Is AFFINITY dead?

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

User @N.P.M. kindly forwarded me the License terms from the in-app Help, which are very different from the ones on the website.

I am probably just missing it but in the Mac version of VS I cannot find any licensing terms in-app. Instead, choosing "VectorStyler Help" from the Help menu takes me to the web-based version of the help at https://www.vectorstyler.com/documentation/introduction/

When I use that page's search feature for License, I get https://www.vectorstyler.com/documentation/introduction/registering/ where the License section says:

The following is a brief explanation of the VectorStyler license terms:

• The license can be used to register VectorStyler for your own personal or professional use on a limited (up to 6) number of computers.
• One license is for a single user only, regardless of the number of installations.
• For multiple person use, each computer requires a separate VectorStyler license.
• The same license is suitable for both the MacOS and Windows versions of VectorStyler.
• The license can be used to register new versions of VectorStyler.

 

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am probably just missing it but in the Mac version of VS I cannot find any licensing terms in-app. Instead, choosing "VectorStyler Help" from the Help menu takes me to the web-based version of the help at https://www.vectorstyler.com/documentation/introduction/

When I use that page's search feature for License, I get https://www.vectorstyler.com/documentation/introduction/registering/ where the License section says:

Thanks. That seems to match what I was sent (and may be where it came from).

[Boldlinedesign]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I don't feel I need to respond to everything. I just get tired of people who don't point out the downsides of another app, and pretend that it resolves all the problems.

User @N.P.M. kindly forwarded me the License terms from the in-app Help, which are very different from the ones on the website. Under them, I agree you're fine. But that's another issue with the product. The website should have the current and correct license terms, as that is something many users will want to know before deciding whether to purchase.

I know you are a generous member of the affinity forum with your time and help to others here and I'm honestly not trying to get into a spat with you. You frequently claimed that the main issue was vectorstyler costing twice as much as designer. While true in the literal sense as 55 dollars is almost half of 95 dollars, it's not a fair comparison given the massive difference in tools and features. I've pointed this out each time you bring up the price difference but you keep doing so.

If you look at my many comments on the affinity forum, I often share and acknowledge there are plenty of things that need improvement in Vectorstyler. I've spent the last couple of years on that forum contributing ideas and sharing bugs I've discovered. I'm not unaware of the issues still to be fixed. The UI needs simplifying, there are some annoying bugs still to deal with, offset path needs help when used on shapes with massive node counts. There are some Boolean improvements needed... I can go on.

Even with the flaws, it offers all the tools and features missing in designer and then some. I don't see why we have to pick a side and not use both

The overall mood here seems to hold any talk of so called competitor software as a threat to affinity. people bend over backward defending the many years long slow upgrade and maturation of designer while attacking another upstart that is maturing at rapid speed with a massive number of features. My entire point in consistently bringing up Vectorstyler is so people have solutions to the tools and abilities long lacking in designer. I was helped because someone brought it up to me two years ago and now it's my main vector program I use. 

 

 

[debraspicher]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I don't feel I need to respond to everything. I just get tired of people who don't point out the downsides of another app, and pretend that it resolves all the problems.

User @N.P.M. kindly forwarded me the License terms from the in-app Help, which are very different from the ones on the website. Under them, I agree you're fine. But that's another issue with the product. The website should have the current and correct license terms, as that is something many users will want to know before deciding whether to purchase.

Right? Many people point out there are pros and cons with the Affinity suites. I think this is fair. I'm personally not 100% content with any program I have ever used. I was certainly not happy with the solutions I had before Affinity, hence my move over because I was ready for something else. Aside from the obvious grifting that is going on there (not you, obvs), I think some people just can't fathom there are so many situations and circumstances, varying standards between people/micro-industries, varying needs, differing prioritities.. heck different hardware.. that can lead people to the solutions they use. Any one of those can cause someone to change their workflow. If there was a single program that accomplished all needs of an entire industry, there would literally be no reason for any alternatives. Alternatives exist because that's impossible.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, debraspicher said:

Many people point out there are pros and cons with the Affinity suites. I think this is fair. I'm personally not 100% content with any program I have ever used.

Same here and that applies for pretty much ALL software + tools I tend to use, be it graphics software, business oriented word processing + design tools, dev + programming tools (IDEs etc.) ... or whatever. There's basically no app which can do it all, or according to Murphy's Law, you actually just don't have access to the expensive app that could possibly do that right now.

For some apps I'm often missing features I would have an urgent need for, or certain of the functions are then usually there, but are so buggy and unusable that it is a nightmare to even try to use them. Or there would be a good workaround app/tool, but it's not available for the hardware & OS systems I would actually have to use ist for,  ... and so on.

