Nox

I'm not sure why you defend this behaviour, these are lame excuses. Of course it is a bit more work but that this will benefit the customer. The applications are self containing (apart from the user settings which are generated by the application itself), there is no cumbersome work to do to package them.
 
it is as simple as that. They already have the tools and infrastructure for creating their MSI/EXE-installers from Version 1.
Modifying this toolchain to work with V2 isn't an undoable task. Considering how much more customer and user friendly this approach is make the little bit of extra work worth to do.
I have a software development background myself and for my projects I take extra steps to make the user experience pleasant and convenient.
 
I don't want to attack you but I'm not sure if you are trolling, have no clue or think too complicated. I honestly don't know what you are talking about.
This was already part of Version 1. And from my experience fetching update information on the client side isn't complicated and serving the release info via an API (or even just a normal string) on the server is also not a big deal. The testing of these features maybe takes a few hours up to a day for one person.
 
They make a product and they want people to buy it, there is no defending in anti costumer practices because it's a little more comfy for the developers.
 

Sounds amazing, thank you so much for listening to your community and customers!

Hi and thanks a lot! 
I am looking forward to this!

A good decision.

Hi all. Thanks for your patience over the weekend when our offices were closed.
We've had a meeting this morning and decided to ALSO offer MSI installers, to those people who would like them. I can't tell you when this will happen, as there is engineering work that will be required to allow this to happen, but we hope it won't be long.
Thanks for your feedback!

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

The funniest thing is that unpacked installer actually seems to give us working portable app and then we can create shortcuts, specify path to exe...  

I'm a brand new customer on PC. I have no regrets about buying the universal license for the price but I do share concern about not having an exe option for program accessibility and found it was strange the way I had to install the trial but didn't realize this was why. It seems unnecessary to put hardship or confusion on a customer base without giving the familiar option we PC users are accustomed to. I was all ready to just point my other programs like Sketchup, etc. to Affinity like I did my CS6 but see the hoops that are a turn off. I'm rooting for the future of this company to continue to be a viable alternative to creative rentware and want to see Serif succeed. This move have me worried. I humbly ask that you please give us the option for either exe like most of our most used program files and if anyone wants to use the app version they still have that choice. A big key word when it comes to creative people is "Options".

I've been a pretty happy Affinity customer for years, and up till now I've recommended it to other people. But I am on the verge of losing faith.
That the improvements in v2 (especially Photo) were more evolutionary than revolutionary was disappointing, but I was still ready to upgrade.
That existing customers received the same pricing as new customers was discouraging, but I was still ready to upgrade.
That the Windows installer is msix-only is quite frustrating and potentially a showstopper for me.
But the fact that Serif is being so closed-mouth about this Windows installer situation feels unforgiveable. I'm not looking for a list of justifications for the msix decision. I simply need to know whether they intend to release an msi/exe installer. If they intend to, then I can purchase it at the sale price and hang on for awhile, but if not, I will move on.
I know it's been less than a week since release, and that the staff are slammed. So I am going to give it a few more days. But I cannot think of one good reason that Serif can't reveal their intentions with respect to the method of installation. Even if they're not yet sure what they'll do, that's helpful information for us to have.
We're not talking about trade secret material here. Unless they provide a status update soon, it'll be hard not to interpret their silence on this issue as anything other than unnecessarily defensive or punitive.

True, but you can also look at it the other way around. They could've released an .msi installer only, which would've had a wider acceptance, and saved the effort to code for .msix.
I don't think many people presume that creating two installers is trivial. It's just that folks want the option to install the program, on their own computers, the way they prefer, and that's reasonable.

This FAQ mostly is a sham, I can see some valid points, but there is no reason not to simply give the customers the option to download either MSI/EXE or MSIX.
Just offer MSIX as the first option for the non-technical users but give everyone who wants it the option to use the non-windows-app-crap MSI/EXE format.
 
Not really, it's just a different installer packaging format. You can even simply one-click convert MSI/EXE installers to MSIX, so in that regard they can just have to maintain one version really.

