Sam Neil

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

Does this mean the issue with the font selection of a text object in all the trio will be fixed? The current suggested solution of uninstalling several windows updates is frankly unacceptable. 

I agree with you - like many other decisions and despite the opposition or recommendation and requests - Serif chooses to ignore and plows through with their plans. I am quite amazed at this decision which I think despite their argument of 40% has not gone down well with so many existing users and they should have had a better plan. I an not upgrading to 2 and not because of the price but the lack of need to do so. V1 does what I need and am leaving it at that until further notice but still think - this was not a good move in terms of customer loyalty.

I don't think we can turn it off. But try just hitting the export button instead of waiting for the preview, I don't see any problem with doing that.

File > place... already works the same way as in the other apps (linked resources if needed +multi placement options 😍). It would be handy to have a distinct icon in the toolbar for quick access like in Designer  and Publisher
Maybe the developers should think about left toolbar customization for the future. There might by an option to vertically list the tools in more than one column if needed (e.g. because of lower viewport height on notebooks). By the way - they can do that. They already proved it in the header toolbar 😉

WOW! Thank you. An Icon would have been nice! In fact - To be able to customise the toolbar would have been nice!

Is there a reason why Photo does not have "Image Place Tool" like Designer - This has become such a vital tool for my work flow. Please consider adding it.

V1 was such a promise when released. It got better over the time. But it still has issues (not regrarding missing features but issues with, in my optinion, the base). All those issues got tested and reported by user in detail. It was explained what is wrong and why it matters. There was hope that Serif fixes those issues with V2.
Now on V2 trial the hardware acceleration got optimized. But that's it. All the other base issues are all still there in V2 - and there is no roadmap. No way to know if Serif has interest in fixing something or not.
I fear, Serif is now in "feature hell" - more, more, more features because maybe their managers think they need features, features, features on the launch page. So, new features are there - great. But on top of the old issues now there are new bugs and some new features are only half baked.
I think, a lot of users who send those detailed issue reports, did not do that because it's their hobby to complain in forums, but because they use the software for some reason and are happy to acts as "free of charge beta testers and suggestion makers". I think they are interested in Affinity becoming a "real new standard" (which, in my opinion V2 is not).
I personally am already laughing when a moderator writes "we logged it with the developers". Without a roadmap this means nothing. I read it as "yes, it's a bug, yes it's a limitation, yes, it's a hindering the workflow ..., maybe we solve it, maybe not." V2 seems to be an indication that "we solve it not" is the more often used solution.
I use V1 and like it. But investing more time in testing and bug reporting for V2 is not what I want to do, after learning that Serif likes to consume this free service of mine but does not give any feedback in form of a roadmap.
I thought the affinity solutions would become the suite to replace my Lego box of softwares (open source and commercial ones). But for me V2 indicates this is not likely to happen.
Maybe Serif is in a "jack of all trades but master of none" dilemma. And maybe they sell to cheap to fund the ressources to become the "real new standard".
 

When I checked their wiki recently, it said Serif was owned by Serif Senior Management which was not very helpful.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

This means nothing! - I am amazed you are comparing Serif to this. I tell you what - Would you like me to pay for your licence? Would this make you happy? is it the £89.00 that is bothering you? You pay 299 for a software and crying for 89!!!. If so let me know, otherwise don't waste poeple's time with such nonsense and pointless comparison between two different business models and wonder why it does not work. I am amazed you are still banging on about this! 
I think Ash has made his point(s) very clear and Serif know where to stand and what to do. There is no point going on about this and this thread should be locked.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

This means nothing! - I am amazed you are comparing Serif to this. I tell you what - Would you like me to pay for your licence? Would this make you happy? is it the £89.00 that is bothering you? You pay 299 for a software and crying for 89!!!. If so let me know, otherwise don't waste poeple's time with such nonsense and pointless comparison between two different business models and wonder why it does not work. I am amazed you are still banging on about this! 
I think Ash has made his point(s) very clear and Serif know where to stand and what to do. There is no point going on about this and this thread should be locked.

