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Startup performance 1.8.6 (and 1.9.0, 1.9.1)


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Yes, there are reports from Serif that they have identified it as an issue and are working on it. And as you say it also seems that it is affecting all versions and pretty much all three applications.

After three months or so it is beyond comprehension that this is still not fixed. It is annoying me several times a day, to the point that I’m completely fed up with it now. 
 

Serif, if you don’t have the resources, let us know and we’re happy to pay for upgrades. But the business model can never be to cater a product to the professional market at a cheap price but not deliver a professional service. Because that is what this is: service (or lack thereof). Bugs happen, but quality of service is how you deal with those. 

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I tried to follow this discussion, but I need to highlight that I also see at first start a very slow Photo, but this is not via the App Store but from Affinity directly. I'm running Big Sur 11.1 and of course the version of latest Affinity Photo. The weird thing is that when I installed it for the first time, it was fast at startup, but now it's for the first time slow. Second restart of Photo is fast, very fast to be honest. 

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Has Serif laid off all their staff? Are they going out of business? Two months since their last update and nothing on this issue?

hope they are not wasting time on new features. There's just too much that needs to be fixed, like these extended start-up bounces and keeping track of what brush you're using when you make minor changes like brush size.

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I too am having this issue which started with 1.8.6 I believe.

Latest macOS just updated to 11.2 (1st feb 2021) and latest Photos, Designer and Publisher from Mac app store.

It would be great if Affinity could be a little more open about their development process and tell what the issues is - or what they think it is.

Many of us have already said we don't want new features until the core apps are solid and fast again.

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We are close to releasing 1.9.0 and have found last week that 1.9.0 from the Mac App Store is again slow to start after a computer restart. We have again contacted Apple development team about our findings, including one potential work around....

We have found that if a COPY of the application is made then the first time that copy is run it takes a while (to verify/validate) and every subsequent time the copy runs quickly from then on even after a computer restart.

This seems to be proof that Serif is not to blame for this delay.

Hopefully all readers of this thread can try this simple trick and report back as to whether it works as well for you as it did for our QA team on Friday.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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4 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

We are close to releasing 1.9.0 and have found last week that 1.9.0 from the Mac App Store is again slow to start after a computer restart.

To clarify, has the QA team been able to reproduce the same issue for the non-MAS versions? It seems that many people in this thread, myself included, have had the same problem with the versions downloaded directly from the Serif website.

I will try the copy workaround, thanks for bringing that up!

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30 minutes ago, davidbailey00 said:

To clarify, has the QA team been able to reproduce the same issue for the non-MAS versions?

No we have not. I do not think that is our experience of this problem at all. Only the MAS build has this predictably for us and the new 1.9.0 build (that QA can download from the store by developer means) has this problem.

I will need to go back through the thread and try to see how many others are in your position. I do not think the Copy work around will make any difference for non MAS builds.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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27 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

No we have not. I do not think that is our experience of this problem at all. Only the MAS build has this predictably for us and the new 1.9.0 build (that QA can download from the store by developer means) has this problem.

I will need to go back through the thread and try to see how many others are in your position. I do not think the Copy work around will make any difference for non MAS builds.

Well count me in on slow starting of web downloaded versions.  After the MAS versions started slowing, I downloaded trials of the 3 apps from your website.  Those worked for a couple weeks then went slow.  I know they were the trial versions because those were the ones I had in my dock.

FWIW, the copy app kludge seems to work after doing preliminary trials.  Interesting, though, that other apps (like Pixelmator Pro, AppleSilicon/App Store version) do not exhibit slow starting at all. 

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I run non-MAS versions of all Serif app and and have the slow-start-up issue on all of them. It began some time round the end of last year.

I'll try making a copy of an app and restart...

[later...]

Okay, made a duplicate of Designer (CMD+D), launched it, quit it, restarted Mac and launched... took about 5 seconds to launch on MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3)... Big Sur 11.1

[repeating for Designer and Photo...]

Maybe interesting to note that the initial "Verifying..." dialog takes about 20 seconds for app on launch after copying... permissions?

[second restart...]

Seems that all three non-MAS apps are now launching as fast as expected (4-10 seconds each). Weird fix, but if this might be a fix. Will post back if slow launch returns.

[third restart...]

looks like the fix sticks... thanks @Patrick Connor

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5 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

No we have not. I do not think that is our experience of this problem at all. Only the MAS build has this predictably for us and the new 1.9.0 build (that QA can download from the store by developer means) has this problem.

