I'm thinking of leaving Adobe Cloud for Affinity

Latte Other Software & Development
62

The thing is, people are claiming to use it offline. Now, when I had it, I was able to close out the initial window, which showed a lot of templates to choose from and such like, along with a sign-in thing in the upper left which had my username. I closed that out which left the regular Affinity Studio open, not showing any account info. Could these people be confusing that with being offline? But… they also report, with screenshots, that after extended “offline use” you’re required to go online to “check the license.”

Anyway, I no longer have it, nor will bother to get it again, so it’ll be up to some other L&L user to followup and correct/clarify me.

2 Likes
63

All right, understandable. I suspect being offline counts as “not logged in”, maybe “only” after X period of time. Maybe. Only way to find out is to create a Canva account (nah!), setting up a virgin VM (grumble) without network access, just to achieve what exactly…

I think that time is better spent looking for someone trustworthy who just wants my money. That’s all I’m willing to give.

2 Likes
64

Exactamundo! (I wanted only “exactly” but that wasn’t the requisite 20 characaters.)

2 Likes
65

If it requires a login to use, then it can still track you, even if you’re offline. It just might have to wait to report back until you let it connect to the mothership.

Best to assume that the terms of use mean what they say. If that isn’t what Canva really meant, they can change them.

5 Likes
66

And I cannot get a straight answer on what exactly does “offline” mean. So many articles say that it can be used offline after the initial setup. Not one says how that’s done. Closest I got to a straight answer was from Bing :open_mouth: which said after Affinity’s been activated, you can use it offline by disconnecting your device from the Internet.

That’s not what I mean by offline. I mean “I am not logged into or required to use the software’s servers for it to work.” I understand that all software “phones home” usage stats/crash reports (which might be opted out) and might call in to check for updates (which also might be opted out.) But, whatever I create or do with the software is not known by the developers or is found at all on their servers, because the software runs locally on my laptop, does everything locally, saves stuff locally (or the cloud server of my choosing) and doesn’t care if my Internet connection is on or not.

By my definition, I might be on the Internet using Safari to look up stuff or wasting time on the L&L forums, while the software is sitting idly by waiting for me to get back to it, all the while not connected to the developer’s servers apart from the occasional “phoning home” stuff. I use Scrivener “offline,” meaning I don’t have to login to my L&L account to use it. Same for when I use LibreOffice, etc. Heck, I think even when I use Pages it qualifies as ‘offline’ use. But AFAIK, I cannot use Affinity ‘offline.’ It requires you to be logged in.

Perhaps I’m just confused. Anyway, I’ve wasted enough time on this; back to writing something.

2 Likes
67

After a day when logging out caused it to quit (still does), and disconnecting internet caused it to not load and quit out, I have it working ‘offline’.

It has to log in once to their server to verify the free licence. After that, you can turn off internet and open the app and you will see on the first screen that you are logged in to the app. As mentioned above, if you log out it closes the app. If you log out of the app (and close), you MUST be connected to the internet to start the app again as it demands to once again check the licence with their server.

I have an issue with having to be logged in to the app under a Canva username, even though offline. What happens if it catches you online at some predetermined ‘license check’ period. Does it upload details of everything you’ve done to Canva? Canva appear to be deliberately vague on that score.

3 Likes
68

The sketchy AI training stuff aside, in a nutshell the problem seems to be that they are trying to apply web-based terms of use to desktop software.

There are things that you definitely cannot publish in the L&L forum. We can and have removed posts and people for a variety of reasons. Similarly, it is reasonable for Canva to limit what people can share through Canva’s servers. They sort of have to, for their own protection.

But. You can write absolutely anything you want using Scrivener. You can infringe other people’s copyrights, you can write things that are illegal in your own and other countries, you can defame people to your heart’s content. We have no way of knowing, we have no way to stop you, we have no control over what you do with Scrivener.

Similarly, you could create absolutely any image you wanted using the pre-Canva Affinity suite. Porn, remixes of copyrighted images, anything. Affinity had no way of knowing and no ability to stop you. That’s what desktop software is, and it’s not at all clear from the new terms of use that Canva understands that.

5 Likes
69

Imagine you got a cooking pot as a birthday present. Every time you put it on the range the doorbell rings.

“Are you trying to use the free pot?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“And it’s the free pot I gave you?”

“I… think so.”

“Are you sure it’s still free?”

“What else would it be? It was a gift. Why are you even here?”

“Calm down. No need to be so passive aggressive! I mean, it’s not like you’re ‘cooking’ drugs in your kitchen… right? RIGHT?”

:face_with_spiral_eyes:

I’m not such a nice person. I assume the worst. They have all the money in the world (minus $380 million) to hire the best lawyers to figure it out and that’s the result. They want this.

Another red flag: The Affinity products used to be on the Apple App Store (versions 1 and 2). Canva itself still is. “Affinity by Canva”, however, is not. Or maybe I’m blind?