After Adobe went to subscription-only, I coasted on CS6 for a while and then switched to Affinity, and have never looked back. OK, well, I do fire up Photoshop every now and again for one reason or another, but overall I've been delighted with the Affinity products, and the value proposition they offer.
Market-wise, Serif's products lie in the middle of the huge gulf between expensive, rigid Adobe, and free, freewheeling open-source alternatives (GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus...). With respect to communication with users, I find myself wishing that Serif would lean more toward the behavior of open-source products.
Serif's communication is hit-or-miss. The v1 Beta programs did a good job giving users an insight into short-term plans for features and bug fixes. But this was all users could see in the way of a product roadmap. And the long gap between v1 and v2 with no public Beta left users in the dark for a very long time. For the most part, we were left guessing. Just the fact that there was a thread entitled "Is Affinity dead?" exemplifies that situation.
In the forums, Serif staff are very responsive to questions about bugs, existing features, and product behavior, which is absolutely wonderful.
On the other hand, my perception is that questions about Serif's short- or long-term plans, or even in some cases questions about existing policies, are greeted with a frustrating silence. 
Recent examples include the v1=>v2 upgrade pricing kerfuffles (there are two of them: one for longstanding v1 users, and one for recent v1 purchasers), the Windows msix installation debacle, and the aforementioned radio silence after 1.10.5.
Some of this secrecy might be justifiable (if somewhat cynically) for business reasons. For example, prospective first-time customers looking to buy Affinity v1 this past July might've been discouraged if they knew that v2 would be released in November, but they would have to pay the going rate for the upgrade. Or, if they learned that their hoped-for feature would not be implemented. So they might have chosen to hold off, impacting the timing and amount of revenue to Serif. 
However, for the most part, I am having trouble understanding the rationale for much of the secrecy. Seeing a product roadmap can be an incentive to buy into a product at an early stage. Maybe someone doesn't want to purchase Designer because they're not sure if there'll ever be a bitmap trace feature. If they see it on the roadmap, perhaps they'll take the plunge now, to start their transition. 
And most of us understand that there will be uncertainty. Even without a definitive answer, a response is superior to silence.
It's fine for Serif to say, "This is the fairly firm roadmap for v2.2 through v2.3, the tentative roadmap for 2.4-2.8, and the speculative feature set for v3. Any of this is still liable to change. Feedback welcome."
It would have been fine for Serif to say on the day after the v2 announcement, "We understand that some users have an issue with the MSIX installation. We're going to be discussing it among ourselves to determine what, if anything we will do in response. Stay tuned." It obviously would have been even better if the plans to use MSIX had been divulged months before announcement, since it would have better prepared Serif for release.
Posts like Ash's, which explain details surrounding the pricing and upgrade decisions, are fantastic, but IMO they could've been published MUCH earlier.
Most of the people who follow the forums, myself included, are committed Affinity users and supporters. We're going to be upgrading to v2, and we're very likely to pay again for v3. So I'm just not clear on what Serif gains by being so reticent to tell us what's going on, and what the plans are for the future.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

Thank you for your words Ash - Affinity is the basis of my project and I cannot work without Publisher - Despite some of the quirks the trio are one of the best software in their respective fields - I think it would be better when and where possible to have the BETA testing public to avoid any hiccups and making the software far more robust - Furthermore do a survey on the most frequently requested features once in a while would be great. I personally feel it is often ignored with a "currently no plans to introduce such feature..." is not helpful. A prime example would be RTL Support. 
The universal licence is good but not always useful as for example I don't use a mac or an iPad so - I don't benefit from it. (Even though I have bought V2). 
Like many here I started my design with Serif Page Plus in the 90s - so as far as loyalty is concerned you have mine because your software is actually very good and intuitive, coupled with the videos - So you have 3 GEMS which I used EVERYDAY. 
Let's move forward and thank you once again.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

