Australian Financial Review yesterday got the scoop that Canva had eaten Serif. Today, the news was confirmed. Wisely, Serif’s CEO then attempted to reassure the community that all was good, actually.

Although the press has in recent years often positioned Serif as a kind of scrappy underdog newcomer, the company has a long history. It was founded in 1987, which makes it only five years younger than Adobe. Most of its recent history has been tied up in becoming a direct competitor to Adobe – and also a direct competitor to Adobe’s business model. Through its Affinity suite, Serif offered an alternative: buy-once apps rather than subscriptions. And although I can’t imagine Serif makes anything other than a minority of its sales on iPad, the company’s superb Affinity apps for Apple’s tablet – compared to Adobe’s comparatively stumbling efforts – haven’t hurt the company’s reputation any.

Which brings us to today’s announcement. Canva now owns Serif. According to Serif’s CEO, not much will change. He claims Canva is a kindred spirit – that Canva and Serif have complementary products, hence the buyout making sense. He says the Affinity brand will continue, the apps will be developed by the same British team, and that no changes to the pricing model are planned “at this time”. But then he would say that, wouldn’t he?

I very much hope this British success story doesn’t get crushed under the weight of a comparative giant. Canva imposing its will on opinionated software with a business model that people love would be a big risk. While Affinity users might love the interface and feature set, a large number of them were drawn – and remain loyal – to the product primarily because of the business model. That’s where much of the goodwill lies. Any switch to a subscription could fatally damage the brand. I suspect Adobe would be quick to counter by unveiling a ‘designer’ Creative Cloud tier comprising Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign that just happened to be priced competitively, in an attempt to win people back.

Version 3 of the Affinity suite will probably be the moment we’ll know. You can already picture a press release stating that Canva has made the “difficult decision” to move Affinity apps to subscriptions, and a “hard choice” to move development from Nottingham to Canva HQ in Australia. I hope this won’t be the case, but we’ve seen this scenario play out so many times before. We’ll find out for sure one way or another within a year or two, and I do hope that in the same way Affinity bucked the trend with modern software, Serif bucks the trend when it comes to modern buyouts.

Published stuff

For TapSmart this week, I outlined why it doesn’t matter there are no folding iPhones and iPads yet. Naturally, lots of folks think Apple is behind the curve, but I’m not sure it is. These devices are fragile and insanely expensive. They might be the future – or at least a future – but right now I don’t think Apple desperately needs to enter the folding device market. Also for TapSmart this week, my lightning fast Mac buyer’s guide 2024.

Over at Stuff, I ask: Would a Gemini AI iPhone 16 be Awfully Impressive or Annoyingly Insidious? As ever, this is a meticulously researched, very grounded, and entirely sensible take on the subject. Cough.

Also for Stuff, I explore a Dungeons & Dragons Lego set you need a dragon’s hoard to afford, along with remembering the excellent Nokia 3210 at 25.

Finally, something a bit more serious for this blog: some brief personal thoughts on Apple and regulatory fights.

Upcoming stuff

A couple of goodies arrived this week for articles I’m working on. One was a GameSir G8, which is reportedly the best stretchy controller for mobile. I’ll be digging into that for a piece on AAA mobile gaming. 

I also received an Atari 400 Mini, in a rather lovely box. It recalled 1970s wallpaper, but unfortunately had the weakest magnetic catch ever. So the first thing my review unit did was tumble out of said box, skid across the floor and end up under some shelves. Fortunately, these mini consoles are bulletproof, and so I’ll be exploring this one for my Stuff column next weekend. 

Other stuff

My social feeds have been full of people grumbling about daylight savings, and that’s set to kick off again next week when UK clocks change. But I love it. (The clocks changing – not the grumbling.) In an instant, we’ll go from sunset around 18:30 to 19:30, meaning I’ll be able to start playing football in the street with my daughter after dinner again. I’m half surprised the Brexit mob didn’t force us on to GMT all year, but that possible future still nags at me, not least because DST is being attacked everywhere. Hopefully it will never happen.

