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Affinity Studio now free

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Re: Affinity Studio now free

#671

Post by cprecioso »

I'm disappointed to see so many negative responses to such a good thing to do. I understand where it's coming from, the distrust on progressively de-empowering freemium apps. But if there was a product to gain some trust (or at least the benefit of the doubt) on doing the right thing, and having a fair and balanced approach to monetization, it is Affinity. Same thing they've been doing for years.

I for one, think this is a really nice thing, and that it gives access to really well-made and actual professional-level design tools to a huge swath of people who didn't have it before, be it for personal use or for work. No previously included feature is now part of the subscription, and they've made sure to say they'll be free forever. I see this as a huge win.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#672

Post by immibis »

Gabrys1 wrote: post #644
jazzyjackson wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

pCloud also has lifetime payment for a storage service. This must be some kind of Ponzi scheme, I guess they must count on 1. storage getting cheaper 2. traffic getting cheaper 3. that people will need more and more storage with time

Lifetime means until the company is bankrupt or gets acquired. It doesn't mean your lifetime.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#673

Post by nguyenkien »

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…

You need account to use, but can download without account.

https://www.affinity.studio/download

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#674

Post by yard2010 »

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…

Flames to dust / Lovers to friends Why do all good things come to an end?

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#676

Post by samuell »

monkeywork wrote: post #648

Wish they would properly support linux - the Affinity products are PAINFUL if not near impossible to get working in wine.

I was going to ask about wine support. Anyone tried in Bottles (wine distribution)? I've had better luck with Bottles than plain Wine with other software. Hoping to try soon.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#677

Post by TeMPOraL »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #457
TeMPOraL wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the good ol' "run it on Windows 95 in a VM" approach. It's pretty common in industrial applications and adjacent small businesses, which often rely on decades old software that has no modern alternative, or (more often) suffered from extensive enshittification. You keep running the software on old hardware, and once you run out of options for old hardware, you virtualize it and continue indefinitely. Of course, t…

Historically, Windows versions had excellent backwards compatibility, so at least in the past, this was much less of a problem in the Windows world than in the macOS world. This is also the reason why so many Windows users are so angry that in particular since Windows 10 (but partly already in previous Windows versions) Microsoft made it so hard to have some "stable" Windows version on a computer that only gets secur…

Windows itself has a great backwards compatibility story - but the Internet doesn't, so the moment you have to communicate with the outside world, you need to deal with the high churn culture of modern software.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#678

Post by prox »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #592
andrecarini wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Directory Opus, replacement for File Explorer. It's got a whole bag of tricks but I just appreciate the built in "convert to x" and FTP, oh and the bulk file renaming. Oh and built in support for various archive formats (no more winrar). Oh and (etc etc) https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

And no data sharing or telemetry? Couldn’t find anything on their website.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#679

Post by maccard »

ezfe wrote: post #350
nirava wrote: post #238

This is a deletion. - they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class experience. - the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and…

Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates. Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates. Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.

> Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version. If serif said “we’re not adding AI tools to v2, we’re going to go to v3 instead” I’d be fine with it. But instead they’re taking the updates they were providing to us anyway and packaging them up under a new revenue stream.

If they didn’t want this backlash they shouldn’t have sold perpetual licenses, they should have sold licenses with 1 year of updates.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#680

Post by sethaurus »

nightski wrote: post #344
jazzyjackson wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm guessing they are giving the core away for free to collect training data.

I think it's simpler than that. Canva's primary competitor is Adobe, and Adobe's remaining advantage is with creative professionals. That's Adobe's core market and their core revenue stream.

It's a classic "commoditize your complements" play. Canva remains profitable without charging for Affinity, but Adobe can't stay profitable if they stop charging for Photoshop/Illustrator.

The business justification works without imputing any more sinister motives than that.

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