Pixate (YC S12) and Google

http://blog.pixate.com/post/124673189563/google

by uptown • 11 years ago

139 64 11 years ago

blog.pixate.com

It's been on my to-do list for the last few months to start playing with Pixate. Can someone knowledgeable on this share their thoughts on what this means for the Pixate tools going forward?

hbosch3• 11 years ago

According to Pixates own FAQ related to this:

* Pixate Studio is now free to everyone

* Pixate Cloud is $5 per seat per month, or $50 per year

* Pixate Studio licenses will be refunded as a credit toward Pixate Cloud

Otherwise, no changes for now it seems. It's a very nice tool for simple prototyping for UX flows, animated transitions, and visual layout. A fantastic tool for designers.

fuzzywalrus• 11 years ago

So I'm wondering if they'll limit local storage accessibility for the Applications devices as a way of enforcing prototypes.

hbosch3• 11 years ago

Interesting acquisition considering they also bought Form[0]. Would love to see some designer-centric prototyping tools built by Google specifically for Android devices. The OSX/iOS ecosystem is particularly well equipped in this area, and finding good design prototyping tools built for Android is a pain point for many people in UX/UI imo.

0. http://www.relativewave.com/form/google/

pavlov3• 11 years ago

I'm involved in Neonto, a startup that makes a design tool that targets both iOS and Android:

http://neonto.com

The unique twist is that Neonto Studio generates real native code (Obj-C for iOS, Java for Android), so it's possible to use it even for complete apps, not just prototypes.

jtwebman3• 11 years ago

Is it using React Native?

danr42• 11 years ago

Looks promising. Can't find any reviews/blog posts of using it.

Do you have any example apps that were made using neonto?

Eridrus• 11 years ago

Is this Mac-only for the foreseeable future?

bitmapbrother2• 11 years ago

Is there a need? Pixate already performs Android prototyping.

Zikes4• 11 years ago

It's refreshing to see a company getting acquired and instead of shutting down they double down on their product/service.

Congratulations to the Pixate team!

jblow• 11 years ago

You might want to read ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com.

Usually this kind of announcement is followed by another one, 9 months-2 years later, of the service being shut down.

This is just the first step of that pattern again.

PaulHoule• 11 years ago

There is also the announcement that the people who started this company quit Google because they couldn't get anything done there and now they have a new startup...

Nilzor• 11 years ago

Funny how everybody is "excited", "delighted" and "ecstatic" about being acquired by a mega corporate.

myth_buster• 11 years ago

I'm really curious how the acqui-hire model is sustainable given the disconnect between expectation and reality. Surely there would be internal models to see the attrition rate of acqui-hires and questions asked whether the money paid was accrued in the form of services to the company. I read somewhere that the acquisition team works on a model similar to an investment bank which kind of explains this disconnect between what's pitched and what eventually transpires.

Zikes4• 11 years ago

To be fair, even if this were a brand new product from Google people would still be speculating on how long before they decide to shut it down.

aaronbrethorst3• 11 years ago

Here's why I (and jawngee) never used Pixate's products for my apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5062868

Given that I only make iOS apps, and that Google acquired them, I feel vindicated 916 days later.

adam12• 11 years ago

I wonder if they would have been acquired by Google if they had open sourced their software. Don't get me wrong - I completely understand your decision.

dragonwriter3• 11 years ago

I wonder if they would have been acquired by Google if they had open sourced their software.

The software [0] he complained about not having source in the old post he points to was open sourced before Google bought them. So, evidently, it wouldn't have stopped Google.

[0] http://www.freestyle.org/

PStamatiou• 11 years ago

Except that Pixate is purely for prototyping in the design phase.. not for actually shipping a binary to the app store.

seivan• 11 years ago

That wasn't their initial product that I even paid for. Not that I minded, I actually liked their initial product until it got open sourced (but abandoned)

dragonwriter3• 11 years ago

Wait, but the thing that you wouldn't use 916 days ago was released as open source a while ago. How is your "I won't use your products because they are just binary blobs and I demand source" vindicated by Google acquiring Pixate after that?

aaronbrethorst3• 11 years ago

I never noticed it was open sourced a while ago. I guess they never emailed their KS backers, or something. I raised my objections to the founders after backing their Kickstarter, and then never bothered using their software after that because I wasn't confident in the long-term survival of it.

Today is literally the first time I've ever heard that this project was open sourced.

plonh2• 11 years ago

How much is Google paying the KickStarter backers? Oh.

tsunamifury• 11 years ago

Pixate has a middle term potential to fix the difficulties with designing and deploying UI's which require basic physics or animations. It has the long term potential to change native front end engineering as its currently done.

Potentially it could compress design, prototyping, and front-end dev into a single seat -- who is more design-forward rather than coding-forward.

lebek• 11 years ago

I think the missing piece is still how app logic interfaces with the UI code outputted by these design tools. How do you do it so the UI can be updated without breaking interface with app logic?

Immediate-mode UI could be part of the solution, but I still can't see a complete solution that wouldn't piss me off as a developer.

cookingrobot• 11 years ago

Can anyone compare Pixate to PencilCase.io?

When I tried pencilcase I found it fairly easy to use, and liked that apps can theoretically be exported and submitted to the app store.

What are the strengths of Pixate?

Finbarr• 11 years ago

Congrats to Paul and the team!

jtwebman3• 11 years ago

Congrats guys! Nice to see hard work pays off.

babl-yc• 11 years ago

I wonder if this was one of those "if you don't join us we're going to copy you" acquisitions.

plonh2• 11 years ago

That's not really a threat, if copying requires taste and wisdom.

antidaily• 11 years ago

First Form (RelativeWave), now Pixate. Two prototyping apps in less than a year.

abvdasker• 11 years ago

Strong candidate for

http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Kiro• 11 years ago

Starting a company and being acquired is an incredible journey so I don't understand the humour in this.

eloisant2• 11 years ago

The humour is that they always announce that thanks to the big corp the product is going to sky-rocket, but after 6 months or so they shut it down.

It's probably great for the founders, not so much for the customers who trusted them and allowed them to grow to the point of being noticed by Big Corp.

ksherlock• 11 years ago

Prescient comment in the old TC article[1]:

Given the corporate interest, it sounds like Pixate has an easy exit ahead of it, if they so desired, but Colton says that’s not the route they’re taking right now. “We want to see how broad this can be,” Colton says. “It’s really a big change in how you can build apps,” he adds.

1. http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/15/pixate-debuts-a-framework-f...

dadude• 11 years ago

Was on the "Check it out" list for IOS. Guess I can cross it off as Im sure IOS support will go first then the entire product later to the great google product graveyard.

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects

Pixate (YC S12) and Google

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