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I was watching a couple videos on the Affinity Vimeo account because I am a novice (I don't know exactly how to grade myself in design / artistic prowess) of graphic design and the such. so then I came across the IPad Affinity Designer Teaser. I instantly loved it, my eyes lit up with love, and then I thought of an app that lets you mirror your mac screen and thought that would be a beautiful mix if I could double click an embedded document and make it show up on my iPad screen through the iPad app (affinity designer or whatever the name would be as an app) and then edit the embedded document from there while it is also showing up on my mac as i edit it ! it would make embedded documents so much easier to control on this 13 inch macbook pro screen. just a little food for thought when and if the app of iPad comes. i started out graphic illustration and design on an iPad mini with procreate, adobe apps, and idraw. this would be beautiful to see the affinity app come to life :D

I have seen this topic come up a lot on these forums and in social media and I was just curious what kind of workflow people are using that would make working on multiple platforms beneficial. I first started using graphic apps like PageMaker, Freehand, and Photoshop in 1995 when the difference between Mac and PC probably hit it’s lowest point ever with the introduction of Windows 95. At the time it would have not been logical to develop for only one of those platforms given how little difference there was between the two of them. Being cross platform was helpful to me at the time since our graphics department at school was all Macs and the computers at my house were always PCs. Today my set up is nothing like it was in 1995. Nearly all my workflow (outside of a few Adobe apps) are all Mac based. This has to do with the fact that programs that focus on platform specific features, I feel, generally end up being better then their cross platform competitors. Here is a quick scan through my application folder: the Omnigroup apps, Transmit, Sketch, iDraw, Bento, iBooks, iBook Author, Billings, Pixelmator, Automator, HoudahSpot, Tembo, iWork, iLife, etc. If someone were to give me a PC to work on I don’t know what I would do since 80% of my workflow is not available on Windows. Adobe, on the other hand, appears to be attempting to be about as cross platform as possible. Just a couple of days ago I read an article that said they will be supporting Chrome OS in addition to Mac, Windows, iOS, (eventually) Android, and no doubt others. If you feel that being cross platform is “the right way to do things” then it seems like your ideal set up is already available today. Yes, Adobe costs more but if they are paying all their developers to support all these platforms then it needs to cost more. Since I don’t really use other platforms (meaning non Apple platforms) I don’t see why I need to have to pay for my software to be developed on those platforms any more. Personally I don’t see the value in being cross platform at all these days. From my point of view it is a dated concept that once made sense but a sea change has occurred over the decades since then. I have been waiting for 6 or 7 years for someone to take full advantage of features on the Mac with pro apps and that is finally starting to happen over the last couple of years. A windows port (or Linux, Android, etc) would force the developers to strip out most of the greatness that makes Affinity Designer Affinity Designer. Their product line without the foundation that it is built on would end up being a totally different product, one that is crippled. This then begs the question why don’t they just make a product that is Windows only? This is exactly what Serif is already doing. If any other platform makes logical sense to port Affinity to I think it would be iOS. Since Mac and iOS share so much of the same code base it seems most of the work would be in creating an interface for a touch screen which would seem manageable to me (ok, I’m not a developer so I probably shouldn’t say that with absolute certainty.) Also when you consider that as Affinity focuses on developing for the Mac iOS will at the same time continue to become more mature. Maybe all the Mac features are currently not available in iOS 8 but what about when it reaches iOS 10 or 11? I don’t mean for this post to sound pro-apple and anti-windows. I am just stating that for this product line it makes more sense for it to be single platform. Even if Microsoft succeeds in remedying the problem that is Windows 8 and Windows 10 comes out and it is a wonderful release I still don’t think that gives justification to support it’s development necessarily. Windows has a different foundation so it makes more sense for someone to develop a product that tries to take full advantage of the technologies that it provides from scratch. Another issue to deal with is that MS is so hit and miss regarding their OS releases. If Windows 10 is a success but Windows 11 flops (like Vista and WIndows 8) that is going to make developing for this platform difficult. Apple has generally had a proven track record with OS releases so Serif is basing their product line on a platform that will continue to improve and not get worse. Again if you have rational for what a cross platform solution would offer that an Apple based platform does not I would like to know what the rational is. We have seen a lot of companies become very successful by staying limited in focus so the argument for adoption of broader platform support would have to go up against a long list of arguments against it.

Will there be Mac versions of Webplus (and the whole existing suite of applications on Windows) in the future? I'm excited this company is finally expanding to one of my most loved platforms, and look forward to perhaps some Linux (possibility?) and iPad applications too :lol: