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Zero chance Apple is getting back into professional tools, this team and their work will be rolled into the photo app edit view at least and that Freeform app they have at most.

This is likely the truth, but as someone that sorely misses Aperture, I have a bit of hopium that Apple does want to start competing with Adobe in the RAW processing space.

I think there's a significant market of "not quite professional, but more than a hobby" photographers for which they don't want to pay an Adobe subscription, and CaptureOne is too much software for their needs.

a RAW converter with all the standard tools, integrated with the Photos app, and presets curated and polished by Apple, could do well. Add some AI features like Lightroom, but run locally on device instead of allowing Adobe to train on your photos, and I think they'd have a winner in that space.

I would love Photos to become actually usable.

I actually ran a project that produced a pretty awesome photo browser that would still be top-notch today, but it was killed.

Photo browsers are really, really difficult to get right, and they don't make money. Most folks expect them to be free.

What’s your reference for Adobe training on your photos?

It's opt-out, enabled by default in Lightroom (non-classic) or if you sync classic with CC.

"Adobe may analyze your content using techniques such as machine learning to develop and improve our products and services." Not explicitly training their models, I was wrong there - but it wouldn't be a stretch for them update terms in the future.

Not as egregious as training their models on your photos, but most certainly should be opt-in, not opt-out.

>Not explicitly training their models, I was wrong there

Nothing in the paragraph above rules this out. "techniques such as machine learning" could easily include AI in the "such as".

That was my initial gut reaction too, but the more I think about it, the more I think it makes sense:

1. Apple is increasingly a company who's primary growth area is through services revenue and Adobe is one of the most successful services-revenue companies around.

2. Adobe's bread and butter is essentially native desktop apps, one of Apple's areas of expertise.

3. Adobe is vulnerable today with a specific market segment, who resents the high cost, quality issues, and subscription-only model of Creative Cloud.

One thing I agree with is these wouldn't be professional tools the same way Adobe's tools are, they split the market between the high-end, which would continue to use Adobe products, and the low-end which would use these competitors. The low end would be content creators and smaller businesses.

The biggest flaw here is around #3, not sure how Apple can capture that services revenue without creating a suite that has the same flaws with consumers that Creative Cloud has? I think they could emphasize quality, and probably come in at half the cost of CC or less, maybe $25 a month. Maybe that's enough?

Apple doesn’t need to move their desktop software to a monthly fee to compete with Adobe, they can compete by stealing their users and locking them into Apple’s platform. If Apple came out with professional alternatives for photoshop, lightroom, and illustrator I would bet a large market segment will switch away from Adobe (and Windows) to Mac purchasing new hardware and tying those users into Apple’s ecosystem (Apple’s bread and butter).

The problem with this viewpoint, is that's exactly what they've been doing with Logic and Final Cut and that's proved to be a failed strategy (both of those applications have shed users for the last decade, specifically the problem they've both made is prioritizing larger platform priorities over the needs of creators. E.g., they both introduced bundled file formats, bundled file formats are great for long-term platform goals [e.g., cross-device sync], but are terrible for professionals who need to micromanage massive individual media files, that are often edited with several different apps).

The reason it's not working is the incentives internal to Apple aren't great, they aren't (significant) revenue generators, so they're seen as disposable, and by choosing the wrong priorities (platform over creators), they end up losing to competitors where it's a primary revenue generator, because those other apps are fighting tooth-and-nail to stay ahead.

One way of solving all this is to try and make it a revenue generator, and I don't think a revenue generator at Apple's scale is possible without making it a subscription. Also just note that services has been Apple's most reliable recent growth area https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/05/2024-q1-apple-results-90-...

>The problem with this viewpoint, is that's exactly what they've been doing with Logic and Final Cut and that's proved to be a failed strategy (both of those applications have shed users for the last decade

Regarding Logic that's nowhere near the case.

Regarding Final Cut, it's more true (there's a tendency for industry editors to go to Resolve for many editors), but the doom when Final Cut X was introduced never panned out. Final Cut remains a huge player. The complains were more from/about the production studio niche (film, advertising, etc). But Final Cut caters to a much larger user base now - millions of people editing for social media, YouTube, and such.

