Comment by tomovo
2 days ago
It's a pity Apple didn't choose to acquire Affinity when there was a chance. Pixelmator Pro looks like a toy app compared to Logic or Final Cut. I don't see how it could ever catch up to Photoshop. Even at such small scale it's always been very buggy in my experience and development seems to have stalled (apart from some obligatory AI features).
I am glad the standalone purchases are still available and I assume they will stay updated in sync with the subscription-based ones. I would hate my copy of Logic getting slowly obsolete..
Affinity never made mac-assed Mac apps. Pixelmator is more a Mac app than Messages or Music. That's why they bought them instead of Affinity.
Maybe. Form over function, not a surprise.
A truly well-designed Mac app is not just form, it is function as well. If you think a good Mac citizen is only what it looks like you're not looking at all.
Your experience couldn't be more different than mine. I love Pixelmator Pro. One of my favorite apps on my computer. Super quick and snappy. Does what I need it to. Which doesn't mean it does what everyone needs it to. I get that it isn't a Photoshop replacement. But not everyone needs a Photoshop replacement.
Your experience is starkly different than mine. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro’s much more toy-like predecessor from ~10 years ago?
My experience is that while there’s a feature and community gap for both Pixelmator Pro and Affinity, Affinity just tried to copy Photoshop, positioning it as a worse but cheaper Photoshop, while Pixelmator Pro feels like an attempt to make a better photo editor, losing some familiarity points but also being tangibly better than Photoshop at most use cases it can handle, which is many. It’s also an excellent macOS citizen. Between those two factors, it seems much more up Apple’s alley.
I guess it depends a lot on the use cases. I've used both the original Pixelmator app and the "Pro" may have been a rewrite internally but it didn't feel like a significant step up for me at the time, more like a rebrand and a way to charge for it again. And so many bugs. The development team did respond to a few of my bug reports, which was nice.
Yeah, in my experience, Pixelmator looks the part but isn't a very good software, especially for vectors. Affinity stuff doesn't look as good but gets much closer to Adobe quality tools.