Exceptionally unproductive? What are you on about? Could they make larger swings? Sure. Are they exceptionally unproductive? Compared to whom? They dominate pretty much all market segments they're in. For example, they took on Apple, after a grudge, and won (Apple had something to do with that too). AI showed up, Adobe is pretty much the only major established player that put it in consumer hands ASAP and in a way that is both legal and makes great sense. Others (majors), if they even showed up with anything AI leaned on others (Microsoft -> OpenAI).
Adobe is moving at a steady strong pace which one cannot ignore. They don't have ferocity or (sometimes) velocity of a hungry small player.. yet, there aren't any in their space. There's Autodesk (lol) and of smaller in video there is The Foundry (if you want to see exceptionally unproductive, at small scale).
I'm the last person to stand behind Adobe (where my linux apps at?), but:
- procreate - yes, I agree. They do compete there and procreate is iPad only. Pricing is what sets them apart and Adobe being a bit stupid there
- Figma - yes and it's Adobe now.
- Blender and Maxon are in different space. Unless you consider Blender's subpar video capabilities and Maxon's buying of video plugins (for Adobe programs). Also, Maxon.. come on, talking about stale. C4D "light" is also part of After Effects.
- Blackmagic is in hardware business. Their Fusion (bought) is stale af. AVID might be a better comparison.
- Autodesk - only overlap is between Flame and Lustre. Flame is in another space where they don't compete and Lustre has been stale (just like Adobe's CC offerings, seems both ceeded to free DaVinci Resolve)
- Stability - look at how wonderfully Adobe actually did put out AI and integrated it well with Photoshop!
Dunno how anyone can un-ironically call anything stale next to Adobes 10 year track record.
> Pricing is what sets them apart
Nah the whole app is built on modern technology, Adobes dusty old apps chugging away on single cores struggling to draw a paint stroke are pretty laughable compared to Procreate. All this is stuff Adobe could have shipped 10-15 years ago in Photoshop if they cared at all.
> Blender and Maxon are in different space
It's all the same space, if you're differentiating 3D from 2D design you're living in the past. Besides we're talking about creative tools shipping features so it's irrelevant as long as its a tool.
Adobe is moving at a steady strong pace which one cannot ignore. They don't have ferocity or (sometimes) velocity of a hungry small player.. yet, there aren't any in their space. There's Autodesk (lol) and of smaller in video there is The Foundry (if you want to see exceptionally unproductive, at small scale).