a Lightroom competitor which can sync photos and edit between iOS and Mac, and has most of the fundamental editing features, I’m done with Adobe. I don’t mind a subscription model necessarily but their prices are too high and I hate that every year I have to barter with their support to get a cheaper price. If such a tool already exists please let me know! I love being able to edit photos on my iPad or Mac without having to worry about manually syncing anything, and Apple Photos is a bit too basic.

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SSLy 5y ago
For sync you can just leverage iCloud, for editing two macOS/iPadOS apps come to mind: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/darkroom-photo-video-editor/id953286746 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/darkroom-photo-video-editor/id... https://apps.apple.com/app/pixelmator/id1444636541 https://apps.apple.com/app/pixelmator/id1444636541 Of course both don't have every Lightroom feature, but that might be a boon to many like me.
- tomduncalf 5y ago
  Do the edits sync? Like I can start editing a picture on my iPhone, continue tweaking it on my iPad, then do final edits on my Mac, all using iCloud? Super cool if so
donatzsky 5y ago
Haven't tried it personally, but Darktable is supposedly about on par with Lightroom. Stronger in some areas, weaker in others. For syncing you can use your favourite cloud storage. Edit: Of course, it's not available for iOS...
matwood 5y ago
Affinity is supposed to be working on the DAM aspect that is missing from all the competitors/options others will likely post. I look every year before re-upping my LR sub and nothing comes close. Being able to pick up any device from my iPad, iPhone or Mac and work on photos from where I left off is pretty awesome. The closest thing is Photos.app, but then I'm missing all the LR advanced functionality.

kossTKR 5y ago

Adobe is a horrible company that scams customers and organisations that wants to use their software - can't wait until they sink. That said it's incredible to me how many huge organisations have ticket systems with age old and easy-to-fix backlogs with issues that just doesn't get fixed - like the team has completely left the building. I'm thinking Google and Apple here in particular. After doing full stack agile development i know it can be difficult and complex - but not that difficult to check forums and fix various issues each month.

karamanolev 5y ago
It's not that difficult or complex. But imagine a team of 5, 10, 100 devs - each one has a family to feed and a job to keep. No one goes to those orgs as a dev because they aspire to change the world. You have to do what the product managers say the hot topic of the day is and it's never "go to the forums and fix issues" or "choose the most upvoted bugs and work on them". It's always the latest hype and headline-grabbing feature to work on that will get people promoted and some products off the shelves. Real users care about real issues, but they're already onboard.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  This is a problem with agile processes, which leave no room for ownership or "extra curriculum" work without micromanager approval.
Unbeliever69 5y ago
Not going to happen. I feel the same way about AutoDesk. Both horrible monopolies that prevent users from escaping their ecosystems.

Joeboy 5y ago

People use Adobe apps because they're integrated (in terms of licensing and workflow) with other Adobe apps, and because they need to collaborate with other people who use Adobe apps. I guess none of that is much of a selling point for XD.

tsywke44 5y ago

Most likely reason for such fall from grace in update speeds? They lost the savant senior dev (or two) keeping their project together.

siscia 5y ago
I came here to make this exact same comment. It really seems like they lost the few key people that were holding the whole thing together, either to another company or just to the void due to bad management. I would love to understand more about this change. The more I mature as an engineer, the more I see the value of few engaged Individual Contributors that behind the scenes are driving the product and steering management decisions.
LennyWhiteJr 5y ago
Yup, this exactly. It is often under-appreciated how much an active corporate engagement model is due to 1 or 2 highly motivated employees. Once they leave, engagement drops because it wasn't something being driven from management or PMs.

chupchap 5y ago

Figma has a lot of features, but it just isn't snappy and a very frustrating experience a lot of times. For this reason alone, I prefer XD. I spend less time fighting the tool.

