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How well does Affinity software suite work on OLD Macs? Can I take it with me upon Upgrading to a New Mac?


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Good news is that I bought the whole Affinity software suite for my Mac.  Bad news is that it is an old 2011 iMac that I have not yet upgraded.  I didn't really want to install it there until I did the upgrade or grabbed a new Mac, but when the M1 MacBook & Mac Mini came out I decided that the 2011 iMac might not be the answer I need anymore (it will never get to the latest additions of the OS now, unless I hack it). 

If I install the Affinity software suite on a Mac, can I move the app when I upgrade to a new Mac?  I ask because I see my computer serial number tied to my Windows laptop that I have it installed on, but maybe that's just the active authorized license?  

How well does Affinity run on an old (2011 or older) Macintosh platform, now?  

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1 hour ago, SymbioticDesign said:

If I install the Affinity software suite on a Mac, can I move the app when I upgrade to a new Mac?  I ask because I see my computer serial number tied to my Windows laptop that I have it installed on, but maybe that's just the active authorized license?  

Here is your major hurdle. Serif does not provide for using a single license for the different OS systems. If you purchased the Windows version, and now want to install it on a Mac, you will need to purchase the Mac versions. However the bright side, Serif is one of very few that allow us to install it on as many machines that we own/have control of of the same operating system.

Affinity Photo 2.4..; Affinity Designer 2.4..; Affinity Publisher 2.4..; Affinity2 Beta versions. Affinity Photo,Designer 1.10.6.1605 Win10 Home Version:21H2, Build: 19044.1766: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s);32GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 3070, 3-Internal HDD (1 Crucial MX5000 1TB, 1-Crucial MX5000 500GB, 1-WD 1 TB), 4 External HDD

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Here are the specs on witch MacOS version Affinty apps can run: https://affinity.serif.com/photo/full-feature-list/

And here are the terms of use: 

 

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X | INTEL Arc A770 LE 16 GB  | 32 GB DDR4 3200MHz | Windows 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.3296)
AMD A10-9600P | dGPU R7 M340 (2 GB)  | 8 GB DDR4 2133 MHz | Windows 10 Home 22H2 (1945.3803) 

Affinity Suite V 2.4 & Beta 2.(latest)
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All work great for me on an old 2009 Mac pro. Also great on a 2012 13" MacBook pro

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

Good news is that I bought the whole Affinity software suite for my Mac.

Yes, I understand that I have to purchase a license for each platform, I did.  When I bought it for Windows, I also bought the Mac version.  It was a steal.  It still is, but it was like getting all the Mac versions for free when it was 1/2 off, and I was able to buy them as I could afford them.  I have always wanted to land back on Mac, just hard when you are retired and can only work part-time.

So, that is cool that I can install it on multiple machines.  Awesome!  I'll have to install it on my iMac, though I have to upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 32 GB (I hope I bought the right kind, it came from China) first, and I hope to upgrade the 2.4 GHz i5 to a faster i7 (and grab an SSD for it), eventually.

I thought I would be buying an iPad Pro (for the past 2 years) and something always comes along and demands I spend my savings, so upgrades and purchases take a back seat.  

Thanks, Guys!

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4 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

So, that is cool that I can install it on multiple machines.  Awesome!  I'll have to install it on my iMac, though I have to upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 32 GB (I hope I bought the right kind, it came from China) first, and I hope to upgrade the 2.4 GHz i5 to a faster i7 (and grab an SSD for it), eventually.

Just a suggestion, but if it was me I would not do any upgrades on the old iMac except possibly adding RAM to it. The money spent on a processor & SSD upgrade would be better saved for the eventual purchase of a new Mac, but more importantly, even with these better performing upgrades, the old Mac's hardware can't take full advantage of them (the busses are too slow, the GPU not powerful enough, etc.) so you can't get as big a boost in the overall performance as you might think.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

except possibly adding RAM to it

I'm assuming the idea is to move the memory upgrade to the new m/c?  For a 2011 system you'd need DDR3, but a 2021 system would be supplied with DDR4 or 5.  They can't be mixed!