Personally I generally tend to also use a bunch of workarounds, so when needed using other apps + tools in companion here. And in cases where I do find nothing which really meets my needs for certain urgent needed tasks, or if something is too time consuming and boring to use/make manually by hand, I then prefer to write my own tools for solving specific things & problems. Aka the lazy way, or so to say why manually fiddling around hours with something when some script/program can for sure do those boring recurring things in just milliseconds for me, well you know time is money ... 😉 .

[Boldlinedesign]

7 hours ago, debraspicher said:

Right? Many people point out there are pros and cons with the Affinity suites. I think this is fair. I'm personally not 100% content with any program I have ever used. I was certainly not happy with the solutions I had before Affinity, hence my move over because I was ready for something else. Aside from the obvious grifting that is going on there (not you, obvs), I think some people just can't fathom there are so many situations and circumstances, varying standards between people/micro-industries, varying needs, differing prioritities.. heck different hardware.. that can lead people to the solutions they use. Any one of those can cause someone to change their workflow. If there was a single program that accomplished all needs of an entire industry, there would literally be no reason for any alternatives. Alternatives exist because that's impossible.

More often the lack of common features needed for professional work in affinity and the years is taken to even potentially be on the verge of seeing them gets fiercely justified and defended here. If you point out a major missing feature, they tell you that not everyone needs that particular feature and that for some, designer does everything they need. We're told to not make new threads but instead add our thoughts to unresolved threads that are literally years old. Heck, we're on a thread questioning if affinity is dead or not lol. When people bring up other software options to plug the many affinity holes, they are scolded, derided, insulted and considered "grifters". They assume you've never admitted the other software has flaws even when you've spoken about it constantly. Some claim they understand the need for multiple software solutions because none are perfect, but you're not allowed to mention alternatives because that's somehow immoral. They go back and check your post history and mock you for talking frequently about another vector solution. They call you a joke but never explain what's so funny... Butt then turn around and pretend they are all for the very thing they just mocked. Crazy.

Why not celebrate  that there are options outside of adobe that we can support and that together can replace subscription software? Why hide behind silly arguments that an extra 45 dollars difference is a big deal, or "creative" attempts to claim another program's usage phone home method is a deal killer, or pretending to use the product and blast  it but then others find out later they never really tried it, etc. It all seems so petty really. 

Without vectorstyler I would have needed to buy adobe cloud because designer alone is not professional enough to get my work done and I've been waiting seven or more years for it to cover the basics. I've been more than patient with affinity and instead of blasting them all the time, I look for alternative solutions instead. 

[tzvi20]

when will the next update come for AF photo?

[AffinityMakesMeSad]

12 hours ago, tzvi20 said:

when will the next update come for AF photo?

The day Adobe Inc announce the “overtake” of Serif Labs - but, it will be called Affinity Photoshop lite Edition…

[Twolane]

This entire thread and the like will be redundant when V2 lands.

[dcr]

If Adobe had any marketing geniuses, they would call it the Affinity Sans Serif suite.

[AffinityMakesMeSad]

19 minutes ago, Twolane said:

This entire thread and the like will be redundant when V2 lands.

But, it’s 2024 then - a long long way from now…

[User_783649]

25 minutes ago, Twolane said:

This entire thread and the like will be redundant when V2 lands.

Or... it may be continued further so everyone here can predict company death and development stagnation until v3 lands 🙂

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

But, it’s 2024 then - a long long way from now…

So you are claiming you can predict the future? What are you using to do that, maybe a crystal ball or Ouija board, or perhaps you have a time machine & have visited 2024 & come back with that info.

[Guest]

Will this thread ever die?

I'm at the point where I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that if the world were to end tomorrow, this pointless thread would continue for all eternity.

[Patrick Connor]

2 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Will this thread ever die?

I think it will become redundant presently. (hopefully for positive reasons rather than a worldwide disaster)

[dcr]

I remember decades when Apple's demise was right around the corner . . .

[Old Bruce]

25 minutes ago, dcr said:

I remember decades when Apple's demise was right around the corner . . .

And there was a multitude of corners.

[thomaso]

39 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

And there was a multitude of corners.

More than just the NeXT corner?

[Old Bruce]

12 minutes ago, thomaso said:

More than just the NeXT corner?

As the kids are wont to say: Oh My Gawd. I had forgotten about that, even though I had the opportunity to play about with it for while. 'Twas still very much a work in progress at that time.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I had forgotten about that, even though I had the opportunity to play about with it for while. 'Twas still very much a work in progress at that time.

