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Pixate is dead, unofficially.

8 years ago from , Product Designer

Its not every day the product you love just comes to a halt after it gets acquired. Pixate is one such product. This is not a rant or negative post to show they failed, but in fact to show that they actually succeeded that its heart breaking to see that its not getting updated.

Few pixate community threads to show whats happening

Need Sketch Integration

Set scroll position on tap

Open letter to Pixate

This is from their blog, Its not been updated since the acquisition.

We don’t want to stop there. Our small team at Pixate has some really big ideas, and with the help of Google we’ll be able to bring those ideas to the design community at scale. We’ve become an essential part of the workflow for tens of thousands of designers, and are excited about expanding our mission at Google to reach millions of product teams worldwide.

Blog

I wanted them to really scale up, because they are part of Google now!

Even in their community, users have created a separate thread asking whether Pixate is dead?

Hi all! First of all, I want to say that seeing your responses does show us that you care about Pixate and it's progress. This means a lot to us, so thank you. As Andrew had mentioned in @kvniekerk's post9, we have things we're working on and while we can't realistically give an ETA for these, we're getting closer to the release. It's true, our progress has appeared to slow down from your standpoint, but I can assure you we're doing a lot of testing inside Google to ensure everything works great, once we release it to the masses. Again, seeing everyone's concerns has proven we've created something people can be passionate about and that's exactly what drives us to further evolve Pixate. Thanks for being awesome!

Again, This all makes sense from their perspective. They might be going through a lot of stuff and they want to push a fully working feature out, rather than pushing out buggy feature. But as an user, I've spend some time learning to make things work in Pixate, I dedicated my productive hours making things work through watching countless tutorials and videos. Now when I know I cannot do certain things in Pixate, My immediate thought is when its coming, and its saddened to see that there is no ETA on when its coming.

Now I have two option, Either learn another prototyping tool. I'm ready to do that. And then what if they get acquired?

This is the cycle guys,

*See a kickass product -> Fall in love -> Use it everywhere -> Product get acquired -> Trying to not lose hope and still use the product -> Product closes its doors / stop their support -> See another product *

22 comments

  • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, 8 years ago

    Either learn another prototyping tool. I'm ready to do that. And then what if they get acquired?

    That’s the likely cycle for VC funded companies, where acquisition is the goal for failure or success.

    I think the moral to the story is to be careful of relying on VC funded companies.

    17 points
    • John PJohn P, 8 years ago

      I think the moral to the story is to be careful of relying on VC funded companies.

      How many more times are people going to be burned by this before they take the hint.

      0 points
  • Sahadeva HammariSahadeva Hammari, 8 years ago

    Here's the flip side of the product cycle you describe:

    Products most people never heard of (Google purchases alone include Writley, YouTube, Picasa, Android, Measure Map, GrandCentral etc etc) > become insanely popular after being built out by bigger company (becoming Google Docs, YouTube, Google Photos, Android, Google Analytics, Google Voice, etc).

    See also Dave Egger's thoughts on selling out

    7 points
  • Jeff EscalanteJeff Escalante, 8 years ago

    I recently wrote a post about this concept you describe at the bottom: https://medium.com/swlh/the-unreliable-startup-69461f629383#.j2voezuqm

    3 points
  • Matt HoilandMatt Hoiland, 8 years ago

    Sounds like what Google did to Sparrow. Best email client to ever come along. Now dead.

    3 points
    • Mike ArndtMike Arndt, 8 years ago

      Besides the fact you have to use it in he browser, do you really think Sparrow is better than Inbox?

      1 point
  • Andrew KordampalosAndrew Kordampalos, 8 years ago

    How do you feel now, that they released Pixate 2.0?

    2 points
  • Jason BlockJason Block, 8 years ago

    They very well might be dead, but knowing some people that have worked for companies in similar acquisition situations, there's a very real, gigantic, unpredictable chunk of work that comes from integrating your systems with the parent company's systems.

    There very well might be internal struggles with regards to how to position the product within the family, but I'd be more willing to bet that they just entered a company with a "don't comment on closed-source stuff that isn't done yet" policy and have a lot of technical debt to manage and reorchestrate.

    2 points
  • Prajwal Rao, almost 8 years ago

    Looks like all is well with Pixate.. v2.0 announced and released..

    http://blog.pixate.com/post/134795427293/pixate2-0

    1 point
  • James LaneJames Lane, 8 years ago

    Wonder if the guys at Pixate saw this and thought: "Sh******t, we best get this update out asap!"

    1 point
    • Tom GantzerTom Gantzer, 8 years ago

      Honestly, I really do think that's likely! Or at least they decided to forgo any further features to release these small ones soon.

      0 points
  • Henrique NogueiraHenrique Nogueira, 8 years ago

    well, apparently, no

    http://blog.pixate.com/post/134795427293/pixate2-0

    1 point
  • Tom GrahamTom Graham, 8 years ago

    lol http://blog.pixate.com/post/134795427293/pixate2-0

    1 point
  • Ryan MurphyRyan Murphy, 8 years ago

    Gargling on hyperbole.

    1 point
  • Joe Blau, 8 years ago

    This is the second time this has happened. I actually paid $200 for the first incarnation of Pixate which was designed to create a way to style iOS/Android apps using CSS. Pixate shut that product down (and I was disappointed) and pivoted to a prototyping tool. It seems like they are shutting down again for different reasons. It's very disconcerting, but engineers are in short supply and big companies seem to be doing whatever it takes to get new talent.

    1 point
  • Wesley HainesWesley Haines, 8 years ago

    This is certainly intriguing. It poses the question - should I ever buy a license to any prototyping software.. assuming they will all get swallowed up by the bigger companies?

    0 points
  • Brian HintonBrian Hinton, 8 years ago

    Long live Pixate...

    0 points
  • Stephen MeszarosStephen Meszaros, 8 years ago (edited 8 years ago )

    From my perspective, interactive prototyping products have created an entirely category of tools. A category that has only recently been made available to designers. That said, while it is sometimes frustrating that we must learn a new tool—I must have played with over ten—I think it's a fairly exciting time to be working as a designer.

    I would add that the developers and designers behind tools like Pixate, and the countless others, are designing for some incredibly tough technical and user experience challenges.

    What I am trying to say is that no tool I have seen out there today has become as ubiquitous as say, Photoshop or Sketch. We likely are to see many new tools and many updates and changes to our favorites. While a product like Pixate might shine brighter than most, it doesn't solve all of my problems. I'd imagine that the transition for them has been tough, but I wouldn't say they are dead just yet. In all of the conversations I've had with the team they have always been genuine and honest, I can only hope that that is still the case.

    0 points
  • Tom GantzerTom Gantzer, 8 years ago

    It's sad, because Pixate did something great; it was a fantastic GUI tool for complex animations and interactions. Many tools today don't get this right. Here's hoping they are cooking up a great update to Pixate.

    0 points
    • Luca Candela, 8 years ago

      No, Pixate is completely dead. What's going to happen is that Google is going to produce a prototyping tool for Android (and possibly web apps) built by that team if nobody kills the project before it launches. But Pixate itself is dead and buried, that's how Google operates.

      2 points
    • John PJohn P, 8 years ago

      Yeah I hear it's next on the list after a great update to Sparrow.

      1 point