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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All the apps work fine on my 2011 iMac running High Sierra and as long as you don't do something too taxing Affinity will plod along quite happily. On my 2015 Affinity also runs well, the only time it lags is when using big brushes.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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21 hours ago, R C-R said:

Just a suggestion, but if it was me I would not do any upgrades on the old iMac except possibly adding RAM to it. The money spent on a processor & SSD upgrade would be better saved for the eventual purchase of a new Mac, but more importantly, even with these better performing upgrades, the old Mac's hardware can't take full advantage of them (the busses are too slow, the GPU not powerful enough, etc.) so you can't get as big a boost in the overall performance as you might think.

Yeah, the M1 chip has pretty much grabbed my attention for now.  I already have the RAM bought (if I got the right stuff according to whatever online RAM look-up tool I used for my iMac, and China sent the right stuff), and here, just gotta stop playing on this Windows machine long enough to do it (I have so much to do).  So, you have a definite good point.  But I am glad to have the RAM.

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Dang it. The memory I got from China appears to be bad.  Right RAM, it appears, but probably fake.  I guess I stop buying from China.  Now I have to contemplate whether I want to spend $160 and get it from OWC.  But Publisher doesn't actually run too well on my 2018 16 GB i5 Dell Inspiron 5000 Series Gaming laptop (rare but crazy freezes have me scared).  Ouch.  No new iPad Pro next month either, it looks like.  I'm going to go somewhere else and try to stop thinking about this for a while.

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9 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

Dang it. The memory I got from China appears to be bad.  Right RAM, it appears, but probably fake.

Are you adding to your existing memory or replacing it?  If it's the former, try removing the old cards and just using the new ones - it might be a compatibility problem.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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16 hours ago, SymbioticDesign said:

Dang it. The memory I got from China appears to be bad. 

What happened when you tried installing & using it? Would your Mac not start up? 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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With them all installed, it beeped, a low beep, regularly.  So I took 2 out and left 2 in.  It beeped the same.  So I took those 2 out and put the other 2 in, and it sounded like it was starting up.  So I picked it up and looked, but it was shutting down, I think.  I just saw the wait circular think icon.  I then turned it on again, watching, nothing ever happened.  I unplugged and replugged (the power cord).  It was like it was intending to start, but something was wrong right away, so it aborted.

I don't know.  I suppose I could try another couple combinations, but it's so depressing.

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On 9/7/2021 at 6:17 PM, R C-R said:

The money spent on a processor & SSD upgrade would be better saved for the eventual purchase of a new Mac, but more importantly, even with these better performing upgrades, the old Mac's hardware can't take full advantage of them (the busses are too slow, the GPU not powerful enough, etc.) so you can't get as big a boost in the overall performance as you might think.

That's what I thought at first as well.
But then I bought a high quality 2TB SanDisk SSD for my 2008 pre-Unibody MacBook Pro nonetheless.
What a performance boost!

Yep, it runs the latest Affinity suite just fine under El Capitan. (With the exception of the Serif account sync which requires Sierra. And which I consider a useless marketing gimmick anyway. :P)

On 9/9/2021 at 1:21 AM, SymbioticDesign said:

Dang it. The memory I got from China appears to be bad.

Lesson to learn here: Buying cheap components usually won't save you money. They are cheap for a reason, which also includes the de facto slavery and massive environmental issues in China.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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25 minutes ago, loukash said:

That's what I thought at first as well.
But then I bought a high quality 2TB SanDisk SSD for my 2008 pre-Unibody MacBook Pro nonetheless.
What a performance boost!

