ljredux

No they did not. They committed to always offering a perpetual licence, which is a different committment entirely. They even envisaged the possibility of subscriptions in their damage limitation email: Which ultimately means, the perpetual and subscription versions of the product will be competing with each other. The most likely outcome is that the subscription version will evolve faster than the perpetual version, and the lack of features in the perpetual version will be used as bait to encourage users to subscribe.

People reinstall operating systems and inevitably buy new computers. Even when logged into the same Microsoft or Apple account, Affinity V2 will be dead on those systems without an activation server. perpetual adjective continuing or enduring forever; everlasting. Adobe's legal department already redefined the meaning of this word when they began deactivating their activation servers for some products. There's no good reason to be confident that a few years down the line, Canva won't do the same. No amount of carefully crafted PR statements are going to undo concerns about this problem.

I wonder if it's technically feasible to let the operating system stores control activation of the product. It's not a great solution to the activation concerns, but I can't see them releasing software without some form of activation. It would give me some peace of mind to know that activation of V2 is tied to the OS instead of servers controlled by this company I don't trust.

Gosh, this is depressing. If subscription tiers arrive, I'm heading straight back to Adobe.

All of those data breaches that happen every day are still completely unacceptable and 100% the fault of the company in charge of the data. Yes, it would be nice if all end users understood best practices, but the fact of the matter is, many will always be less tech savvy than others and that's partly why regulations are so important. Data operators have a duty of care. Unfortunately, time and again, we find that many weren't taking that duty seriously enough. Rarely do we get an unfiltered, completely truthful explanation for data breaches because it's in the data operator's interests to present a perspective that shows them in the best possible light. Only when a regulator investigates (because a breach was particularly damaging) do we usually get the truth, and it's almost always more disturbing than the original explanation.

I wondered how long I would be able to keep this email account spam free when I created it over five years ago. I'm surprised it lasted this long given the sheer number of contacts, so well done, I guess. When I check https://haveibeenpwned.com/ in a few weeks, I expect Affinity to be the first name to appear on the list of shame.

I guess I'll check-in every couple of weeks to see if there's any news. I'm not buying V1 now if V2 is imminent and I have to buy it all over again to stay current. Thanks for the replies. 🙂

One year after trialling Photo and Designer and deciding I wasn't quite ready to migrate from Photoshop and Illustrator I finally have time to make an effort to migrate to the Serif products. The possibility of a looming 2.0 release is now stopping me though. Gotta wonder how many others are hesitating over those Buy buttons.

Problem is, there are so many file formats and most of them seem to be problematic. I'm trialling AP and spent all my free time over two days trying to get better results with resizing (resampling) and exporting to various formats, but Photoshop simply does it better (whatever the format) with the exact same files. I have more control over the exporting process too. I hate Gimp but even that does better with resampling and exporting. Maybe I'm expecting too much from software at this price point..., I don't know.

Windows natively supports mice with up to five buttons: left, middle (the mouse wheel button), and right, plus two additional buttons called XBUTTON1 and XBUTTON2. The Windows Messages that need to be handled are listed here. Bloated mouse utility software (which add latency) shouldn't be required to support those two extra buttons. I would love to be able to shift those horrible so-called 'shortcuts' which require a simultaneous left click + right click over to the additional buttons. Getting the timing right and avoiding context menu popups is a pain.

I just want to check that this will continue a trial started yesterday with version 1.9.2. I'm sure it won't be revoked, but I'd like to make sure nonetheless.

Yeah, I figured it out after I posted. No worries anyway. When I have more free time, ten days will be enough.

Uh, it looks like I misread something somewhere and was being premature anyway. I didn't realise the trial was only ten days so I'll wait until I have a reduced workload later this year before evaluating and working out whether it's a good Photoshop + Illustrator replacement for me. Thanks again for all the info.

I was referring to the next major update. Ie 1.x > 2.0. I feel compelled to stay current, so it would grate if 2.0 was released within 1-2 months of purchasing the Affinity 1.x suite. MEB answered my question anyway, but I appreciate you trying to help. I've already decided to start trialling the products immediately. 🙂

Thanks MEB. I appreciate the quick reply. 👍