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I knew a guy who got a job with Intel's wearable division. Everything was chaotic, everyone was toxic, and Intel one day lost interest and fired the whole divis

I knew a guy who got a job with Intel's wearable division. Everything was chaotic, everyone was toxic, and Intel one day lost interest and fired the whole division. The sad thing is they acquired the basis smartwatch and destroyed it, leaving only Garmin as developers of dedicated activity trackers. I considered getting a basis but was obviously glad I didn't.

cjbgkagh 1y ago
I hear it’s division dependent, but just about every time someone complained about things being toxic at Microsoft they would be told at least it is not Intel.
josephg 1y ago
I've been thinking of buying pixelmator pro recently for photo editing. It seems like a lovely photo editing application. And they have a lifetime license. But Apple bought the company recently. I worry that whatever made the product great will go away post acquisition. Whether or not Apple keeps working on it at the same level of quality is anyone's guess. Or maybe they'll integrate the best features into their free Photos app and ditch the rest. Or something else entirely. I can't think of any examples where acquisitions make a product better. But dozens where the product was killed immediately, or suffered a long slow death.
- malnourish 1y ago
  YouTube? Twitch? I don't use either but people sure flock to them. There are many acquisitions that lead to better products.
  - saintfire 1y ago
    I would argue neither is better for it, as a user. They're more lucrative for creators/streamers and have further reach but the platform experience is noticeably worse.
    - achenet 1y ago
      YouTube was acquired in 2006. I do think since then things like video quality and length have improved, although you can argue the ads everwhere are bad UX.
    - zeppelin101 1y ago
      Youtube was about to get destroyed by an avalanche of lawsuits by the TV/movie industry. Without Google's army of lawyers, they would not have lasted.
      - josephg 1y ago
        True. Android might be another example. But there's also hundreds of examples of the opposite happening: Successful products being bought by a big company and then killed post acquisition. We probably won't know which camp Pixelmator will fall into for a few years yet.
    - xbmcuser 1y ago
      You would be arguing wrongly YouTube today is the largest trove of knowledge accessible by the largest number of people in the world. It also has a lot of false information but overall it is one of the greatest cause of change in the world.
    - philjohn 1y ago
      Would YouTube be the behemoth it is without the plethora of content (some of it, high quality)? And if it being more lucrative for creators is what got that content, I would argue the platform as a whole is better. You could have the most whizz bang video platform, but without good content, what good is that?
      - wongarsu 1y ago
        With the money came the greed, the over-polished mass market content, and the ecosystem of creators is now mostly driven by engagement. Not to mention all the topics that have been soft-banned because one algorithm flags those videos as not monetizable, and the next algorithm decides that only showing or recommending videos that can show ads results in the most add revenue I don't think YouTube is clearly better or worse than it was before acquisition, and maybe an independent YouTube would have walked the same path. It is simply a very different platform that was ship-of-theseusd
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    Youtube is an absolutely miserable product compared to where it's been in the past, are you joking?
  - astura 1y ago
