Gathered from the FAQ, you only pay if you want Canva AI features. Yes, you create a Canva account, which is free, so that you can get your license. With old affinity, you also needed an account to receive the license.
In the new UI the ai features are tucked into an additional “studio” like how layout, raster, and vector are individual studios. You can choose which studios have a visible toggle, so you can hide the Canva AI toggle if you don’t want to see it.
Perhaps it gets worse over time. But right now, they’ve just made it free.
It sounds like you're positioning this as a counter to the post you're replying to, but I think that is actually what they're complaining about.
> you only pay if you want Canva AI features
Right, so what they've done is tied their business model as a product to AI features and nothing else. That's not "oh good, I can use it for free", it's "oh no, they are no longer incentivised to care about the parts of the product I wanted".
the ai bubble has already popped!!! the biggest tech companies on the planet who are spending insane amounts of capex on “ai” keep reporting insane earnings reports one after another, things are popping left & right
this question could be reasonably asked of any company's capex expenditure, no? reasonably I will trust until proven otherwise that companies as successful as our biggest ones know what they are doing vs. 76.89% of HN claiming some sort of fictitious "bubble"
it is same thing we keep hearing for about a decade now how "recession is imminent" which of course it'll eventually happen, it always does, you just have to predict it for 10-15 years and one day you'll be right... same thing with this "bubble" - there will eventually be a "pull back" - prolonged capex of this magnitude is not something any company will do but it is getting so boring here on HN hearing about this amazing 'bubble' that is about to pop and we just keep sitting and waiting for this magical moment while the companies, in a very, very, very bad economy are crushing earnings...
I have to admit but unifying all apps and let me choose which panels to see it a good improvement over the old apps. Plus the fact that now I can share the editable files with others that don't use affinity and they can just download the app for free. I agree, in the future it might turn into another adobe but for now its nice.
In the new UI the ai features are tucked into an additional “studio” like how layout, raster, and vector are individual studios. You can choose which studios have a visible toggle, so you can hide the Canva AI toggle if you don’t want to see it.
Perhaps it gets worse over time. But right now, they’ve just made it free.