I had an old 2007 iMac which was sitting around for years, still usable but pretty slow, so before passing it on to my daughter, I fitted a Crucial 500gb ssd and it transformed the mac and seemed to be a much better performance upgrade than maxing out the ram (back in 2010) which was a whopping 4gb - still runs affinity but slows down when you have thousands of elements on a page which is down to the ram limitation - but still, If my other macs all blew ip or where thieved - I could still hook up a backup drive and use it for jobs, I'd probably be tearing my hair out at some point (4gb) but still workable

 

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

maxing out the ram (back in 2010) which was a whopping 4gb

Yeah, like my 2008 MBP.

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

but still, If my other macs all blew ip or where thieved - I could still hook up a backup drive and use it for jobs, I'd probably be tearing my hair out at some point (4gb) but still workable

This MBP is still my travel machine – while the much more powerful and maxed-out MBP 2012 (pre-retina, matte display) usually sits at home. Just last weekend I was using the 2008 MBP for mobile multitrack recording with Logic Pro X via my multiple "obsolete" FireWire audio interfaces, one of them being whopping 18 years old. Works like a charm. :)

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

slows down when you have thousands of elements on a page which is down to the ram limitation

Yes, there comes a moment when you hit a brickwall…
But having started DTP with Macs like… SE/30, IIsi, PowerBook 140, LC475, and the like, I'm still used to be patient every now and then. :D

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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2 minutes ago, loukash said:

Yeah, like my 2008 MBP.

Yeah have one of those, it was my main work Mac from 2010 to 2016.  it's the first gen 13" Ai which just has MacBook at the bottom of the screen, great machine with the flip door - I'd still be using it today if my son hadn't have dropped it down the stairs and broke the screen and hinge - I removed the screen, and now have it as a headless mac - still works great with el capitan plugged into a monitor.

Also there was a late firmware upgrade to those 2008 MacBooks that accidentally gave you the ability to upgrade to 8gb of ram (unofficially apple supported) which I did years ago expecting it not to work (along with a Crucial ssd) but it worked great, and later, after the screen accident, I bought a second hand 2010 15" MBP that used the same ram modules so just swapped them around with the 4gb that came in the 2010 another great fully functional mac that I could use to work on today

once the boot rom is upgraded via MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.4 to Boot ROM Version: MB51.007D.B03 it should support 2 x 4gb = 8gb.

Heres a link to the article: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/9102-secret-firmware-lets-late-08-macbooks-use-8gb

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

That's the next model, obviously. Mine is the 15" MacBookPro4,1.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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5 hours ago, loukash said:

2008 pre-Unibody MacBook Pro

AAAAAAhhhhhh just read "pre" --- oh well -- I'd still buy one second hand now if it was in good condition, my son is now twelve and knows to leave my stuff alone😠

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, loukash said:

That's what I thought at first as well.
But then I bought a high quality 2TB SanDisk SSD for my 2008 pre-Unibody MacBook Pro nonetheless.
What a performance boost!

I'm not saying there would not be a substantial performance boost, just that the old Mac can never match the performance of an SSD in a newer one because the old Mac's slower busses & the internal port the SSD attaches to will limit how fast data can be moved into & out of it. That becomes particularly important when there is not enough RAM to hold everything at once & the OS begins paging data in & out of VM.

So I think it would be better to save the money spent on the SSD so it could be applied to the purchase of a new Mac.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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On 9/10/2021 at 4:27 PM, R C-R said:

old Mac can never match the performance of an SSD in a newer one

I think most users are probably aware of that, but in my experience, a standard sata SSD still offers a huge all around speed improvement over using an old 3.5" HDD and should give an old mac a new lease of life, although, I do lust after owning a M1 mac mini at some point, I'd still need an old mac hanging around to open Acrobat pro + any old CS5-6 work and to print CMYK proofs (as Affinity isn't currently upto the job and only supports RGB)  

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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28 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

but in my experience, a standard sata SSD still offers a huge all around speed improvement over using an old 3.5" HDD and should give an old mac a new lease of life...

Sure, at least until the old Mac develops some hardware problem that can't be fixed economically. After all, even Macs do not last forever.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

even Macs do not last forever

My LC475 just needs a fresh buffer battery every few years. :D

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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