sdflhasjd 5y ago
I'm a developer, so I'm mostly viewing the designs rather than making them, but I also find Figma to be clunky and awkward. I much prefer Zeplin and XD. And with as much bullshit as Adobe throws at you with creative cloud, at least you can export .xd files.
- wx196 5y ago
  You can export .fig files as well.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  > I'm a developer, so I'm mostly viewing the designs rather than making them, but I also find Figma to be clunky and awkward. I much prefer Zeplin and XD. Also a dev and I also found Figma to be kind of clunky at first compared to other options. It has gotten much better though, they will never be on the level of Sketch but at the same time the biggest obstacle that Sketch has is that it's a Mac only desktop app. Figma might be clunky, but I found it's flexibility to be a massive benefit over other tools.
  - Unbeliever69 5y ago
    To me that clunkiness was just not understanding/utilizing the true power of the tool. Once you work past that uncomfortable phase there is a eureka moment when it all snaps into place and you can't imagine doing it any other way. There is not a single Sketch feature I wish I had in Figma.
josefrichter 5y ago
Interesting. I’ve switched from Sketch to Figma, because Sketch was unbearably slow.

chefgoldbluum 5y ago

Adobe offered me a reduced rate subscription over the phone after I cancelled my subscription. No qualifications mentioned. I accepted. A year and a half later I noticed I had been charged 3-4x the reduced rate each month for the last 6 months. I tried to get my money back, they refused. I cancelled my subscription and vowed never to touch Adobe products again. I was in a position at my company to end our use of XD and immediately move to Figma. We've grown 3x since and Figma's been great. For personal work I prefer Sketch it looks and feels like a native app.

prismatix 5y ago
Figma is great, but I do want to note that Adobe XD is free (or at least it was last time I checked).
- chefgoldbluum 5y ago
  It was free in the early days but over time teams and individuals were funneled into paying. At least in my region, you can still get a 7 day trial, but beyond that you have to pay.

HatchedLake721 5y ago

I love Photoshop. Their hotkeys are a muscle memory in my brain for 10+ years. I hate CreativeCloud. It eats resources and I found gigabytes of random trash logs it writes. I wish I could download and use Photoshop on its own. When I get a new laptop, I won’t install CreativeCloud. Has anyone got recommendations for photoshop alternatives? For graphic/web design only stuff, editing, cropping, adjusting pixels and stuff like that.

HlessClaudesman 5y ago
Find a copy of Photoshop CS6. Newer features are not worth the CC grief.
- eropple 5y ago
  If all you need is Photoshop, that's true. But, IME, nothing steps to Premiere and After Effects, particularly in combination. And modern Premiere is worth paying for, for performance if nothing else. Going back to the scary old days of stuff like Voukoder--no thank you. (No, definitely not Resolve.)
  - uxcolumbo 5y ago
    Why do you think Resolve is not up to the job?
    - eropple 5y ago
      It's not Premiere. That might sound flip, but Premiere is a learned skill and I have yet to discover really compelling reasons beyond price (which isn't actually that expensive) to use Not Premiere. From a feature perspective its workflow options are sub-par; for example, it doesn't directly interface with After Effects. AE Live Templates in Premiere alone has saved me hours of time rendering out of After Effects. And AE, too, is not optional; while I like AE a lot less than I do Premiere, it sticks because--and there's a theme here--nothing else really does what After Effects does while integrating into an NLE. The ecosystem matters. I think Resolve is fine if you don't know other tools or your needs are small. I've used it in a pinch before when I didn't have any other options, it's totally usable. And there are some tools (grading, obviously) which are absolutely top notch, and if you are in an all-Blackmagic recording stack I can definitely see some benefits to ease-of-use when, say, pulling video recorded from an ATEM Mini and some Blackmagic cameras. But it's a limited editor with limited compatibility with everything else in my workflow and those of the folks I know.

noduerme 5y ago

>> I just couldn’t believe how reactive the XD team were at releasing new features. Yeah, this pretty much sums up the disappointment for anyone who's still paying for Adobe these days. Everything they have feels like legacy software. There's no one at the helm. They are hanging on and their stock price is still going up, purely because of inertia and the effect of their monopoly on photoshop. [edit, I just checked and it's finally going down. Hooray.] Adobe is no longer in a position to compete with anything new that comes along. They're going to ride their current software and locked-in users to the grave. They're currently at what, almost $500 a share? There has never been a company more over-extended and overpriced. They're fucking doomed, and the sooner they go down the better for everyone in the creative industry.

Unbeliever69 5y ago
I'm so grateful that I paid for a copy of the Master Collection back in 2010ish. When I need to do design the older software still does everything I need.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I did too, but I have to pull out old hardware to use it. It won't run on an M1 Mac.

