4 ms·

Adobe's UI design app 'Adobe XD' is one of the few Adobe apps to trail behind their competitors: Sketch and Figma. Figma is also much more than just a UI desig

Adobe's UI design app 'Adobe XD' is one of the few Adobe apps to trail behind their competitors: Sketch and Figma. Figma is also much more than just a UI design tool. You can create virtual whiteboards, brainstorm sessions and virtual classrooms - far ahead in collaboration features compared to Adobe XD and Sketch. Figma is even encroaching on the territory of apps like 'Miro' (a popular online collaborative whiteboard tool). Adobe also has single Adobe ID sign-on for their products. I assume Adobe ID will integrate into Figma as some time in future. Will they force Figma users to switch to Adobe IDs? Adobe's plan for Figma shows if you can't beat a rival, you buy the competition. (An aside: 'Procreate' on the iPad is a digital painting app where, once again, Adobe is chasing the competition with their own digital painting app called 'Fresco'. Adobe's app has failed to dent Procreate's massive popularity.)

longtimelistnr 4y ago
Interesting you mention Miro because this is the first time I’ve heard them come up in the figma discussion. Personally I think Miro can give them a run for their money and create a competitor on top of their existing product (if they choose too). Because the Miro collaboration is identical to figma with the only difference being Miro isn’t targeting product design. Their web app is just as smooth as figma and I could totally see them building out their offering to compete.
kranke155 4y ago
Few Adobe apps? Working in the video/media creation space, here is the current status of the apps that I use: Photoshop - slow. New desirable features (for the artists using it) come once every 2/3 years. Now tries to cloud save even when you don’t want it to. Competitors: Affinity Photo Outlook: many if not most photo only users I know of have moved on from Adobe products. Seems to be mostly used in the photo retouching and editing industry. Adobe Premiere - slow. Unusable for anything longer than 10-30 minutes in length. Anything longer is by rule done in AVID instead. Extremely prone to crashes. Buggy. Some tools have decreased in quality (ie type tool). Overall customer satisfaction is from my experience low. Live Link, the ability to have a linked media between Premiere and After Effects, is so unreliable that I would only expect its use by first year video editors. Anything beyond that I would question that individuals intelligence. Competitors: Final Cut X, Davinci Resolve, AVID Outlook: Although Avid dominates in long form, Premiere should remain in place for shorter material - music videos, advertising and corporate video. Resolve is getting better but UI is heavily opinionated which turns some people off. Final Cut was given up on by the industry (unfairly in my view) due to botched launch. FCPX is however in my view a far superior product. Adobe After Effects: incredibly slow. Similar to photoshop has a low cadence of desirable features - particularly for one of the core user bases - 2D Motion designers - for whom features requested 10 years ago are still not coming. Adobe relies on plugin makers extending its functionality and making it useful. Competitors: NUKE and Cavalry Outlook: NUKE, once considered the slowest renderer on the planet, is now faster than after effects since they’ve slowly converted the tools to GPU. Cavalry is still a young software. UI/UX is so radically different from After effects however it’s hard to see people make the switch. The link with Illustrator is what keeps after effects unassailable. For now. Adobe general outlook: in the creative communities im a part of, Adobe is widely regarded as a useless leeching company that’s locked away decades of solid software development (done in the distant past) behind a subscription wall. In the last 10 years they have failed to innovate in any significant aspect. Actually important updates that help folks get work done are a really rare occurrence. Overall the general view of Adobe products is that they are bad and getting worse. There’s constant talk about alternatives and how to avoid Adobe products in the pipeline if possible.
- hazelnut-tree 4y ago
  I also dislike Adobe and many of their products. But my impression is the majority of Adobe apps continue to dominate their market sectors. I use the Affinity apps (Designer, Photo and Publisher) but even Affinity have made little dent on equivalent Adobe apps. However, Affinity have carved out a slice of the market with apps that are successful, profitable, and no subscription.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Ah got it. I assumed you meant that Adobe XD trailed it’s competitors in features and quality. Now I understand you mean in market share. Yes that’s true but I wonder how shaky this is considering the increasingly poor foundations. This sort of thing starts slowly then it all collapses in a wave (the same way Figma exploded in usage). Autodesk was considered unassailable and now I know studios try to avoid working with their software more and more. In many areas - modelling for games in particular - 3ds Max has fallen off in favor of other apps like Blender. In motion Design Cinema 4D has taken over. It can happen.

