
Omni Group Layoffs - keehun
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/03/31/omni-group-layoffs/
======
dman
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.

~~~
new2628
OK, I'll bite. I have a fundamental aversion to paying for something that has
zero marginal cost. I feel I'm taken for a ride if I do so.

If I pay for a book, I feel it cost some effort to produce it physically,
print it, bind it, ship it. I cannot force myself to pay for an e-book, which
is a pdf copied at no extra cost. Same for digital music and software or any
other digital "good" or subscription. I sympathise with the creators, if they
will produce something that does not scale, I will pay them for it. Otherwise,
sorry, but not my job to figure out their business models.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I also have that aversion. But regard, zero marginal cost doesn't mean 'zero
cost'. There's overhead to amortize. Like, the effort to have a company that
hosts that stuff. And the desire to run a for-profit company, else we'd all be
at the mercy of volunteer organizations.

They seem to have 'figured out' their business model already, and it involves
each person copying the PDF, paying a nominal fee.

FWIW

~~~
new2628
You make a good point of course -- my issue is that this amortization has
become totally divorced from use. For example, a taxi driver also needs to
amortize the upfront cost of their car, but the more they drive, the more the
car wears down, so it is all predictable, and somehow feels "fair". With
digital goods, you may sell it twice, or a billion times, what you earn is
independent of how much cost you sunk into it (apart from hosting and other
infrastructure as you mention) -- which explains the runaway successes of our
times, but it's just something I am unwilling to participate in :)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes it seems like new rules are needed for synthetic businesses of this sort.

I've argued elsewhere on HN, that the reward for building an automated system
should be, pay for building the system. In America at least, we consider the
entire lifetime output of said system to belong to the builder. That is
unsustainable. Imagine a future where everything is automated. There will be
no need for workers, and not much further development. The economy becomes a
static owner-vs-unemployed deal, and how can that survive?

~~~
vharuck
Wouldn't that discourage automation? By which I mean, wouldn't the economy
optimize for busy work instead of producing more value for less effort?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Referring to reassignment of automated machine output? I don't see this
slowing automation much. It makes for a simpler, more reliable process across
the business. Why deal with hiring people when automation solves it forever?

And even if some folks _do_ decide to go the 'boutique' route and hand-make
something, there is always another person who will go the automated route and
cut their prices by 90%. Free market after all.

It will be upsetting for sure. Lots of entrenched interests in renting
automation at high rates. Maybe have to do it in a phased approach - VAT or
some such?

------
yaacov
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.

~~~
lozaning
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
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-...](https://antibody-
software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-
the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/)

~~~
xeromal
WinDirStat is still slow as shit. I use it weekly. haha

------
KingOfCoders
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.

~~~
asciimike
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.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> (it was "make sandboxing work" in 2013 and "make dark mode work" recently)

Honestly starting to feel like the past 4 years of OS X changes have just been
too much burden for the few remaining OS X software developers across the
board. I recall when the Mac App Store came about a lot of developers moved
their software to it, then sandboxing happened and that seemed like an
absolute nightmare for most to implement, then after months of that they
started to leave the App Store and then there's Gatekeeper too.

Now I'm not saying these are bad things, I definitely see the benefits but
there just isn't the mass of engineering talent or money in building OS X
software to justify the work required.

This has been tangible to me, 6 years ago my Mac was running all Cocoa apps
apart from Creative Suite. Today all the apps I'm running are Electron apart
from Textmate and Creative Suite.

The neglect of the Mac platform and the divvying up of the small Mac userbase
into Mac users, iPad users and iPhone users means the future of the OS X app
experience is just going to be running Javascript apps in Chrome wrappers.

~~~
empthought
Surely this is the motivation for Catalyst.

~~~
robenkleene
The problem with Catalyst is that it’s just bringing iOS apps to the Mac, and
iOS does not produce profitable businesses in many categories. The #1 paid iOS
app, Procreate, has only 17 employees, OmniGroup pre-layoffs had ~40.

------
joeberon
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
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
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.

------
DavideNL
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
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.

~~~
toss4732
I think companies should use something like what Jetbrains does with its IDEs.
You get a lifetime access to the version you paid a year subscription for.
Keep the yearly subscription up, and you are getting updates, getting a more
recent lifetime access, and the sub gets cheaper.

