The market for apps that are basically "This existing software, but how it was 5-8 years ago" is functionally infinite at this point. Every Office app. The entire Adobe suite. It's open season. Hell, ATP tech babble aside, 95 % of Bluesky users are here because it's Twitter with less bullshit - ThreadSky

skybrush.bsky.social • 36 days ago

The market for apps that are basically "This existing software, but how it was 5-8 years ago" is functionally infinite at this point. Every Office app. The entire Adobe suite. It's open season.

Hell, ATP tech babble aside, 95 % of Bluesky users are here because it's Twitter with less bullshit

Reposted from Nash

If there's a moral to this thread it's this:

With software you can only offer a shit service for so long before someone realizes it's very easy to provide an alternative and steal your lunch.

Considering office products haven't changed much in decades, in this case it would be relative cake.

Comments

tinplatesoldier.bsky.social•34 days ago

Imagine the millions a Search Engine without AI could produce.

sdevonplayers.bsky.social•35 days ago

The thing is there are good freeware options on most things if you look around too. Gimp for photoshop, open office for windows etc

skybrush.bsky.social•35 days ago

The thing that's hard is that a lot of freeware, to put it plainly, just has a less smooth UI/UX than the mainline products. I remember looking for some freeware - or even just cheaper - alternatives for CAD software, and I'm sorry, they all feel a lot more clumsy that AutoCAD/Inventor/Solidworks.

fletch.online•34 days ago

FreeCAD just ain’t there yet. Feels too much like 15 personal projects smashed together with no coherent UX and a UI that thinks indecipherable icons build character.

If they could just straight up steal the look and feel of Solidworks 2011 and stop there I’d never use anything else.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

Inventor is how I got into 3D CAD at work, so that's my preferred UI. I did end up using Fusion360 at home, but damn, it genuinely feels like AutoDesk just deliberately made the experience a bit worse because it's their free (for limited uses) alternative.

fletch.online•34 days ago

Same sentiment here. Fusion pales in comparison. I always despised its notion of assembly mates, and the feature timeline is craaaaaap.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

Weirdly, I like Fusion's texture library better than Inventor's? Actually, the studio environment in general!

skybrush.bsky.social•35 days ago

And it's completely understandable - they're (often) newer AND have way fewer resources! But it doesn't change the feeling of just having more hassle than what you're used to.

That's why I added that it's more complicated than just "Here's another word processor"

steve-arch.bsky.social•31 days ago

I also moved from auto desk to Vectorworks /nementschek about 5 years ago. Not going back!

skybrush.bsky.social•31 days ago

How are those? I tried some 3D CAD alternatives to the "big ones" (Inventor, Solidworks), and I just could not with the UIs. Everything I found felt clumsy and just not great flow. Ended up back at AutoDesk with Fusion, but even that feels like a deliberately worse version of Inventor.

skybrush.bsky.social•31 days ago

I just assumed you were replying to the original skeet, and now I feel like I repeated way too much information 😅

steve-arch.bsky.social•31 days ago

Apple iWork (if on mac) has been a bit of a revelation to be honest. Again not as ‘feature rich’ but has 90% of ms office and does it 100% better. Well for my use cases at least! The cloud versions aren’t hobbled either! But the UI is less nice / customisable and you have to root about a bit more

steve-arch.bsky.social•31 days ago

Vectorworks is primarily AEC / BIM /cad focused. That said, the UI is very easy to pick up and the learning curve is much shallower than autodesk stuff. Probably not as ‘feature rich’ as revit, but I’ve not come across anything I couldn’t do and does all the basics better imo. Draftsight is 👍 for 2d

steve-arch.bsky.social•31 days ago

Draft sight from desault (solid works) is a good 2d autocad alternative. About 1/3 the price last time I’d say it’s about as developed as acad was in about 16-18. Though they’ve copied the user interface with just enough changes to prevent a lawsuit. So pretty seamless transition.

duckmer.bsky.social•36 days ago

we're experiencing Coca-Cola Classic at a global scale

gfzw.bsky.social•34 days ago

I love seeing the honers making software that lifts the core features, drops daft bits, and makes it mutable so you can do extend it yourself.

