dcr

Adobe released five updated versions of Fireworks. After Macromedia Fireworks 8, Adobe released Adobe Fireworks CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.1 and CS6. It was discontinued in 2013, 8 years after Adobe bought Macromedia. IMHO, that's a rather slow shuttering.

It doesn't even have to be a major calamity. Imagine the Internet is down for a week or weekend (power outage due to weather, cable severed by hapless construction crews, etc.) and you still need to complete a project. If you have the software installed on a desktop but now need it on a laptop because it has a battery and the desktop doesn't, you wouldn't be able to activate the software to use it. What happens when the hard drive crashes or dies? Or the logic board goes out and needs to be replaced? In Adobe's case, either of those would require a re-activation of the software. I don't know how Serif's V2 licensing system ties to the computer but I would guess in a similar manner. And sometimes computers die and can't be fixed because replacement parts are not available anymore. Or they become irreparably damaged via an accident. Then you have to get a new one or a new-to-you old one. In any event, when an activation is tied to the computer's hardware and that hardware needs to be replaced at some point in the future, that activation is dead. And if you can't connect to a licensing server because the servers are gone or your computer is too old to connect, you won't be able to reactivate it. Same with CS3 except they didn't notify customers so if you didn't have a problem with your install until after they had ceased offering replacement serial numbers, you were out of luck. CS5, CS5.5 and CS6 can still reportedly be activated but some older OS versions are unable to connect to the licensing server so if you need to reactivate on an older machine, you're out of luck.

Are you thinking of FreeHand? Because FreeHand was one of the first Macromedia products that Adobe killed off. Fireworks lasted seven years after Adobe bought Macromedia.

Add clarify that the accessible license server must remain accessible to the operating system versions that the software runs on. As an example, Adobe CS6 apps will run on Mac OS X 10.6.8 but can no longer be activated on Mac OS 10.6.8 because the license server is no longer accessible by Mac OS X 10.6.8. In such a case, under your proposed EULA, it should be required that they either keep a license server available that would be accessible to older operating systems or, should that prove to be a security issue, they would then release versions that could be activated offline with a serial number.

Yes. I know I don't "own" the software but I am not looking for a right to sell or distribute it or dig into the source code or anything like that. I only want to right to continue to use the software for as long as I have a means (i.e., a compatible OS) to run that software. That was one of the big reasons for me too. I grabbed V2 right away, but I won't be using it. I'm not asking for a refund and will hold on to the slightest, most likely negligible hope that they might offer a reliable method to activate offline in some future update. In the meantime, I'll continue using V1 but, quite honestly, I'm no longer excited to use it as it's clear now there's no future for Affinity products for me.

Oh, and when the Adobe logos are taken off their buildings, have a livestream event where the Adobe signage is thrown into a big bonfire or, if the materials are environmentally unsafe for burning, livestream them being thrown into an industrial shredder or destroyed with axes and sledgehammers.

You're talking about Quark. Photoshop and Illustrator would have been broken up into multiple Quark plugins that would have cost $500 each. And then each new release of QuarkXPress would break the plugins so you'd have to buy all new ones.

Affinity Publisher & Adobe InDesign would get merged into Affinity InDesign, dropping the "Publisher" name to escape the negative association with Microsoft Publisher. Affinity Photo & Adobe Photoshop would probably become Affinity Photoshop. Affinity Designer & Adobe Illustrator, well, that's anyone's guess. Basically, everything Adobe would be renamed Affinity, except for a simplistic graphic editor for the social media crowd. That near useless app can keep the Adobe name.

Then you better bring back Fireworks.

I haven't seen anything about Adobe announcing anything tomorrow so I think that may debunk the speculation Serif is selling out to them.

That was what I was referencing.

I kind of hope so, otherwise we'll be seeing posts on how Serif will never meet the announced release date and Affinity is dead and all that.

I'll disagree with you there. Way back when, GoLive CyberStudio certainly lived up to the hype. They had a demo version that was, I think, a thirty day demo or something and I downloaded it. And a day—or maybe it was a weekend—was enough to convince me to buy which I did without even waiting thirty days. And I used that for a number of years until I upgraded to Mac OS X. Of course, that was long before Adobe bought it and eventually killed it. Sigh. Sometimes it seems like there ought to be a memorial page somewhere to mourn all the great software that Adobe bought and killed. Should be a lesson to any company to never to sell out to Adobe.

Thanks. I'll probably move to Typeface when I can no longer use Font Explorer Pro X which may be whenever I upgrade to Ventura (which will be after I make sure my applications will run on it).

