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Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#51

Post by carlosjobim »

skwee357 wrote: post #22

Kind of a bummer. I paid for Affinity tools some time ago, but I guess my license is now worth trash, and if I want to use the new Affinity tools, I need to have "Canva account". I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so…

The complaining is off the charts! Nothing in your life would have changed if you hadn't heard about this free product. Now you rest sleepless and grind your teeth because other people get to enjoy free high quality software.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#53

Post by insane_dreamer »

They seem to have removed Affinity from the Mac App Store.

For those who want a lifetime license instead of freemium, Amandine* is similar to Affinity ($30 on Mac Store).

(I have no connection to either app).

* Edit: It's Amadine, not Amandine (my typo)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#54

Post by glimshe »

Nooooooo!

I'm a loyal Serif customer and paid for their software. I LOVE Affinity. And I HATE "free" commercial products because they need to extract revenue from subscription services, ads, data selling etc.

This is the first step toward making Affinity become another rental application like Photoshop. Escaping Adobe's predatory business model is exactly why I became a Serif customer in the first place.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#55

Post by tym0 »

northrup wrote: post #41
tym0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just bought V2 I am worried that V2 uses an activation server at all unlike V1 with its license key. When this free/premium with AI thing crash and burn in a few years I can kiss that license goodbye.

You should log in and download the offline copy of your license key and store it in order to safeguard such things.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be a thing for V2

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#56

Post by jessep »

odie5533 wrote: post #48
osxman wrote: post #29

This is bad news... I liked the Publisher/Designer/Photo apps on my Mac. The presentation of this new 'Canva' acquired product feels like a circus, and roadmap is very unclear also. This feels like it will be the end of a none adobe solution. Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

Now that the basic tools are all free, they no longer make money. AI features are the only thing that makes money, so all development is going to funneled into the AI features exclusively.

That doesn't make sense. The free part is the marketing, the more people like it, the faster it spreads. I run a freemium business and all the motivation internally is to increase growth by improving the free product. Once you achieve a good conversion to pro, any more will slow down growth. At that point, all you care about is improving the product for free users to generate word of mouth, and building features that will do so.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#57

Post by turtlebro »

osxman wrote: post #29

This is bad news... I liked the Publisher/Designer/Photo apps on my Mac. The presentation of this new 'Canva' acquired product feels like a circus, and roadmap is very unclear also. This feels like it will be the end of a none adobe solution. Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

Circus? And why do you think you payed for nothing?

Looks like they unified Designer/Photo/Publisher into one app, will take a bit to to get used to, but overall nice, the split between Photo & Designer was always a bit silly I feel. Also added GenAI features, for $12/m, not in a hurry to subscribe atm, but could come in handy. Cool to see the suite is still alive and getting updates.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#58

Post by achow »

glimshe wrote: post #54

Nooooooo! I'm a loyal Serif customer and paid for their software. I LOVE Affinity. And I HATE "free" commercial products because they need to extract revenue from subscription services, ads, data selling etc. This is the first step toward making Affinity become another rental application like Photoshop. Escaping Adobe's predatory business model is exactly why I became a Serif customer in the first place.

Look at it this way, this could challenge Adobe to make Creative Suite free and charge only for AI in their product (one can dream at least).

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#59

Post by skwee357 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #51
skwee357 wrote: post #22

Kind of a bummer. I paid for Affinity tools some time ago, but I guess my license is now worth trash, and if I want to use the new Affinity tools, I need to have "Canva account". I mean, free tools are good. But I smell a road to enshittification (for example, by offering Affinity for free so you create Canva account, then they push Canva AI or whatever BS to you little by little, and in the end deprecate affinity so…

The complaining is off the charts! Nothing in your life would have changed if you hadn't heard about this free product. Now you rest sleepless and grind your teeth because other people get to enjoy free high quality software.

Don't worry, I sleep tight and don't grind my teeth (at least not over Affinity).

What bothers me, however, is that I bought Affinity tools in the first place in order to avoid marrying myself with Adobe and their predatory business practices. I, and many people here on HN, shared this sentiment of Adobe. However, I'm kind of baffled by the amount of people who seems to celebrate these free tools, as this is a 101 in predatory business making: acquire a good product, make it free but with an account, deprecate said good product and force everyone to use your SaaS offering with monthly subscription. I might be wrong, time will tell.

I wonder when people will learn the real value of "free" offering by For Profit Big Corp (c)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#60

Post by sgerenser »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #27
turnsout wrote: post #20

As an Affinity user, I'm interested to try this out (just downloaded). I'm surprised they tried to put it all in one app. Affinity Publisher is quite different from Affinity Photo for example. Edit: Just checked out the app. They essentially put Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher together in one app, switchable from a tab. Honestly, it's executed well. I hope it stays free—these apps are legitim…

Combining vector and raster editors makes some amount of sense since the raster editor had some vector capabilities anyway, but yeah, tossing in layout/desktop publishing feels kind of weird. It's a bit like combining a microwave oven and a blender.

Combining a microwave oven and a blender, you say? They already did that: https://www.thermomix.com
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