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> people hated them for going subscription with the tools that used to be desktop, but they absolutely adore figma that has never been anything but subscription

I think a big part of it is exactly that, that Figma's value proposition as a subscription was always clear from the beginning, that it's not just a design tool but a real-time, collaborative design environment. Sketch was always the better choice for solo, side-project work, because it was a one-off purchase with no need for a cloud component (its more recent direction to try to become a cloud-first service has unfortunately only served to highlight its shortcomings versus Figma).

Creative Suite never had a value proposition as a subscription apart from becoming a predictable cost center for businesses. Tacking on an inferior version of Dropbox, making the whole suite subscription-only, and calling it Creative Cloud did a pretty decent job of alienating those who didn't fall into that "predictable cost center" market.




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