And QuarkXPress continually manages to shoot themselves in the foot. When Adobe moved to subscriptions, Quark had their first big opportunity. They kind of blew it. And, as time goes on, their only target appears to be their own feet and they keep shooting and not understanding why they keep missing the actual target and why their feet hurt and some toes are missing. The only thing that makes Adobe "irreplaceable" is when you have files locked in their formats. There are a wide variety of applications that will open PSD files without a problem. That makes Photoshop the easiest app to replace. With Illustrator files, I have only found CorelDraw and VectorStyler to be able to open the native .ai file and not just the PDF stream. And InDesign (.indd) files are even harder. There are a number of options for opening .idml files but what is really needed are options for opening .indd files because, if you have a large number of files, it is likely you will not be able to export them all to .idml before you no longer have access to InDesign. That's where, I think, some people get stuck. And that leaves out Fireworks. I don't know of anything that can open and edit a Fireworks .png file. And since Adobe killed off Fireworks, well, I don't think even a subscription will help you now. There are plenty of competitors in that space though. There are countless applications for doing simple graphics and with templates or pre-made options. AI is becoming common as well. But, it would be fun to watch Adobe lose the professional market and then crash and burn in a sea of inexpensive apps that provide shallow and simple tools. Yes. I switched from InDesign CS3 to InDesign CS6 back when CS6 was still current. And, really, I only switched because I was receiving files created in Illustrator versions after CS3 that InDesign CS3 could not import. That was really the only reason. Otherwise, InDesign CS3 did pretty much everything we needed it to do. I think there were a couple new features in CS6 that have been handy, but I can't remember what they are. I basically went from PageMaker 6.5 to InDesign CS3. We had PageMaker 7 but never really used it because 6.5 did everything we needed. And the switch to InDesign CS3 was done primarily because PageMaker didn't run on MacOS X. The sticky point now is that I have the means to open any PageMaker file or InDesign CS3 file we have and will continue to be able to do so as long as I have hardware capable of running those apps. But, I cannot activate InDesign CS6 on another machine so once the machine with the current install of InDesign CS6 becomes incapable of running, then I have no easy way to open all those .indd files that have accumulated over the years. And that's where Adobe has people over the barrel. And that's also why I avoid software that requires Internet activation.

Don't you know by now that with its thousands of features VectorStyler can do virtually everything? I heard a rumor the next version will even be able to change a baby's diapers.

For Mac users, are people still happy with Typeface? I used FontExplorer Pro X, but as that's no longer maintained, I'm betting it might break with the next OS update, which means I need to switch again. I used to use Suitcase Fusion which I was happy with until they went to a subscription. I don't do subscriptions to software. I initially moved to FontAgent but wasn't completely happy with it and switched to FontExplorer Pro X when I got a new Mac. Been happy with it but, like I said, I'll be needing a replacement sooner or later.

I have Illustrator CS3 and have received files that are from Illustrator CC. CS3 cannot open them but, so far, I've found that I can place the file as artwork in InDesign CS6, export that to a PDF then open the PDF in Illustrator CS3. For me, the main benefit of being able to run older versions are for the times when you might need to open a file in the original app that created it. I would guess the Affinity 2 will be able to open Affinity 1 files without a problem, but how long will they maintain backwards compatibility? Maybe Affinity 7 will drop support for 1. And, if you have some v1 files lingering about, at least you would still be able to open them in Affinity v1 (or v2 or v6) if needed. At any rate, always good to have options. Yes. Also useful if you have older machines that might not be able to run v2. As I recall, the Affinity v1 apps for Mac require 10.9 minimum. I have a MacBook Pro that maxes out at 10.11. I would bet that Affinity v2 may not be compatible with an OS that old. Maybe it will, but I'm guessing probably not. It would be handy to be able to save files from v2 into v1 (and not just via PDF export) so that, should I need to, I could open them on that older machine. And even if Affinity v2 could run under 10.11, I'm guessing it might be so slow on that older machine that I'd want to stick with v1 anyway. Even still, it's lacking. It would be nice to be able to downsave from CS6 to CS3 but (at least in the case of InDesign) that can't be done. You can save to IDML which you can open in InDesign CS4 then from CS4 you can save it into a format CS3 can open. But that only works if you have CS4.

If there is a new application added to the mix, I would guess a DAM as a couple others have suggested. It's something they've said before they're considering, so I think that would be the strongest possibility. Animation software seems improbable. Maybe being able to do animated GIFs could be a new addition to Photo, but I doubt there will be anything along the lines of animation software or video editing software. I would love an announcement that they've figured out the Adobe Fireworks file format and are releasing a Fireworks competitor, or adding Fireworks features to Photo, but that seems unlikely as well. A DAM seems the most likely possibility. But, it could be that the only BIG thing is the new Affinity Suite with the three apps more tightly integrated.

Maybe he bought VectorStyler.

In my case, for at least one of the purchases, it's because Serif didn't accept Apple iTunes gift cards for online payment.

Won't exciting updates be posted on Serif's website and/or forums so we don't have to wade through the, um, let's call it the "filthy mud" of "social" channels?

Maybe it was the ghost of Microsoft Bob.

I just wish they had ported NeXT's Billiards game over to Mac OS X. (Or, if they did, I never found it.)

To me, it looks like Mac OS X (at least the earlier incarnations) were more NeXT than Mac. I seem to recall it said it was basically NeXT with the Mac Finder and other bits of the Mac user interface grafted on top. Plus, when Apple "bought" NeXT, it was basically the NeXT people that took over, not just Steve Jobs. I have a NeXTstation which I bought before the merger. Black and white monitor. And the operating system looks a lot like what became Mac OS X.