Once upon a time, digital product design happened in Photoshop and Illustrator. Then competitors like Sketch and Figma came out with a better product. This made Adobe create XD to compete, but it was unable to make a good product so instead they tried to purcahse their competition instead of making something better.

9 months after Adobe announced it was to purchase Figma (and 3 months before it hoped the deal would close), Adobe discontinued XD.

Fireworks tried to fill the gaps between PS and Illustrator, but never got traction.

> Adobe discontinued XD

That was my understanding as well, hmm

>Fireworks tried to fill the gaps between PS and Illustrator, but never got traction.

I couldn't disagree more. Fireworks was a perfect blend of raster and vector editing and was killer for early 2000s web design work. It was an amazing Macromedia product that got neglected by Adobe.

If I'm in a cynical mood I sometimes think it's because an up-to-date Fireworks would have cannibalized the sales of PS/AI, but I think that gives too much credit to Adobe.

Fireworks wasn't an original Adobe product but a Macromedia one they got during the acquisition. Adobe seems to have had some massive lack of effort for those (Flash being the prime exemple).

RIP to Fireworks, it's the first tool I ever used for design.

Yet another example of Adobe purchasing their biggest competition and then shutting it down!

I'd bet they're hoping to just have an AI alternative by 2025

Yes, XD directly competes with Figma.

It could. XD is dead but maybe this might inspire Adobe to revive it.

They will be forced to now, isn't it? I am sure they wouldn't want to start from scratch. But have to admit, XD was nothing as compared to Figma right now.

They had a really good core in my opinion. The overall performance and especially the prototype preview was really nice. Every change was instant and not even heavy animations were a problem. Much nicer than the Sketch slideshow style prototypes and Figma prototypes that load very slow, not to mention the bugginess.

Judging by the 20bil price they wanted to pay, I guess they know what kind of investment would be needed to compete now.

XD never took off. If Adobe wants to get into the UI market they would need to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. If you're starting with a failed product you're most likely going to fail again.

Hmm. May be they see Penpot and learn something from it.