Honestly surprised folks have been suggesting Logic hasn't been losing users, I had the perception that was common knowledge (like I've said elsewhere mainly due to the Ableton Live effect, which has cornered a subsection of the market, and my own subjective evaluation of their new features, which... give the perception of an application floundering to me). In any event, I'm going to stop saying that because I don't think those two data points are strong enough to back up my original statement.

Re Final Cut, Apple has released user numbers as recent as 2018: "more than 2.5 million seats" https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2018/04/final-cut-pro-x-up... Adobe Creative Cloud is estimated to have 33 million users by comparison https://prodesigntools.com/number-of-creative-cloud-subscrib... (not saying this means any thing for Final Cut vs Premiere, just a useful data point).

Re Final Cut, I would have agreed it was mainly just losing the high-end a few years ago, but the sheer volume of YouTube videos taking about switching from Final Cut (and Premiere) to DaVinci Resolve is hard to ignore. Final Cut seems squeezed by Premiere/Avid on the high-end and Resolve on the low end.

>Re Final Cut, I would have agreed it was mainly just losing the high-end a few years ago, but the sheer volume of YouTube videos taking about switching from Final Cut (and Premiere) to DaVinci Resolve is hard to ignore.

Many of them are real, as Resolve has had some solid big feature updates with frequency and it's also very usable free, so it has drawn people in. Some of those "I'm switching" though are the usual video market influencer promotions and/or need to change things every while.

For Logic this is not the case though. Haven't seen anything suggesting it's losing users, and in the pop space it has tons of high profile users. There are also lots of industry "market reports" that say that the overall market is growing in general.

They have moved to a subscription system in the form of logic pro for the iPad at least - I haven't personally tried it, but being able to maintain reasonable parity between the iPad version and the more full-fledged desktop version seems like it would be pretty powerful. I've also been seeing a lot of VST's with cross compatibility between iOS and Mac.

In the past, I've even used GarageBand for the iPad to mock up initial musical prototypes and then imported them into logic pro on my Mac and that's been pretty fantastic.

Anecdotally, most of my friends are split pretty evenly between either Ableton, FL studio, or Logic Pro.

> I haven't personally tried it, but being able to maintain reasonable parity between the iPad version and the more full-fledged desktop version seems like it would be pretty powerful. [...]

> In the past, I've even used GarageBand for the iPad to mock up initial musical prototypes and then imported them into logic pro on my Mac and that's been pretty fantastic.

I didn't mean to imply that syncing between platforms isn't without merit. You didn't really address the counterarguments that I listed in my post, e.g., that complex media projects require micromanaging files. E.g., syncing a Logic song between platforms doesn't really work if you many GBs of recorded takes, and using many GB third-party sample libraries.

There's a two part problem with Apple's strategy here:

1. They're breaking high-end workflows with these decisions

2. They're not acknowledging how high-end workflows drive lower-end workflows

Here is in my opinion the best piece ever written about how Apple's approach to pro apps changed pre- and post-2010/iPhone, that covers all of these points nicely https://lonelysandwich.com/post/7033868135/fcp-the-new-class but tldr: pre-2010 Apple would have done this by consulting with practitioners on the high-end to build a system they can leverage, post-2010 just builds the new system without consulting anyone and tries to force it on everyone through software releases, this ends up alienating the high-end.

What leads you to believe that Logic has been shedding users? What little information I can find on this suggests that Logic has in fact been growing slightly & has significant market share. I also think it’s a huge driver of Mac sales.

Yeah, this is mainly based on Ableton Live clearly eating everyone's lunch on the electronic music front, and myself following Logic's new features added over the last five to ten years (e.g., combination of copying Live-style looping/sampling features, and the ML session player stuff). Just from my observation these new features have been hitting very lukewarm with their audience. Logic (and Cubase) seem stuck between Pro Tools for live music recording and arranging, and Live for electronic music. The one area Logic still seems super strong to me is composing and arranging sample-based instruments, e.g., like you might do for a soundtrack. But that just seems like a small market.

Curious if you have any counter information here? There's definitely a ton of room for me to be wrong on this.

I think we both have a lot of room for being wrong! There seem to be no reliable sources for DAW market share, and I imagine all of these companies consider it in their interests to keep the number of active users of their software to themselves. So anything I have to say here is purely anecdotal.