    I immediately thought of Keyhole, Inc, which became Google Earth.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  I have Pixelmator Pro & Photomator. They haven't meaningfully changed since Apple's acquisition, and they don't rely on any subscription or online features that could be ruined after the fact. If a future update fucks things over, you don't have to update. Everything runs locally.
  - josephg 1y ago
    Are they still being worked on? Have either product received updates since the acquisition? I'm tossing up between pixelmator and affinity photo.
    - systoll 1y ago
      Pixelmator was updated at the end of June. The main changes were integration of Apple's AI stuff and improved VoiceOver support. Nothing earth-shattering but it's still active.
- furyofantares 1y ago
  Maybe some of these will work for you; Minecraft, PayPal, GitHub, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Android, Waze. With Apple it's harder for me to know. How do former Dark Sky users feel about the Weather app? I think it has all the features? How about Shazam, which I never used before it became an iOS feature? TestFlight retained its identity. Beats by Dre headsets did too, though Beats Music I think became Apple Music in a way.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    With the possible exception of Android (which tbh I have never used) and possibly Minecraft, it's hard to make an argument that any of those acquisitions improved the products. At best they're kept in stasis.
    - williamdclt 1y ago
      Github has gotten a lot more unstable (GH Actions outages every couple weeks or so), but it definitely has not been in stasis: the pace of change has been a whole lot higher since the acquisition (and I'd say generally for the better)
    - furyofantares 1y ago
      It is also hard to argue that they were killed off immediately or slowly died.
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      Facebook replaced Instagram with a completely different app, which they then made quite useful to a lot of people. (Sure, I might object to all the strings attached, but there are dimensions along which Instagram was improved – in the same way you can improve a house by bulldozing it and building a dozen single-room flats in its place.)
  - dwaite 1y ago
    Some of these are hard comparisons specifically because what you are describing is really the initial exit. Acquisitions are often not funded by valuation as much as an actual plan to make money. Something like Minecraft for an example - the existing established customer base with perpetual license was not justification for buying it. The value Microsoft saw was around things like DLC content and cosmetics, and subscription revenue through server hosting. From what I have observed - one could say that everything Apple acquires is an accu-hire first, for a product they want to ship and trying to find a delivery-focused team to help them with that. If the company already built a product similar to that and had it hit the market - thats great! It means that they are getting a team which has delivered successfully and maybe even have a significant head start toward Apple's MVP. That likely means also that the team will have a fair bit of autonomy too (and often retain their brands). DarkSky's product in that light wasn't their app. It was their work on localized weather models and their weather API. Apple's Weather App doesn't look like DarkSky, but AFAICT you could rebuild the DarkSky app on the WeatherKit REST API (including features like historical weather, and supporting alternative platforms like Android).
- acdha 1y ago
  Apple is different from Microsoft or Google in that they don’t have a monopoly to subsidize mistakes. They bought things like Logic and Final Cut because they realize that not having high-quality Mac software means that Adobe gets to choose whether professionals in those fields keep buying Macs. I would expect Pixelmator will continue to be developed to compete with Photoshop.
MostlyStable 1y ago
I had the basis. It was fantastic. I still miss it.

