Ask Paul: January 16 ⭐

Happy Friday! We got back late from Acapulco, had an earthquake alarm go off at 12:45 am, and everything is just great. But let’s kick off this weekend a bit early with some great reader questions. I’m going to need a nap after this.

? There’s only one thing creative about Creator Studio

spacecamel asks:

Looking at the pro subscription that Apple announce this week, I think the iWork part could be a bigger deal than people realize. They announce the Google AI integration and if they can get it to the point where Copilot is for office, having those tools for 13 a month is much cheaper than any of the other services. Plus you get some really good other pro software and can share the all of the AI with the whole family. This seems like a good deal.

I was going to write about this separately, but since you ask. Apologies if this feels overly negative, I know some see this thing and think it’s great.

But.

I don’t understand Creator Studio. At all. Well, beyond Apple’s need to continue goosing its Services numbers via yet another monthly subscription.

Look, I know things have changed. I know Steve Jobs isn’t with us anymore and that the current leadership at Apple is about revenues leading design rather than the reverse. And I’m also aware that Jobs was problematic for all kinds of reasons. But one of the things he would repeat regularly that I took to heart was that Apple was about making great products and if the customer base agreed, they would pay to own them. In other words, design was leading revenues. And while there were all kinds of ways in which this surfaced in real-world ways, the one that’s most relevant here is, you pay a bit extra perhaps for the quality of an Apple product, but in doing so, you also got more. And among those things you got were free OS updates, free iLife tools, and free iWork apps. The pro apps were expensive because they were pro apps, but they were also one-time payments.

Yes, you still get all that today (though one worries about the pro apps). I know. But this expansion into more and more ways to keep paying Apple money every single month is troubling. And now we’re reaching a point that Microsoft reached 25+ years ago when it arbitrarily created Windows SKUs (product editions), arbitrarily had to decide which features were or were not in each, and then kept expanding the number of options until it was so confusing that no one understood what was what.

I don’t understand a world in which the iWork apps are free but I can pay every single month to get a handful of additional features. This is the same issue I have with Microsoft 365 Copilot: Those are just features of a thing I am already paying for, so they should just be included.

I don’t understand a world in which a handful of new features for iWork apps are in a bundle with a handful of new features for high-end creator apps like Final Cut Pro. They have nothing in common.

I don’t understand a world in which one can pay Apple $38 a month for an Apple One subscription and not get those new features, especially the iWork and Pixelmator Pro stuff.

I don’t understand a world in which one can pay $300 for Final Cut Pro and not get those new features.

When it comes to subscriptions, I feel strongly that there should be pay to own choices too. This is the thing Adobe does not do and it’s just a money grab because they know most creators would pay for whatever version of Photoshop and then, go figure, actually use the damn thing they paid for, and do so for several years. That’s classic enshittification with a captive audience. So Apple is learning here from the worst while delivering apps that still aren’t competitive with the high-end Adobe stuff.

(By the way, Microsoft is following the old Apple model with Copilot+ PCs: You buy one and you get additional features.)

What is the market for these creator offerings? Affinity (photos) and DaVinci Resolve (video) aren’t just free, they’re top shelf. How does anyone charge anything for word processing features? Why are they bundled together?

I’ll tell you why. Because Apple’s best customers will throw whatever amount of money they can at Apple every single month and this company is not above abusing that trust.

I’m sure a lot of this stuff is great or at least fine, that’s not the point. The point is that it’s not better than the free or expensive alternatives and in a non-captive, freely competitive market, no company could ever try to sell something like this as a never-ending subscription.

We need to stop paying for things we don’t need, and we need to stop paying every single month for things we will never use. If there is functionality in there that someone does need, I’m curious why this is in any way better than what’s already out there. Put another way, if you think about Apple’s primary contribution to enshittification, the App Store and its unfair and ridiculous 30 percent fees, you can see Apple reversing how platforms work. That is, you build something and then try to convince others to support it and you support those people for free because they are helping you. But Apple charges those people for nothing, which is insane. Everything in Creator Studio is the same: Things that should be “free” (included) because you bought that thing already, either in the form of expensive hardware with high margins or expensive software. You don’t charge those customers every single month for a few additional features in each app. It’s nuts.

There are too many subscriptions with no alternative ways to acquire the functionality locked in those subscriptions.

I don’t like this. If you see some value in it, great. But I look at this and it just feels disconnected from reality. As, again, does Microsoft 365 Copilot. Or Adobe in not just selling Photoshop outright. Those products all deserve to fail because they’re not customer-focused, they’re enshittification aimed at miking customers.

