tariq

Thanks for the link. Those (lessons and translations) don't look like "compatibility and stability improvements" ... we're heading into a world where they are even less transparent about the software....

So today all the apps were updated with the informative mysterious message "compatibility and stability improvements" ... is this a sign of things to come with Canva taking Affinity?

Decency. Which I agree is optional. Now can I ask you, why you would defend this poor state of affairs?

That is a post hidden in a forum. Affinity should put up a note prominently on the main website. And anyway that forum post you linked to does not do any of the following: confirm the root cause, or what diagnosis your team undertook (so we can judge how competently this was done) a plan to fix it a time-table does not set out precisely how apple has (or has not) helped All that post does is speculate about the cause and then say "Apple won't help". Finally, Dan, Patrick, and whoever else from Affinity is reading this - don't you think there is a real genuine issue given how many people are complaining? No - not the technical issue, the issue of Affinity's terrible response.

Hi Dan With the greatest respect, one would hope that after so many years a statement from Affinity was more definite than "perhaps". Affinity should publish a note on their website 1. explaining the issue, 2. explaining what precisely they've done to diagnose the cause, 3. what they intend to do about it incl a timetable. This transparency will expose any half-competent attempts to diagnose the issue - "perhaps" is not good enough. And also if it is the size or number of libraries then Affinity need to explain how other larger more complex apps don't suffer this problem. It will also put some pressure on the leadership at Affinity who are either unaware of think this is an acceptable way to treat its loyal customers. End the speculation on the forums. Make a public official statement. Call out Apple for their help/non-help, remember the apps won Apple app of the year awards....

@NotMyFault - why do the following apps, large and small, not suffer the problem? Firefox, Chrome, Adobe, Mathematica, SublimeText, Audacity, DaVinciResolve, Blender, Python, Visual Studio Code, Microsoft Office, Lyx, .... this is not a defensible position.

Nothing has been "cleared up".

I agree @mliving - it is INSANE. Affinity have been rather shifty on the cause (no benefits of open source here). Initially some suggested, with possible acknowledgement/confirmation from Affinity, that the Apps started including "web components" to enable access to user-profiles from the apps themselves. Since "web components" have wider security implications, macOS runs checks on the apps every time they start ... apparently. If this is true - big if - then this is bad software design. Keep the user profiles away from the apps. Let users log in via their favourite web browser to access and update their profiles, and to download purchased extensions. Don't bloat the app. This is serious feature creep and as we have seen, has had a disastrous impact on usability. If there was a competent product owner / software architect they would be insisting this code is sliced out and removed. Now, I've been using computers since the 1980s. I've never seen professional software do this. Today - in 2024 - I use a range of apps on my MacBook Pro - as do my family and friends on their Apple computers. None of the apps suffer this issue - Firefox, Microsoft office, Mathematica, Python, Blender, Audacity, Sublime Text, Cubase, DaVinci Resolve ... a mix of proprietary software as well as smaller open source tools. None suffer this issue. I saved up for years to get what I thought would be an insanely powerful machine to last me a decade or more. MacBook Pro M2 MAX with 32GB RAM and 2TB storage. It is insanely powerful. But my ancient Dell 8600 laptop with Windows 2000 ran software that started faster. My very ancient Acorn Archimedes from about 1995 loaded Impression Publisher (DTP) from a floppy disk in about the same time as Affinity ... Many of us want Affinity to succeed. We sorely need competition to Adobe and others. I personally would love a British business to do well. But really they need to listen to us - their customers, especially those of us who jumped from Adobe and convinced family and friends to do so too.

This is a new bug that seems to have only appeared in recent versions. The apps seem to remember the previous window size when started (that is closed, reboot, power cycle etc). However, the apps don't seem to check if the previous window size is too big for the current display. This causes the window control buttons (the red, yellow and blue dots on macOS) to be unreachable. I have to try to use the pointer to shrink the window size and hope the window moves such that the controls are in view again. This may only happen when using full-screen on previous application sessions - not 100% sure. Anyway this is a NEW big because I have used different displays (laptop, external display) and both normal and full-screen for years without problems. The problem definitely happens with Photo but if I recall I also saw it with Designer too. currently - Affinity Photo 2.3.1 (App Store), MacOS 14.3.

thanks @lacerto - the "passthrough -> interpret" option worked for me.

I've attached a simple Designer document. It was created by placing imported PDFs, one of which has blue colour elements. The document has the profile "Grey / Greyscale D50" (document settings) - and so the document overall appears greyscale, as intended. When exporting to PDF, the resulting PDF shows the original colours, and is not greyscale. This exported PDF is attached. I have tried messing with the export advanced options but have not succeeded. How can I ensure the exported PDF only has the grey colours. 13_simple_example.pdf 13_simple_example.afdesign

Thanks everyone for the replies. Can I check one thing specifically - the Olicana font has "ink splashes" and "fingerprints" - will these work in Affinity or are these SVG graphics?

I'm thinking of investing in commercial fonts - but I want to be sure Affinity suite supports the provided font features. See images attached - taken from the font vendor website (links below). I'm no expert, but these seem to be called "contextual alternative ligatures" and "opentype stylistic sets". Examples includes: "joining up letters" putting letters inside another - eg the Monterchi font which can place the second letter inside the first capital "handwritten" underlines that span the intended letters non-letter graphical elements, eg "ink splashes" as per Olicana full support to letter decorations (accents) for multi-language (Latin script) support - eg Brill Latin One of the screenshots shows a font config dialog which looks like Adobe, not Affinity. https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/zetafonts/monterchi https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/g-type/rollerscript-2 https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/liebefonts/liebeheide https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/g-type/olicana https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/tiro/brill-latin

Just to say this slow-startup is STILL happening in 2023, with Affinity 2.2.1 macOS App Store version 23 seconds on an M2 Max with 32 GB RAM and 1TB SSD It is bad design to include "web components" in the app, better to keep the app focused on design, and let users go to the website for web stuff like profile and downloads.

