It's also what made the company: they were originally developers of software targeting NeXT machines/OS. Their products are a better fit in the role of 'big fish in a small pond' of the NeXT and then Mac worlds. Also, the Windows world has never valued the kind of craftsmanship Omni puts into their products... it's much more of a corporate market where managers and purchasing departments decide which products win.

True, but sometimes what got you here, won't get you there.

That's fine. A 30year career doing what you love on your own terms is a winning life.

The flip side is that I'm never ever going to use a diagramming tool that isn't compatible with windows.

Even if it were great, the fact I can't use it on my company workstation? Useless. Or even if I happened to have a mac workstation - being unable to share the source files with colleagues? It's dead on arrival. So basically it's a great diagramming tool so long as you work at a company that exclusively uses Macs. Which there really aren't many of. It's basically a diagramming tool for employees of Apple. Who, by the way, produce their own similar (less good) tools.

The productivity tools? Fine, you don't need to be able to share that. But Omnigraffle is juts a bizarre decision.

Sometimes it's best to stick to what you do well and do it really well. The market for their product is very different on the Windows side.

I haven't used their products but how the market is different from the Windows side? Aren't they general productivity tools?

Non-Mac/iOS users generally don't pay for software/don't care enough about polish to pay a little extra for something. That's why the majority of developers develop for iOS first and release on iOS first even though Android has the far larger market share (https://www.cultofmac.com/601492/app-store-google-play-reven...).

The type of person who is willing to pay extra for the polish Mac/iOS has over Windows/Android, is usually also the type of who is going to be willing to spend more for a better app.

Their USP is their integration into the platform.

How was this for the best when they had to lay off "usually off market" talent?

It worked pretty well for three decades.

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.

Not really. In the Windows world Visio pretty much owns the market. Sure, the retail price of Visio is higher but it's also typically built into corporate pricing schedules for Microsoft software (i.e. discounted and on the pre-approved vendor list)... good luck competing with that. For anyone price-sensitive there's open source / freeware / web-based stuff. This doesn't leave much room for another desktop product.

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

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.

The difference between using software developed explicitly and exclusively for the Mac (and/or iOS) platform vs a cross-platform application is often quite dramatic.

Omni in particular makes extremely clean, friendly applications that feel aligned with the platform.

Yes. I would pay for a native Mac experience. I would never pay for any app that uses something like Electron. If you’re okay with mediocre software, why buy a Mac outside of doing development?

The way things are going you're not really going to have a choice in a few years.

We do have a choice now, and that is to pay for good software. When we resign ourselves to "the way things are going", it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Apparently they are working on the web version of OmniFocus.

It’s out and has been for a while, but it’s not a standalone product.[1] You need to set up your database in one of the apps, and some functionality is not implemented (yet).

[1]: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/web