I wish they would release a video editor
I've got the feeling that Serif should focus on their available software palette for now. There are so much great video editors already on the market like Apple Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere and additionally some Open Source Software. Maybe, after some more years, I'm with you.
I'm tempted to buy version 2 if only because Serif is the polar opposite of Adobe, and they deserve to be rewarded for that.
Besides the software license model that Adobe chose, they often were not really interested in debugging their software to a level, I have been expecting. I can imagine that they didn't care so much about some developers support requests. Serif seems to be more open minded to the voice of their community, if I read their answers in their forum.
The monthly cost is covered easily through a single job and really not something noticeable when it comes to monthly bills. Technically it is cheaper this way then if you were upgrading to every paid update release from Adobe before CC came about
I'd call myself some kind of professional, at least I'm earning my living with design. I do own two Adobe CS 6 licenses. My first Adobe software came with a flatbed scanner and was Adobe Photoshop 3. I was a long time Macromedia user and therefore had a Freehand license, later on an Adobe Acrobat 5 license and then a Macromedia studio license. For me it wasn't affordable to spent $4k for the whole Adobe Suite at once, but I could upgrade and sidegrade step by step until I had two complete licenses over the years.
Then in 2013 Adobe was switching to subscription for most of their products. For big advertising agencies that probably was a good deal and like you said, really easy to manage. For me as a self-employed exchanging open data files almost never happens as I'm sending my PDFs to the printing store or to newspaper publishers and that's it. If data exchange happens, we always find a simple way through IDML or Illustrator CS6 files (yes, still in 2022). No headaches or problems, it just works and is accepted by most people I work with. Sometimes I get an Adobe Illustrator CC file that doesn't want to open in my CS6, but hey - it often opens fine in Affinity Designer ;-). If even that doesn't work, there is QuarkXPress or Markzware OmniMarkz that is helping me out.
I would have paid Adobe's subscription fees, if it just had been a newspaper license. That is a license you can use as long as you want. For getting upgrades, you'd need to renew your subscription or buy a new license. The main reason for me, not to subscribe to Adobe CC is, that my work would be tied to a system that needs at least every few month a connection to an activation server and that is really bugging me. I simply don't want to be in the situation that I can't or want to afford a new computer system with a valid subscription or my work is getting inaccessible and thus mostly worthless.
Besides still running a backup of Freehand on a Mac PPC G4, Adobe CS5.5 gives me access to my old Freehand files, that Adobe CS6 and higher won't open. A perpetual license gives me the feeling, that my work stays my work, not something dependent on an internet connection or a monthly fee. With the latest move from Adobe not so much time ago to ban PS Type 1 fonts from their products, I bet that many old designs won't be accessible anymore over the next years as Adobe showed us before that it's is not really manageable to run older CC versions under any circumstances and that would make me serious headaches.
The Affinity apps are fine to get professional work done and they're giving me the same good feeling, like Adobe did back in 2012. I know that might all sound a bit irrational. However, Adobe simply didn't care about clients like me 10 years ago and lost them as their customers. At that time they were rendering my two software suite licenses, that I had to save up for years, somehow valueless, at least they decreased the value, by not giving any more acceptable upgrade options. I wasn't pleased about that. Now 10 years later, I probably saved around $10k in subscriptions and got my work always done over the past years just like before without needing any new features from Adobe.
I gave up my hope that Adobe would change their mind, giving back their customers the freedom of handling their intellectual property in a save manner by letting them at least choose between perpetual license and subscription. I'm really happy that there is a new toolset from Serif on the market to get professional print publishing done. That said, I have to admit that I still have a recent Adobe Acrobat Pro perpetual license in my toolchain that I don't want to miss right now. Please don't get me wrong, Adobe products are great, but till this day I hope I can avoid them, as far as I can.
