Is AFFINITY dead?

[Pšenda]

10 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Mainly Xara Designer Pro, CorelDraw, and Illustrator. 

You're not using VectorStyler?!? In no time, a couple of paid promoters will pounce on you and start forcing it on you 🙂

[MikeW]

8 hours ago, NNN said:

A long time ago XDP was cumbersome with CMYK files. Is there anything new in that field? ...

CMYK has always worked fine if one understood how it works and its limitations. I believe there will be a rudimentary document CMYK setup--similar to Affinity applications--whenever the version sold via Magix catches up with Xara's Plus subscription version.

8 hours ago, NNN said:

I, also, thought you will mention Vector Styler.

8 hours ago, Pšenda said:

You're not using VectorStyler?!? In no time, a couple of paid promoters will pounce on you and start forcing it on you 🙂

Hah hah!

I have VectorStyler. And Draw from LibreOffice. And MS Expression Design. And...but the question I was asked was a rather limited one.

While in the past I have used MS Expression Design (and the original Creature House version), I don't use them for work either anymore or at anytime in the past. I purchased VS as much as a hedge for the future as for any other reason. Now my future has changed, or rather, is changing, and I am uncertain whether I'll be following the white rabbit down the application black holes.

I'll likely keep a few applications up to date as I'll likely do layout work for a few companies I enjoy working with until I die. And I may look towards a non-profit or two my skills would benefit. Maybe. The three companies I do work for now only have a few jobs a year each and I am beginning to enjoy actually sleeping more.

[Boldlinedesign]

12 hours ago, Pšenda said:

You're not using VectorStyler?!? In no time, a couple of paid promoters will pounce on you and start forcing it on you 🙂

hey, no one's forcing you to use a more powerful  program with advanced features that gets rapid updates and improvement and bug fixes consistently. 😏

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Boldlinedesign said:

hey, no one's forcing you to use a more powerful  program with advanced features that gets rapid updates and improvement and bug fixes consistently. 😏

And costs twice as much as Affinity Designer (last time I checked), and where the purchase fee covers only 1 year of maintenance.

[dcr]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And costs twice as much as Affinity Designer (last time I checked), and where the purchase fee covers only 1 year of maintenance.

Where did you see that?  On their purchase page, it says "The license includes free updates for new releases, until version 2."

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, dcr said:

Where did you see that?  On their purchase page, it says "The license includes free updates for new releases, until version 2."

Thanks. They must have changed it then. Of course, they may hit version two quicker than Serif has, so that may be next year

 

 

[dcr]

28 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. They must have changed it then. Of course, they may hit version two quicker than Serif has, so that may be next year

As far as I can remember, they had that license note up since coming out of beta.

Regardless, depending upon what Designer v2 is like, maybe I won't even need VS v2. 

[walt.farrell]

45 minutes ago, dcr said:

As far as I can remember, they had that license note up since coming out of beta.

I definitely remember it saying 1 year when I purchased it.

[ashf]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I definitely remember it saying 1 year when I purchased it.

Yes, you are right.
Apparently they changed the policy to offer free updates till they release v2.
 

[Andy05]

2 minutes ago, ashf said:

Yes, you are right.
Apparently they changed the policy to offer free updates till they release v2.
 

Probably they think they'll be able to release V2 within less than a year. So people would uproar, if they paid for "1 year of upgrades" and neither getting V2 nor any updates for V1 after V2 rolled out, in case if it's less than a year since they purchased a license.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

And costs twice as much as Affinity Designer (last time I checked), and where the purchase fee covers only 1 year of maintenance.

Interesting that he regularly "forgets" to mention it 🙂

[ashf]

1 minute ago, Andy05 said:

Probably they think they'll be able to release V2 within less than a year. So people would uproar, if they paid for "1 year of upgrades" and neither getting V2 nor any updates for V1 after V2 rolled out, in case if it's less than a year since they purchased a license.

Sounds familiar - someone said they will offer free updates for at least 2 years when they released a new product 8 years ago.
Now it's 2022 and I still get free updates... lol

[Andy05]

4 minutes ago, ashf said:

Sounds familiar - someone said they will offer free updates for at least 2 years when they released a new product 8 years ago.
Now it's 2022 and I still get free updates... lol

Uhm. Seems like you missed the point completely. Affinity never gave a deadline (a date, or a period of time) with their license. AFAIK it has always been "for all V1.xx versions".

So, no, doesn't sound familiar. It's the complete opposite actually.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

no one's forcing you

Yes, no one is forcing me - just like the constant and annoying ads for yogurts and baby diapers on TV, which I will never buy anyway, even though I would definitely be dry all night.

I just find it unfair and unethical to use a competitor's forum to promote your product.

[dcr]

43 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I definitely remember it saying 1 year when I purchased it.

Maybe you purchased before I did or my memory isn't what it used to be or both.

 

18 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Yes, no one is forcing me - just like the constant and annoying ads for yogurts and baby diapers on TV, which I will never buy anyway, even though I would definitely be dry all night.

I just find it unfair and unethical to use a competitor's forum to promote your product.

Is it VS's owner promoting it or just users?  I only learned of VS because of users in this forum and I appreciate it because VS currently has features that Designer lacks.  I am hopeful that Designer v2 adds some or all of the features that I need that Illustrator CS3 had and VS has.  If not, I'll continue using both as needed.

Of course, one feature VS has that appears doubtful Designer will ever have is the ability to open .AI files (not just the PDF stream). 

