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Comment by kingnothing | Hacker News Reader

If we're looking at a single program, like Photoshop, I can get the best tool in the industry for $20 / month. You have three hurdles to overcome...

1. What would you do better than Photoshop?

2. How would you price it to be competitive?

3. How will you convince users that your product is worthwhile?

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So, let's take Pixelmator as an example. They easily bought me with their promise of a streamlined design and simple to use tools. Their demos looked so cool, that I've easily paid $40 (I think it was $40). Then, when I started using it, I realized it's missing some super-simple features (that people request on their forum) + it's not so stable, it freezes and crashes sometimes. (Also, can't remember the exact features that I was missing) So, now, even though I have a paid for Pixelmator, I still have to ask my wife to do simple edits in her Photoshop occasionally, which I hate using.

So, what I'm saying is that selling to me was not a problem at all, if only they could deliver a good product. I also used Sketch as an example of a product that works great: it's cheap, it probably misses tons of Corel Draw features, but it's simple, cheap, and perfectly serves needs of those, dealing with web/mobile design.

So, should there be a similar product for raster graphics and video? Also, NI on the audio production market feels to me as up for disruption.

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