Illegible Preferences

[ronnyb]

The checked Checkboxes are not uncheckable.... is that supposed to be a Preference or Notification?

[carl123]

On all 3 desktop released apps I can change the options at will

On all 3 beta apps I cant

I suspect this "required feedback" is compulsory if you want to participate in the beta testing.

(Windows 8.1)

 

[walt.farrell]

That's always been my suspicion, too, Carl. They are forcing the upload of crash files for the beta versions, but we have a choice for the retail versions.

[fde101]

Curiously, I only see one of the checkboxes there, but that is how I was interpreting this also.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, carl123 said:

On all 3 desktop released apps I can change the options at will

FWIW, on Macs (at least those running High Sierra or earlier) those preference options do not exist in any of the 3 retail apps. Those options are set globally in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy tab > Analytics. But I don't know if those settings apply to the betas, which of course are available only directly from Affinity.

[A_B_C]

I fear I have to say I don’t like being forced to upload any stuff from my computer. Indeed I would like to have control over what I share. Not that I wouldn’t be against submitting crash reports (I would probably even tick the checkbox), but that’s a matter of principle. 

On 11/2/2019 at 6:52 AM, carl123 said:

I suspect this "required feedback" is compulsory if you want to participate in the beta testing.

Honestly, I would believe participating in the beta process is first of all a benefit for Serif. Nothing is more valuable to a software company than an lively beta testing community, isn’t it? Hence, I don’t fully understand why there should be something forced upon the user “in exchange” for the option to participate in beta testing. Does that make sense? 

[Jon P]

It is intentional that these options are disabled in beta builds, and we auto enable the sending of crash reports.

This will always be optional in release builds, but as part of the agreement to use the betas it is something we enable, it can be quite helpful to us.

[MikeW]

On 11/2/2019 at 4:19 PM, A_B_C said:

... I don’t fully understand why there should be something forced upon the user “in exchange” for the option to participate in beta testing...

For myself, the automatic submission is fine. I don't remember how large the dumps can get, but if they can get large and I had a slow internet connection, I would likely care more.

And besides. I use one particular software package (commercial release version) in order to support two clients where one has the option to not send usage and/or dump files: Unchecking the preference to not send those things disables the software. So with this wider perspective, Serif's decision is "kinder."

[A_B_C]

Thanks for the clarification. As I said, I am not against sharing crash dumps, but personally, I would prefer to have the option to decide myself. At the same time, one shouldn’t make this a bigger issue as it actually is. There are indeed companies that are much more curious about what users do on their machines. Not to speak of social media services and the like.