This review is not about Illustrator vs Affinity Designer. Neither will I mention every feature of the app. I will cover those features which stood out to me as I used the app over the last few weeks.

It’s not often that we get to see people challenge what has become a ‘norm’ or an ‘industry standard’. A quick search on YouTube or Google for tutorials on learning how to draw vectors, learn web design or UI design will lead you to professionals using Illustrator and Photoshop as their preferred choice of software. If Affinity Designer for Mac needs to make its presence felt in an area dominated by Adobe, it needs to prove to users that it is better at accomplishing tasks related to graphic design.

For any application its UI is crucial to its success or failure. However, if you take a look at Illustrator or Photoshop their user interface isn’t all that comforting for beginners, yet pro users seem to have got accustomed to it. Over the years Adobe’s  software suite has increased the number of features it has however, not much has changed in terms of its UI and UX (user experience).

This is exactly where Affinity Designer makes its first big impression. The user interface of Affinity Designer for Mac is everything you’d expect from a modern app. While there is instant familiarity with the workspace from Illustrator, the user interface is more beginner friendly and is very intuitive. The software takes a more visual and gesture based approach rather than features being hidden deep inside menus.

The way we interact with software is increasingly changing. With the advent of touch based interactions on our smartphones and tablets, trackpads on notebooks and desktops, gestures have become a ubiquitous interaction mechanism. It’s great to see Affinity Designer embracing gesture based interactions. The software does this by creating active drop zones in the layer panel.

For example, you can create a clipping mask by simply dragging the object halfway under the main object. You can also mask a vector shape by dragging other vector next to its thumbnail in the layer panel. But, it doesn’t stop there as you drag the object in different drop zones the app shows you live preview of what a clipping mask or layer mask will look like. This feature is fantastic. If you never knew how these features work trying and testing with live previews makes experimenting a lot of fun.

Experimenting can only be fun if you can undo and get back to previous state in case you don’t like the changes. Affinity Designer features a modern take on undo function. You can slide through more than 8000 steps of history so there will never be a moment where you feel that you messed up your file.

It’s worth mentioning that Affinity Designers’ full compatibility with popular file formats such as .psd, .ai, and .pdf will play a critical role in its success. The developers spent almost four years in R&D while developing the software and compatibility with Adobe’s suite of apps is a great achievement.

Affinity Designer for Mac when under development carried a codename ‘Persona’. Although the app was named differently when released, Personas bring a new workflow to the mix. The app features three Personas, Draw, Pixel and Export.

Draw Persona is all about vector drawing however, you are greeted with a pleasant surprise when you click on Pixel Persona. The app geniously brings pixel brushes, selection and effects like smudging, blurring, erasing vector brushes, sharpening and more to a vector drawing app. Want to apply a grunge brush to your vector art? No need to switch the app you are using. Affinity Designer can handle both.

The developers didn’t just stop at adding pixel persona, they added an intelligent assistant to make your tasks easier and enable you to work in an intuitive manner.

If I switch from draw to pixel persona and add a pixel brush stroke to my artwork technically I would need to first add a ‘pixel layer’ however, with the assistant working in the background you don’t have to worry about it as it automatically does the needful. The assistant can also place mask layer inside the vector when erasing. It can rasterise vector layer and then apply other brushes, automatically add adjustment as child layer to selection and rasterise layer and then apply filters.

Even the layer blending modes have received some love and gained live previews. Scrolling through different blend modes such as overlay, multiply, soft-light etc. will show you a live preview of what your design will look like so that you can make better choice quickly. This feature again goes onto show that the developers have paid close attention to the details.

Affinity Designer features dedicated gradient and transparency tools. These allow you to apply multiple gradients in an intuitive manner without the need to open any dialogue boxes.

Once you’re done creating your graphic design you can use the export persona to export your design. You can choose to export your design as 1x, 2x and 3x which is important as you may be creating design for retina displays or even mobile devices.

Another feature I’ve really liked is continuous export, once selected it automatically updates the exported file in the specified format and setting even as you continue to make edits and make alternate design decisions. It’s great to know that your final artwork folder will always contain the latest file no matter how many times you choose to make changes. Since the exported file is always overwritten you won’t have to deal with any duplicates.