Thank you for your words Ash - Affinity is the basis of my project and I cannot work without Publisher - Despite some of the quirks the trio are one of the best software in their respective fields - I think it would be better when and where possible to have the BETA testing public to avoid any hiccups and making the software far more robust - Furthermore do a survey on the most frequently requested features once in a while would be great. I personally feel it is often ignored with a "currently no plans to introduce such feature..." is not helpful. A prime example would be RTL Support. 
The universal licence is good but not always useful as for example I don't use a mac or an iPad so - I don't benefit from it. (Even though I have bought V2). 
Like many here I started my design with Serif Page Plus in the 90s - so as far as loyalty is concerned you have mine because your software is actually very good and intuitive, coupled with the videos - So you have 3 GEMS which I used EVERYDAY. 
Let's move forward and thank you once again.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

Thank you for your words Ash - Affinity is the basis of my project and I cannot work without Publisher - Despite some of the quirks the trio are one of the best software in their respective fields - I think it would be better when and where possible to have the BETA testing public to avoid any hiccups and making the software far more robust - Furthermore do a survey on the most frequently requested features once in a while would be great. I personally feel it is often ignored with a "currently no plans to introduce such feature..." is not helpful. A prime example would be RTL Support. 
The universal licence is good but not always useful as for example I don't use a mac or an iPad so - I don't benefit from it. (Even though I have bought V2). 
Like many here I started my design with Serif Page Plus in the 90s - so as far as loyalty is concerned you have mine because your software is actually very good and intuitive, coupled with the videos - So you have 3 GEMS which I used EVERYDAY. 
Let's move forward and thank you once again.

