Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe • Hacker News Board

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#21

Post by t-writescode » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:38 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #20

freedomben wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it, but a subscription model is coming. Canva is making money hands over fist by doing that, and I can't imagine they are going to part from what has been so lucrative

The only reason people get Affinity is because of the non subscription model. Adobe software is just better.

That's not true at all. There's also the strong dislike of Adobe as a company.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#22

Post by orbital-decay » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:39 AM UTC

phinnaeus wrote: post #10

nikolay wrote: post #5

A mistake, if you ask me. They can't compete with Adobe.

Affinity can, though. I haven't touched Photoshop/Illustrator in years since I discovered Affinity.

You're probably not the target audience though. Adobe products might be old, dysfunctional, and janky under all that cruft, but they have vast amounts of domain knowledge put into them.

Meaningfully competing with Photoshop & co involves breaking the lock-in (nearly impossible) and being much better use-case-wise. It's been done in certain niches where Photoshop is bad/mediocre/stagnates, like digital painting, but for general purpose suites like Affinity it means they have to be better at most things, which they just don't seem to be capable of.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#23

Post by ulfw » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:41 AM UTC

Canva seems lost in terms of what they are or want to be. I suppose AI doesn't help businesses like Canva's.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#24

Post by buzzerbetrayed » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:41 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #20

freedomben wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it, but a subscription model is coming. Canva is making money hands over fist by doing that, and I can't imagine they are going to part from what has been so lucrative

The only reason people get Affinity is because of the non subscription model. Adobe software is just better.

100% this. There is absolutely 0 reason to use Affinity of Adobe besides pricing model. They can play around with the numbers and try to have a cheaper subscription than Adobe, or maybe bundle it with the other software Canva offers, but ultimately I think switching to a subscription model will be the end of the Affinity software suite.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#25

Post by appstorelottery » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:41 AM UTC

I painfully switched to Affinity because of the rising Adobe subscription prices, I'd been a photoshop/illustrator user from the Dot com boom... I recall paying around 780 every two years for creative suite and given the hell I'd gone through by choosing Flex for a ERP project (Adobe's promises of iOS compatibility never materialising, then breaking compatibility - requiring a close-to-rewrite in their next version of Flex)... to cut a long story short - gave me shall we say - a few resentments towards the company. I suppose it's time to consider Pixelmator now, I'm such a grey-beard... subscriptions suck. ;-)

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#26

Post by ReleaseCandidat » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:45 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #20

freedomben wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it, but a subscription model is coming. Canva is making money hands over fist by doing that, and I can't imagine they are going to part from what has been so lucrative

The only reason people get Affinity is because of the non subscription model. Adobe software is just better.

I also try to avoid the two big "A"s, Autodesk and Adobe.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#27

Post by zubspace » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:45 AM UTC

Step 1: Announce the acquisition. Everyone will talk about the company and the fear of subscriptions.

Step 2: Tell everyone, that the current pricing model will stay and no subscriptions will be offered. Everyone will cheer and recommend the products.

Step 3: Wait until the dust settles and switch to subscriptions. The community will say "told you that this will happen" and life goes on.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#28

Post by pier25 » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

Hopefully this will allow the Serif team to improve their products. I bought their products from day one with the hope they would get better but after 10 years or so I'm still on Adobe.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#29

Post by presentation » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #17

(Customer from the very beginning for Designer&Photo, made a book with Publisher) They will move to subscriptions (there will be many more of these moves, see VMWare), which will kill their differenitation towards Adobe and kill the product. If subscription, I can use Illustrator (which has 10x more tutorials than Designer). Most companies screw up M&A.

If the pricing model is the only thing that differentiates Affinity then that wouldn’t have been a very good sign for their future

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#30

Post by dudus » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 5:55 AM UTC

Never heard about Canva. But checking them out they seem to focus on mobile apps and web apps to edit photos and videos. With a very specific focus on social media influencers. Don't be fooled by the cheeky templates and filters,they are going heavy on AI, with some interesting features such as inpainting and video background removal.

I guess that's either a very lucrative business or they have a ton of VC money behind them. This acquisition gives them some good editors on desktop to use as a base to deploy some of this AI tech focusing on a more pro market.