Pros:
MSI had an installation success rate of ~85% (and we have many requests to our tech support team for v1 install failures). MSIX promises a 99.9% success rate.  MSI requires admin privileges to install. MSIX installs per-user, but files are deduplicated so that disk space isn't wasted. MSI apps are not sandboxed from other applications, meaning other applications can break those apps (we have seen this with several third-party apps in the past). MSIX apps are sandboxed to prevent this. MSI updates require a manual download of the full ~550mb installer which must be manually installed. MSIX can perform in-app delta updates which are smaller and faster. MSI updates can only be performed one at a time. MSIX can update all three apps simultaneously. MSI cannot guarantee that an uninstall will leave your machine in the exact state prior to install. MSIX installs are segregated and don't rely on the registry or special filesystem locations meaning an uninstall always leaves you in a clean state. Installation and app data paths are cleaned on uninstall. MSI apps cannot integrate with Microsoft Photos app to provide "Edit In..." style features. MSIX can. MSI does not require a digital signature. MSIX does (this means any MSIX that appears to be from Serif, will be guaranteed to be from us and only us). Cons:
MSI can allow the user to change the installation directory. MSIX can move installed apps to different drives, but it cannot choose a specific directory (due to the sandbox). See below: MSI can allow an option to install a desktop shortcut. MSIX doesn't provide this as an option, but you can pin the apps to either the Start Menu or the Taskbar. There is also the secret Shell:AppsFolder location in Explorer that allows you to right-click or drag the icon to your Desktop for a shortcut as a workaround if you need it.  MSI has easy discovery of undocumented app locations for launching from a third-party. MSIX hides the install location due to the sandbox, but we use App Execution Alias to enable this scenario. You can find the aliases in the following location: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityDesigner2.exe
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityPhoto2.exe
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityPublisher2.exe
Remembering to replace username with your Windows username. Also, those paths are already in your %PATH% variable so you can often launch them without even specifying the full path, e.g. just AffinityPhoto2.exe. There are bugs in some third-party applications with the App Execution Alias , and the next post includes aflaunch.exe as a work around if you need that instead. 
 

After reading the „pro“ and „contra“ I can understand Serifs mentality. But to be more user friendly there should be customers choice if the would like to download and install the exe or the msix version. So Serif, leave it to your customers please!

Hi,
I totally agree! 
Windows users are not like Apple users, they need to see under the hood and the "WindowsApps" folder is not accessible even as an admin. My few useful programs are accessible by shortcuts and there, it's impossible.
I also ask for the return of ".exe" files 

I agree, delivering the suite as "Windows Apps" and not normal ".exe"-applications is extremely customer and user unfriendly. Not even Adobe dared to take this tainted path.
It rips off all the control the user have about their PC and the programs and makes things unnecessarily complicated.
I'm very disappointed.

Hey everyone!
Congratulations on the release of V2!
- Quite pleased to see V2.
- Quite pleased to see no subscription.
- Not so pleased to see no High Sierra support (but understandable to some point).
- Not so pleased to see no V1 file compatibility (not understandable).
Please include a simple 1.X importer and exporter. You already have that for 1.X. You should (?) be able to integrate it with V2 in a quite straight forward way, unless you went crazy on the most basic systems you have.
I know I can import and export to .psd, but that will leave behind everything that's Affinity. I'd like to only leave everything behind that's Affinity V2 in the process when transferring between V2 and V1.
On some hardware, I still require High Sierra for some stuff. I could update my iPad versions (and get Publisher that doesn't exist as version 1), but without being able to port the files between V1 and V2, that's going to be a headache.
Please be aware that by not including this, you're going to split up your user base. To which degree, of course, I don't know. But it will happen. Some people
- will still require to or want to work with older OSs you don't support,
- won't be able to or won't want to invest the money to upgrade the entire suite, especially with the prices increased and the 40% off period being over,
- won't want to even upgrade one software when this means breaking links between, for example, V2 Photo and V1 Designer as well as V2 Photo and V1 Publisher,
- are completely satisfied with V1 already and don't see a point in updating to V2,
- don't like or have trouble using the new UI,
- just decide updating isn't worth it (yet), because the new features aren't (yet) worth the cost for updating,
- face bugs in V2 that weren't there in V1.
User base fragmentation means
- fewer bug reports, resulting in less reliable software,
- a number of people having issues with your software, because they need to exchange files with someone from the other group (V1 VS V2) making your software, at best, bothersome to use or, depending on the situation, completely unusable or just not efficient enough to accomplish the required results,
- people being frustrated, because of going V2 with a trial or buying one of the softwares, saving a bunch of files, and not being able to go back (that's huge!),
- some users will trust your software less, since a new version created such a messy situation.
I think a simple Exporter and Importer for V1 files could very well be worth the effort.
Now personally, I am going to buy the entire V2 suite anyway, because V1 did serve me quite well (started using Designer before 1.0, it's almost been a decade now) and for a reasonable price as well and I will probably have to update eventually, in a few years. But still. Would be great to go back and forth between V2 on iPad and V1 on desktop.
I searched for "v1" and the search stated there were 0 results.
Best wishes,
Shu

