Matt4179

Hi @pdussart,
The 4 window arrangement is by design. Having all on one page would meant to have a really long page. 
Encoding is UTF-8. If you have any issue, give us an example and we can have a look
Not entirely sure what you mean by this. if you mean the "XMP companion" that other software write along with the exported file, then I'm afraid no. We have no plans to implement this at the moment. . 

Hey - S -,
That's a fair comment and something we would look at considering in the future.  I will definitely pass this feedback on—thank you  
Your second point is already fixed after being caught during early internal testing. Good catch though  

For what it is worth took two minutes on the Mac (OS 10.14.6), granted it maxed everything out.

Fantastic! Great work as usual.

A lot of work has been done for 1.8 changing the EXIF panel into the Metadata panel, where editable elements are editable and read-only elements are presented. We look forward to your feedback during the forthcoming beta cycle

But what if one had never learned the Photoshop way, would it still be an issue? I can't tell you how many times I hit save as on PS and forgot to mess with the little drop down box. I would go to do large format print looking for the JPG only to find I missed it and saved it as PSD. At least when I export I know what I'm getting. Seconds is all it takes to export. If that is an issue, maybe try adjusting work flow instead. There is always room for improvement, but who's to say it is on Affinity's side?
 
 

Not many times. It very easy to get used to cmd-alt-shift-S.
Personally I feel it would not make any difference to me if in Save As you could select different format. Only difference is indeed which file you are left open, original or a copy.
Professional work flow would demand that you keep your document in affinity format until piece is ready, then export as common format. Preferably archive both.

It is not illogical - on the contrary.
After years of groping, I switched to the same way in my applications. Unambiguous separation of native formats from exported is simply better.
The only problem is that you have learned some workflow *). This has nothing to do with logic.
 
For me is important, that Affinity respects the same logic for all applications.
What can be seen as illogical when editing the photos (it can be done with some restrictions in several formats), even more important for Designer, where "vector" can really work only in native format.
 
*) I recommend that you change the keyboard shortcut for Export - replace it with a keyboard shortcut for SaveAs, and you will always jump direct to Export.

You can make a selection, press q and filter or paint the mask. Press q again and you have a modified selection.

I can understand if you would like to have 3D in Affinity Photo, but it "needs" it to compete with Photoshop? I really don't think so. There are other programs that handle 3D texturing and modelling a lot better than Photoshop (including the example given in your post), and the feature is honestly a typical example of feature bloat from Adobe's end (it is a very underdeveloped tool compared to other 3D programs). No serious 3D modeller nowadays is going to use mainly Photoshop to paint their models or create stuff like text with 3D effects on it simply because it lacks a lot of essential features to handle things like PBR (physically based rendering), among others.

If you want to use 3D in your work you can check out actual 3D programs like Maya, ZBrush, and a bunch of other alternatives that are specialized at handling 3D. Heck, I would strongly recommend picking up Blender, which is a free 3D program that is currently developing 2D animation tools in a 3D environment as a part of its latest beta build, which can greatly compliment any image editing program. If Affinity wants to get into the 3D business, they should honestly be focusing on getting better addon support by other 3D softwares like ZBrush by making it easier to export UV maps directly into AP like how it is with Photoshop for some final texture editing, and/or make a new brand of software focusing on 3D like Substance Painter.