Woad V.

Hi InfoCentral, A couple of points which may help: (i) I am not a dude, to the best of my knowledge. (ii) It is rare income is generated without expenditure. "One has to speculate to accumulate," is the old saying. Thus, one has to buy cameras, lenses, computing power and so on before one can make a product for sale. Some brilliant and lucky people manage to make a lot of money from nothing but most who try fail. Toodle pip.

Hi InfoCentral, And there are people with a few hundred quid; people with a tenner and people who are paupers. And then people with large debts - probably owed to or spent with rich billionaires. Not everyone has money to freely spend. That goes for small firms, too. Plus, the best is not always the most expensive and vice-versa. And then there is opportunity cost (an economics' concept - simply means that whatever we spend on something means the lost opportunity to spend it another way - more precisely the next-best alternative way from one's POV). My opportunity cost is I want a specific camera but spending on cars and computers sends that further into the future. But I'm lucky; I have a camera which works and, by the time I can afford my target camera (Canon Eos 80D) Canon may well have marketed the 90D; people will be trading-up and selling their old 80Ds at reduced rates. Well, I hope so anyway. Toodle pip.

Hi Scungio, good to meet you, my fabulously rich co-participant. :) But if one cannot afford the up-front costs to start with, what then? Today I bought an upgrade to my computer stable - £450. That was very expensive to me. Problem is, it is second-hand - as all my PCs, bar two, have been (my first one ever - a 286 model bought in medieval times and one I built myself - try building an Apple yourself!). Now, being second-hand, it will finish its days, as all my computers do, in a dark corner of my study - far too old for anyone to want; forlorn, with no operating system (as I always remove hard discs - always physically destroy those - Google do and I trust them on this). So no second-hand retail value for me. Heck, this latest PC just cost me (and you will not believe this but true it be) £100* more than the most recent car I bought - which has just died but did 2.5 years' excellent service. No resale value in that, either. (* A Mercedes A-Class sold "as spares or repair" to me for £350 but was running; I drove it away and it has managed three MoTs since then - UK tests of something-like roadworthyness). I digress. I agree that many Apple users regard Android's diversity as problematic - and there are some truths in that. But it is also its strength. I want to buy other brands of cars than just Mercedes - I also have a Jaguar and have had thirteen Volvos. Variety is the spice of driving - or hard-driving. :) Actually, I blame Serif for my financial disaster (spending £450 is a financial disaster). My existing PCs were insufficiently powered to run Affinity well and certainly struggled with Affinity and ACDSee simultaneously open. And Topaz simply refused to run. New PC (well used PC) hopefully arrives next week and should boot donkeys, as I believe the expression is in America. Then we'll be motoring! Damn - not so, my cheap car having packed-up. C'est la thingy. Toodle pip.

Ah, thanks Patrick. Appreciated.

Hi Pioneer. Thanks muchly. That, then, is partly my ignorance - I did not realize Page+ supported external photo-editors. I always either used the tools in Page+ or, if too complex, I opened my photo-editor (Photo+ and / or ACDSee), edited in those, then saved and imported the result into Page+. No wonder the dinosaurs died-out, if that's the sort of thing I've been doing. Or something like that. Again, thanks, John. Toodle pip.

ve2cjw, Hi, Excellent work - how very kind of you. Thank you so very much. Really appreciated.

Hiya, sorry to be so dense - but would you mind explaining, please? Thanks.

Hi R C-R, thanks for your reply, Yes, undoubtedly, Apple do have an ecosystem - which is much easier and better achieved by keeping most aspects in-house. I would argue that neither Windows's PCs nor Android-powered technology has such an ecosystem. Not willing and / or unable to pay. (Economics: demand is the ability and willingness to pay for something). I would not have been able to afford to take the Apple ride over the years. I did first use them - with 5.5" floppy discs - at teacher training college. I bought my first CBM Commodore 16 shortly after. I have bought a lot of computing power over the years - it has cost enough as it is! Would I have jumped on the Apple ride if I could have afforded it, all those years ago? Maybe I would - I was designing (as well as teaching) and almost all designers were going Apple. As I said, it is how I discovered Serif, which only made software for PCs. Rather ironic, really. Apropos the viable choice - completely agree. Actually, that was my whole central point: it would be good if Serif somehow were able to engineer Affinity for Android devices, to extend choice. Well, that put the World to right. :) Toodle pip.