[Boldlinedesign]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And costs twice as much as Affinity Designer (last time I checked), and where the purchase fee covers only 1 year of maintenance.

You've countered with this point several times over the last year and you might be right if  affinity designer and vectorstyler were equal in ability and features. The thing is, Vectorstyler offers a thousand more features and tools than designer. So for just twice the price, you get over thousand more tools and features with vectorstyler. That's a steal! The real question we should ask is, why does affinity designer cost so much given its lack of features?

 

[Boldlinedesign]

3 hours ago, Pšenda said:

I just find it unfair and unethical to use a competitor's forum to promote your product.

I would agree with you on this if I was discouraging the purchase of affinity and my motive was not to help fellow affinity designer users. The truth is, No one is suggesting or pushing affinity users to give up on designer. I actually own every affinity product on every possible platform and I'll purchase 2.0 happily when it arrives. There's a place in my professional design flow for affinity and I support programs without a subscription.

A couple years ago I was an active member on this very affinity forum and was hoping to use affinity for all my professional vector design needs. As the years went by without affinity adding common tools and features, along with my copy of adobe cs6 getting long in the tooth, I was anxious to find a solution that did not involve paying for the creative cloud. Others on the forum mentioned vectorstyler as a program that offers all the tools affinity was lackig and then some! 
I'm forever grateful for that suggestion as Vectorstyler has become a major part of my design workflow. I don't know if I would have found that solution without people on this forum sharing it here.

Serif has decided to take the path they have, for better and for worse. I can see how they've spent considerable time making sure all three programs work cohesively. I'm sure the last big update to 1.11 was all about the future by cleaning up code to make things more efficient. There are many great aspects to affinity that I love. All that said, they've not focused as much on adding new features that many other competing programs have standard. It's been years of waiting for these features..

My only goal in sharing about vectorstyler is to help other affinity users struggling with impatience and frustration who want to be free of adobe and find affinity designer lacking features they need. 
I've always encouraged everyone to support both affinity and vectorstyler as they are not the same thing. 

I don't find any of that unethical in the slightest. Also, for the record, I'm also not the creator or developer of Vectorstyler, nor do I get paid to share the good news of vectorstyler with others. 
 

[Boldlinedesign]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Interesting that he regularly "forgets" to mention it 🙂

I've "forgotten" to mention the cost of vectorstyler because it's not a big cost at all. I'd pay several hundred for vectorstyler easily. $100 is not much money at all really. If anyone is so concerned about paying an extra 45 dollars,  enough to dismiss vectorstyler completely, they have bigger issues to deal with. 

Add in the fact that Vectorstyler offers thousands more features and tools than affinity and the cost difference is only 45 dollars is an amazing steal. 

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Add in the fact that Vectorstyler offers thousands more features and tools...

VectorStyler does have many more vector-oriented features than AD, but it is not thousands more, & there are features that AD has that VS lacks. That's why some users here have suggested getting both.

[postmadesign]

4 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

I've "forgotten" to mention the cost of vectorstyler because it's not a big cost at all. I'd pay several hundred for vectorstyler easily. $100 is not much money at all really. If anyone is so concerned about paying an extra 45 dollars,  enough to dismiss vectorstyler completely, they have bigger issues to deal with. 

Add in the fact that Vectorstyler offers thousands more features and tools than affinity and the cost difference is only 45 dollars is an amazing steal. 

I agree that VS offers a lot of hardcore vector features that I would love to see in Affinity. I have a license and use it, but only sporadically, which is mostly down to it being rather buggy and unstable for me (this could have to do with my older Mac too). Even if I like the feature richness of VS, it still has quite some way to go to become as nice to use as Affinity. The UI in VS is really messy and hard to understand, with a lot of options for everything. I have been working with these kinds of programs for over 20 yrs now, so I am hardly a novice, but the UI of VS must be one of the most convoluted and complicated to navigate. For VS to really become a serious workhorse for me, it really needs to work on this, right now I will only use a specific feature I need and then jump back to Affinity...

Affinity and VS are both at one extreme of the spectrum: feature packed but hard to use for VS, basic but very intuitive and fast for Affinity.

[Petar Petrenko]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And costs twice as much as Affinity Designer (last time I checked), and where the purchase fee covers only 1 year of maintenance.

No, you are wrong. It is even cheaper than Designer because for $100 you get 2 licences -- for Windows and Mac.

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, NNN said:

No, you are wrong. It is even cheaper than Designer because for $100 you get 2 licences -- for Windows and Mac.

That's great for the people who use both OS, but you can't really say that makes it cheaper per se; most people tend to use one or the other!

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, NNN said:

No, you are wrong. It is even cheaper than Designer because for $100 you get 2 licences -- for Windows and Mac.

My only PCs are Windows, and I will probably never have a Mac, so it's 2x as expensive for me.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, postmadesign said:

The UI in VS is really messy and hard to understand, with a lot of options for everything.

That is the main reason I use it very rarely.

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

7 hours ago, NNN said:

No, you are wrong. It is even cheaper than Designer because for $100 you get 2 licences -- for Windows and Mac.

My only PCs are Windows, and I will probably never have a Mac, so it's 2x as expensive for me.

"Buy 1 + get 1 free" 😇

From another point of view, Affinity is many times cheaper because it does not limit a licence to 1 computer  – as VS apparently does:

4.3. The license grants You the right to use the Software on one or more computers depending on the type of your purchase. The number of Seats purchased determines the maximum number of simultaneous installations You are allowed to make of the Software.