Can Affinity Designer replace Illustrator? The answer to this question will depend on whether you are doing a feature by feature comparison or questioning its capabilities as a graphic design software.

There’s no doubt that Illustrator wins when it comes to the number of features. However, this doesn’t takeaway the fact that Affinity Designer is a very promising and extremely powerful graphic design software for the Mac. If you never knew Illustrator existed and used Affinity Designer for your project, you’d be able to accomplish nearly everything.

Affinity Designer is not fighting a feature vs feature battle rather it sets an example of how keeping usability in the forefront can result in a more productive and intuitive experience. The developers have said no to many features and yes to the ones that don’t sacrifice usability and provide reliable experience without adding any clutter.

If you are a beginner in vector drawing and graphic designing, I would recommend that you start right here with Affinity Designer. If you are a pro user who has been using Illustrator all this while, give Affinity Designer a try (trial available) and you won’t regret it.

Even though the application overall has highly impressed me there are a few concerns. If you’ve been using Illustrator you’ve got accustomed to certain keyboard shortcuts. In Affinity Designer you may need to learn different shortcuts. The software currently lacks any sort of symbols management. You can’t type text on a path. The only way to work is with layers, there’s no support for pages or art-boards.

It’s important to note that Affinity Designer was released on October 02, 2014. With the set of features already available in V 1.x it’s exciting to wait and see how the developers expand the current feature set.

Another point worth mentioning is that Serif Labs has opted to sell the software for a one-time price and not a subscription model. This alone is a very attractive investment for anyone from beginners to professionals.

Affinity Designer for Mac brings a fresh breath of air to the traditional vector drawing applications. Its focus on usability without sacrificing on advanced features is applaudable.

Watch Affinity Designer Features Overview Video

I bought the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 512GB SSD, 2.5GHz i7 quad-core processor and 16GB RAM on August 15th, the day it was launched in India. This is my second Mac the first was a 27-inch mid 2010 iMac. I recently published the story behind me switching from an iMac to MacBook Pro, if you’re interested you can find it here.

It’s been almost 10 days since I’ve been using the new Retina MacBook Pro and this review will be focusing on real-world use, general observations and experiences. If you’re looking for a more technical review focusing on speed tests and tech specs, you may want to visit AnandTech for the most comprehensive hardware reviews.

Over the last 10 days my workflow has drastically changed. I was using a windows laptop before I purchased the iMac, and over the last 4 years working on a large 27-inch screen made me feel that going back to a laptop would be a challenge. However, I was prepared for the tradeoff between modern computing speed and screen space.

As I started working on the new Retina MacBook Pro I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that I was being more efficient in my workflow and obviously could get the work done much faster than ever before. Before I get into the details about how the MacBook Pro changed my workflow I should talk about how I work.

A typical day would see me browsing through hundreds of webpages, lots of email, working on Pages, creating presentations on Keynote,  producing wireframes for apps, web design etc. With the luxury of 27 inch screen I mostly had everything open on a single desktop area. This allowed me to always have a bird’s eye view of everything that was open and gave me a feeling of being in control over everything. I rarely ever used ‘Spaces’ (creating multiple desktop spaces in OS X) as I just liked everything at one space. Even though this allowed me to view more at once, it could easily be too distracting at times.

With the MacBook Pro going from 27-inch to 15.4 inch screen required me to adjust the way I worked. From having lots of windows open at once I instantly switched to a more organised workflow by creating multiple spaces. Also, using full screen apps now made more sense, having mail open full screen on a 27 inch screen is not the same as it being open full screen on 15.4 inch screen. Full screen apps such as Mail, Pages or Safari make more sense on laptop when compared to a desktop. So, even though now I would see less at once but this increased my focus on the task at hand. Over the last 10 days I’ve noticed that having less to view at once actually made more sense and one could be more productive this way. It’s worth mentioning that I do miss the large screen space when it comes to wire framing apps, websites or editing a movie, but retina display surely makes up for that.

The first thing I ever noticed about the new MacBook Pro was its flawless high-resolution screen. The text is crisp, photos look stunning and it’s a complete visual treat. It suddenly makes you wonder why on Earth would you ever work on anything that does not have a retina screen. So, it was love at first sight with the new screen.

