Discussion on Affinity Suite for macOS 1.8.6 release

[Oval]

Great that the apps are already fully optimised for Apple silicon!  👍 👍 👍

[Royk]

I am very interested in the difference in performance. Will the ARM be just different vs the x86 or wil it be a leap to new things for programs like Designer, Photo, photoshop, illustrator, etc etc etc. ?

[Patrick Connor]

3 minutes ago, Royk said:

Will the ARM be just different vs the x86 or wil it be a leap to new things for programs like Designer, Photo, photoshop, illustrator, etc etc etc. ?

I do not understand the question, sorry. Our Affinity software will run much faster if you buy Arm based hardware, currently the M1 chip is being sold, and other Apple silicon ARM chips in the future. There is no speed improvement for intel chips here, just a new build with a few minor fixes and a new icon.

If that does not help, perhaps ask again in the questions forum.

[Royk]

1 minute ago, Patrick Connor said:

I do not understand the question, sorry. Our Affinity software will run much faster if you buy Arm based hardware, currently the M1 chip is being sold, and other Apple silicon ARM chips in the future. There is no speed improvement for intel chips here, just a new build with a few minor fixes and a new icon.

If that does not help, perhaps ask again in the questions forum.

No you are on point of my question. I am interested in what Apple is doing with ARM. It is different than x86. I just wonder how it will be different in performance. What is a bottleneck on the x86 instructionset for programs like Photo and Designer, and takes ARM benefits from?

 

[Patrick Connor]

2 minutes ago, Royk said:

I am interested in what Apple is doing with ARM. It is different than x86. I just wonder how it will be different in performance. What is a bottleneck on the x86 instructionset for programs like Photo and Designer, and takes ARM benefits from?

that is not a discussion for this thread, but Apple can https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/ The memory of CPU and GPU is shared in M1 making memory heavy GPU computations much quicker to pass back to the software. 

[Royk]

3 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

that is not a discussion for this thread, but Apple can https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/ The memory of CPU and GPU is shared in M1 making memory heavy GPU computations much quicker to pass back to the software. 

Why is this question not relevant? Affinity released an update optimized for the M1. So my question is why the Affinity Suite works beter or faster on the M1 than with x86. Just trying to learn. I take out of it that it is because the dealing the memory in a different way. Thanks

[walt.farrell]

25 minutes ago, Royk said:

Why is this question not relevant?

Patrick didn't say it's not relevant. He said it's not something for this thread. You can post your own topic in the Questions forum to have that discussion.

[Guest]

Just an FYI, but NONE of the new Big Sur/M1 Affinity apps (Designer, Photo, Publisher) will even launch on Catalina (10.15.7) in under two minutes on my 2020 13" MacBook Pro 32GB - no splash screen or other info. Once launch it's unusable, and like EVERY OTHER app that has updated to support Big Sur/M1 begins destabilizing my computer to the point where I need to restart (often several times/zap the PRAM).

The only thing that has changed on my computer is the apps that have updated to support Big Sur/M1. Ulysses, MindNode, Tot, Affinity Suite, Nova, Transmit. You experience may be different, just letting you know my experience.

 

[UPDATE]

It appears that it's not related to the app updates, but rather Apple's Gatekeeper servers. Disconnecting from the network will remedy this situation temporary.

There's some more information available via Panic's Twitter feed:

Edited November 12, 2020 by Guest
More information available.

[mdriftmeyer]

Is it expected that Designer, Photo and Publisher will balloon by 1GB because they include Silicon packaging in them? If so, can we get stripped out versions?

[ATP]

2 minutes ago, mdriftmeyer said:

Is it expected that Designer, Photo and Publisher will balloon by 1GB because they include Silicon packaging in them? If so, can we get stripped out versions?

The size increase is only 200MB.

[mdriftmeyer]

19 minutes ago, ATP said:

The size increase is only 200MB.

My Designer 1.8.4 is 1.71GB.

My Designer 1.8.6 is 2.78 GB

 

[ATP]

40 minutes ago, mdriftmeyer said:

My Designer 1.8.4 is 1.71GB.

My Designer 1.8.6 is 2.78 GB

 

That's interesting, I was thinking of the installer and didn't give it a thought the actual install might be bigger. This is hopefully an error and can be corrected in the future, seems very big for no reason.

[Patrick Connor]

Talking about 2 different numbers. The download size increases is 200MB to around 700MB. The Disk Space is 2.8 GB. There's a lot of near duplication in the 2 builds and good compression in the download file format.

[Richard Liu]

@Patrick Connor

Are there any new features or bug fixes in AFP 1.8.6 compared to the previous release for macOS?  I miss the usual list.

