Free from Adobe, what’s next

[Claus]

I just cancelled my CC subscription, actually painless. Normally they would ask 50% of the remaining months paid as a penalty but my cunning plan was to change to their cheapest plan and then cancel. In the process my credit card got declined and guess what, they cancelled everything automatically and I’m free to go. They don’t like users without credit cards.

I started as a graphic designer but don’t depend on it anymore and for the last few years I tried to avoid opening Illustrator because whatever tool I was looking for would probably have changed or retired and the loading had become so long it was not worth it. So for me committing to faster and simpler software was not hard. However now I’m without my usual toolset I have some observations and worries. First of all you only have to work for a short while in Designer before you find something you can’t do. Split a curve easily, join curves easily, split a closed shape with a curve, scale anchor points, text wrap just to name the ones I came across the first 5 minutes. On the other hand I have a tool that creates a heart to my specification. I’m wondering how that got on the to-do list before the others. Also I noticed in other threads that the developers seem to ride a middle-high horse when it comes to evaluating users suggestions. Sometimes, just sometimes, give people what they ask for.

Anyway, I believe this line of products will be serious competition for Adobe. I’m hoping for the history to repeat itself when Indesign killed Quark. However at the time of introduction Indesign had addressed every single user need that Quark had disregarded in all their arrogance. I don’t see the same situation here so adoptation is sure to be less revolutionary. I just hope these great applications will evolve quickly.

Btw. I just bought the iPad Designer app, not sure I need it but it’s the coolest thing ever.

[gdenby]

Hi, Claus,

From my very fuzzy recollection, Designer seems to be where Illustrator was maybe 25 years ago. Lots of stuff is just not there yet, or fairly tedious work arounds. As far as I can tell from hanging out on the forum, development is focussed on implementing really basic things. Most every one would love to have arrow line ends built in. But for myself, a decent blend tool would be about 1000% more useful.

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, Claus said:

...I’m hoping for the history to repeat itself when Indesign killed Quark. ...

Quark, the company, never died. QuarkXPress did take a huge penalty hit industry-wide...back in the 2000s. That was then, this is now and Quark (the company) and it's various products (more than just QuarkXPress) is thriving once again.

I don't think Serif or Quark or some as of yet to exist company will deal Adobe anything close to a death blow. World-wide, there are too many individual, small shops and large enterprises that depend upon it. And I don't think that is actually Serif's goal--I'm sure they would take it, but it is an unrealistic goal.

They just need to get to a more entrenched place in the market among professionals from the Indy designers all the way to print establishments. The road to that is simply a long one paved with solid advancements in the software. That is a good and possible goal.