From my vantage point (Brooklyn-based creative music-maker regularly recording & performing), it’s a growing market and both Ableton _and_ Logic are doing pretty well. Ableton has some obvious strengths—its scene-based workflow & M4L in particular—but it’s also got a very opinionated UI & is a bit less intuitive/fluid for editing (at least from my perspective as a Logic user!). I know many people who use Logic to make creative music that involves both live recording and electronic instruments, and a lot of those people have switched away from Pro Tools because of its hideous UI, the subscription pricing, & the annoyance of iLok. I even know several professional, touring musicians who perform with MainStage & swear by it.

In other words, I think that Logic has found a pretty broad audience of creative musicians who straddle the songwriting & electronic music worlds (which is more & more people every day).

What makes you think that Ableton is eating everyone’s lunch in electronic music? I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong, honestly, & I’d in particular point to their purchase of Cycling ‘74 & successful hardware products like Push & Move, but I’m curious to hear details from your perspective.

Definitely hoping that Gruber is wrong here & Logic stays the fantastic loss-leader it’s been for the last decade or so.

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

> What makes you think that Ableton is eating everyone’s lunch in electronic music? I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong, honestly, & I’d in particular point to their purchase of Cycling ‘74 & successful hardware products like Push & Move, but I’m curious to hear details from your perspective.

This is purely just from reading opinions of folks online, they seem to think Live has advantages for being more tailored for electronic music, and Logic is more dated, and some of the more entry-level features (e.g., ML session players) rub people the wrong way.

Also awesome to hear the love for Cycling 74! Max is perhaps my personal favorite piece of software ever, and that same group I follow I mainly see actually complaining about it in Live! I maintain a couple of Max for Live plugins:

https://github.com/robenkleene/sidewinder

https://github.com/robenkleene/thwomp

Feel you on the entry-level features making people worried that Apple is prosumer-izing their baby. I worry about that sometimes.

Yes, Max is amazing. Thanks for sharing your instruments! Sidewinder looks particularly cool.

I also got into building in there for a while (& still do sometimes), though not specifically M4L: https://github.com/flats/max-instruments. Even wrote a couple of externals back in the day.

What I _really_ want is some sort of a hybrid between a DAW and something like Csound—fully graphical but also fully scriptable/automatable. Live w/ M4L is _kinda_ close, but we’re not quite there yet…

Ableton is king for electronic music, but isn’t a very strong DAW for general audio work outside of that.

there’s a lot of genres out there and Logic is still considered one of the best for general DAWs out there.

>Logic (and Cubase) seem stuck between Pro Tools for live music recording and arranging, and Live for electronic music

Which is the best place to be to do both - which is what a huge number of musicians need - not just (or ever) recording 16 channel drums and 10 musicians in some big studio like with Pro Tools, nor doing just EDM and working off just a laptop (as with Ableton).

High end studios will use Pro Tools for legacy reasons. EDM and electronica musicians will usually opt for Ableton (and many for FL too, hugely popular as well).

But the 10s of millions of people recording and producing music however, will either be fully electronic and opt for something like Live, or will be (even more common) in the place you descrive Logic and Cubase being stuck in (Studio Pro and Reaper too).

That's "stuck place" between the two case is a much bigger market. The Pro Tools market is tiny in comparison. Which is perhaps also why the go from bankcruptcy to bankcruptcy.

>Apple doesn’t need to move their desktop software to a monthly fee to compete with Adobe, they can compete by stealing their users and locking them into Apple’s platform.

Apple "locking" was always overplayed, and this is even less true in 2024, where music and video are subscriptions (so you just switch to another service and still have access to all music, at worst you lose your playlists, big deal), most apps regular people use web based/cross platform, and pro graphics, video, music, business, and 3D stuff are all cross platform too. People switch to (and sometimes from) Resolve all the time, for example.

Which can only work up to 10% of the world desktop market.

Adobe portfolio is gigantic, they also have plenty of stuff for the server room.

Also Apple owning 10% of the desktop market is hardly going to impact Adobe that much.

The times when Adobe was Apple first are long gone.

Have you used Pixelmator Pro? It’s far too complex to shoehorn into the Photos app. It also doesn’t make sense because like Photoshop Pixelmator images don’t necessarily originate from a photo. How do you create a blank document? Both practically and conceptually Pixelmator features aren’t a logical fit for Photos.