Expectations and rapport between the company and customers would have to be improved before they could go back to a true roadmap, imo. It may never be feasible if development remains too fluid for reasons such as a development learning curves, technical obstacles, business opportunities, etc... they are a small company attempting to do something very ambitious and probably learning in the process.
My conjecture: I suspect that during v1 they were still in the baby stages of building a full platform that would've worked for what they promised, but faced early growing pains either because of scaling problems or issues with the platform itself that needed rethinking/refactoring. Perhaps having to undo some of what they first built in order to continue to scale properly and reliably at that point on 3 platforms (it used to just be Apple...). So to reduce bugs, but also to meet the goals they could have met at the time and maintain income, they kept moving forward but with a more fluid outlook in mind. So that took away from the development of major features that otherwise might’ve been at least been started by their team in order to solve issues with scaling the platform/foundation itself.
Potential Development Woes: Many aspects of development seem as if they're being done from scratch. Some of the current implementations may be placeholders for proprietary/long-term solutions. This can give the appearances of a hastily built product while they are work on the guts. We have no way to know, but they don't have the development experience of say, the developers of Adobe. Moreover, Adobe is building on top of an older platform. It's time-tested, it's proven, and it's likely been refactored to scale for many years to come. It's much easier for them to scale or to cycle through new developers, keep them up to speed and still hit development targets fairly on time. How much work would they really have to do if the bare bones were laid before them? Also, it likely has more documentation. It's much easier to train that person within the confines of certain time-tested APIs rather than to bring in a brand new person to build the API itself entirely, plus write the initial code to interact with it. I think it is much more likely Serif bit off more than they could chew with v1 rather than that the company being disingenuous. However, that's just my feeling.
Now, if all what I said above were indeed the case, yes technically they could have come forward and been more upfront about having to gut V1 entirely and that as things were it could not meet their expectations. This could've been their primary mistake, not being forward.. That said, they’ve kind of admitted this by suggesting they were buildings things differently this time, that it should work better and thus should work for their business going forward. Basically, they were in new territory. This, however, does not mean they are not still learning.
This is what I think caused the roadmap to ultimately be pulled. Something along these lines anyway. At some point the writing was on the wall and the pressure to meet certain demands maybe became too much while fighting with the frustrations of working with V1 code. To speed things up, they cut their losses and took down the roadmap to flesh out the development process itself. That's why we always hear "This is going to be an undertaking but it is in our plans”, etc. I don't think it is an excuse, personally. I think they are being honest and it might even feel awful when they have to say this. So that might be another reason for reduced communication, developer frustration and just not feeling like they are where they want or expected to be.
I think negative sentiment is a factor, but I just don’t think to the degree some people are suggesting. I can think of a couple of moderators/staff here that can hold their own. So I don't think a user's cynical feeling prevents all from expressing themselves. That said, it does appear at times as though developers do let marketing do the legwork as far as PR and that can be seen as using them as a shield. This, imo, has been quite damaging. That’s why there's been this strong impression either via (supporters) “Oh they’re afraid of being forthcoming because see all the criticism and disappointment! Can you blame them!? *points at crazy rando*" versus (detractors) “They’ve misled us, it’s been the marketing intentionally misleading all along and I/you were so foolish to believe in them. Look at how much they suck, haha” It's created conjecture and tension between two ways of perceiving the situation, neither of which could be debunked fully.
I do agree they should be more aggressive with betas/alphas in preproduction, but they should likely also be very careful about it. Maybe set it up so people will have to apply for it and keep it limited. Doing it out in the open presents issues because 1) trolls and to be quite blunt, 2) there's a portion of the user base here that don't understand how the development process works and are prone to unnecessary conjecture. This can lead to misunderstandings, something the staff likely want to minimize.
It's different for open source programs. Development is supported by donations and generous volunteers/testers who treat it as their pet project, so expectations are adjusted accordingly. Nobody expects GIMP to compete with Adobe, for example, as the user base for these programs are quite niche. Also the toleration for weird design choices are much higher. I still remember when GIMP was a bit of a joke among artists very early on. It's been in development forever and is still considered a joke for a some even if that's not quite true now. The user has no real skin in the game if they are testing a product for free. Serif isn’t the same, they’re the opposite of a charity, they’re an actual business and must be able to fund themselves through word of mouth.
Basically, while they absolutely cannot make business decisions solely based upon the discretion of a very limited demographic of users on their product forums, they should consider borrowing more inspiration towards development from the most attached of their user base as far as company interaction is considered. Since these are the most ideal of members to spread the most positive words on their suite. Some might say they already do that with staff interactions, but I mean this from a corporate perspective. Imagine if word spread that a thread here gains enough recognition for leading to significant tweaks/changes in the program suite that make their a positive off forum. It then gives the perception of a company that truly listens. The problem is, these changes tend to come so late, the opportunity is often lost.

You are talking absolutely rubbish!!! - This is a major version!!!! - A free update is normally within two weeks of a launch of the new MAJOR version NOT a year after! As Patrick says, they got eat! If you had bought your copy two weeks ago I can understand but not a year ago! Clearly you are not a regular user and are here for a "Freebie". A lot of effort has gone into the software, and this is not "Shareware!

Thank you for your words Ash - Affinity is the basis of my project and I cannot work without Publisher - Despite some of the quirks the trio are one of the best software in their respective fields - I think it would be better when and where possible to have the BETA testing public to avoid any hiccups and making the software far more robust - Furthermore do a survey on the most frequently requested features once in a while would be great. I personally feel it is often ignored with a "currently no plans to introduce such feature..." is not helpful. A prime example would be RTL Support. 
The universal licence is good but not always useful as for example I don't use a mac or an iPad so - I don't benefit from it. (Even though I have bought V2). 
Like many here I started my design with Serif Page Plus in the 90s - so as far as loyalty is concerned you have mine because your software is actually very good and intuitive, coupled with the videos - So you have 3 GEMS which I used EVERYDAY. 
Let's move forward and thank you once again.