Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 353 posts

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

#341

Post by bananapub »

alwillis wrote: post #286

I think one thing most people are missing: because Canva has 175 million users with a significant number of them paying a subscription, this enables them to keep the Affinity apps purchase model in place. Think about it: why would Canva essentially destroy the reason why so many users (around 3 million according to the reporting) went to Affinity in the first place by going to a subscription model? I don't see that h…

> because Canva has 175 million users with a significant number of them paying a subscription, this enables them to keep the Affinity apps purchase model in place.

please bookmark your own post and come back to it in five years so you can have a big a laugh.

Canva wants to be a player in image editing/design/etc. They have a big product that their investors love and has the ever-so-common monthly-tax funding model.

They have now bought a tiny, niche, desktop editing suite that makes approximately zero profit compared to Canva.

Do you think they did this because:

1. they thought it would be fun to own it and not interfere in any way, and to tell their investors to fuck off over and over when they suggest redeploying resources

1. they thought it would provide a good group of people and codebases to expand their existing editing software, and given that the software they currently sell makes essentially no money, at best they'll let it limp along with most staff working on integrating it into Canva-proper, at worst they'll kill it

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

#342

Post by bananapub »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #226
microflash wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with V2 license is that it cannot be activated offline so Canva can take a courageous decision to stop activations any time in future. V1 is great because it can be activated offline.

Great to know, I pondered buying V2 as a V1 owner, but now they can kiss my butt. The only downside is that Affinity V2 has no option to save files in a V1-compatible manner. Which stinks for exchanging stuff with other Affinity users.

> I pondered buying V2 as a V1 owner, but now they can kiss my butt.

you're...declining to support a company you like that makes software you like, that is offering a massive discount to you, because at some point in the future they may not allow more activations of version 2, which would not affect your ability to use version 1 in any way?

this is a rather idiosyncratic position to take.

> The only downside is that Affinity V2 has no option to save files in a V1-compatible manner. Which stinks for exchanging stuff with other Affinity users.

as an affinity user, I am glad they didn't do that and instead did almost literally anything else with that engineering time.

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

#343

Post by upsuper »

gushie wrote: post #340
upsuper wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized that we provide an option called "Flatten PDF" [1] which does exactly what you described: flatten everything including text into a big image per page. It makes all text unselectable and also produces a very large file. This feature was introduced for printing consistency as PDF viewers and print drivers may render things differently. But I don't think it's selected by default, so users have to consciously…

I had assumed 'Flatten PDF' was to make the PDF smaller so just used it without thinking or comparing!

I agree that the help page isn't very helpful. I had to reach out internally to understand what it is doing and why it is there.

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

#344

Post by upsuper »

microflash wrote: post #11

The link should probably be changed to official announcement.[1] That said, this is pretty dismaying. I've been using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for years. Their standalone and non-subscription based apps are perfect for my usecase. Compared to Adobe, they are a no-brainer. But, I don't think Canva would leave them be as is. Either next versions will be a subscription or a rug pull is coming for the existin…

Canva and Affinity just released another news [1] which makes the pledge that

> We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future. If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it.

[1]: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/

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

#345

Post by DHPersonal »

I got a press release email from Canva today that included the following about perpetual licenses, which reads to me as if the prices are going to be increasing on those licenses:

> We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

> We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future.

> If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to.

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

#346

Post by candiodari »

bananapub wrote: post #339
candiodari wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a cult if it works ...

what does "work" mean? that it maximises profits for HN posters? that it maximises some abstract goodness for society? that it provides good quality products at the lowest prices? the fact businesses keep doing something doesn't provide any information on if that's good for anyone else.

Profit in software companies does in fact provide most of those example.

Only the last one needs some clarification. If a business did not do things that benefit others, they wouldn't get paid. So, almost by definition, businesses do. You might argue that a bigger value could be provided in another way, but it definitely does provide value.

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

#347

Post by thiht »

layer8 wrote: post #273
nrml_amnt wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love HN.

There should be no need for HN to provide this kind of support channel. It exhibits how things don’t work.

It's not support at all in this case, don't mix everything. Someone says something wrong about a product you're literally working on, there's nothing wrong in responding.

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

#348

Post by Kye »

gushie wrote: post #340
upsuper wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized that we provide an option called "Flatten PDF" [1] which does exactly what you described: flatten everything including text into a big image per page. It makes all text unselectable and also produces a very large file. This feature was introduced for printing consistency as PDF viewers and print drivers may render things differently. But I don't think it's selected by default, so users have to consciously…

I had assumed 'Flatten PDF' was to make the PDF smaller so just used it without thinking or comparing!

"Flatten" comes from the world of desktop image editors. You "flatten" one layer down to the next to make one layer. Sometimes the people who work on these kinds of things forget their users might have never used software with metaphors like this.

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

#349

Post by musicale »

upsuper wrote: post #344
microflash wrote: post #11

The link should probably be changed to official announcement.[1] That said, this is pretty dismaying. I've been using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for years. Their standalone and non-subscription based apps are perfect for my usecase. Compared to Adobe, they are a no-brainer. But, I don't think Canva would leave them be as is. Either next versions will be a subscription or a rug pull is coming for the existin…

Canva and Affinity just released another news [1] which makes the pledge that > We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future. If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. [1]: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/

Guess we'll see how well this ages.

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

#350

Post by Stego »

upsuper wrote: post #343
gushie wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had assumed 'Flatten PDF' was to make the PDF smaller so just used it without thinking or comparing!

I agree that the help page isn't very helpful. I had to reach out internally to understand what it is doing and why it is there.

Hey, I'm the SGEL for User Voice, ping me on slack and I'll be able to help.
Post reply on HN