Affinity

Am I worried about Canva ruining Affinity later on? Yes. Is this a good update? It's all I could've ever wanted on an app. This is every Affinity software merged in one, adding more functionality than removing, and the workflow just let's you flow without having to worry about different software, it's really as good as it gets. The only weary part is Canva owning it and making it free, raising concerns for how they could rug you in the long run, so use it while you can!

"Free version with limited functionality." is incorrect. The app requires an account, and if you stop just a second to skim several pages or T&Cs spread into intentionally ambiguous areas, and plus the pages that pertain to privacy, or more appropriately lack thereof, it should take anybody no time to realize they're paying with their data.

If anything "with limiting functionality" would fit better. Although it would still not be free.

I knew Affinity was going to end up as this dumpster fire. When v2 came out I hesitated to get it because somewhere along the line the hostile takeover happened. I wondered if I was being paranoid for holding on to v1 Designer for too long.

But it seems it wasn't long enough.

You rent services, not software. A service is work continuously done for you. A piece of software is work already being done. You pay for it, you expect it to work as advertised, if the provider has any decency they'll handled unforeseen bugs for a short time, And that's it. No new features messing up with your workflow, in the case of subscription software often useless features and bug fixes—although keep in mind you were supposed to be getting something finished—are the hooks so paying a subscription fools people to think they're not paying for the same old, increasingly bloated idea again, and again, and again.

Rent a VPS, or even stupid AI if you're into that, because at least energy is used somewhere on your behalf. But SaaS are leeches that seek to do the least amount of work to be have a charge card or whatever. In this case it's not even their work, they took over somebody else's, how do you think it's going to end if you trust them. If you were an older user, they already betrayed your trust a number of times, doing what they said there weren't going to do, and they even closed the forums so you couldn't complain (i.e; they muzzled customers), making it easy to equate metrics such as high downloads volume of a product deceptively free product to user satisfaction. As I saw somebody keeps repeating in other comments. Do you really think they're gonna stop now because a new version number?