From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.apps


As usual, one company buys another, then (often despite claims to the contrary) simply gets rid of everything that made the bought company
special. The individual Adobe-competitor apps were good, one massively overbloated "do it all" app is an incredibly stupid idea. :-\

I also doubt it will remain free for long, or at least not completely
free (they could use 'in app purchases' for further functions /
features).

Time to start looking for new Abode and now Affinity replacement apps. :-\


Affinity's entire suite goes completely free
on Mac with new all-in-one app
--------------------------------------------
The popular three Affinity design apps on Mac and Windows both
have been scrapped, as Canva combines all previous functions
into a single and completely free Mac app.

It's an enormous understatement to say that users of Affinity
Publisher, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Designer, have been
worrying for a month. New owner Canva removed Mac apps, made
all of the iPad versions of its apps free, and promised a
dramatic announcement.

Now that announcement and the release of the new software has
broadly put to rest the key concerns:
- There will be no subscriptions for core app functionality
- Canva is not rebranding the apps
- Canva is not dropping the apps

There is a something of a devil in the details, and not all
users will be happy. But compared to having Canva asset-strip
the apps, or switch to subscriptions, the announcement is
better news than feared.

Or it is better than expected for Mac and Windows users.
Unexpectedly, Canva says that the iPad version of its new
offering will not be released until 2026.

The company has confirmed to AppleInsider that the current iPad
apps will remain available until then. Canva also confirms that
the new Affinity app is a native Mac one, and not built on
Electron cross-platform development frameworks.


One app, every function
The key detail is that Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer,
and Affinity Photo are gone, and instead there is just one
single app called Affinity.

We tried getting a pre-release version of the app to see what
was going on, but that didn't happen. So while we are
immediately testing out the public release, there are some
concerns we can aready answer.

Specifically, there is an argument that this is really only a
re-skinning of the original apps. For the new app constantly
features a stubby control strip with large buttons for Vector,
Pixel, and Layout.

Clicking on Vector gives you what pretty much what Affinity
Designer had before. And similarly Pixel is Affinity Photo,
while Layout is absolutely Affinity Publisher.

What Canva says, though, is that users will be able to
customize the app's toolbars to create any workspace they want.

It has to be, though, that existing users will have to heavily
customize it. That's because there is only so much room, and
even if the Vector, Pixel, and Layout buttons divide the one
app into three, Canva will presumably have selected only the
most commonly used tools from across the three apps.

Consequently, there has to be a risk that new users won't find
controls that they need, because they just do not know about
them.

But then it may also mean that existing users of any one of the
original Affinity apps will now be exposed to features from all
three.

Canva does say that users will be able to share their workspaces
and sets of tools.

One immediate finding is that users familiar with the Export
option from, say, Affinity Publisher, are going to take a minute
to learn how to do it now. For there is one Export panel with
every option from every app, and within a range that includes
JPEG and ePub, there are typically half a dozen options.

Then once any one of those is selected, you get a pane with
finer controls. Those look very similar to how the previous apps
did this, but it's already taken a little hunting to find what we
needed.


Evolution of app switching
This fits, too, because combining Affinity's range of features
into a single app is a clear evolution of the company's prior
approach. Previously, each of the company's previous three apps
had a one-click way to switch apps.

Whichever app a user started in, their document remained open and
exactly where and how it was. But every tool, every menu wrapped
around it would belong to the other app. Now every tool from each
app can be accessed at any time.


Free forever
One of the major selling points of the Affinity apps was always
that they were one-off purchases. It was particularly attractive
as Adobe keeps hiking its subscription prices, year after year,
and sometimes more than once per year.

The Affinity apps were not exorbitantly priced either. And, like
we said, the new single app is free. And, Canva stresses that this
is free without any catch.

Users do have to have an account in order to use the apps. This was
also the case with the previous Affinity apps, and the company says
that existing accounts will work.

New users will have to sign up for a Canva account. There are paid
tiers, but all that is needed is a free one.

The app appears to have multiple routes into Canva. All users can
share their work via the platform, for instance.

And users who do choose to subscribe to a premium Canva tier will
able to use the platform's AI tools within Affinity.


Why Canva is doing this
When Canva bought out Serif, the developer of Affinity, it appeared
to be a consumer company buying a professional art one. Canva has
very strongly pursued new and consumer users, intending to make
creating artwork simple for them.

But Canva is only simple when you work precisely the way it lets
you. For a professional user, it was too constrained.

It's also frustrated AppleInsider staff. Depending on how a Canva
user sent an image in, it was at the very least awkward to bring
that into any other image editor.

So it's possible that Canva sees Affinity as its route to the
professional market. It certainly does position Canva far more
closely against Adobe than its own offerings ever did.

Plus there is this issue of Affinity users having to have Canva
accounts. It will presumably drive some Affinity users to go for
the paid tiers.

Prices for those vary, and Canva doesn't reveal the cost of all of
its various plans up front. Education and non-profit company users,
for instance, have to ask.

But there is a generic Canva Pro tier. That costs $100 per year.

Each of the old Affinity trio of apps cost $70, or could be bought
in a bundle for $170. That was a one-off purchase, though, and only
Canva knows how many new users it was getting each year.

Doubtlessly Canva has run the numbers and expects this move and the
demand for paid AI-generation and editing of images to ultimately
be profitable.

But in the meantime, the fact that the app is not a subscription
one is a relief for users who'd already bought the previous ones.
That it wasn't asset stripped and features moved into Canva itself,
is also worth celebrating.

Yet this is a case where the real impact will not be known until
the new Affinity app can be tried out extensively. And it's also a
case where if you have the original three Affinity apps, hang on to
them.

That's clearly necessary with the iPad versions. It's not
surprising that with a complete redesign, the company concentrated
on the Mac and Windows versions first.

But it does raise an issue. When you open an existing Affinity
document in the new app, you are told it has to be updated - and
that it won't be possible to open it in the old software.

That's far from unusual. But in this case it does mean you cannot
work cross-platform as the iPad apps only recognize the old format.

It's no understatement to say that if you liked the Affinity trio of
apps, you relished them. They may have initially been considered
cheap versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, but they
became strong apps in their own right.

The announcement from Canva will put some minds at rest - and
there's no reason not to download the free app and try it out.

But it's still going to be a shame that the individual Affinity
Designer, Affinity Publisher, and Affinity Photo are behind us.



<https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/10/30/affinitys-entire-suite-goes-completely-free-on-mac-with-new-all-in-one-app>





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