> How do you create a blank document?

surely they could put a button or menu action somewhere in the photos app and call it "new canvas". or in addition to upgrading Photos, integrate pixelmator features to the Notes app, which already allows creating a blank canvas to draw on. this doesn't seem like an especially difficult problem for them

They also have Photomator which would fit completely in photos.

They never left. Logic and Final Cut are stronger than ever.

That doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Pixelmator have a photo editing app but their main (graphics design) app fulfils a completely different function that wouldn’t make that much sense at all to even attempt to combine into Photos…

Side note re the photo edit view, are there any particular features you think this would make sense for? In my experience, Photomator is pretty close to Photos in functionality. And broadly speaking, Pixelmator features don't make sense in Photos (for the same reason Lightroom and Photoshop are separate apps, they're designed from the bottom up around different approaches to photo editing). Based on those two facts, the only way I can make sense of this acquisition is that they want the Pixelmator app specifically, because that's the only part that would be really hard for them to reproduce in house, and I can't think of many reasons why they'd want that besides creating a new pro suite like this.

Photomator is significantly more capable than Photos on the iPad and iPhone: it very obviously has a more robust image editing pipeline, supports layers, has actually useful ML features, proper curves, vastly better colour balance editing, supports LUTs, has culling support etc.

Photomator on the iPad is more capable than Photos on the Mac.

Frankly I think this is an acqui-hire. I think Photomator will significantly boost the capabilities of Photos, back to an Aperture-level app. I think some of the features may even end up in the camera.

Pixelmator, I don't know. I think a whole bunch of Pixelmator features do make sense as a tab/workspace in Photos, actually, but either way I don't see Apple keeping it called "Pixelmator"; I would expect to see it called "Images" (to go with Pages and Numbers, and with photo-specific stuff left in Photos).

I really hope they don't go this way. The only software that I can think of that Apple offers as subscription is Filemaker (Claris is an apple company). I believe the subscription model has harmed FileMaker, as more Filemaker developers are shifting to frameworks for building web apps due to the unreasonable per-user pricing.

Today I learned that:

1. FileMaker still exists, and

2. It’s $43/person/month for a reasonable amount of storage. Or you can buy a single license for $594.

I strongly suspect 2 is why I didn’t know 1.

Wow. I never knew FileMaker made the transition from classic Mac OS.

I worked for an EHR company in the mental health space that as recent as 2020 was still selling their FileMaker-driven EHR, mostly to psychiatrists.

It's actually really slick for making CRUD apps - the pricing is just horrible.

In LOB, $43/mo. is a pittance - the only question worth considering is whether it boosts productivity by at least $43 of paid time per month. A low-code app in the right spot could easily meet that benchmark.

I suspect the bigger reason is the complete absence of advertising.

> The only software that I can think of that Apple offers as subscription

iPad versions of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro are subscription based and these are latest pro apps Apple released.

Good catch. Thankfully the full version are not subscription on macOS.

Just running Creative Cloud's daemons seems to double my Macbook's power usage. (I have a startup script to kill most of it because of this.) Maybe the battery life tail wagging the dog here, but there is something smart about displacing this mess with an...app? Which is all I ever wanted.

Deep-down I wonder how big a deal this is at Apple. As someone who's sensibility aligns with Apple's approach to design and software architecture (e.g., I strongly believe the Magic Mouse charging port on the bottom is the the right decision), and I use Adobe products heavily: I don't mind the price, and I don't mind the subscription.

But I despise, deeply, from the bottom of my soul, that Adobe Creative Cloud runs a background process on my machine, even when the applications aren't running. That is an affront.

There are days I wonder if the entire reason for the locked-down iOS App Store and Mac app sandboxing is purely just to try and figure out some approach to software distribution that never lets Adobe run an invisible background process on their hardware ever again.

If you want to dive deeper into that Adobe CC madness, run something like AdGuard on your network and see how Adobe’s telemetry calls are the #1 source of network traffic, even for someone who runs a web dev shop, a HomeAssistant instance to control all of my lights/thermostats, and a Plex media server that’s playing something nearly non-stop…Adobe CC is still the #1 network activity (until I blocked it).

I never got a good answer for why this was the case, but I think it’s wildly out of control.

I’m sure this has been discussed in Apple’s board meetings. People don’t like change. Users would stop using Logic and Final Cut in protest, and continuing users will be left with a sour taste in their mouth. Some would stop using Apple products all together!