I will need to go back through the thread and try to see how many others are in your position. I do not think the Copy work around will make any difference for non MAS builds.

Count me in. Am running non-MAS versions of publisher and photo.

Would be delighted if the bug is going to be fixed with v. 1.9.0. The work around can't be more than a temporary solution, don't you think so?

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48 minutes ago, Michael _123 said:

The work around can't be more than a temporary solution, don't you think so?

Well I would hope it's temporary obviously, this is quite a new workaround for us too.

If Apple tell us what to change or they roll out something in an update it would go away. Right now my QA team are just trying anything, and this "fix" surprised us, so I thought I would crowdsource some feedback for it.

To those with slow startup that is NOT helped by copying the application, can you please try starting in flight mode (no internet)

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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To clarify, I`m using the website version of all Affinity Apps (Photo, Designer, Publisher) and I`m also experiencing the slow startup time (20+ sec on first launch) with all 3 apps.

Will also try, whether the suggested workaround will change this behaviour.

Edit: just tried with a copy of Affinity Photo v 1.8.6 on macOS Big Sur 11.2 and Yes, the first launch after a reboot is now faster, 4+ sec ... will have a look whether this changes after several reboots ...

second Edit: also working for Designer & Publisher 

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12 minutes ago, j3rry said:

with AP 1.9.0.216 4 seconds.

AFAIK the beta builds have never had the problem. It was one of the reasons we felt Apple were doing something specific to the release builds. People often have more assets, effects or brushes installed with the release build than the beta, so you could expect some timing differences.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Thank you @Patrick Connor for this workaround. This worked for all three applications, both MAS (Photo and Designer) and non-MAS (Publisher). Very thankful for this.

It is good to hear something again from Serif after a long silence. But please don't try to make this an Apple problem (see my other post as example). No other unified apps (and there are many by now) have shown similar behaviour, and the problem occurs with both MAS and non-MAS versions. There could very well be something on Apple's side that attenuates the issue, but Serif owns this problem. And from your messages it looks like Serif still has no idea what the issue is, hasn't solved it in a new release, can't replicate the issue for non-MAS versions, and found a workaround purely by accident. As happy as I am with the workaround, it has not taken away my concerns on Serif's abilities to solve problems.  

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Just now, Willem Jan Drijfhout said:

This is a very, very, very concerning statement.....

It shouldn't be. We often have to work around the problems created by other software, it is just unusual for that software to be the OS itself. You should not assume that it means we are not trying to solve this.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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4 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

AFAIK the beta builds have never had the problem. It was one of the reasons we felt Apple were doing something specific to the release builds. People often have more assets, effects or brushes installed with the release build than the beta, so you could expect some timing differences.

My beta-version had the same issue (only tried Photo)

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I've attached a trace taken with the macOS Inspector app in which Affinity Designer 1.8.6 (web version) exhibits the launch delay problem, to help the devs diagnose. This was taken with the App Launch template, changing the time limit from 5 seconds to 30 seconds, and stopping early once the app finished launching. As you can see from the screenshot also attached, the delay occurs during the "System Interface Initialization" stage. Maybe this video on the Apple Developer site could also help: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/423/ 

image.png

Affinity_Designer_slow_launch.trace.zip

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Apple is working on their own designer and photo. It is easy - they will blend GIMP, Affinity and Photoshop and you guys out of business. They are actively blocking your app and not sure why you not having public outrage about it. The cant block Spotify because Spotify has better programmers than affinity. Try it and you will see that Spotify is faster that apple music on Mac nad on iPhone...

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12 minutes ago, Rafal Czapiewski said:

They are actively blocking your app

lol, no, this is not what "blocked" means in this context 😅 clearly there's a problem somewhere but Apple is not doing anything intentionally to cause this. I would advise you to learn a bit about software development before making up some conspiracy theory...

edit, since i saw someone react with the confused emoji: "blocked" in a programming context just means that a thread is waiting on something else to complete before it continues, like how you might wait to complete your shopping list before leaving to go to the shops

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Just now, davidbailey00 said:

lol, no, this is not what "blocked" means in this context 😅 clearly there's a problem somewhere but Apple is not doing anything intentionally to cause this. I would advise you to learn a bit about software development before making up some conspiracy theory...

I love good conspiracy theory and a bit of paranoia... but seriously I am just shock that after so many years simple program is opening for 1 minute on new Mac. BTW you remember how long was photoshop opening on Mac three to 4 years ago? It was even longer than affinity today. Just a bit of trivia

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