Thanks Dan - the OS is 13.4 and we'll try the 6.4.0-5 driver. Have you had others reporting similar issues?

Aahh - re-opening this one. It seems my wife has been suffering in silence since my last update as the issue was not resolved by a Wacom driver update. Because it is intermittent, it felt like the problem was fixed but it wasn't, and she didn't say anything. She says that since that last update 3 weeks ago, the issue has been persistent and intermittent. Today I observed a bad phase with the pointer freezing and jumping in Chrome and on the desktop (Finder) with Affinity Photo running in the background. As soon as it was killed, the problem stopped. I manually checked the Wacom driver was the latest, and the Affinity Photo is the latest 2.1 Is there anything I can do to help diagnose this?

hi Dan It turns out the Wacom driver was the latest but one. Upgrading seems to have fixed the problem - we'll keep an eye on it for a few days before finally being content. It is odd that the problem only occurred when Photo was open (even when not the foreground app). Thanks for your help.

Hi Dan thanks for the suggestions. 1. I checked and Open Using Rosetta is not enabled. I know that there were some issues with some apps misreporting this flag (eg Cubase) so I also checked the process monitor to ensure the Apple Silicon native app was running and not "Intel". 2. I'd like to keep the Metal acceleration if that's ok. If the solution is to downgrade from Metal than that's not a solution to the bug. 3. For now I'll keep the App Store version and hope the issue is Wacom driver related - as you say, their release notes suggest there is a known issue but they're pretty vague. If this doesn't go away in the next two Wacom driver updates, I'll bring this back here. Thanks again!

Summary: Affinity Photo running, even in the background, causes the Wacom pen to glitch intermittently. Is this a known issue? Detail: The Wacom Intuos Pro Small PTH-460 (2019) pen glitches intermittently - it either doesn't register clicks, or there are gaps in its movement. This happens in all apps - Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Word, MacOS Finder .. not just Affinity apps. If Affinity is NOT running, then there is no issue. Initially we thought this was a Wacom driver issue (they are notorious for driver quality compared to 20 years ago, yes we've been using Wacom that long). However testing with Wacom tech support has led us to conclude that the issue only happens when Affinity is running, even if it isn't the foreground app. Specifically this is on an M1 iMac with MacOS Ventura 13.3.1(a) and Wacom driver 6.4.2-1 with the latest Apple Store version 2.0.4 of Affinity V2. A range of tests we already did include: not using the Caldigit Thunderbolt Element Hub for its USB connection, connecting directly wiping the disk properly (disk utility format) and reinstalling the macOS afresh with minimal apps (only chrome and Affinity plus the Wacom driver) watching the Activity Monitor for CPU and Memory issues - result is no problem is observed with this semi-scientific test It is difficult to film the issue as it is subtle, intermittent, and also hard to predict. We've been using Wacom tablets for 20 years on Mac and Windows so we're pretty sure we know how they are supposed to work - and this ain't it. Additional Info: I haven't noticed the issue on a MacBook Pro M1 nor an MacBook Pro M2. This might be because the pen is used all the time with the iMac as its only pointer device (no mouse, no trackpad) and only for some work on the MBPros.

Hi Dan How does Adobe avoid this? They have large application file sizes too. Mathematica. Cubase. .. none of them are small? Also yes - do publish architecture specific binaries for those that want them - give people a choice, nothing is going to stop them using the Apple App Store. Also please revisit the decision around the embedded user-profile stuff - it isn' needed, it is bloatware, it adds complexity and technical and security risk, and users are 100% happy to work with their profiles on the web.

yep - that's the one. I think 3 years is long enough to have given Affinity's own processes to succeed - time for some openness and transparency - and if it is the terrible idea of embedding a web component, then carve it back out.

bump for 2023

Affinity apps, all of them, have suffered a very long startup delay in MacOS. On a 32GB M2 Max MacBook Pro this can take 30 seconds. This bug has been reported for approx 2 years if not longer. This is not what anyone would expect of software that wants to be seen as professional. Affinity has not been transparent and open about the bug and work to resolve it. This impacts on our confidence in the software development and quality assurance processes supporting the software many rely on professionally. We've had long enough for Affinity's own process to work - it hasn't. It is now time for Affinity to do what some of us have asked for: Confirm the actual cause definitely - it was stated somewhere (here, twitter?) that the embedding of a web component to support online user profiles within the app caused this issue. This is bad software design - keep the complex and security burden of a web component out of the app - let users log in via a browser to manage their profiles and accounts. Be open about the actual work going on to fix this issue - be technical, don't be shy. The open source development model is a great success story - Affinity clearly could do with some outside expertise and advice here. Some of the many many examples of software, small and large, that does NOT suffer this startup delay issue: Chrome, Firefox, Sublime Text, Mathematica, Adobe, Microsoft Office, Transmission, Cubase, ...

In Designer, there are several options for PDF export. What is the detailed difference between Print and Press Ready options? Eg PDF conformance level? Embedded fonts? Colour spaces? I've noticed that press ready converts to CMYK even if the source document is RGB. This caused me problems with book printing ....

hi @walt.farrell what's the difference?