BruceMarriott.com

Adobe Enshittification and Moving on from Photoshop to Affinity Photo 2

For many years, I have paid Adobe for their Creative Cloud Photography Plan - you can’t buy Photoshop; they have a subscription model. It costs about £80/year, depending on special deals I get¹. Currently, I have annual licences stacked that run through to April 2027, but I’ve always been aware that I was on the edge of what I would pay each year.

My plan, if Adobe got too greedy with full Photoshop, was to go for Adobe Elements as a one-off purchase and reinforce it with Elements+. That would work out cheaper and probably be enough for my simple needs. But I was unpleasantly surprised when Adobe recently announced that future versions of Elements would be limited to only working for 3 years. Effectively it’s moving Elements to a subscription model, as well.

The reality is that with either Photoshop or Elements, a version 5 years old would still handle all my simple needs around cropping and the odd colour adjustment. While the price of Photoshop seemed reasonable per year, I went along with paying, but actually, I just don’t feel I need lots of new facilities that come out each year. I know Photoshop, and I’ve gone with the easy option, I suppose.

What’s really stuck in my throat is that Photoshop has recently started spamming me when I start the app (on Windows 11) - a recent example is shown in the image below.

Adobe spam when I started Photoshop (under Windows 11)

I couldn’t find a way to stop such splash screen spamming. I note in the spam popup itself is a little tick box to stop it from being shown again for 7 days, but that made me even more incensed and I didn’t go along with it. I noticed later the tick box got changed to 30 days, but that’s still deeply annoying behaviour in what is a professional product I pay a non-trivial amount to use. If it was a free app or one I used at a peppercorn cost, I might understand, but this really does seem to be Adobe trying to grab all it can from a captive audience.

The term Enshittification has come to prominence over the last couple of years to describe companies that use their power in ways that make things worse for consumers as they try to maximise their own take as much as possible. Time-limiting Elements, full-size app pop-up marketing, and what seems a gaggle of startup services (on Windows) all feel unnecessary, and I just don’t want all this gratuitous friction, especially when I pay so much.

If you Google for Photoshop alternatives, then Affinity Photo 2 is always mentioned. and I bought a copy on special offer at £33.99. Note that - I bought it - I can use it as long as I want to. It doesn’t install any startup apps, and when I start Photo 2, it doesn’t try and sell me stuff. I can also install and use Photo 2 on as many machines (of the same type) as I want, whereas with Adobe Photoshop, I’m limited to two, and that becomes frustrating when I get a new computer but still have both old ones active, at least for a while.

Affinity Photo 2 is obviously different from Photoshop, and I’m still finding my way around its dissimilar nomenclature and ways of working, but it seems capable of doing what I need. I’m using the holidays to experiment, and barring some big problem, I aim to move permanently to Photo 2 from the start of 2025. I’m sure there will be some occasional frustrations, but I will hack through them, and they won’t be the frustrations of perpetually paying a lot of money and feeling taken advantage of.

Apple Music not playing under Brave Browser

I’ve been trying to play music from my Apple Music account on my Windows 11 laptop with Brave (version 1.56.9) as my preferred browser and visiting the app at music.apple.com

But when I tried to play a song rather than music all I got was a dialogue window with the following text:

          Not available on the web
You can listen to this in the Apple Music app

The solution, for me, was to check that Brave was configured with Widevine support and finding it wasn’t I switched it on. The dialogue is on the Settings/Extensions page and if you change the setting you have to relaunch/restart the browser for it to have effect.

If you have problems I hope it sorts it for you as well.

Great/Poor Spinning Bikes have a real impact on the fitness quality I achieve

See the footnote re dated accuracy and updating¹

I first drafted this in July 2022 and then it got left in a darkened room while a lot of life happened. Well now I’m bouncing back, so here you go…

It’s a long story but for the last few years I’ve been a member of two gyms and that’s made for some interesting comparisons re the spinning bikes they each have and the impact on my training. Long story short it turns out that I work about 15% harder given a better bike with proper real time reporting of cadence and power. I should add that I’m not a super fit person with much Lycra and special cycling shoes etc. I’m very much an ordinary Joe, now retired and is belatedly determined to be fitter than I have been in my life generally.