Reaper does that for me - never looked back.

sierrashark.bsky.social•34 days ago

you could say this for a lot of industries tbh

imagine how much of a killing an upstart automaker would make by releasing a new, simple, cheap car with manual everything and no infotainment junk nowadays

granted it can’t be devoid of screens because of mandatory backup cameras but still

snoodoodle.bsky.social•34 days ago

Makes me wonder about the other end of the scale too, universities with researchers running decade-old software that only works on the older machines for their data analysis peripherals. Every day those folks cross their fingers the machines don't fail, bc the hardware relies on abandonware. 😟

snoodoodle.bsky.social•34 days ago

(Sorry if that's unrelated, I was just musing on this bc we tend to focus on the software being fiddled with while we're using it. We don't tend to spare a thought for the stuff that never gets ported or updated to have compatibility with "newer" systems. Most we see is OS emulation, for example.)

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

Definitely no sorries!

At my old company, we had some essential software - the only way to get readings off a critical instrument - that only ran on XP, was only installed on one computer, and with the original disc long lost. And the laptop held charge for about 20 minutes. Huge point of failure.

snoodoodle.bsky.social•34 days ago

Oh that's a nightmare! I feel like these things can only be resolved with regulations regarding the support and archival of older software. Idk if it's the same in America but I'm sure the UK gov pays to have older Windows OS supported. They could share those updates w the rest of us... >:/

snoodoodle.bsky.social•34 days ago

Things would be great if microsoft (and other companies too!) had to legally have an archives page of their older OS, software and manuals for customers to download. They'd have to improve their products, too! But media and tech preservation isn't in the capitalism wheelhouse, unfortunately. 😔

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

OS's are a bit more complicated given the security update issue - but with all the hesitancy about Win11 (I only switched on my personal PC bc I bought a new one and it was pre-installed), I wonder if MS will have to push the October 2025 end date for Win10

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

This was a case of wrongheaded money saving, but there are a lot of cases where it's just that changing software would be a near-catastrophic interruption due to limited infrastructure and resources

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

I don't want to imply that it's EASY to replace them, by the way. Most of these programs have existed for decades, with feature creep to match, and 90 % of those features are things people actually want and expect, as well as a fully polished UI that's similar to what they know.

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

So, I realize that the "If" at the beginning of "If you could make a word processor that does everything Microsoft Word does but without the SaaS and genAI bullshit, you could beat its ass" is a load-bearing word.

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

I do think the amount of rough edges people are willing to deal with is only going to rise as more and more Bullshit(TM) is foie gras-fed into the mainstream software suites.

secondthrowaway.bsky.social•36 days ago

-points at open office-

I really tried to get the hang of it

screamingwyvern.com•36 days ago

I stream indie RPGs and couldn't show the PDF booklet because of Adobe's "helpful" bullshit. So I got an open source PDF reader and it was wonderfully clean and usable! And then the next week I needed to fill in forms, which that reader didn't support.

ajfidalgo.com•34 days ago

I use SumatraPDF for freeware viewing without BS, and keep a copy of Adobe Reader around strictly for filling in forms.

screamingwyvern.com•34 days ago

Sumatra is the one I found. It’s been great. Since I do a lot of manuals, the way it handles indexes is fantastic.