[Patrick Connor]

@Richard Liu

This release is essentially a rebuild if the 1.8.4 code with some code efficiency improvements, which recognises the new OS and with binaries for Apple silicon chips like the M1.

All bug fixing and new features are going into 1.9.0 which is already in beta. Consequently it was not easy to also do an overlapping customer beta of 1.8.6 (they could not coexist). It would not be prudent to add in lots of changes without any additional public scrutiny, so only safe behind the scenes changes were made this time.

tldr; There's nothing more to add to the release notes this time

[Puck]

Correct me if I'm wrong: For someone with a Mac with Intel CPU and Mac OS Mojave this update doesn't make sense, right?

Cheers, Puck

[Patrick Connor]

57 minutes ago, Puck said:

this update doesn't make sense, right?

There are only a few behind the scenes changes for you, correct. In your situation you could skip this update, but binary (smaller) updates tend to only work from the last release, so the next patch to 1.9.0 will be larger as a consequence.

[Puck]

9 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

There are only a few behind the scenes changes for you, correct. In your situation you could skip this update, but binary (smaller) updates tend to only work from the last release, so the next patch to 1.9.0 will be larger as a consequence.

I understand. Thank you very much for this information.

[Puck]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

There are only a few behind the scenes changes for you, correct. In your situation you could skip this update, but binary (smaller) updates tend to only work from the last release, so the next patch to 1.9.0 will be larger as a consequence.

 

1 hour ago, Puck said:

I understand. Thank you very much for this information.

Great! Loading and installing APhoto 1.8.6 from MAS failed twice! Now my version of 1.8.4 is unusable. Fortunately I have a backup. I am not amused, to be honest.

Cheers, Puck

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Puck said:

Great! Loading and installing APhoto 1.8.6 from MAS failed twice!

Updating etc. worked without problems here. - Bigger file size differences will be now due to BIG BINARY installer files, aka supporting now Big Sure and thus two different hardware CPUs (Intel x64, Apple M1/ARM chipset) in code.

Further it's generally always a good idea to be not among the early adopters when Apple officially releases new OS versions, since net traffic is known to be always pretty huge then on Apple's servers and services (MAS etc.), which affects their whole ecosystem bandwidth during that times.

See also:

 

[anita]

Please, is there a link to the older version? I was sortof not paying too much attention and Designer updated itself.. The new file is huge and definitely not an improvement on my computer. I really can't afford new hardware...

[Alfred]

16 minutes ago, anita said:

Please, is there a link to the older version? I was sortof not paying too much attention and Designer updated itself.. The new file is huge and definitely not an improvement on my computer. I really can't afford new hardware...

Please see the following post:

 

[v_kyr]

58 minutes ago, anita said:

...The new file is huge and definitely not an improvement on my computer. I really can't afford new hardware...

Well another approach --instead of installing an older single binary app version here-- would be to "lipo" an "universal" (multi-architecture) file to the only needed runtime CPU architecture!

• Instant weight loss: how to strip Universal Apps

Though the above sketched might not be the initial way inexperienced end users might be fearless willing to go. Thus some more easy to use and safe (via Drag'n'Drop handling etc.) third party or Apple app for such tasks would be fine to have for mere mortals. - In the past (when working for NeXT) we had such easy turnaround tools for striping FAT mach-O-format architecture binaries (NIHS aka m68k, IA-32 „i386“, PA-RISC and SPARC).

I'm pretty sure that someone will soon reinvent and offer such an enduser friendly to use tool for MacOS Universal binaries too, since it's by far nothing earthshaking to build one GUI based!

Quote

lipo

The lipo command creates or operates on "universal" (multi-architecture) files. It only ever produces one output file, and never alters the input file. The operations that lipo performs are:

• listing the architecture types in a universal file
• creating a single universal file from one or more input files
• thinning out a single universal file to one specified architecture type
• and extracting, replacing, and/or removing architectures types from the input file to create a single new universal output file

 

[SallijaneG]

I have the 3 Affinity programs (1.8.3) on Macbook Pro, Sierra 10.12.6, and have no immediate plans to upgrade my system or get a new computer.  I am was considering going to 1.8.6, checking here for system requirements, and am now concerned about the application- and file-size issues that I see in this discussion.  Can anyone tell me if I am missing a compelling reason for me to update the Affinity programs?

[jmwellborn]

On 11/12/2020 at 7:09 AM, Patrick Connor said:

All Readers

This thread is solely for commenting on this announcement.

Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the relevant Bugs on macOS section for Photo, Designer, & Publisher and any questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.

It was such a nice surprise to see Ash speaking on two separate occasions during the Apple online presentation this week!   Hooray, Affinity!