The gym with the very basic bikes is Datchet and Eton Leisure Health Club (DEL) (https://www.deleisure.com/) at the Thames Valley Athletics Centre (TVAC). The bikes are Schwinn AC Sport models in white but without electronic consols, so they show neither speed or power. They were ‘new’ about 4 years ago and are clearly very well made if with no smarts whatsoever - at least in the basic form DEL bought.

The bikes at Windsor Leisure Centre (WLC) (https://www.leisurefocus.org.uk/our-centres/windsor-leisure-centre/) are Life Fitness IC7’s, from ICG (https://www.teamicg.com/en/bikes/ic7), were new about a year ago and bought because the sister gym at Maidenhead has been using them very successfully since it opened in 2020. They have terrific colour displays (using power generated by the rider) that show cadence and rider power (and much more), talks to your phone for easy recording and setup and also allow Coach By Color (https://www.teamicg.com/en/bikes/ic7/coachbycolor). In this each rider inputs their FTP (Functional Threshold Power) number - it’s basically a number that says how fit you are - and you are told to achieve certain colours/work efforts through the class. The colours go from White (least work) though Blue, Green and Yellow to Red, Red being the highest effort and not sustained for long generally. Because everybody has their own FTP (calculated by the bike or, more accurately, input yourself following a test), when the class is told to go to Red you can all achieve it because you are each doing your own personal maximum. To add motivation the bikes shine out the colour you are currently achieving to everybody else and seeing a sea of Red in class really encourages you to do more, especially if you are not on Red yourself! This video gives you something of the flavour of these bikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gljgqggincU If you do a Google you find that one-off these bikes are around £2500 a piece. Not cheap but streaks ahead of the DEL bikes, which I’m pretty sure would have been significantly cheaper - £1000?

I always record my heart rate when doing exercise, using a Polar strap (https://www.polar.com/uk-en/products/accessories/polar-verity-sense/) that talks to my phone, and the Polar app turns that into calories burned and so a clear indication of effort put in.

It occurred to me I could do some back to back comparisons of the bikes/classes to see how much extra work I did on a decent spin bike compared to a basic one - I certainly felt (and feel) more drained at the end of a class with the better bike. Of course instructors are all different and so I tried to record across a number of different trainers. This was all done in the Spring of 2022.

I looked at 7 classes at each gym, with the classes given by 4 different instructors in each location - 8 instructors in total. And it turns out that on average I worked about 15% harder on the better bikes. I don’t claim rigorous scientific accuracy for my 15% extra effort (the classes compared weren’t all done at the same time of the day for example and ultimately they are different instructors at each location etc), but it does bare out anecdotally how I feel about the two types of bike.

Time marched on and within weeks I actually found using the basic DEL bikes an increasing turnoff, because of the lack of feedback and the lack of options it gave instructors, to the point where I no longer spin there. I’ve also found that I have been slowly increasing my FTP on the Windsor bikes and so putting more effort into each spin. Coach By Color is a wonderful system, if it comes with a learning curve for instructors and attendees.

If you are looking at doing spinning as part of your fitness regime then do size up the bikes when you are looking at a new gym and don’t assume they are all broadly the same. I would certainly recommend the Windsor Leisure bikes (and their gym facilities more generally). At DEL the spinning classes are popular but it’s a great shame that the bikes are not really very good. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a terrific workout, but then again that’s where I thought I was until I discovered the joy and impact of using way better equipment.

Advice to Gym Class Instructors

This is generic advice to those who give classes in gym’s from somebody who consumes them and has seen a fair few different instructors over the years. Much of it is common sense and yet it is still easily forgotten.

Start the class on time
Start on time and never wait for people who are late. Waiting only penalises those who bothered to turn up on time. If people are late that’s their problem.