Final Cut is Apple’s direct competition with Adobe, but Apple makes their money largely from hardware, App Store fees, and platform lock-in. Their current pricing isn’t outrageous for a casual or adventurous user to purchase and furthers their lock-in to the Apple ecosystem, meanwhile professionals will purchase Apple’s expensive hardware upgrades, this also advances Apple further into the zeitgeist of professional video and music software and anyone looking to get into the hobby will heavily consider Apple against the alternatives.

IMO the most logical pricing for continuously-updating, offline software is paid updates. Or “subscription-based, but you get to keep the old version without renewing the subscription” which is the same as paid updates but modern and auto-renews. For example, this is what Jetbrains does.

Businesses need money to keep updating the software, and won’t get it if all their customers have already bought the product. On the other hand, if something is offline and paid for, it should never go away.

Online is different, because customers need to continuously pay for hosting and compute. If it’s an app that’s almost all client side and the business just makes it online to force users to subscribe…yeah that’s wrong. But obviously something like a VPS is going to be a subscription.

> “subscription-based, but you get to keep the old version without renewing the subscription”

I would be content if Adobe moved to this model, particularly for Lightroom Classic.

There's only so much they can eventually cram into a RAW editor, and they've stopped adding library management features for a while because it's essentially finished in that aspect. I don't need more AI in it, and it'll be years before I have a new camera that I need it to support - it's at that point I'd love to simply cancel the subscription, but still retain access to the current version.

I've had my Adobe subscription long enough now to have paid full price for Lightroom at least 5x over.

Just let me buy a specific version and be done with it, and I'll pay for updates when I need them if the features are interesting enough, or I need the update to support new hardware. Otherwise, there's no need.

The app store currently does not support the Jetbrains subscription model, which is mildly annoying

I think it is more acquire-Hire rather than anything else. Their products are so good, rather than risking losing them due to potentially some buy-out Apple will just bring them in-house.

They won’t introduce this subscription bundle.

What they will do is introduce Apple One Premier+ : includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+ […] and all your creator tools including Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator, Photomator, Logic Pro […]

If you’re already paying $40 or whatever for Apple One Premier it’s a very short step to $65 for Premier+

I pay for Apple One Premier. Would I pay for Apple One Prmeier+?

Almost certainly.

Is there really a sufficient overlap between Apple consumers and "creators"?

I personally think there's probably enough of an overlap with enough customers that it would make sense to offer it as Apple One Premier+ rather than a stand alone thing. I know a lot of people who I suspect would say "OK, another couple of hundred dollars on top of what I already pay Apple, and I have these on demand to tinker with, sure!"

I also know a lot of people who are hobbyists or enjoying tinkering who resent having to pay Adobe to be able to use Creative Suite, so if the price was right (you get tools that Adobe charge $75 a month for PLUS Apple Music, Apple TV+, yadda yadda) then that's a sell in itself.

I feel like if you're a family and you and the kids have iPhones and iPads and macbooks and you're already paying for the Apple One Premier plan then it's a fairly trivial cost to have another $30 or whatever dollars on top so that your kids have access to some really good software to create things with, because you've already spent an enormous amount of money with Apple, and there's an upsell from Garage Band to Logic, an upsell from iMovie to Final Cut, etc. It kind of fits.

Maybe they have a stand alone subscription for them as well - but you get a better price if it's a bolt on to the Apple One subscription.

This is all pure speculation though. The only thing I know if that they offered it like I was proposing, I'd definitely subscribe.

I agree, I think it would be more likely this would be a different bundle.

Maybe there would be a tier of Apple one that also included this stuff, but I think it would be pretty stupid if that was the only way to get it.

I think there’s a lot of companies that might be willing to get this for some of their creative employees who would absolutely resent having to pay for Apple TV+ and Apple Music to do so.

Repeating what I said in the other thread -- unless Apple is open to release Pixelmator on Windows and/or the web, it's not going to compete with Adobe CC. ok, maybe the users that exclusively work on Mac. But that's nowhere a replacement for Adobe CC.

Does that matter?

We already know Apple doesn’t care about the Windows market, they could’ve made all sorts of moves over the last 20 years if they did.

It also seems very unlikely they care about the high-end professional market. The kind of people who are really in with Adobe.

