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over 8 years ago from David Bachmann, Front-end developer
FWIW, they seem to be working on an indesign competitor called Affinity Publisher.
iWork Pages == InDesign Lite. Seriously. I know it sounds ridiculous, that's exactly how I use it... Can replicate about 95% of what I need InDesign to do without much effort.
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That's going to be a tougher nut to crack, I think. With a lot of these illustration and design tools, the final version is agnostic toward the means that were used to create it. If you're creating a graphic that will end up as a PNG, JPG, or SVG, the website/PDF file/vendor doesn't really care if you made it in Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, or Affinity. However, especially with large-scale projects, InDesign files require a lot of different logistical points and people to touch and manipulate the documents to get them right, so more standardized software and processes are needed to support those initiatives.
I do think it would be cool if there were an "InDesign Lite." I find myself not feeling 100% comfortable in any of the tools when you start talking about mixing a lot of photos and illustration and doing layout. I love the idea of linking files and allowing the tools that most easily manipulate each of the file types edit them. I was pumped when Adobe announced Linked Smart Objects in Photoshop! But I don't feel great at doing layout stuff in Photoshop, and InDesign is really big and bulky to me, so a piece of software that is small and good at type and grids, and mixing linked objects in, would definitely be something I'd be interested in.