1 Reply by JGD

(14 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Oof, good riddance!

I didn't make any predictions regarding management back when they sold off the company after saying, time and again, that they never would, stopped selling their wares and left a bunch of customers stranded (especially the ones who started their 15-day trials during a… 30-day drought, ffs lol), shut down the forums in favor of Discord (ugh) and made a 180° on subscriptions (yeaaaah…), but I can't say I'm surprised in the least. In hindsight, what a completely stupid but understandable turn of events, considering the company that bought them.

Aaaaanyway, now that this thing looks to be with another foot in the grave, anyone willing to go the F/OSS route, as I suggested before? With these guys just coasting, and Adobe just, well, coasting, maybe those at the fringes will have another shot.

Heck, people are so fed up with even Windows and Microsoft's adware crap these days, that jumping ship to Linux may become a sensible course of action for many prosumers, if not hardened professionals, at some not-so-distant point in the future. Even I was super fed up with Apple when I feverishly edited my farewell post for the last time, but the way Alan Dye was “sacked” (rumour has it that he new he was getting the boot, hence why he let himself get poached by Meta) and Tim Cook decided to step down in such short succession after the mess that was Tahoe and their first botched attempt at a Siri revamp gives me a bit more confidence in the future of macOS, at least for the time being.

In any case, when it comes to creative software, I'll be doing my part, at least the tiny bit I can do for now before I finish and turn in my PhD thesis. I just sent the people at Scribus a bug report regarding third-party font managers (it doesn't support those, because of course it doesn't; respecting system-wide font APIs and behaving in the same way as any other macOS app is too exotic of a thing for a cross-platform, Qt-based F/OSS app to do roll ), and up next will come a thorough rundown of variable OpenType font support across the industry on the relevant forum topics (they still don't support those because it's a nascent format and it's technically hard to export them to PDF, and they convinced themselves that it's not that big of a deal in the market, or whatever). It's sad, because in the 1.7.x branch preview it finally got a decent, dockable palette interface and is otherwise shaping up to be a decent QuarkXPress/InDesign/Affinity Studio/Publisher competitor.

As for Inkscape and GIMP, I'm not touching those with a ten-metre-pole. Yet. wink It's a bit ironic, considering how Scribus was always my favourite punching bag over at Serif's forums… and it turned out to be the most native-looking of the bunch, heh.

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2 Reply by JGD

(41 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Exactamundo! Meaning, we still need a F/OSS alternative…

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3 Reply by JGD

(42 replies, posted in General Discussion)

sneil69 wrote:
Ali wrote:
sneil69 wrote:

I am saying nothing until the 30th but trust me on this one!

I have no good reason to trust you, so no, I won't - sorry.

My best guess would be a hybrid approach to pricing - a mixed economy.


It does not matter - The trust me was more rhetorical

I know what I know and believe me it is more than what you know

Let's just leave it at that.


Ok, I'll just say this: I can neither confirm nor deny how NDAs signed with Serif work and, as you just said, let's just leave it at that, so… Are you on the same boat? wink

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4 Reply by JGD

(6 replies, posted in General Discussion)

dcr wrote:

As a sidenote, the forums being made read-only but left open also leaves open the perhaps slim possibility they could be opened again in the future.

While I perfectly understand your sentiment, the “powers” that be (they're just Serif employees volunteering as “mods” of sorts, and while the one I interacted with was super nice and that may make the whole thing seem endearing, it's actually concerning that Canva can't be arsed to hire some proper full-time mods) were very adamant about that not being, like, at all in the cards. They went all-in on Discord, I'm afraid.

dcr wrote:

I couldn't even access them on Discord.  The link said the invitation had expired and I saw no other way to get in.  And, after the news of Discord's data leak/hack, I'm not sure I'd want to sign up there anyway.

Meh, it's a complete s***show anyway. The platform itself is completely chaotic, and it doesn't seem like they're that much invested in it. They say they read all the posts, but even if that's true, they're very absent from the discussion. They are, of course, under a gag order regarding the announcement on the 30th, but still. And, yeah, there's the whole privacy angle to be considered, especially if you're in the UK, oof.

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5 Reply by JGD

(6 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Fun fact: the forums may not allow for new account registrations and for existing users to add new posts or replies, but they still allow for existing account logins, and for unfettered reactions and edits to existing posts, it's hilarious. lol

No, really… I was feeling a bit bad about my last message, as Serif did extend their Mac and PC trials (iPadOS users were never affected, as they just offered free licenses and that was that) until the end of the month, so I decided to give it ago, and guess what, I could edit it. Check it out: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. … nt-1414965

Do you think I should tell them about it… on Discord? wink That's the ethical thing to do, and surely they will close those loopholes, but it would be hilarious if they just completely forgot about it and haven't even even monitoring them for a while (let alone now), it just goes to show how inept they are at this kind of thing.

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6 Reply by JGD

(42 replies, posted in General Discussion)

First post! smile

Now, for the serious business…

sneil69 wrote:
Alfred wrote:

Welcome, Sam, and thanks for sharing your thoughts about what Canva has in store for those of us who have Affinity version 2 licences. I just wish they weren’t keeping us waiting so long before the big reveal!

The reason it has taken this long is, the application has been written from ground up with a the help from Canva's dev team and direction and design by Ash & Co. (imho) - This is the gamble Affinity has taken and they will lose a lot of users if it will a web based application (Which most certainly) will.

I would be amazed it is otherwise.

Wait, do you have insider knowledge on what's happening behind the scenes? Blink twice for yes. wink

If they offer both, with maybe access to the web version being strictly subscription-based (which, err, makes sense, you'd be using their servers and having the convenience of advanced collaboration features and universal access regardless of which device you'd be using, after all), that would actually be an improvement, and even if it delayed the app's further development, or if, worse still, it set it back in features (kind of like when Apple redid their entire iWork suite in the process and somewhat nerfed it in the process), many users would be ok with it, others would stick with Affinity v2 and wait for the new solution to catch up, etc.

Killing off native Affinity apps, as compiled and released for the two OSes and the two architectures they run on (so, four variants, and in fact soon to be only three, as Apple is never going back to Intel and will deprecate Rosetta, stop releasing new major macOS versions for Intel Macs next year and stop supporting older ones altogether in three years), is an absolute disaster. It'll be comparable to Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia, or maybe even more stupid as at least Adobe had a couple of reasons to do it and didn't radically change its business model right then and there (I mean, they tried capitalising on Flash and failed miserably, but they kept selling packaged software), and no matter how promising that message vkbellis shared may sound or how nice Patrick actually is, as Ali stated, the fact of the matter is that he's no longer running the show, Canva is. It's not Patrick or Serif we don't trust, it's Canva.

I've always felt that the acquisition was a bit out of character, but figured that Canva could stand to benefit from adding to their offering with a set of native apps, and thus becoming a bit more respectable in the design world. If they go this route, and ripping up their pledge so shortly after they signed it (I mean, it isn't much of a pledge if it lasts for a couple of months and applies only to the current version; it may even be construed as a ruse to extract more money from naïve customers instead of being upfront about it and preparing them for an inevitable transition), I suspect it might actually damage their brand further. My €0,02.

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