Once you come to terms with how excellent the screen is you start noticing that everything is just swift. Thanks to the SSD launching applications, booting-up, waking from sleep, reading & writing data is very fast. I can’t stress enough on how ‘fast’ especially if you’re moving from HDD to SSD for the first time on a computing machine. I would never turn off the iMac as it would take about 3-4 minutes to boot-up and that often felt like a lot. Apple’s iOS devices ‘always on’ usage behaviour has certainly changed the way we expect the way modern computers should work. MacBook Pro takes only a few seconds (less than 15) to boot-up so turning it off when not using it can help you save some energy. Although, there are no major benefits of turning off your computer when not using it, however occasionally it will make it more responsive as it will clear the RAM being hogged by kernel tasks.

The next aspect about the Retina MacBook Pro that I want to highlight is 16GB RAM. For the last four years I had been working with 4GB RAM on my iMac. For the modern-day browsing and general computing activities 4GB just isn’t enough although it does depend on how you use your computer. Since, I love having 15-25 tabs open in Safari when I’m researching on some topic having access to lots of RAM is a huge advantage.

I’ve put the new MacBook Pro under extreme work load by having lots of safari tabs open, playing SimCity, working on a Pages document, importing photos to iPhoto and even working on Final Cut Pro and Aperture, but the MacBook Pro just keeps taking it all and doesn’t lag one bit. I would refer to myself as a “power” user, so working on a portable machine that can take all that load is extremely satisfying.

I was a bit concerned about the battery life of my new Retina MacBook Pro. I had considered holding off my purchase for another year in anticipation of Intel’s Broadwell chips that are expected to be much more power efficient. However, so far the battery life on the MacBook Pro has been very reasonable. Keeping the screen brightness low and keyboard backlight off while not activating the dedicated graphics chip the MacBook Pro has exceeded Apple’s battery guidelines. Switching from iMac to a MacBook Pro also gave me the freedom from being tied to my desk. This freedom to work from anywhere without sacrificing on power or battery is a huge benefit.

The last aspect I want to cover is the overall build quality. Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro is undoubtedly the best looking machine you can buy in the market. The unibody construction feels extremely solid and it doesn’t feel that heavy when compared with the older generation models.

When working for long durations the system does heat up and sometimes it can get a bit uncomfortable. The fans have rarely kicked in at full speed during normal use. In my daily use the fans kicked in at full speed only while playing SimCity as the game requires the use of dedicated graphics card.

The Retina MacBook Pro might be costly but it scores highly in all aspects you can think of. However, it may still not meet everyone’s requirement. If you’re into high-end gaming and love running games at highest graphics settings then this may not be for you. If you prefer having more than 1TB storage then you’d have to look elsewhere. Upgrading the machine after purchasing is not possible; 16GB RAM will always remain 16GB. The device has been rated low in repairability. If you want to play DVD’s you would need to buy a SuperDrive.

Other benefits of a MacBook Pro include iCloud, access to some of the best softwares from the Mac App Store, less susceptible to malware, extremely responsive multi-touch trackpad and the best customer support service.

Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro is the gold standard in laptops and OS X Yosemite will only put it further in the lead. If you’ve waited all this while to switch to the MacBook Pro lineup there was never a better time than today.

Engadget broke an exclusive this morning detailing a reputed new input device from Apple. Dubbed the Magic Trackpad or Magic Slate, this new device offers Bluetooth connectivity in a form factor reminiscent of the Apple Wireless Keyboard. According to reports, the trackpad provides multitouch, finger-based inputs to devices that otherwise do not have a trackpad like desktop Macs.

Judging from the emphasis on mobile devices at this year’s WWDC, one has to wonder whether this will be positioned as a desktop input device for the iPad as well. This new trackpad, used in conjunction with the iPad Keyboard Dock or another Bluetooth keyboard, would provide a complete desktop solution for the iPad. It would eliminate the awkward type and reach workflow many have complained about when using the iPad in a desktop setting.

Stay tuned for the rest of the day as news starts to leak out before the keynote at 10AM PST. And don’t forget to come back for our live blog during the keynote. You can access it here.

Magic Trackpad / Magic Slate Image Gallery