Steel Rat

It doesn't. If it did, I would never have found this thread.

I always turn off startup panels in every app, lol. I didn't block emails from Affinity, because they weren't sending  me stuff daily. If they had been annoying, I would have unsubscribed. So I saw the V2 email and purchased.

Thanks Mark and a thumbs up to Affinity/Serif

Hi all. Thanks for your patience over the weekend when our offices were closed.
We've had a meeting this morning and decided to ALSO offer MSI installers to those people who would like them. I can't tell you when this will happen, as there is engineering work that will be required to allow this to happen, but we hope it won't be long.
Thanks for your feedback!

This change made the application almost unusable for my daily workflow. Since the path the application is installed to is locked away by Windows, even to administrator accounts, a lot of application can't launch it externally.
E.g. Unity3D will not allow me to mark Affinity as my external image editor, which means I can no longer open images directly from Unity3D, which is how I use Affinity 99% of the time.
The Stream Deck also can't launch the application anymore. You have to find a hidden folder in windows (not the actual application path), find the app and create a shortcut, which Windows will not allow and ask to place to place it on the desktop, which you can then link to. That workaround took me a while to figure out, considering what a simple task it should've been.

I had no issues with the version 1 update process.  What complaints were there?   I prefer that with the ability to choose whether to update or not versus a forced update.

If an update breaks something how can I revert back to a previous update?   I also like having downloaded copies of the updates, can we still do that?

This, for me, is the most important statement in the thread so far. It's something that developers should take more seriously because over time it just wears us down to the point we can no longer be bothered. I have many thousands of pounds worth of software that I use daily. Add to that all the other online accounts and various systems we use every single day as part of our work. 
All of these changes and aggravations added to our workflow can feel like it's becoming a full time job simply trying to deal with unnecessary nonsense. Over the past three years I have been slowly changing the way I work and slowly doing away with everything I use unless it's an absolute necessity. I have given up subscriptions, stopped upgrading software and even uninstalled some software (that I have spent a lot of money on over the years) that I like, and want to use, but can no longer deal with the accumulation of aggravation. A hundred small changes and annoyances to our daily routine ends up a very real, and very time consuming problem
Companies and developers think we are being trivial and behaving irrational but they just don't see the other side of it because they treat every problem like it's the only thing we have to deal with. We get the same cr*p with all other software, dealing with banks,HMRC, Paypal, Stripe, email providers, forced updates, hardware ... the list just goes on and on.
For this reason alone, I have been slowly changing how I work and even given up completely other smaller sources of revenue (and it's associated software, online accounts etc) because I can no longer continue dealing with the added workload. I've had weeks where I have literally spent more time with stuff like this than I have actually working. It gets you down and even ends up affecting your health.
The end result is my typical behaviour now goes something like this ... I notice a software upgrade in email, I click the link and look at what it offers - I wait and then check forums to see what others are saying. I see this type of unnecessary added aggravation and I make my mind up before even trying, irrational or not, this is now just another company that has decided to go down the route of problem causing. I don't need the problems, I'll just add this to my ongoing list of software that I need to find alternatives. Maybe I'll calm down, maybe I won't, but whatever happens - Affinity is now on my list of "just like all the other companies - find alternative".
Your software might be great, it might not, but I just don't need another problem in my life dragging me down if I can find a different solution. The most important decision factor in my work life and anything I purchase or sign up to has become one simple first-stop check - "how much unnecessary change or problems is this company prepared to inflict on its customer" ... anything above zero and I'm already questioning whether or not I can live without it.

Hello John,
form the deepest of my heart; Thank you so much! 👍
There are now three different working ways for linking from Blender to AFPhotoV2  but your genius finding means that the linking between both programs is now truly update proof.*
(*Each AFPhotoV2 update will change its Foldernaming path to the exe)

Edit; 3Dcoat is way stricter, for it to work, the exe file from Mark Ingram is so far the only way.

I must agree with anyone that Serif should abandon msix.
It makes zero sense to sandbox a painting program, for webbrowsers it might be necessary but only gives a false sense of security.
 

Ahead of the curve? This is literally the only significant piece of software I use that chose to deliberately implement Microsoft's horrible tablet centric interface-in-an-interface and totally break the desktop experience.
It was an appallingly bad decision for numerous reasons, some of which have been highlighted in this thread.
I recommend the following fix that you implement ASAP in a maintenance release: when installing, create a stub executable in C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo that contains a copy of the icon and invokes the executable stored in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\<mangled installation folder name>\App\Photo.exe. Rinse-repeat for Designer and Publisher. In this way, the applications will be accessible using the standard desktop interface metaphor of Windows as well, instead of only via their ridiculous Windows App model that nobody I know even uses. 
 

This new installer approach has cost people (me included) a lot of wasted time and aggravation.  I reinstalled version 1 out of frustration. I am very disappointed.I have the whole suit and I will continue to support Affinity products and promote them as usual. However, being silent would convey the idea that this install methodology (and control by Microsoft) are a welcome decision. NO, its not.
Nevertheless, I do appreciate your efforts towards these wonderful applications. I sincerely hope that a solution comes sooner rather than later.
Thank you.
Kind regards.

Programmers who live on the cutting edge aren't the ones getting bled...
Geez. Who cares what MS is suggesting. Regular installers aren't going away anytime soon. Just admit this was a boneheaded decision and reverse course before too much time passes.

That's what I'm seeing as well. I'd like to be able to turn that feature off.
The problem with it choosing 16:9 instead of 9:16, then rotating, depending on the image, means the crop grid is way outside the bounds of the image.
Anyway. I appreciate your responses, and your patience.

Since that involves two steps (one to choose the preset & a second one to rotate it), it would be nice if we could create the reciprocal preset to eliminate the extra rotate step.
Also, it is confusing & annoying that the builtin preset names begin with the larger number (like 10" x 8" [8R] or 16 : 10) but in the context toolbar they begin with the smaller number & that is always used for the width, which means the crop box often initially extends far outside the document edges & we have to zoom out to grab a handle.

I just purchased Affinity Photo as a replacement for Photoshop. 
 
This issue is the first one I ran into, and it's VERY frustrating when dealing with deep/intricate folder structures.
 
Does the development team monitor these forums at all?

I second this! Very tedious having to constantly re-configure the tools you use all the time.

I second this! Very tedious having to constantly re-configure the tools you use all the time.