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sandebert 5y ago

Some months back somebody, in a HN thread, posted a link to an Adobe forum post where Adobe linked to an older version of Photoshop that was free and legal to download. It didn't require their cloud solution, and they also provided a serial number for it. I've tried several times to find that link again, but always failed. Does this ring a bell with somebody?

ffritz 5y ago
Yip, does ring a bell. I believe it was the CS2 version. I also remember downloading it some 6-7 years ago on Windows.
- sandebert 5y ago
  Amazing, so it's not my brain playing games with me. Any chance you would be able to find the link, I don't seem to have the skills.
  - mostafas 5y ago
    Perhaps this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865636
    - sandebert 5y ago
      Yes, that is it, thank you so much! However, reading it now I'm not entirely sure if it's still possible to install this...
      - _fat_santa 5y ago
        Question. How does CS2 and CS3 compare to Gimp nowdays?
      - sandebert 5y ago
        After reading all the links from that HN post, I've come to the conclusion that it's not possible to use download and install CS2/CS3 anymore. Thanks to all that helped, much appreciated.

xaedes 5y ago

Really? Dark cyan on light pink? Where did the colors go wrong? It does reduce readability a lot. Why do people feel the need to make websites barely readable by going for low contrast?

josefrichter 5y ago

I’ve never heard anyone say “I like Adobe”. It’s seems to be universally hated, and rightly so.

seltzered_ 5y ago

It's probably worth noting the history. I think Tom Krcha ( https://twitter.com/tomkrcha https://twitter.com/tomkrcha ) led initial work of Adobe XD and is long gone from there. I could argue XD has it's place in enterprise environments where it's more painful to purchase outside of Adobe and it's good enough to do basic UX visioning/mockup.

scottbelsky 5y ago

Speaking on behalf of a group of more recent leaders at the helm of creative products at Adobe, this thread is obviously frustrating and hard to read but also motivating. Many fair criticism and suggestions, and many of these are now (finally) being addressed. We have undertaken a massive effort to deliver web apps that are deeply collaborative, cloud services that are resilient, and are rearchitecting many of our apps (some decades old!) to be more performant (less memory hog) and incorporate some pretty mind-blowing ai capabilities that save tons of time in creative workflows. The policy stuff is being updated and redesigned for clarity, and our daily challenge is to innovate and build next generation experiences while not tampering with the muscle memory of our legacy customers. Admittedly, this has slowed development of certain products in the past. But as I look around the team these days, people are here for the mission and determined to do the hard work. The shift to subscription was before my time, but modern apps are cloud enabled and we see a ton more ways to leverage this model for customer value (including today’s 20k+ fonts, stock, ai tools computing in cloud, collab, web apps…). Ultimately, my hope is that the next generation of creative will work together better than ever (interoperability, dev ecosystem will be important across many of the point solutions emerging), enable new forms of collaboration, and unlock new possibilities (via ai, new approaches to democratize 3d creation, new mediums emerging like AR/VR). But it is up to the Adobe team to absorb the feedback and show rather than tell.

systemvoltage 5y ago
> modern apps are cloud enabled and we see a ton more ways to leverage this model for customer value (including today’s 20k+ fonts, stock, ai tools computing in cloud, collab, web apps…) I think the average consumer doesn't care about this and it makes sense from corporate strategy standpoint - this is your bread and butter. It generates enormous cashflows. But you're not going to get good reception on HN - we wan't none of these features. We want 2008 version of Adobe products. Install. Get the job done. Close it. We're happy to pay for that. Also, let's cut to the chase, Adobe's advertisement platform is where its shareholders wants it to go: https://business.adobe.com/products/advertising/adobe-advertising-cloud/products.html https://business.adobe.com/products/advertising/adobe-advert...
- 5y ago

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shwoopdiwoop 5y ago

I just can’t shake the feeling that whenever I have to use Adobe software, it’s trying to do its hardest to make my life miserable. Creative Cloud is the worst piece of software ever conceived. And why do I have to update the updater to then update creative cloud before I can update an app that refuses to open otherwise? It’s just pure madness and I really wish the market would finally put an end to this and just refuse to engage with Adobe’s malicious pricing and subscription policies. Figma on the other end, feels like a good friend that has my best interests in mind. Hope it’s going to stay like this for a while.

lifeplusplus 5y ago

I find XD has better performance than figma but CC cloud is cancer so i dont recommend it

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I don't get this. He used XD for YEARS without bullets or pages or some other features? How does a professional front end developer manage to do that?