Hi there!
I got an e-mail pushing for version 1.8. So I checked with the friend who recommended Affinity Proto in the first place. He told me to abstain from upgrading. Why?
I am on 1.7.3 and have a love/hate relationship. I really like the RAW handling and the final results. What really bugs me is the slowness. Waiting for simple adjustments to show is irksome. The step frpom RAW to Develop can take minutes. And the .affinity files are gigantic with little benefit for me.
Affinity Photo needs no new features. (Except for a polygonal lasso tool. ) It needs a workover to get a lot faster. You succeded with RAW, carry on! And it needs better means to crop permantently and so reduce file size. And it needs a means to flatten and save reasonably sized files in Affinity format. Fix that and you will win the world!
Remember the OSX Snow Leopard? It was launched with the motto "NO NEW FEATURES" and was a huge success for Apple.
(I am on an "old" Imac that works very well with Photoshop CS 6. My friend has the latest Imac and feel the same as I do, except for more love, less hate.)