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Comment by badlibrarian | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe you'll have better luck in a week when somebody familiar with RAW and a 20 year grudge against Adobe chooses to spend a day of tokens on the problem. Maybe me.

Rome wasn't built in a day, nor Adobe destroyed in a single git push. But they both shall fall.

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People are underestimating heavily what has happened here and to our industry in general.

Adobe employee here. We have access to LLMs and tokens as well.

And 500 levels of org tree, and grumpy customers that freak out if you change anything about their workflows, and decades of legacy code across dozens of micro-services, and backwards compatibility requirements with 20 year old formats...

You have:

1. LLMs

2. an executive team that hates your customers. this problem with company culture goes back at least 13 years: https://fstoppers.com/video/adobes-ceo-deftly-dodges-questio...

Unfortunately any benefit from #1 is neutralized by #2

How are LLMs and tokens going to help you retain customers who you've spent the past decade pissing off?

Those customers are already pissed off, yet record sales every quarter. This will be great to offer this diminished experience to them until they start using AI to do all of their editing.

I'm going to revel coming back to this arrogant comment in a couple years.

Seriously, you have no idea the kind of goodwill you've squandered, and the kind of resentment you've created. I expect it will bite your company squarely in the ass.

I was surprised as well that an Adobe employee would make such a revealing comment.

Call it arrogance or just an acknowledgement of reality:

Revenue over the last ten years

August 31, 2026 — $6.760B May 31, 2026 — $6.618B February 28, 2026 — $6.398B November 30, 2025 — $6.194B

August 31, 2025 — $5.988B May 31, 2025 — $5.873B February 28, 2025 — $5.714B November 30, 2024 — $5.606B

August 31, 2024 — $5.408B May 31, 2024 — $5.309B February 29, 2024 — $5.182B November 30, 2023 — $5.048B

August 31, 2023 — $4.890B May 31, 2023 — $4.816B February 28, 2023 — $4.655B November 30, 2022 — $4.525B

August 31, 2022 — $4.433B May 31, 2022 — $4.386B February 28, 2022 — $4.262B November 30, 2021 — $4.110B

August 31, 2021 — $3.935B May 31, 2021 — $3.835B February 28, 2021 — $3.905B November 30, 2020 — $3.424B

August 31, 2020 — $3.225B May 31, 2020 — $3.128B February 29, 2020 — $3.091B November 30, 2019 — $2.992B

August 31, 2019 — $2.834B May 31, 2019 — $2.744B February 28, 2019 — $2.601B November 30, 2018 — $2.465B

August 31, 2018 — $2.291B May 31, 2018 — $2.195B February 28, 2018 — $2.079B November 30, 2017 — ~$2.008B

August 31, 2017 — ~$1.844B May 31, 2017 — ~$1.773B February 28, 2017 — ~$1.682B November 30, 2016 — ~$1.611B

And yet... 10 straight quarters of ARR decline. CEO leaving. Market prices you like a company in decline.

Besides, you're on HN, we don't value revenue here because we're idiots. But even the market agrees. Stock down 64% from peak.

Tootsie Roll Industries heats sugar and has nearly triple your P/E.

Huh? ARR has been monotonically increasing. Maybe you mean the ARR growth rate? Yes, that has been decreasing.

You also have managers actively hostile towards your customers.

That is true, but does Adobe have another Photoshop to build? And in how many hours will that be copied as well?

Not too many years ago, you had significant open source C++ libraries. You cared about them as much as you cared for customers.

So, what's Adobe Acrobat's competitive advantage to justify $15-25/mo vs. a free PDFCraft?

I haven't tried PDFCraft, but I'm willing to bet it isn't going to handle tables as well or offer signing.

Anyone would be insane to pay for Adobe pdf over pdf xchange, but plenty of companies do. I'm not sure how/why the world pays for Adobe with so many good options but they do.

That's exactly what I was thinking. It's only a matter of time. Surely the models, when well directed, can get most or all of the way there in short order.

Surely the models, when well directed, can get most or all of the way there in short order.

"Hey ChatGPT, what would the sufficiently smart compiler argument look like in the LLM era?"

I did this a few months ago and it's not simple: different sensors have different pixel arrangements, files can have different data structures, and the default tone mapping is provided by the app (so opening the same raw file in darktable vs preview will have different results). There are different algorithms for how you assemble the raw data as well, and the issue is that you can get something _passable_ that isn't _optimal_, and it's really hard for the LLM to recognize that something isn't right. Is it the pixel processing, or is it the tone mapping, or is that just how the image looked?

And on top of that, you need a bunch of different files from different sensors to test with. Canon, sony, apple, fuji, nikon, olympus, etc. -- if you're building a truly general application, that's a concern.

Or if you're like me and you shoot fuji, you just build a fuji raw parser and call it good. The "TAM of 1" world of software development...

All the camera companies offer custom software that works better (mathematically) than the Adobe versions. They're just trapped in godawful UX. It's a one day job to do the brain transplant.

Glad to see another based knower knowing Rome still exists

I chose "both shall fall" (future tense) on purpose. And likely in the same manner: a self-destructive period of reactive fascism, followed by becoming a nostalgic name noted for its crumbling architecture.

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