cjbgkagh 1y ago

I hear it’s division dependent, but just about every time someone complained about things being toxic at Microsoft they would be told at least it is not Intel.

josephg 1y ago

I've been thinking of buying pixelmator pro recently for photo editing. It seems like a lovely photo editing application. And they have a lifetime license. But Apple bought the company recently. I worry that whatever made the product great will go away post acquisition. Whether or not Apple keeps working on it at the same level of quality is anyone's guess. Or maybe they'll integrate the best features into their free Photos app and ditch the rest. Or something else entirely. I can't think of any examples where acquisitions make a product better. But dozens where the product was killed immediately, or suffered a long slow death.

malnourish 1y ago
YouTube? Twitch? I don't use either but people sure flock to them. There are many acquisitions that lead to better products.
- saintfire 1y ago
  I would argue neither is better for it, as a user. They're more lucrative for creators/streamers and have further reach but the platform experience is noticeably worse.
  - achenet 1y ago
    YouTube was acquired in 2006. I do think since then things like video quality and length have improved, although you can argue the ads everwhere are bad UX.
  - zeppelin101 1y ago
    Youtube was about to get destroyed by an avalanche of lawsuits by the TV/movie industry. Without Google's army of lawyers, they would not have lasted.
    - josephg 1y ago
      True. Android might be another example. But there's also hundreds of examples of the opposite happening: Successful products being bought by a big company and then killed post acquisition. We probably won't know which camp Pixelmator will fall into for a few years yet.
  - xbmcuser 1y ago
    You would be arguing wrongly YouTube today is the largest trove of knowledge accessible by the largest number of people in the world. It also has a lot of false information but overall it is one of the greatest cause of change in the world.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    Would YouTube be the behemoth it is without the plethora of content (some of it, high quality)? And if it being more lucrative for creators is what got that content, I would argue the platform as a whole is better. You could have the most whizz bang video platform, but without good content, what good is that?
    - wongarsu 1y ago
      With the money came the greed, the over-polished mass market content, and the ecosystem of creators is now mostly driven by engagement. Not to mention all the topics that have been soft-banned because one algorithm flags those videos as not monetizable, and the next algorithm decides that only showing or recommending videos that can show ads results in the most add revenue I don't think YouTube is clearly better or worse than it was before acquisition, and maybe an independent YouTube would have walked the same path. It is simply a very different platform that was ship-of-theseusd
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Youtube is an absolutely miserable product compared to where it's been in the past, are you joking?
- astura 1y ago
  I immediately thought of Keyhole, Inc, which became Google Earth.
LoganDark 1y ago
I have Pixelmator Pro & Photomator. They haven't meaningfully changed since Apple's acquisition, and they don't rely on any subscription or online features that could be ruined after the fact. If a future update fucks things over, you don't have to update. Everything runs locally.
- josephg 1y ago
  Are they still being worked on? Have either product received updates since the acquisition? I'm tossing up between pixelmator and affinity photo.
  - systoll 1y ago
    Pixelmator was updated at the end of June. The main changes were integration of Apple's AI stuff and improved VoiceOver support. Nothing earth-shattering but it's still active.
furyofantares 1y ago
Maybe some of these will work for you; Minecraft, PayPal, GitHub, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Android, Waze. With Apple it's harder for me to know. How do former Dark Sky users feel about the Weather app? I think it has all the features? How about Shazam, which I never used before it became an iOS feature? TestFlight retained its identity. Beats by Dre headsets did too, though Beats Music I think became Apple Music in a way.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  With the possible exception of Android (which tbh I have never used) and possibly Minecraft, it's hard to make an argument that any of those acquisitions improved the products. At best they're kept in stasis.
  - williamdclt 1y ago
    Github has gotten a lot more unstable (GH Actions outages every couple weeks or so), but it definitely has not been in stasis: the pace of change has been a whole lot higher since the acquisition (and I'd say generally for the better)
  - furyofantares 1y ago
    It is also hard to argue that they were killed off immediately or slowly died.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    Facebook replaced Instagram with a completely different app, which they then made quite useful to a lot of people. (Sure, I might object to all the strings attached, but there are dimensions along which Instagram was improved – in the same way you can improve a house by bulldozing it and building a dozen single-room flats in its place.)
- dwaite 1y ago
  Some of these are hard comparisons specifically because what you are describing is really the initial exit. Acquisitions are often not funded by valuation as much as an actual plan to make money. Something like Minecraft for an example - the existing established customer base with perpetual license was not justification for buying it. The value Microsoft saw was around things like DLC content and cosmetics, and subscription revenue through server hosting. From what I have observed - one could say that everything Apple acquires is an accu-hire first, for a product they want to ship and trying to find a delivery-focused team to help them with that. If the company already built a product similar to that and had it hit the market - thats great! It means that they are getting a team which has delivered successfully and maybe even have a significant head start toward Apple's MVP. That likely means also that the team will have a fair bit of autonomy too (and often retain their brands). DarkSky's product in that light wasn't their app. It was their work on localized weather models and their weather API. Apple's Weather App doesn't look like DarkSky, but AFAICT you could rebuild the DarkSky app on the WeatherKit REST API (including features like historical weather, and supporting alternative platforms like Android).
acdha 1y ago
Apple is different from Microsoft or Google in that they don’t have a monopoly to subsidize mistakes. They bought things like Logic and Final Cut because they realize that not having high-quality Mac software means that Adobe gets to choose whether professionals in those fields keep buying Macs. I would expect Pixelmator will continue to be developed to compete with Photoshop.

MostlyStable 1y ago

I had the basis. It was fantastic. I still miss it.