Nope it was pretty much ahead of it's time and I had the opportunity to work for that company in DE. - So without NeXT's software technologies no Apple MacOS nowadays and no WWW (greetings to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee), and several other software too (...since those days they were initially only able to develop certain cool software things only due to NeXTstep/OpenStep and black hardware) !!!

[dcr]

58 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Nope it was pretty much ahead of it's time and I had the opportunity to work for that company in DE. - So without NeXT's software technologies no Apple MacOS nowadays and no WWW (greetings to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee), and several other software too (...since those days they were initially only able to develop certain cool software things only due to NeXTstep/OpenStep and black hardware) !!!

To me, it looks like Mac OS X (at least the earlier incarnations) were more NeXT than Mac.  I seem to recall it said it was basically NeXT with the Mac Finder and other bits of the Mac user interface grafted on top.  Plus, when Apple "bought" NeXT, it was basically the NeXT people that took over, not just Steve Jobs.

I have a NeXTstation which I bought before the merger.  Black and white monitor.  And the operating system looks a lot like what became Mac OS X.

[dcr]

I just wish they had ported NeXT's Billiards game over to Mac OS X.  (Or, if they did, I never found it.)

[v_kyr]

53 minutes ago, dcr said:

I just wish they had ported NeXT's Billiards game over to Mac OS X.  (Or, if they did, I never found it.)

AFAIK the Billiards.app code never was published on Apple developer sites as an Obj-C example project.

• Billiards (1990) NeXT Computer (Youtube video)

• Previous NeXT computer hardware emulator

But BlastApp is available as source code sample project, which I sometimes play on MacOS ...

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, N.P.M. said:

Or rather shine a light on Walt

???

[affi.usr]

Hopes

 

I'm long time Affinity Suite user. I bought all related books to support company and all suite apps. My hope is that will be fair future with:

1) continoue practise of previos release policy

2) clear information to avoid disinformation about subscription model or changing payment model

3) precise at the future what part of futures in comparition to leading competitors will be supported and what will be abandoned

 

Currently with Capture One I have now problem with multiple files development. I own one version and I stuck with it as I not buy another camera and lens. Support is not better in future version. Missing future are available in current Photo release (at the time of writing 1.10). Version C23 features like smart adjustments are not deal changer. I stuck with version Capture One 20 and it is all I need. Maybe I will update at version 30, 40, but currently it is not make sense. I hope Affinity learn with it and not add whistle marketing feature but real impact changer like open scripting support in any language (as internal app version has JavaScript - yuk! I prefer python - suppport).

I have full version of CorelDraw 2017 and... I still don't use it. Designer is more comfortable.

I have full version of Quark. 2017. I still prefer Publisher for the job even with lacking options. It is more comfortable. 

It is perspective amatour which make from time to time DTP, simple graphics stuffs like posters, folders etc. I have time that I miss cheap offer for CS6 as student for lifetime version (20% full price for all apps inculded)... which currently I probably I will not able use on latest Windows version. If someone has luck can use probably free CS2 version of Adobe at Windows 10 Pro PC (but I am not sure that it is fully legal!), but not on latests Mac. So what is the point mention latest CC version? The important is for Affinity add the most importants funcionalities. Adobe CS6 Extendend have special medical tools to analysis x-ray and 3D options, but will we need it? I don't think so!

My statement is as long time customer observing products few years, I even earn money with it. Affinity if limit functionalities and abandom whistles from Adobe CC can be real winner. Few years show that Affinity have to limit development product list and features. I don't need full replecament of Adobe CC. I need sotware with the most usefull crucial one options. One the most missing parts is add infrastructure to create plugins for Affinity without limitation. Is not available something? You can code it or create commercial extension.

 

Currently Affinity lacking on very one important part. It is too small place to add functionalities yourself. Adding scripting language is only beginning. We will not begging, but we should demanding it. Why? I will add one example. Capture One vs Affinity Photo. Capture One is better with multiple RAW processing, speed colors adjustments and it can be devasting in comparision one to one. But when you are Pentax user it will be different. One of the best support Pentax lens supports. Popular Pentax 50mm - Adobe support 1, Affinity - around 7 versions included very old, not supported by anyone M series. Lightroom lost the game here!

My opionion is - future Affinity is add possibility to contribute users to app without invole Affinity Stuff to add functionalities. We need Adobe SDK alternative for suite. This way others can support Affinity Suite, earn money too, but support grow platform like Topaz support Photoshop users. I am little furious that anyone not asking about it!

 

If stuff can not create all features why you are not help yourself and add possibility others do it for us users?

 

Best wishes for all users and Affinity stuff crew.