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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#581

Post by daemin »

ezfe wrote: post #403
jkaplowitz wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscriptions often don’t allow continuing use of even existing versions of the product after you stop paying - it’s not just about access to future updates. The main exceptions are subscriptions that are explicitly for support and maintenance contracts on top of a perpetual license. There are also a few unusual business models, like JetBrains offer for subscriptions that last at least 12 months which grants a perpet…

Correct, and you're no longer paying so that's okay? It is unfortunate if the software stops existing but there is not a financial issue.

There is a big difference between buying a perpetual licence with extra yearly support packages versus leasing the software with on a subscription model. While the two options may appear to be the same thing, the first one doesn't remove your ability to run the software once you stop paying for support.

The best way that I have to describe it is in the first option you're buying a version of the software and then paying for updates and bug fixes in a flexible manner, while in the second option you're leasing use of the software for as long as you continue to pay.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#582

Post by brookst »

alt227 wrote: post #253
pentagrama wrote: post #143

I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here: Serif is the company that originally built this software. -------- 2014–2024 Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model: - Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent) - Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent) - Affinity Pub…

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

What will you recommend to people instead?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#583

Post by brookst »

radiator wrote: post #185
brookst wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only way to be sure it will never change is to build it yourself and make it free for everyone forever!

Though even if you build it, someone might eventually make you an offer you cannot refuse.

You can always refuse offers. Plenty of people enjoy working long hours and answering endless customer support issues for no revenue. Well, there must be someone out there.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#584

Post by taurath »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #333
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free. I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic, they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well to, yaknow, synergize Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual licenses for software that can work without a clou…

You are far too trusting. The free users are the product. It’s now a platform, not an app.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#585

Post by aleph_minus_one »

tracker1 wrote: post #552
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and if you just let them install the app but then reveal that they can't actually run the models, they'll feel ripped off. Just release some simple free "test application" that checks whether the computer satisfies the system requirements and does something "simple" (but relevant for the user) so that the users want to try out this simple free test application and want to update their hardware so that it can run. N…

Seems like a waste when you know most computers are laptops that won't meet minimum requirements.

This depends a lot on the group of users that you are talking about.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#587

Post by notpushkin »

input_sh wrote: post #526
tecleandor wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally on the landing page they have two columns comparing: Affinity vs Affinity + Canva premium plans And the FAQs under it are trying, repetitively, to upsell the Canva AI plans: Are AI features available? Yes. With a Canva premium plan you can unlock Canva AI features in Affinity. Can I access AI tools without a Canva Pro or other premium plan? No, these are only available to those with Canva premium accounts.…

Freemium would imply it's a stripped down version of what they used to sell, but that's not what's happening there. You get every feature that used to be behind a paywall for free and then they slapped some AI features on top. If anything, I'm happy it's behind a paywall instead of ruining the core experience.

It is a freemium model, but they are doing it in the proper way. I’m a bit worried this could lead to enshittification down the road, but for now I’m glad they’re doing this, will definitely give it another try, and might throw in a few bucks even. (Especially if they reconstider their stance on Linux support!)

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#588

Post by ineedasername »

alt227 wrote: post #253
pentagrama wrote: post #143

I used Affinity for several years, so to add some background here: Serif is the company that originally built this software. -------- 2014–2024 Serif developed the Affinity suite, a collection of three independent desktop apps sold with a one-time payment model: - Affinity Designer: vector graphic design (Adobe Illustrator equivalent) - Affinity Photo: digital image editing (Adobe Photoshop equivalent) - Affinity Pub…

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

I am unclear on the problem: are the apps, previously free, significantly more limited than their prior free versions unless/until you also purchase a subscription for the CanvaAI portions?

That aside, this isn’t a new thing for Canva, they aren’t chasing AI here, in this space GenAI is chasing the use case that Canva has been filling for a while, and incorporating genai as part of that is just, you know, “hey lots of people use this ai tool for design work now so maybe we add one because like it or not it’s how thing are”. Design is the Canva space, it’s not like they did a pivot to crypto.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#589

Post by kyer-sh »

ryandrake wrote: post #219
matwood wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you freeze your machine in its current state, software that isn't maintained will eventually stop working.

This is only true for very badly written software, and/or on platforms that maintain very bad backward compatibility. It's not some natural law of software--it's choices that (IMO) bad developers choose to make over and over.

It’s not just the case of badly written software. It will work until they shut off the license servers.

Adobe CS2 is a highly-capable software suite that would happily run on today’s computers. I remember when Adobe shut down the license servers for CS2. They released a version that you didn’t need to activate to assure people that they would still be able to use the software they bought in the future. But then they got tired of hosting the download servers, so they stopped, and that was it.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#590

Post by andrecarini »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #333
alt227 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shame IMO. The Serif suite was great, and I used to try to get every designer I could to dump adobe and switch to serif. Now that it has switched to a freemium model trying to get you to subscribe to AI, I wont be using this or telling other people about it any more. Their priorities have changed. No longer are they trying to to beat adobe at their own game, they are just chasing AI money like everyone…

I think it's really cool they can get AI money from the people who want to pay that, to give away the core for free. I can empathize with feeling their focus will be elsewhere (whatever increases revenue) but I figure AI isn't magic, they need to have the rest of the creative suite work well to, yaknow, synergize Edit: I'll add that I much prefer purchasing perpetual licenses for software that can work without a clou…

> Opus

Which software is that? I can only think about either the open source codec or the LLM from Anthropic.

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