But they have a ton of Prosumer customers they could make happy. I know a number of people personally who would like to use Adobe tools but can’t afford the subscriptions. Being able to buy a smaller Apple product, or maybe pay a few dollars a month, to get a good product that covers their needs would probably make them quite happy.

And anything that makes the Mac more sticky to current customers (or new customers) is a good investment for Apple. Every person they can lure away from Creative Cloud or prevent from ever starting with it is someone who doesn’t have an easy path to move to Windows without changing software.

It's not a replacement for the whole suite but probably the majority of Adobe users are on Macs these days.

That's wrong actually. Probably only Adobe knows but from personal experience most photographers I know use Windows. They almost all edit on desktop, they laptops only on location for preview. Nvidia GPUs also work well with Lightroom enhance and denoise features which run locally.

It's anecdotal but I'm a hobbyist photographer and all the photographers I know IRL use Macs. All the designers I know use Macs. Video editing and motion graphics is the area where I see people using Windows but it's still probably 50/50.

In the pro world, from my anecdotal perspective, I'd say Windows is still more popular in game dev and 3d stuff which is outside of Adobe's scope.

Apple might go for subscription services for pro apps, but probably not the consumer versions.

What are the reasons Apple might stick with the one-time-fee model for Logic and Final Cut Pro? (What are the advantages? Even if those advantages might just be for goodwill with their existing (pro)consumer base.)

(Not rhetorical here -- I'm genuinely curious)

Unlike Microsoft, Apple seems to understand that sometimes it's okay to not milk every last cent out of every last possible channel — looking at you, ads in the operating system. I would wager the revenue they could make on making that software a recurring subscription is pennies compared to the marketing ethos that every pro artist uses Apple, and so should you. The amount of hardware and iCloud subscriptions they sell to all aspiring artists, kids who want to be like their heroes, their parents, etc, should far outweigh what they could make from the other end.

Apple has ads in their OS too. Inside Settings on iOS, they constantly push Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, AppleCare+, etc at the very top of Settings

I would also call the news plus, sports, and audio tabs in the News app advertising as they cannot be disabled. Likewise it defaults to the Apple TV+ tab in the TV app on launch and adds Apple TV+ spam to the Home tab even with no subscription. The Stocks app has News+ spam starting this year. App Store is full of unrelated “promoted” apps. Accidentally hitting the “play” button on a computer prompts for Music subscription.

If Apple had any self respect at all these would be one time per year at best prompts or something which could be disabled with a subscription. I would no longer recommend Apple as the go to for respecting their customers.

> compared to the marketing ethos that every pro artist uses Apple, and so should you.

I'd argue Apple has already achieved this, at least in my circle (Photography). I've ran a photography business on the side for going on 5 years now, and I've yet to meet a single (professional) photographer in my market that doesn't use or recommend mac's. Anytime the question of "What computer to get" comes up in Photography forums as well, it's always some variation of "M-series MBP."

Of course, it helps that Lightroom Classic runs like absolute crap on even the beefiest Windows desktop, but Apple is still synonymous with creative professional, and has been for a while.

Funny I just posted the exact opposite in another comment I guess experiences differ.

I think there are two possible reasons. The first is they stand to make a lot of money from selling high spec machines to creative types (look at the upgrade costs to the new Mac Mini) simply because the cost of a computer is a drop in the bucket for large media enterprises. And the second (may be a little optimistic from my end) they gain a lot of prestige from their computers and software being used to make media and art.

Probably as a "bait" to get users into the Apple ecosystem? They can't run Logic on PC so they have to buy an expensive Mac.

I'm wondering now if it also serves as a better way to also make users stick around (and ultimately buy more hardware). eg., with a subscription model, it might make it slightly easier to bail and try an alternative? (especially when those alternatives might offer discounts on subscriptions).

I could see it either way, Apple still gets a benefit.

Whether a subscription or purchase any piece of software you use on a Mac that you can’t get on Windows is one more sticking point that helps Apple retain their users. And since they make a lot of profit on their hardware that’s a very good thing for them.

Definitely follow the lead of one of the most reviled companies going.

The mercenary mind has no receptors for that, it only registers $$$.

If that was the case, perhaps they should have bought Affinity instead?

They were already bought, by Canva, earlier this year.