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

It feels like, for a while at least, we're going to regress to using 5 apps for something we'd do in one single app before if we want to sidestep AI- and SaaS Hell. And that's annoying, but it's getting closer to Worth It every day.

horse.twilightsparkle.space•33 days ago

Perhaps Okular can do the job, unless it was the reader you tried? It supports filling in forms, though I personally haven't used this feature, so I don't know how it fairs.

https://okular.kde.org/

nenewhips.online•34 days ago

this is going to sound insane but I think microsoft edge is actually really nice for pdfs

screamingwyvern.com•34 days ago

I'm going to be honest: I cannot use a browser for PDFs because I will close a browser as soon as I'm finished with it. And by "finished with it" I mean "opened Wikipedia to check on some information." And then the page is gone. Again. 😀

burntcopper.bsky.social•35 days ago

Can you get Foxit? Last i checked it can do forms and has v few ads.

skybrush.bsky.social•35 days ago

I just took a look and they're going all in :/

burntcopper.bsky.social•35 days ago

Urrrrrgh.

skybrush.bsky.social•35 days ago

Gotta love corporate FOMO

FOMP?

(Fear Of Missing Profit)

nuke.blue•33 days ago

Just realized that's why I own Pixelmator Pro.

bobmungovan.bsky.social•36 days ago

Percentage seems low, and I'm not sure how sarcastic I'm being.

wietse111.bsky.social•34 days ago

I disagree with office. Especially Excel is goated. Unbeaten. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's pretty damn close. An extremely solid product.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

Excel definitely works fine for most things. But it's a matter of time before they shoehorn in some genAI bullshit. Can't see where they would even begin to justify implementing it? Me neither. But I very much doubt that'll stop them. MS, like bug tech at large, have fucking COMMITTED.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

BIG tech, although "Bug tech" might not be completely inaccurate at this point

simons-mith.bsky.social•34 days ago

Excel cannot be trusted to give the correct answer for 1.0 + 1.000
Excel thinks 31 Jan 2014 * 2 = 4 March 2028
Excel thinks it's okay to strip leading and trailing zeros even when the user specifically enters them
Excel cannot store the number 0.3 accurately.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

I say this with all the good intention possible and no offense meant: Let's not turn this into a back and forth about whether any one particular software is "good enough" or not.

darthmarmalade.bsky.social•36 days ago

See also television. How about a channel that only shows sci-fi? And one that’s nothing but music videos?

joshuasharp.bsky.social•36 days ago

Truth. And has been true for me for as long as SaaS has been the dominant business model.

starstormx1.bsky.social•34 days ago

I'd argue a good chunk of Corel/Alludo's catalog is like that, heh. They've stuck with selling perpetual licenses even after subscriptions became popular, and who knows how much of their software has been updated?

starstormx1.bsky.social•34 days ago

(I wonder where Magix and ACDSee's library falls under? You can still get perpetual licenses for Vegas, at least)

goateecreations.bsky.social•34 days ago

While we're at it, can I get Windows XP back?

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

I am in two minds about XP, because on one hands it was a great version of Windows, but I don't think I've ever quite forgiven it for being the version that eliminated MS-DOS as an actual OS and made it incredibly difficult to play my old games for a decade until DOSBox was available 😅

goateecreations.bsky.social•34 days ago

Fair enough.

wrenburrow.bsky.social•36 days ago

Watch Big Tech capitalise on this by releasing "Classic" apps at 2025 prices a couple of months down the road.

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

Photoshop Vanilla

wrenburrow.bsky.social•36 days ago

Office Anniversary Edition

wrin.bsky.social•34 days ago

You shouldn't speak these horrors into existence

simoncraven.bsky.social•34 days ago

In the screenwriting trade there are a couple of plucky small-volume companies making excellent low-cost buy-once pro standard screenwriting software as a reaction to the buggy bloatware that is Final Draft, a pricy monster with expensive mandatory periodic updates

jacob.earth•33 days ago

Any recommendations?

simoncraven.bsky.social•33 days ago

https://www.fadeinpro.com/ is what I use on Windows. Cheap, stable, effective. Highland 2 from https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/ is one a lot of Mac users swear by

jacob.earth•33 days ago

Thank you! 🙏

rescott.bsky.social•36 days ago

Truth

jamesperrett.bsky.social•36 days ago

Libre Office or Open Office have been catering for those who don't want all the MS stuff for years. Lots of other great free/cheap software around if you look for it.