I am very disappointed. I expect a software vendor to provide me with an executable .exe file for installation that gives me the choice of the local program folder. This is also the case with most providers. I just don't want to do this cumbersome .msix crap to myself, especially since I don't use MS Store apps and have disabled all Microsoft spy features. If Serif continues down this path, they've definitely lost a customer. And I think I'm not the only one.

Adobe products use OpenCL on AMD GPUs, they have zero issues running on there. DaVinci Resolve uses OpenCL, but surprisingly it doesn't have any issues on AMD either.
Blender switched from OpenCL to HIP on AMD GPUs, because this API is more reliable, versatile, faster, future proof and very similar to CUDA. Also OpenCL as a whole has really big problems in general, it's hard and annoying to implement for hardware manufacturers, that's why everyone sticks to 2.0. OpenCL 3.0 is a big reset which makes most features optional because Khronos (standardisation organisation) has realized 2.0+ was a big mistake.
Serif has 3 options to handle this:
- fix the OpenCL bug like all other creative apps, make use of OpenCL 3.0's feature query function in the future.
- think straigh forward, future proof and switch to a better API (HIP and CUDA)
- or just do nothing and blame AMD for not supporting a broken API
Obviously the latter option does not fix anything.

on gaming side they are fine, this is what hurts actually. I enjoy my games with the 5500XT for the last 2 years with zero issues, but this thing with the openCL is biting bad right now.

Adobe products use OpenCL on AMD GPUs, they have zero issues running on there. DaVinci Resolve uses OpenCL, but surprisingly it doesn't have any issues on AMD either.
Blender switched from OpenCL to HIP on AMD GPUs, because this API is more reliable, versatile, faster, future proof and very similar to CUDA. Also OpenCL as a whole has really big problems in general, it's hard and annoying to implement for hardware manufacturers, that's why everyone sticks to 2.0. OpenCL 3.0 is a big reset which makes most features optional because Khronos (standardisation organisation) has realized 2.0+ was a big mistake.
Serif has 3 options to handle this:
- fix the OpenCL bug like all other creative apps, make use of OpenCL 3.0's feature query function in the future.
- think straigh forward, future proof and switch to a better API (HIP and CUDA)
- or just do nothing and blame AMD for not supporting a broken API
Obviously the latter option does not fix anything.

Adobe products use OpenCL on AMD GPUs, they have zero issues running on there. DaVinci Resolve uses OpenCL, but surprisingly it doesn't have any issues on AMD either.
Blender switched from OpenCL to HIP on AMD GPUs, because this API is more reliable, versatile, faster, future proof and very similar to CUDA. Also OpenCL as a whole has really big problems in general, it's hard and annoying to implement for hardware manufacturers, that's why everyone sticks to 2.0. OpenCL 3.0 is a big reset which makes most features optional because Khronos (standardisation organisation) has realized 2.0+ was a big mistake.
Serif has 3 options to handle this:
- fix the OpenCL bug like all other creative apps, make use of OpenCL 3.0's feature query function in the future.
- think straigh forward, future proof and switch to a better API (HIP and CUDA)
- or just do nothing and blame AMD for not supporting a broken API
Obviously the latter option does not fix anything.