Ash

Just for future info we tend to split out email sends based on time zone so customers in Europe for example will receive email before customers in the US, just to avoid emails being received in the middle of the night (in your local time).

Hi All, When much of the world went into lockdown last year we put a few things in place to try to offer some support to the creative community. In the big scheme of things they were fairly small gestures I guess, but we were quite overwhelmed by the positive feedback we received about it. In particular the 90-day trial of all our apps provided a big help for people who may have lost access to their normal tools through their work or university, and offering a deep 50% discount on our apps was also greatly appreciated. We reverted back to our normal trial length and pricing as those initial restrictions eased and the situation felt like it was improving. However here in the UK we are back in full national lockdown and in many countries restrictions are tight and livelihoods continue being severely affected as we deal with the second wave of this virus. For that reason, we have decided to re-introduce both our 90-day trial and 50% discount on all our apps and digital content (unfortunately the relatively small margins we have on workbooks means we cannot offer the discount on those). We have also reset the 90-day trial so anyone who took advantage of it before can do so again. The thoughts of all of us at Serif remain with everyone affected by this crisis and we wish you all the best. Ash

Thanks for your feedback on the reg/store content sync. Last thing we want is for this to be viewed negatively, we just thought it was a nice convenient feature. We’ve decided to make the change that if you sign out any store content you have installed will remain (we’ll actually give an option if you want to clear it or keep it). So if you would prefer to be signed out you can without having to manually install the kits This change will be in the next beta.

Yes we'll allow n devices to be connected for sure and all of them have access to the content simultaneously. The point was more that if we said that content would remain if you signed out, then in fact you wouldn't need 100 devices all signed in at once, just 100 devices which had signed in, even just briefly, at any point in the past if that makes sense.

Yeah, we’re very interested in hearing feedback on the reg / content streaming stuff. A few comments: Signing in is purely to give the ability to stream content from the store directly into your apps. If you decide not to sign in it will have no other impact at all - you will be able to use the apps as usual. All store content will continue to be available to download and install in the old way if you would prefer for whatever reason not to sign in to get it. Once you are signed and install your content that will be available to you in future whether or not you are connected to the internet. The only thing is if you physically decide to sign out of the app you will then lose access to that store content. You can get it back at anytime by signing in again (or alternatively installing the old way as per point 2.) This will not be the case in the next beta - if you sign out you will be able to choose to keep your store content installed. We are absolutely not collecting any usage data or anything else while you are signed in. The issue with allowing your store content to still be available if you sign out of the app is that it could be open to abuse (i.e. credentials for an account which has purchased all content could be passed around for 1,000s of people to sign in, install and then immediately sign out of). Of course this concern isn’t directed at you guys, but something we need to think about But yes we are very interested in your feedback on all of this and are definitely listening.

As it stands we are planning to end the discount on 20th April (and this is also the day you will no longer be able to sign up for a 90 day trial). We may review that nearer the time depending on how things are, but that's our current plan.

Sorry only just seen this - hope you've sorted it out already, but if not you need to unlock with product key and use the key you would have got on email - that will unlock another 90 days for you.

It's $24.99 from us as well right? Think its well documented that Apple take 30% commission on sales through their App Store so helps us out to buy direct, but we don't really mind

Thanks Jennifer, much appreciated!

We’ll make sure it’s available through 20th April everywhere, which in reality will be running to midday ish UTC on 21st

Hi All, Unfortunately, we are hearing many stories from the creative community about how they are being severely impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We know we can’t solve a lot of these problems, but we do want to try to offer as much support as possible. That’s why we’re announcing three measures that we've just put in place. They are: A new 90-day free trial of the Mac and Windows versions of the whole Affinity suite A 50% discount for those who would rather buy and keep the apps on Mac, Windows and iPad A pledge to engage more than 100 freelance creatives for work, spending the equivalent of our annual commissioning budget in the next three months (more details of this will be announced next week). The introduction of the 90-day free trial and deeply discounted pricing is done in the hope that this will make life a little easier for people who rely on creative software to make a living, but may be stuck at home without their usual tools, or for students who might not have access to their Affinity apps on their personal devices. In addition, by increasing our spend on commissioning work from freelancers we can also put some extra money into a part of the industry which will be particularly affected. We plan to make the free trial and additional discount available until 20 April, but of course we will continue to review the situation as time goes on. We have put posts on Facebook and Twitter about what we are doing if it's something you would like to share. We're now all working from home In terms of the team here, we have all vacated our Nottingham offices and are now working from home. Naturally this is causing us some disruption, but we continue to type code and expect to carry on making good progress with our development efforts. Support is a bit trickier though. Firstly, we can’t accept inbound telephone calls right now, and there are also going to be challenges for our staff to work their normal full-time hours – especially with imminent school closures in the UK. We’re obviously going to do our very best but hope you will understand if we are not as fast to respond to email as usual. Of course, if a question you have is something which could be answered by our community, then we’d also greatly appreciate if you put that here on the forum rather than contact us directly. It would definitely help us out a lot. Frankly it’s hard to know what to say or do in this unprecedented situation. But more than anything else, we want to use this opportunity to wish good health to you and your loved ones at this incredibly difficult time. All the very best, Ash

Hi All, We're thrilled to announce that Affinity Publisher will be launched at Affinity Live on the 19th June - and it's also available to pre-order now with a 20% discount. We are going to live stream the event keynote at 6.15pm (BST) which will also include announcements on our future plans and perhaps a few surprises. For more info check out our spotlight article here. Would be great if you could join us... Thanks, Ash <EDIT> Here is a video of the event </EDIT>

Hi All - not sure if this has been said already, but we will be putting a slide in the Publisher Beta welcome screen (Help -> Welcome) which will offer the pre-order for the additional discount for beta testers. This should go live tomorrow late afternoon / evening. This will allow anyone using the beta to claim that discount in the event they haven't received the email, and will also allow you to claim twice (or an additional time if you've already used your email voucher) if you want to get both the Window and Mac version at the beta tester price. Note - there will be a pre-order offer slide appear in Photo and Designer tomorrow too, but it's only if you follow the link from the slide in the Publisher beta where you get the extra 10% Hope that helps with some of these questions. We're incredibly grateful for all the support you have given us during the beta and are really keen to make sure you all get the opportunity to get the extra discount, and figured this was the best way to make that happen. Thanks, Ash

It's all ok - plenty of apps do not have material difference between iOS and Mac anymore other than the rounded corners which we are obeying. Unlike some.

To offer some explanation on the icons. One of the completely unique things about Affinity is that we have our apps on iOS, Windows and Mac. More than that, they are exactly the same apps - same back end, same features and same file format. It’s important for us to be able to talk about the apps without always having a hard distinction between iPad and desktop and so it doesn't make sense to have completely different icons on those platforms (other than the rounded corners Apple give all icons on iOS). On top of that, we felt the current icons don't work as well when they are very small or on darker backgrounds as the silhouette gets lost, or indeed on Windows where the start menu and MS Store is a lot more set up for square icons. Hopefully that gives you some insight into our rationale, and if you're not keen on them you can forgive us! We knew it was something which could be a little controversial. Thanks, Ash p.s. we are making a few tweaks to the size on Mac - as has been said by a few on here they are perhaps a few pixels too big. Also we decided to not worry about having a beta indicator on these - the main reason we have had that before is to distinguish between the beta and retail version when you have both installed, but as the icons have changed on this round that isn't needed. We will have a beta indicator on them for any future beta versions once the 1.7 versions have shipped.