~~~
rurp
Yeah, I think that's pretty much the perfect model and I wish most companies
would adopt it. It supports both types of customers: people who always want
the latest updates and features, and those who want the most stable software.

I am firmly in the second group, but get why so many people prefer the first.
I like that those users can get all of the updates they want, while I don't
have to constantly burn mental energy figuring out UI changes and new bugs.

------
chrisfrantz
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.

~~~
filleokus
I don't know if I'm an outlier here, but to me the Omni Group is/was almost
like an extension of Apple themselves. Like with Panic's or CultureCode's
applications, they just work in the way a seasoned Mac user would expect. They
fit into both the look and feel of the Apple ecosystem and support all
integrations you would expect.

Of course the market for high-quality Apple only software is small. But I
think they would be even less competitive and successful if they pivoted to
the Web.

It would be almost like suggesting Microsoft drop their desktop Office
applications and just focus on Office365.

~~~
rubidium
“ almost like suggesting Microsoft drop their desktop Office applications and
just focus on Office365”

Not sure if you’re experience is different, but this seems to be exactly what
they’re doing. Outlook windows app is buggy and terrible. Outlook 365 is
great.

Excel is the only app better on native then web.

~~~
dade_
And OneNote 2016, I hate the web/app version. Outlook has always been a
bizarre mess, it is the only application I have seen with a 'cancel server
request' because it has stopped responding. 17 years later (I think since
office 2003), it is now needed on every Office desktop app because of horrible
lag interacting with OneDrive/SharePoint. I've actually installed LibreOffice
because I can't stand the shitty performance. In 1997, MS Word opened in about
3 seconds on a fast PC, and now it is an ordeal.

------
thruhiker
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
They seem to be moving to a subscription model:
[https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/](https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/)

~~~
Karunamon
Not really moving, more providing the option. Given that iOS and desktop are
two separate versions, with new licenses required for upgrades...

------
kbumsik
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.

~~~
gowld
Seems like a great opportunity to build a Windows alternative. Omni software
is deeply Mac, using Mac UX/UI components that don't exist elsewhere. If they
GTK/QT/JSed it, it wouldn't be Omni and it wouldn't be worth $50-$250 a pop.

~~~
worthless-trash
Are you saying using mac components alone gives it the $50-$100 a pop value,
if so thats some quality brainwashing going on.

~~~
pavlov
I’ve been paying for OmniGraffle since 2004 or so and also bought licenses at
various employers. The price has never been a problem.

But if it wasn’t a native Mac Cocoa app, I would never use it. A lot of
OmniGraffle’s value comes from UI that abides by platform guidelines and the
high-quality rendering and integrations enabled by being a native app rather
than a lowest common denominator cross-platform port.

------
Wowfunhappy
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._

------
tinyhouse
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.

~~~
bsimpson
OmniWeb was my favorite browser when it was around.

~~~
hinkley
Which was originally the web browser on NeXT computers.

~~~
tannhaeuser
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)

------
devin
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
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
The Mac solution for that is to buy more Macs and Mac software licenses.

------
twarge
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_.

------
musicale
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.

~~~
asciimike
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

------
asciimike
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.

~~~
emdowling
I agree with all of the above, but unfortunately no matter how good the
intention and clarity of market ("high quality software targeted at a specific
group of users"), if that user group is not willing to pay, then you are doing
a bad job of solving their problems.

We can lament how sad this news is - and it is - but it does expose that, at
some level, the company was not able/willing to meet the needs of their
(potential) customers.

~~~
Klonoar
Uhhh, no - they're well known for meeting that need. They're also very well
known for being good at what they do.

It's just economics of the race to the bottom in software development, likely
coupled with a touch of worldwide pandemic.

------
diebeforei485
Omnifocus Pro 3 user here. Totally worth every penny.

------
uNmas
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.

------
regulation_d
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.

------
snickmy
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.

~~~
jpwgarrison
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.

------
submeta
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.

------
nstart
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 :(

------
rdslw
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? :)

~~~
edwinyzh
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.

------
indymike
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
You could buy a license?

~~~
indymike
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.

------
meesterdude
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.

------
time0ut
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
...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
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.

------
veidr
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?

------
j2bax
Big Omniplan fan.

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

------
watersb
Really good people. :-(

Been a customer since their web browser for NeXt. Dang.

------
0xff00ffee
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.

------
JackPoach
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.

------
_pmf_
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
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.