? Book ’em, Dano

helix2301 asks:

I was wondering if you had follow up to your post on the book. You keep saying it’s too long. Have you decided what you are cutting out? What’s the plan? I think the great part about the book is that it’s the complete guide. Maybe you should have a field guide light. Just wondering about the plan.

My goal is to make the book shorter, but mostly through the elimination of exposition, more of a concise why/how reference. The trick, the trouble I’ve had, is landing on a format that makes sense across all the content. It’s been problematic.

But the 25H2 edition will just cover new topics. Which is also problematic, right? Consider the new Passkeys chapter. I can’t just cover the third-party passkey provider plugin stuff because there will eventually be a version of the book that is “complete” again. So I have to cover the stuff that Microsoft added in 23H2, and the other ways you can use passkeys because they actually make more sense for most people. (I mean, I could ignore everything else. But that would be more work later and a big part of this is ensuring the format makes sense. Also, I want to get across what I recommend, and I do not recommend using the built-in passkeys functionality, in this case.)

For this edition, I hope to sell a version of the book that is two things, the 25H2 version (new content) and the 24H2 version (existing content) as a bundle. And if you already own the previous (now current) edition, you can get the 25H2 version for half price or whatever. In time, I will convert the whole thing over to the new format and there will be just one book again. (26H2?) You know, assuming I can figure out a format that actually works.

Did you run into any issues with he leanpub update? Over Christmas and new years they had issues with authors not being able to update books.

No. It was initially confusing, but it’s better looking and works more reliably, and it’s been a positive experience overall. There are other issues with Leanpub that I wish they would address, but that big update has been fine, no issues.

Regarding the timing on the 25H2, it’s still up in the air. I’m hoping to get it out while we’re in Mexico, so by May, but preferably on the sooner side (February?). We’ll see. I’m trying to move between very different topics so I can be sure the format works correctly everywhere.

?️ An affinity for something that just works

owllicks asks:

I watched the latest Hands On Windows episode and wanted to know your thoughts on the new Affinity app? I am still using the older version and now that it has been out a few months, I wanted to hear from someone who uses it a lot as you mentioned in the episode. Thank you for the great content.

To be clear, I stick to the photos (“Pixel”) functionality and don’t use the other “modules” at all for the most part. I don’t see any major functional differences. But there are a few things to know.

First, the file format has changed, so any files you import or create in the new app can’t be used in Affinity Photos 2.x. That may or may not be problematic, I guess.

I mentioned this somewhere else, I can’t recall where, but the only day-to-day issue I’ve had is that some of the keyboard shortcuts I rely on are different in the new app and it’s been a little problematic. Fortunately, you can customize those, but you have to do that in each install of the app (I use a lot of different computers); this won’t be a huge problem for most people. You can do that in Settings > Shortcuts. (The Export dialog is also less keyboard friendly, but it’s workable.)

Obviously, when a product like this becomes free, there is a suspicion that it’s free with some asterisk, that Affinity will require a subscription at some point or whatever. I don’t personally need any of the premium AI features that require a Canva plan (Affinity is owned by Canva now), and none of them were free in previous versions of the app, so far as I can tell. But it may be worth looking at those things. For example Remove Background and Select Subject are free, but tools like Object Selection, Portrait Blur, Colorize, Super-resolve, and others are paid. Canva Pro is $12.99 per month or $119 per year and I would never personally pay for that. But perhaps some will see the value there.

You can run both app versions side-by-side, so there’s no reason not to try. But just be careful of the file format thing.

? You’re stuck in a random number generator

ClintonFitch3rd asks:

Is there any rhyme or reason to how Microsoft rolls out Patch Tuesday updates? I have a Surface Laptop 7 and a Surface Laptop 5. The Laptop 5 got the new Start menu almost immediately but it wasn’t until this week that I got it on the 7. Is it an Intel vs Snapdragon thing or is it… Microsoft doing Microsoft things?

This sounds impossible, but it’s literally random. Microsoft calls this functionality “controlled feature rollout” (CFR), but there is nothing controlled about it. It’s just random.

Given how many computers I use and test, I see what feels like a nearly infinite combination of features across them all. The new Start menu, for example, is still only on a few of them, at least organically. But I use vivetool to enable new features when possible because I have to experience and write about them. Sadly, it’s not always possible, and with many features all we can do is wait and pray, basically.

Note that vivetool is not easy or obvious: You don’t get a menu of features you can install. You basically have to Google (something like “vivetool enable new Start menu”) to find the codes you need to install things. It’s not great, but it’s all we have.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.