Political commentator Ian Dunt recently wrote about writing. It’s an interesting piece, which itself remarks that everything is interesting. And also that writing is weird. Good points.

I’ve been writing professionally for almost 25 years. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, corporates and book publishers. And while it’s something that can come naturally, the act of writing ranges from effortless to the typing equivalent of pulling teeth. And you never quite know what you’re going to face.

Ian offers interesting tips, not least the importance of curiosity and boredom. If you’re bored writing, your audience will feel that. So find what’s in your subject that sparks curiosity. I also commented on the piece to add a few things I’ve found useful in my own writing, which I’ll share here. (Hopefully you’re at this point still curious rather than bored to the point of slapping yourself repeatedly, to stay awake.)

First, making no assumptions can be beneficial. It doesn’t hurt to add brief notes or outward links to get a reader up to speed on a subject. But omit those vital sentences and your work might be impenetrable – or at least harder to read than it should have been.

Next, find what you love and do as much of that as you can, because your passion will shine through. For me, that’s storytelling. If I could, I’d spend my work life interviewing people, especially in the world of apps and video games, to make sure creators’ stories aren’t lost. Alas, few pay for that. But when they do, I’m very happy.

Finally, don’t allow anyone to tell you how you should write. Advice and ideas are fine, but being prescriptive is not. I once had someone sternly argue that you should always write an entire piece from start to finish, and only then go back and edit, as if writing tools have never moved beyond the typewriter. They believed this helped avoid distraction. That’s great if it works for you. My writing style is more like sculpture – I often start with a big mess of words, ideas and research I smash into shape in Scrivener or iA Writer, shifting things around, hacking off chunks that don’t work, and hopefully ending up with something suitable for the words equivalent of an art gallery. Or at least not a skip.

Sometimes, people even read my stuff too. If you’re one of them, thanks for stopping by. This blog’s never exactly been high traffic, but I do appreciate each and every person spending some of their time here.

Apple’s being walloped by regulators, and it’s increasingly clear most of the tech press doesn’t understand antitrust. Fortunately, Ian Betteridge does, so go and read his blog.

My take, honestly, is all this just makes me feel a bit sad. I like a lot of what Apple does. Even if I didn’t write about Apple, I’d have an iMac, an Apple TV or two, an iPhone, and an iPad. But Apple as it grows (and is expected by the markets to continue doing so) has overreached in some cases, and enacted dark patterns elsewhere.

I imagine a lot of people are rushing to defend Apple by default because, in part, they remember when the company nearly winked out of existence. Others, perhaps, because the company does objectively do an awful lot of things really well, and seems to care more than most rivals about what matters. But that doesn’t excuse the bad stuff, nor that in some cases Apple has decided it’s OK to just be ‘least bad’. That isn’t good enough.

I don’t want an MLS nav item forced on me in Apple TV. I want to install Retroarch on my iPhone. I don’t want ads in the App Store trying to trick me into installing something other than what I searched for. And I don’t want devs of apps I love to partake in a lottery with every single update they file. Small things, of course, but all of these little pieces – from millions and millions of users, businesses and creators – add up.

If nothing else, what happens next will be interesting. But mostly, I hope it will be beneficial, leading to a better future for consumers and Apple alike, even if the Apple that emerges is in key ways different from the one we have today.

Published stuff

I had fun for this week’s Stuff column, transforming an iPad Pro and a GameSir X2s controller into a terrifying hybrid: I turned my massive iPad Pro into a handheld games console – and it’s every bit as weird as it sounds. Hey, Apple! If you want someone to lead your gaming efforts, you know who to call!

I also wrote Everything we know about the Lego and Nintendo Super Mario Kart collaboration, which could have been one line of copy, but needed to be at least 300 words. Hence unleashing the prediction parrot. And I added Canabalt to my best browser games feature.

Meanwhile, for TapSmart, I wrote about how to use your iPhone to help you declutter. We’ve also just released issue 297 of sister mag Swipe. If you’d like to support our indie iPhone writing, please consider downloading the app and checking out the free trial.

