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Affinity Studio now free

affinity.studio

91–100 of 825 posts

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#91
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.

it's fair to be very worried about the future of the apps, but this:

> Also I paid every upgrade for NOTHING.

is ridiculous. you (and I) paid for upgrades for software we liked, and then in exchange for that money got upgrades to said software.

it's completely ridiculous for you to now whinge about this particular thing.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#92
post #89
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.

I’m also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at Canva. This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan. We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever. AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental inference costs. Hence that’s an _optional_ subscription. I understand why you feel that way. Having being…

I understand where y'all are coming from and this is not a judgement against Canva specifically. But you can't be surprised that people are concerned after so many years of anti-consumer anti-patterns in software that start exactly like this. This has nothing to do with Canva or Serif but the industry as a whole has squandered goodwill for so many years that actions like this no longer get the benefit of the doubt.

So unfortunately due to the rug pulls of many bad actors y'all will have to explain exactly how this doesn't end poorly because damn near every other time a company has followed this trajectory it is not in the consumer's best interest.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#93
post #25
post #2

This seems … way better than what I expected following the acquisition? What am I missing? And I assume this is a supplement to (and not a replacement of) the existing Affinity applications?

It is a replacement, the old Affinity apps are discontinued: "Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But please note that these apps won’t receive future updates. "For the best experience, we recommend using the new Affinity by Canva app."

Oh, that’s a shame. I liked those programs.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#94
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its a local-first app, that could be very good! Even if browser+WASM with local storage that is a step up from web apps. I don't like companies hoovering all data.

How long before that's no longer the case?

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

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#95
post #89
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.

I’m also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at Canva. This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan. We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever. AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental inference costs. Hence that’s an _optional_ subscription. I understand why you feel that way. Having being…

> This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan.

That's what they all say, right before they go ahead and do it anyway.

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#96
post #89
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.

I’m also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at Canva. This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan. We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever. AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental inference costs. Hence that’s an _optional_ subscription. I understand why you feel that way. Having being…

It might be the plan now - but it only takes one Product Manager in 18 months who is looking to push a metric

It's also concerning that you have to be logged in to use a free native app

Re: Affinity Studio now free

#100
post #89
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.

I’m also a loyal Serif customer, love Affinity, and I work at Canva. This is not the first step in that. It’s not anywhere close to our plan. We want to make Affinity, and professional design, the default tool. And a huge part of that is free, forever. AI features; like generative fill, have COGS and incremental inference costs. Hence that’s an _optional_ subscription. I understand why you feel that way. Having being…

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