Slow startup (all Affinity apps)

[h_d]

4 hours ago, Delden said:

Can you confirm that users having bought these apps directly from Serif are not experiencing this

I bought Publisher from Serif and there is never any delay when I launch it. I bought Photo and Designer from the Apple App Store and there is sometimes (every day or two) a delay when launching them. 

 

4 hours ago, Delden said:

is it possible to transfer the licences

Apple issue those licences. You'd need to ask them.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, Delden said:

Example : working on Publisher, having to open Designer to create a diagram and Photo to adjust settings of an image creates a triple penalty in this scenario. On a 8 cores machine, 64 gigs of RAM it is not acceptable. Sure, once open everything is smooth, but it still remain an avoidable and annoying hiccup.

If you have all three, you usually do not have to "open Designer" or Photo to do those actions. Just stay in Publisher and switch to the Designer or Photo Personas.

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, Delden said:

If so, is it possible to transfer the licences, uninstall the versions installed from the AppStore and reinstall these apps directly from Serif ? Using that new log in thing (that precisely slows down the apps) offers authentication and license management, right ? 

No, it is not possible to transfer the licenses.

And no, the new Registration function does not provide license management for the applications. The 3 stores are entirely separate business entities that do not share any customer information.

FAQ:

 

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, Delden said:

No matter its usefulness or slowness acceptance, it still is a bug affecting all users.

Not true. It only affects Mac users running Big Sur & for (most of?) them only during the first time they launch the app after booting up their Macs.

So for example, I run Catalina & even after a fresh reboot of my iMac, the Affinity apps start up in just a few seconds. After that, until I reboot again, the launch time is typically <1 second -- the Dock icons don't even bounce more than once or twice.

[Delden]

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

Not true. It only affects Mac users running Big Sur & for (most of?) them only during the first time they launch the app after booting up their Macs.

So for example, I run Catalina & even after a fresh reboot of my iMac, the Affinity apps start up in just a few seconds. After that, until I reboot again, the launch time is typically <1 second -- the Dock icons don't even bounce more than once or twice.

Of course, I am only referring to Mac users.

Glad that it works well on Catalina (it was my case, too), but one cannot require the users to stay on an outdated operating system. Even if it still receive maintenance updates. It is clearly made to be replaced. Some Big Sur functionalities are useful to me (I preferred Catalina).

[Dave Tuck]

On 6/12/2021 at 10:11 PM, Dave Tuck said:

I updated the OS to 11.4 (Mac) the other day, I wonder if that's when the slow start-up times came back.  Just a theory but ...  If it slows down again I'll keep a careful note upgrades that precede a slow down.

No Mac updates and is now 27/6/21 and still starting up quickly.

[orion]

I have the same problem after I upgraded my macOS from Catalina to Big Sur.

The Affinity apps really take a long time to startup (each time after a restart of the machine). After closing and opening the app again, the Affinity apps start very quickly.
FYI: I'm working on an iMac Pro (8-core, RAM 32GB, Radeon Pro Vega 56 8GB) with macOS Big Sur 11.4, and the Affinity suite (Photo, Designer, Publisher) version 1.9.3.

With Catalina, I observed the long startup times only once after a fresh install of the apps.

[PeterSvancar]

Looks like the latest update big sur fixed the issue. Atleast for me.

thanks

[Delden]

1 hour ago, PeterSvancar said:

Looks like the latest update big sur fixed the issue. Atleast for me.

thanks

Hello,

No it didn't.

[PeterSvancar]

Thats strange, i did test and publisher too and the load time was almost instant even after computer restart. So will test again and create video if necessary 

[Patrick Connor]

2 hours ago, PeterSvancar said:

Looks like the latest update big sur fixed the issue. At least for me.

That is interesting, so you are using the RC 11.5 that came out a few days ago. Which Store did you purchase from ? Mac App Store or Affinity Store? 

[PeterSvancar]

I have purchased at app store and yesterday updated osx. Now iam in work, can post later double check results

[Michael_the_second]

Still 20 bounces at startup with all Serif Apps. MacOS 11.5 didn't solve that!.

[Old Bruce]

Just going to chime in and say that the Affinity products, both retail and betas, start quickly for me on OS 10.14.6. But I do notice that after a machine restart Apple's Safari web browser will take the better part of 30 seconds to start up the first time and a single second for subsequent starts.

[MEB]

Old Bruce,
Mojave isn't affected by this issue.

[Old Bruce]

But Safari is. Odd.

[MEB]

I was using it until quite recently and never had issues (Safari included). Not sure if some recent security update changed anything in this regards as I moved to Big Sur.

[Dan C]

I can confirm that I have installed the macOS 11.5 update - after installation the apps launched within 2-3 seconds, but then once I restarted the mac the apps took 20-30 seconds to launch, as before, so I'm assuming that there's no security check after installing the update, unlike when restarting and this is the behaviour being reported here in this thread.

[PeterSvancar]

this seems to be the correct statement. the app launched fast only after fresh update of osx. right after next restart, the bouncing is back

[DEMinSoCAL]

Unfortunately, 1.10 does not fix the slow launch.  23 bounces on the dock when starting.  I guess this will never be fixed.

[Dan C]

6 minutes ago, DEMinSoCAL said:

Unfortunately, 1.10 does not fix the slow launch

My apologies but this is to be expected, as the issue has not been marked as fixed internally & we'd certainly update this thread if we had more information.

7 minutes ago, DEMinSoCAL said:

I guess this will never be fixed.

As mentioned previously a number of times in this thread, this requires 'fixes' from potentially multiple sources, including both Apple and Affinity and therefore we do not currently expect any Affinity update only to change the current behaviour, without an update to macOS which specifically addresses this also.

This means the timescale for resolving this isn't controlled by Affinity, though we do understand how frustrating this issue can be, and as above we'll continue to update our users as and when new information is available.

[rudluc]

I hardly use Affinity Photo any more and only use Pixelmator Pro where possible. It starts with a blink of an eye.
It's a shame, but I can't be happy about the new update.

[Archangel]

On 2/24/2021 at 7:40 PM, MEB said:

Hi @Bikr,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. We are investigating these issues. Meanwhile, duplicate the Affinity Photo.app file, delete or the original app file to something else, then rename the duplicated app file (remove "copy" from its name) and launch the app. This seems to fix the slow start/bouncing until we find out what's causing the issue.

Has anyone looked at deleting the Prefetch file related to the App in the Windows Directory and then reloading the application to create a new prefetch file? Does that make any difference in Windows 10?

 

Or is this problem only Mac related.

[DEMinSoCAL]

2 hours ago, Michael S Harvey said:

Has anyone looked at deleting the Prefetch file related to the App in the Windows Directory and then reloading the application to create a new prefetch file? Does that make any difference in Windows 10?

 

Or is this problem only Mac related.

Only Mac related.

[MikeTO]

On 7/23/2021 at 8:27 AM, Old Bruce said:

But I do notice that after a machine restart Apple's Safari web browser will take the better part of 30 seconds to start up the first time and a single second for subsequent starts.

I don't have this problem with Safari on Big Sur. Strange.