alt Hacker NewsI much prefer the interface of Pixelmator and Pages to Photoshop and InDesign, and paying once (for the non-AI-augmented version of Pixelmator, which Apple indicate will continue to receive some manner of updates going forward) is a nice plus.
It’s unfortunate there’s not a real Illustrator equivalent; Pixelmator has okay enough vector editing and export support for my needs, but notably will render the canvas rasterized at whatever the nominal resolution is even when zoomed in editing an SVG. Vector exports work as expected, just the editing is rasterized. Still, a small price to pay for not paying monthly for Adobe’s mountain of crufty malware.
I feel like there had to have been some appetite within Apple to acquire serif (the Affinity suite of apps, Affinity Designer being a great Illustrator alternative) before Canva did because they were making non-kneecapped iPad apps, getting demos/mentions at Apple events, and just generally seeming like a good fit from the outside. (Other than being a non-Apple-technology cross-platform suite)
I can’t say that would’ve been a perfect outcome all things considered, but Apple certainly would’ve had a well rounded creative suite.