Affinity just announced their version 3 of their graphics suites. It’s a crazy technical achievement marred by the false promise of “democratizing creative tools”. This feels straight out of the enshittification playbook. I was rooting for them years ago after Adobe went subs only. Sad to see this direction. They gave away their core product for free. Professionals just lost their leverage. This is no longer a business relationship where someone exchanges money for the service. They are now intrinsically tied to the AI bubble and the company will forever have to choose between “serve our pro users or serve our AI subscription users”. That venn diagram is not a circle. Canva, in no ambiguious terms, has stated their number 1 priority is to create the most valuable company. Everything else follows from that. Disappointed to say the least. The marketing around this was…interesting. I do wonder if the messaging “but it’s free!” is still as powerful as it use to be, or if people are wising up and asking the most relevant follow up question: “…But at what cost?”