tnargs

Yes, it’s clear alright. Clearly, even though I only ever use it on one machine, changing hardware is going to cost me 80 dollars unnecessarily.
Got it.

As deeply as I sympathize with this (firm) request, and welcome it, I cannot help but think that it would never have happened if only Serif were a little more forthcoming.
At the start of this thread, Serif staff said that the DAM is "planned". A mealy word that invites misunderstanding. An invitation that was accepted.
20 months later Serif staff said, again in this thread, that the DAM is on a long list of to-do's and in front of it lie "Affinity Designer for iPad, Affinity Publisher and next betas/updates to Affinity Designer and Photo for desktop (1.7)." This looked like a substantial setback for eager followers.
Another 15 months have passed, and it looks to me like all those prior projects are done. So, what are we to think? Does that mean it is at the top of the to-do list? Or have another four major projects arisen and pushed it back again?
How about giving us a crumb, please? Preferably something not agonizingly vague. I respect your need not to over-commit. But it has been a long wait, with mixed signals. Don't we deserve some news? Something that is fair to both Serif and us?
regards

As deeply as I sympathize with this (firm) request, and welcome it, I cannot help but think that it would never have happened if only Serif were a little more forthcoming.
At the start of this thread, Serif staff said that the DAM is "planned". A mealy word that invites misunderstanding. An invitation that was accepted.
20 months later Serif staff said, again in this thread, that the DAM is on a long list of to-do's and in front of it lie "Affinity Designer for iPad, Affinity Publisher and next betas/updates to Affinity Designer and Photo for desktop (1.7)." This looked like a substantial setback for eager followers.
Another 15 months have passed, and it looks to me like all those prior projects are done. So, what are we to think? Does that mean it is at the top of the to-do list? Or have another four major projects arisen and pushed it back again?
How about giving us a crumb, please? Preferably something not agonizingly vague. I respect your need not to over-commit. But it has been a long wait, with mixed signals. Don't we deserve some news? Something that is fair to both Serif and us?
regards

"Plans" means nothing. You should see some of my plans!
Like I said, people might have misled themselves.

I really can't agree with this, "AP in this thread led customers to believe that a DAMwas in the cards in near future". People might have misled themselves, but all I ever saw from Serif/AP years ago about DAM in Affinity Photo, was a statement that it was on a list of things that they might get around to looking at one day, but it was definitely not on their priority/action list, and don't expect anything any time soon.
As far as I can tell, it has never gotten onto their priority/action list, and they have never said that it has.
cheers

I think this will depend on whoever and whatever apps, if any, take advantage of MacOS 10.15 giving developers access to the Photos database.  We just don't know yet.  It hasn't even shipped. (Another month?)  Obviously it would be in the interests of any developer to make a transition to their system as simple as possible.  I would imagine that Catalogs and Collections would be easy as they're essentially a database question.  Adjustments may be harder.
 

I haven't used the RAW convertor in AP much so I can't really comment on it's quality but there is something that you need to bear in mind when comparing it to other convertors.  There is no such thing as a correct default conversion as raw files need to be interpreted to some degree so they can be viewed.  Different convertors pre apply various adjustments by default.  Lightroom/ACR for example, and much to many people's annoyance, applies some degree of recovery to images.  The amount varies from image to image but it won't tell you how much or give you an easy way to remove it.
 
What might, or might not, be relevant in your case is that AP defaults to zero colour noise reduction but ACR starts out with 25% to reduce colour blotchiness in the shadows.  Have you tried adjusting that in AP or turning it down to 0 in ACR?

Hi MBd,
You were close  ;)
For commercial individual use you can install it in two computers.
On a home environment you can install it on up to five computers.