Finish the class on time
Respect attendees time and do not assume they will view you running over time as a free bargain. The one exception may be for a stretch, but even there the best instructors build in time for a final stretch within the allocated time.

Get there early and be fully setup and ready with the sound system
Music and sound systems are often a problem with Bluetooth connection hassles typical. Know who to contact if there is a problem. And hopefully if you got there early these problems won’t be paraded in front of a room full of people twiddling their thumbs. Alternatively be self contained and turn up with your own speaker (large or small) - no hassles then. Also know how to setup and use the head-mic if you are using one.

Know the gym equipment
This particularly applies to spinning bikes which can vary tremendously in their capabilities. If the bikes change or you are new to a gym then find out about the equipment and the culture at the gym re using that equipment. You won’t last very long (in a competitive world) if you don’t know how to get the most from the bike and give a strong class. Be professional and don’t assume you can muddle through on lots of good will or what you have done in the past or elsewhere.

Make sure you have the right equipment for the class you want to give
If you plan a class with steps then make sure steps are there. Or even put the steps out ready. If you plan on using bands, hand weights or bar bells then make sure a rich variety of weight’s/strengths are available without attendees having to rush around elsewhere in the gym complex for this or that.

Don’t spend lots of time explaining what to do
In circuits type classes sometimes much time is lost while explaining in too much detail what is to be done at each station. If possible use recuperation periods to explain what comes next. Look to start quickly and maintain pace.

Full Fibre Broadband in the UK - Poor roll out information and reporting

At the moment we are with Virgin to deliver fast internet to the house. It is indeed fast and seems reasonably reliable but they charge a lot because there is no competition. The answer is Openreach/BT and their roll out of Full Fibre. You can register on BT to be informed when it can be ordered, but what you really want to know is what the plan is and with some sensible accuracy. Of course we also need to be aware that all plans can change etc. What prompts this interest is that Openreach seem to have been doing work in my area of Slough - pulling underground cables along roads etc.

Openreach has a section on its website called “Where and when we’re building” which sounds encouraging. But it’s junk - it chunks out the plans into what is being built into 3 very broad categorises: that between 4/2021 and 4/2024, 4/2022 and 4/2025 and finally between 4/2021 and 4/2026.

Really you’d hope the regulator and/or government would demand the release of more detailed plans and reporting against them, but I won’t hold me breath. For the record Government’s gigabit-capable broadband targets can be found on this web-page “Gigabit-broadband in the UK: Government targets and policy”. And this seems to sum it all up:

“The Government’s manifesto commitment was to deliver nationwide gigabit-broadband by 2025. That target was revised in November 2020 to a minimum of 85% of premises by 2025.”

As I say I can’t see that anybody is sensibly demanding the industry report their plans for achieving this with proper and reasonable granularity.

Currently Full Fibre is due to reach us (and many other towns and cities), between April 2021 and April 2024. While it’s pretty piss-poor reporting, there is not much we can do about it. Fingers crossed that it happens in the next 2 years.

Windows 10 Hello Problems - Reset cures things

It started with Lenovo updating the Synaptics Fingerprint Reader Driver to 6.0.26.1136 on my Lenovo X1 Generation 9. After the update whenever I went to use the computer I got this message at the login screen “your credentials could not be verified”.

It was like the facial recognition would recognise me but it couldn’t go on to fully log me in. Ditto with the fingerprint reader, if that has never been that reliable for me. The error message was not too serious because I was always able to enter my account pin number and the machine was then all as normal.

I tried switching the fingerprint recognition off and then on again, but could not get it to enrol my finger - the little animation you get normally, was not showing and all I could do was cancel and exit the process.

I decided to Reset the Windows 10 Hello system. Swiftly done using either of these instructions:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000145172/windows-10-resetting-the-windows-hello-biometrics
https://blog.goptg.com/how-to-reset-windows-hello-biometrics

I used the first link, which although on Dells site is generic to all W10.

The reset totally clears out the old biometrics and so you need to register your face and fingers again. I did this and karma was restored.