dickius.bsky.social•36 days ago

I would pay $100 for an up-to-date version of Picasa (the desktop app, not the website)

inkycyber.bsky.social•34 days ago

Affinity by Serif is a great example, Photoshop with no bullshit or AI and a one time fee for an actually good piece of software. This is something I feel we've lost now that everything is subscription based (I easily spend 1k + a year on subscriptions) Devs, if you make good tools users will come

shaneconneely.bsky.social•34 days ago

Managed to dig out my licence for cs6 a week or two ago. I'm delighted with myself from a decade ago

kiraisgr8.bsky.social•33 days ago

i think about this sometimes, it's wild that something as unthinkable as "industry pillar leaving a huge market gap for their flagship product" is currently happening at nearly every such pillar

patter.bsky.social•34 days ago

& all they've got left is "have some features you never asked for. you WILL enjoy them" or "how about you rent our scrapcode"

patter.bsky.social•34 days ago

Libre Office is pretty much Word as it was a decade or so ago. Buttons in the usual places for things, without moving them around at random

joshisloud.bsky.social•34 days ago

📌

coolspeech.bsky.social•34 days ago

A Microsoft Word that doesn’t make deranged changes to the document on its own volition.

skybrush.bsky.social•34 days ago

I would not have the energy to mess around with LaTeX today, but I will say, sometimes I'd take spending 10 minutes finding an erroneous bracket in a bunch if pseudo-code over the seemingly random, black box actions of Word.

nocleverhandle.bsky.social•34 days ago

That was called Frame Maker... until Adobe killed it. 😭

ctc3d.bsky.social•35 days ago

Peak everything was about 2009. Internet, apps, cameras...

secondthrowaway.bsky.social•36 days ago

I've been using the same office 2013 install forever, idc

theryusui.bsky.social•36 days ago

2010 for me

secondthrowaway.bsky.social•36 days ago

"wow how'd you get office 2013 three years early"

my dumbass brain outrunning my common sense like the flash

secondthrowaway.bsky.social•36 days ago

also I love your pfp

sever your leg please, sir

theryusui.bsky.social•36 days ago

it's the greatest day

hearnoevil.bsky.social•34 days ago

Isn't this the niche filled by Corel products?

randywuerger.bsky.social•34 days ago

Good grief — no! Corel is abandonware piled high.

starstormx1.bsky.social•34 days ago

Given WordPerfect has been stuck in v21 for who knows how long...

htfb.bsky.social•33 days ago

It's being picky, but pre-2019 Excel was bad in all the ways people say Excel is bad while post-2019 Excel is bad in only some of them. Don't make me go back there.

skybrush.bsky.social•33 days ago

Yeah, Excel is probably an outlier currently (maybe because screwing too much too fast with it would piss more companies off than stuffing Clippy 2.0 in Word?), but I don't think it's going to be safe forever, or even for long.

chronovore.bsky.social•35 days ago

I'm on Pixelmator instead of Adobe Photoshop for exactly this reason.

steve-arch.bsky.social•31 days ago

Yup and non subscription too! I’ve switched a lot over the past 5 years.
Adobe -> affinity
Revit -> Vectorworks
MS office -> apple iWork (a surprisingly well developed underused suite and bundled free)
Acrobat -> preview
Ms project-> project libre
Got work done 8 years ago & can work now!

shinjiikarus.bsky.social•34 days ago

If anyone would care for ATP, they’d use ActivityPub like mastodon. I agree: The general audience does not care and only wants Twitter w/o the BS.

jrobie.bsky.social•36 days ago

I'm in for anywhere between $500 and 1K for a modern/secure version of Win 7

skybrush.bsky.social•36 days ago

For the ways I use Windows at home and at work, Windows 10 didn't seem like a huge downgrade from 7, but the latter still feels like the peak, yeah.

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