Most folks are highlighting what feel like obvious flaws in the business model:
- "They charge too much for their software"
- "'Apple only' meant limited distribution"
- "SaaS apps are making desktop software obsolete"
Those all may be true; however, I think these miss the point as they aim for something that wasn't really Omni's goal. Omni succeeds because it builds amazingly high quality software targeted at a specific group of users, and charges a fair price for it (vs the vast majority of software that is of questionable quality and heavily subsidized by VCs and/or your attention). There are (were?) still enough people in the world willing to buy high quality software at that price point to sustain the company.
I think the other point missed is that, unlike what I feel like a lot of SV memes portray, Omni was designed to be an infinite game, "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play"[1]. The company isn't trying to blitzscale its way to a billion dollar valuation and let the founders cash out after five years--it's designed to be the best place for the best indie MacOS/iOS devs to have fun building great apps for as long as possible. They've succeeded for a long time, and I have no doubt that even with the downsizing there is still room for the company to succeed in that goal
If you're looking for awesome macOS/iOS devs, these really are the best of the best, and you'll be lucky to have them. Given that a big chunk of the team was also support and QA, there are likely a few of them available as well, and definitely check them out if you're in the market for those.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
Fun story: the first Omni app I ever shipped was OmniKeyMaster, which let you swap your Mac App Store license key for an Omni App Store license key. Within an hour of submission, Apple pulled it from the App Store (for obvious reasons). Always fun to have your hand slapped a week into an internship!
Second fun story: speaking to the nature of the company... as part of the internship offer, Omni agreed to pay for our housing, and ended up renting the five of us a house in Wallingford. Turns out the house ended up being a scam (we all showed up to move in and someone else was living in it), and so they put us up in the Residence Inn in South Lake Union for two weeks until they got us furnished apartments right next door to the office. It probably cost them a hell of a lot, but to them it was the right thing to do and they take care of their employees (even though they had just hired us). This company does its best to do right by its people, so I know this must have been an incredibly difficult decision for them to make.