Of course, this could just be a business decision, not wanting to pay the Apple tax (for the subs) or something. It could also mean it got rejected for violating the rules or they knew beforehand and didn’t even try to submit it.

4 Likes
70

We’ll have to wait and see. Perhaps they only submitted the apps on Oct 30th and they haven’t yet passed whatever review process Apple does.

1 Like
71

Possible. But not confidence-inspiring (they had foresight enough to shut down the forum 24 days in advance, but didn’t plan for a 48 h review process?).

1 Like
72

Having seen some of the weird App Store delays inflicted on Scrivener, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

1 Like
73

If you know this, how come Canva doesn’t?

Then again, not starting with a release date announcement is a hidden superpower not many possess. :see_no_evil_monkey:

74

Canva may not see much advantage in caring about the Mac App Store (or any app store). After all, Affinity is “free” and their mysterious “Creative Freedom is Coming October 30th” marketing gimmick sure drove up speculation and traffic to their site. And since you have to go to the Canva site to login to use the thing, what advantage do they have in going thru app stores? Eventually, yes, after the hype has died down, but for now?

1 Like
75

You’re not entirely beholden to App Store review times. When submitting an app for review, you can choose to have it released as soon as it passes review, or at a time of your choosing after it passes review. So for our minor releases, for instance, we just set them to be released as soon as they pass review. But if you have a major update, you generally submit early, pass review, but only press the release button when you’re ready to go. So I very much doubt Affinity is waiting to pass review. More likely they are just off the App Sore now.

2 Likes
76

Made my day, intentional or not. :grinning_cat_with_smiling_eyes:

4 Likes
77

Oops - in vino veritas.

4 Likes
78

I’ll drink to that! I frequently do.

5 Likes
79

I wish I had more time to dive into the details (you know, where the devil resides). Still, some quick checking suggests that if we use the new Affinity by Canva without subscribing to a paid Canva AI plan, Canva does not automatically access or review our creative work. Our files remain local unless we choose to store them in Canva’s cloud or use AI features that require sending data to Canva’s servers.

I remain concerned by the expansive language in the Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Acceptable Use Policy (discussed earlier in this thread). It’s occurred to me, though, that none of that matters if Canva never accesses our files. In other words, so long as I don’t activate a paid Canva AI plan or store my project files in the Canva cloud, wouldn’t I be free of Canva playing big brother?

1 Like
80

I think you’re right.

1 Like
81

I’ll stipulate that I’m neither an expert, nor possess any special knowledge.

I think Serif’s Affinity was listed in the Mac/iPad Stores as a FREE app, because you had to log into their server to retrieve a license. Their model was pay once, use everywhere. The L&L gang can speak to the difficulty in matching their current license structures with the App stores, and how that at present there isn’t really a good single-party way to pay once for Mac & iPad.

As a current V2 license holder, I was getting emails from Canva, but hadn’t connected the dots that Canva wasn’t Serif until reading this thread. I almost never use any of the three applications because I had never gotten to the point in learning them that I could use, always too busy with other things. I wasn’t familiar with Canva before either. They claim that sometime in the near future they will be sending me a “thank you for your loyalty” gift, which leads me to…

MY GUESS is that Canva isn’t interested in selling your data. but selling you pre-paid AI credit bundles to use to pay the per insistence fee for their AI tools suite for generative effects. Just like in modern games where the In-App purchases are in a In-Game currency that always seems to make you pay for the next higher tier in the buy-credits menu (and a practice the EU is about to outlaw). There may be merit in this schema, if it would allow them to apply for bulk licensing of copyrighted IP and arrange for your use of it through a derivative license, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be that clean or easy.

If I’m right, they are simply setting up the artistic arcade and inviting you into it to drop your quarters left and right in all the fancy new AI versions of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and so forth, with their Generative AI tools to fill in the gaps.

I won’t speculate if that business model is better or worse than the ‘rob the artist blind and steal their work to train your LLM’ model.

@November_Sierra 's take-down of the T&Cs is brutally correct. Lawyers write these things based on what makes sense to their knowledge from the courtroom, but it makes me wonder if this wasn’t the legal AI generative cancer at play. Like they asked their LLM to write the T&Cs based on what was done by others in the past. Wouldn’t surprise me if they did… Or their paid human lawyers used ChatGPT to… Well, we have seen recent lawyers getting spanked hard by judges for doing just that (here are three examples: one, two, and three).

IF (and it’s a big IF) Canva is going to want to operate the LLM and charge per use, then that is how they will make their money and it makes sense to pave the way to their door. That doesn’t mean it won’t be a trap someday even if it isn’t one today.

Windows 11 and MacOS Sequoia both have a AI text-to-image generators pre-installed, and a lot of people enjoy using them, so there is a market for it.

2 Likes