Thanks InfoCentral and IanSG. Hi both and everyone, I am sure tech spec is easily available but my later point was arguing that (i) more people are using smartphones as cameras and (ii) the tech of those devices is zooming in improvements. I have never understood Apple fans' insistence that their devices are superior to, firstly, Windows, then Android (though, of course Apple proceeded Android and good Windows PCs). I know Apple make brilliantly-designed equipment, which looks very pretty, has traditionally been easier to use and integrates extremely well within the Apple ecosystem. But Apple does have disadvantages: Two are: price and the tight grip on outsiders' software (even though Android might suffer with some poorer software, I think fierce competition is, generally, good). Now that latter point (well both, actually, extends to hardware as well as software. Apple are developing their next generations of hardware - sometimes with the help of outside firms. But everyone can work towards the next generations of Android and PCs. Some will fail. But some will succeed and that open approach to hardware (and software) development is what drives the non-Apple sectors so well. There are, indeed, some low-powered, poor Android devices out there - and some middling - and, of course, some high-end. Octacore CPUs and 3GB base memory (before overall RAM) came to Android a long time ago. And tablets tend to be even more powerful (though not always). So I do not think Apple have a monopoly on good high-end tech. In fact, I think that, in the long-run, they will have to become more open or wither. I must admit, that is taking longer than I expected but only because an excellent but expensive range is bolstered by being a brand with a big, adoring fan base. So, yes, Apple devices are excellent but they are far from having a monopoly on such excellence. And look at the market penetrations from those pie charts. Toodle pip (in a non-Apple sort of way). PS: MBd (we cross-posted) - you are again, treating Android as a monolith, as is Apple. Neither it nor PCs are. There are many developers and producers out there. Yes Google and Microsoft do make the Operating Systems but they are caned by the device makers when they have it wrong. Some Android devices are bloated - as has been Windows - but improvements are always being made. Apple have much right but they do not have that monopoly good tech. To say "Android burns resources" has been true of some devices and some releases of Android OS. But many Android devices are very fast and things continue to improve (at Apple, too, of course). On a personal note, I tend to buy the "inexpensive" (in comparison) Chinese 'phones. Samsung are too expensive, not spectacular and I don't want an indoor bonfire. (Sorry, joking - all LiOn batteries are vulnerable). But those Chinese firms are zipping along in their tech development. My current 'phone is an Elephone and it is very fast - and, yes, I "paint" on it and write on it and have tried photograph correction on it - but I prefer sitting at my PC for that, with my 27" and 50" screens to see changes on. Mobile screens are too small for my taste. PPS if anyone wants a new mobile, do look at those Chinese brands - various on-line tech web-mags now do reviews and comparisons specifically of the Chinese offerings. I love my Elephone P9000 but I might upgrade in a while. Then again, since it does all I ask and still offers a blistering speed, I might just stick. It cost me £200 about eighteen months-plus ago (on Ebay) and it is on a SIM-only deal with Tesco (Sorry, UK only) (which frequently wins in customer surveys and piggy-backs on O2) for £7.50 pcm. Just saying, if anyone wants good value...

Hi MBd Point taken. Though tomorrow's professionals may well be today's smartphone photographers (remember, some websites only accept images shot by smartphones). Thus, the top-level of photography with such devices is far higher than ever before. Mike Browne, the You Tube famed professional photographer, has shown some amazing images shot with smartphones. Axiomatically, I am thinking of artistic professionals rather than (say) product photographers. However, there is potential for wedding photography, especially as the 28mm (?) focal length is improved upon by smartphone manufacturers. I freely admit, I am pretty poor at taking good smartphone photographs but many youngsters are very good. I think the time is right to realise the enormous potential of these devices for high-end enthusiasts and some professional applications. As a side note, much of the research money has gone into smartphone cameras, rather than other types; they have improved quickly and may well continue so to do. Tony Northrup (in a You Tube video) argues that the consumer camera is dead. So tomorrow's professionals will have to come from smartphone photographers. Entice them early with software and they may well remain with it. Apropos your PS - great for Apple users but won't help Android ones - which was my target-market argument. Cheers.

Hi all, I appreciate R&D is vastly expensive; that Android is far less homogeneous than Apple (and all the sub-points above). I do not like Apple - never have used in in many years as a designer and photographer. I have always been the exception to all the users who embraced Apple. Indeed, that is why I chose to use Serif from Page+ "1" - because it operated on Windows. I do not wish to suggest a strategy which would bankrupt Serif. I cherish the firm, their products and their history and feel for their staff. Serif must take sensible business decisions. Google's Android (which I use extensively, with Windows desktop machines too) is vast though and I would have thought some acknowledgement of this might be in Serif's best interests. Perhaps developing full-scale Affinity for Android now is not sensible. Fair enough. But what about developing an Android "app" (programme to me) which would be able to link Android to Affinity Windows? (I am assuming Apple users mainly only use Apple). This app could be lowish tech - ie very limited in scope. Perhaps something to tweak smartphone / table shot images within the shooting device; something to facilitate the interchange-information of images from Android to PC; something to smooth the path of photographs and images between the two platforms. Now, true, all this can be done with other apps. But, offering a programme to keep images, from shooting to high-level processing (and, maybe, back to the device) within Affinity's ecosystem, might encourage purchases by other people. And it would enable through-put much smoother for Windows's Affinity users who also use Android. It would also start to afford Serif's developers a better understanding of Android, should they wish to further Affinity's presence in the future. Just a thought. Toodle Pip. (Damn! did that sound like an Apple reference?)

Welcome Jarek and all those who have recently joined. (That includes me). I love the way in which you apologise for your English - by using perfectly good English, when most native English speakers - certainly including me - are utterly useless at any other language. Even useless at English sometimes! Hope you like it here.