Upcoming stuff

I used to be a regular in Retro Gamer’s pages, but haven’t written for that publication in a long time. Mostly, that’s because it started to become increasingly tough to find people to talk to. (My main interest was – and remains – telling the stories of how games came to be.)

That’s now an itch I want to scratch again, and I’ve identified a few gaps in the magazine’s now extensive making-ofs library. Two articles have been approved, and one dev has agreed to an interview. I’m hoping the other will too, although they’ve so far connected with me on socials but not responded to messages. Fingers crossed!

Other stuff

Almost all my pictures are now on the wall, including my Oli Frey prints and framed Sinclair hardware. I quite like how I dealt with those. While I get the appeal of Grid frames, I like the notion I could take my Sinclairs down, plug them in, and actually use them again. Not that I likely ever will. (See also: my Wire EMI LPs that are the last things to yet go back up on the wall.)

Another slice of happy: Super Monsters Ate My Condo is returning to mobile. Whatever gripes I might have about Apple Arcade, I’m really glad to see a handful of old titles making their way back. Here’s hoping a few more titles lurking on my downgraded iPad Air get a second lease of life on the App Store.

Finally, it’s fantastic to see Digital Eclipse cover the story of Jeff Minter and Llamasoft in its latest release. Jeff’s Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time is seared into my memory as one of the earliest games I played. And I’ve long been a fan, from the VIC-20 days, through Llamatron on the ST, Tempest 2000 on the Jag, and Jeff’s unfortunately unrewarding time on mobile, to the present day. Here’s hoping his unique and compelling mix of arcade games and psychedelia finds favour with a wide range of modern-day gamers.

Two columns over at Stuff this week. First, The Prodigy’s Wind It Up vanishing from music streaming makes me want to buy CDs again. Which given my previous articles on physical vs digital is perhaps cementing my position as Old Man Shakes Fist At Cloud on the site. Oh well.

Elsewhere, I dipped a toe into the Apple vs EU scrap and surprised myself with this conclusion: Apple and the EU’s browser fight will only have one winner – and it won’t be you. As per the article, I do think the EU has a point, but with browsers I’m not sure it’s thought through the likely unintended consequence of its actions.

Over at TapSmart, three pieces this week. First up, Apollo is added to my classic app series. Then I grump about the need for a Screen Time kill switch. And finally there’s a round-up of the best music discovery apps for iPhone.

Finally, on Mastodon, my daily retro game series hit 250 entries, with Snare (for Thalamus, created by Rob Stevens).

Other stuff

Given all the legal fights going on, you have to wonder if there’s something in the water right now. Apple vs the EU – often completely misunderstood by commentators, especially those from the US – is skilfully covered by Baldur Bjarnason. I also recommend Dan Moren’s piece for Six Colors, because it’s good and also to highlight that some smart folks in the US do get it.

Elsewhere, The Verge explores the consequences of Nintendo kicking Yuzu to death in a back alley. Personally, I’m not in favour of current-gen systems being emulated, but I’m also against Nintendo’s known position that all emulation should be wiped out.

Without emulation, most games would be lost – in a literal sense (it’s the pirates who’ve rescued most games from oblivion, after all) and also in an access sense, since gaming companies are keen to sell you the same old suspects over and over again, and in locked formats that mean you cannot take a legally bought ROM or disk image and do with it as you please.

There should be a middle ground, but there probably won’t ever be one. And that Verge article doesn’t explore all of the fallout, given that I’m now reading about people behind multi-emulator frameworks wondering how much Nintendo stuff they have to remove, not because Nintendo has threatened legal action, but because they’re fearful Nintendo will. 

And this isn’t me dumping on Nintendo. Others in this space (hello, Sony, eg) have acted similarly multiple times. If they all got their way, playing old games would be like streaming music if the likes of Spotify and Apple Music were replaced by label-specific services, which never gave you more than a handful of greatest hits albums, and pretended 99% of music history just didn’t exist. Bah.

Let’s end on a happier note. Or at least something that made me happy. I finally got a bunch of pictures up on the office wall, which gave me a lift. Now for the rest…