longtimelistnr 4y ago

Interesting you mention Miro because this is the first time I’ve heard them come up in the figma discussion. Personally I think Miro can give them a run for their money and create a competitor on top of their existing product (if they choose too). Because the Miro collaboration is identical to figma with the only difference being Miro isn’t targeting product design. Their web app is just as smooth as figma and I could totally see them building out their offering to compete.

kranke155 4y ago

Few Adobe apps? Working in the video/media creation space, here is the current status of the apps that I use: Photoshop - slow. New desirable features (for the artists using it) come once every 2/3 years. Now tries to cloud save even when you don’t want it to. Competitors: Affinity Photo Outlook: many if not most photo only users I know of have moved on from Adobe products. Seems to be mostly used in the photo retouching and editing industry. Adobe Premiere - slow. Unusable for anything longer than 10-30 minutes in length. Anything longer is by rule done in AVID instead. Extremely prone to crashes. Buggy. Some tools have decreased in quality (ie type tool). Overall customer satisfaction is from my experience low. Live Link, the ability to have a linked media between Premiere and After Effects, is so unreliable that I would only expect its use by first year video editors. Anything beyond that I would question that individuals intelligence. Competitors: Final Cut X, Davinci Resolve, AVID Outlook: Although Avid dominates in long form, Premiere should remain in place for shorter material - music videos, advertising and corporate video. Resolve is getting better but UI is heavily opinionated which turns some people off. Final Cut was given up on by the industry (unfairly in my view) due to botched launch. FCPX is however in my view a far superior product. Adobe After Effects: incredibly slow. Similar to photoshop has a low cadence of desirable features - particularly for one of the core user bases - 2D Motion designers - for whom features requested 10 years ago are still not coming. Adobe relies on plugin makers extending its functionality and making it useful. Competitors: NUKE and Cavalry Outlook: NUKE, once considered the slowest renderer on the planet, is now faster than after effects since they’ve slowly converted the tools to GPU. Cavalry is still a young software. UI/UX is so radically different from After effects however it’s hard to see people make the switch. The link with Illustrator is what keeps after effects unassailable. For now. Adobe general outlook: in the creative communities im a part of, Adobe is widely regarded as a useless leeching company that’s locked away decades of solid software development (done in the distant past) behind a subscription wall. In the last 10 years they have failed to innovate in any significant aspect. Actually important updates that help folks get work done are a really rare occurrence. Overall the general view of Adobe products is that they are bad and getting worse. There’s constant talk about alternatives and how to avoid Adobe products in the pipeline if possible.

hazelnut-tree 4y ago
I also dislike Adobe and many of their products. But my impression is the majority of Adobe apps continue to dominate their market sectors. I use the Affinity apps (Designer, Photo and Publisher) but even Affinity have made little dent on equivalent Adobe apps. However, Affinity have carved out a slice of the market with apps that are successful, profitable, and no subscription.
- kranke155 4y ago
  Ah got it. I assumed you meant that Adobe XD trailed it’s competitors in features and quality. Now I understand you mean in market share. Yes that’s true but I wonder how shaky this is considering the increasingly poor foundations. This sort of thing starts slowly then it all collapses in a wave (the same way Figma exploded in usage). Autodesk was considered unassailable and now I know studios try to avoid working with their software more and more. In many areas - modelling for games in particular - 3ds Max has fallen off in favor of other apps like Blender. In motion Design Cinema 4D has taken over. It can happen.