Is AFFINITY dead?

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, debraspicher said:

It's not there yet for the nit pickiest of people.

Publisher is not there for those who need long tables, cross-references, footnotes, or have to work on long and articulated books having to be split into smaller units. And for everyone having to deal with any non-Roman language. In other words, for anyone making non-narrative books and technical documentation, or dealing with non-Western markets.

Paolo

 

[dcr]

IMHO, if Serif can get the features people want/need in either a future 1.x release or a 2.x release, I think they have a tremendous opportunity.  I looked into a number of Adobe alternatives and, for InDesign, I hedged my bets with Affinity Publisher, QuarkXPress and Scribus.  QuarkXPress has really dropped the ball and now with their call-home-every-five-days nonsense to check your license, it's a PITA.  Scribus seems almost MIA.  Granted, it's open source and it looks like the team may be volunteers, but even development releases seem slow.  Even lacking some needed features, Affinity Publisher seems like the best alternative to InDesign right now.  I hope Serif is able to take advantage of that.

[AffinityMakesMeSmile]

On 10/3/2022 at 11:05 AM, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Yet another week passed by…

And, still no sign of Affinity Publisher for iPad…

People like me really really wants Publisher now, not next summer…

Ha!

yet another week has passed with nooooooo sign, not a micro f***in’ small sign, that Affinity Publisher for iPad will ever coming to iPad…

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

yet another week has passed with nooooooo sign, not a micro f***in’ small sign, that Affinity Publisher for iPad will ever coming to iPad…

No sign that you can see, but that does not mean it will never come to iPad, or for that matter say anything one way or another about when it might come or what features it might support. 😉

[Andy05]

22 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Ha!

yet another week has passed [...]

I'd like to thank you for your weekly reminder. As I can use every second one as a reminder for myself to move the garbage bins out as you post exactly on the day it's due.

(BTW: That's not even a joke. A convenient coincidence...)

[Old Bruce]

28 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Ha!

yet another week has passed with nooooooo sign, not a micro f***in’ small sign, that Affinity Publisher for iPad will ever coming to iPad…

 

[toyartuk]

Wow....having watched graphics software develop over the last 35 years from many different companies, I can honestly say in my opinion some of your expectations are incredible when reading through the responses to this post.

Expecting instant change to any succesful mass market piece of software is unrealistic. Unless of course you want to go back to the days of constant updates and weekly patches and fixes - no fun I can assure you.

Of course the Affinity suite is here for the long run, the way SERIF treat their customer base is indicative of their future success. I would say Adobe needs to learn from people like the SERIF team, but to be honest I lost interest in Adobe when their pitch moved to a more sales different focus around 5 years ago and don't really care one way or the other if they don't.

Get behind the Affinity team, don't give them constant grief about your particular problems (causing further delays) - and MAYBE just maybe we might all get the solution we have been waiting for.

 

[R C-R]

35 minutes ago, BAKAI said:

And Serif Affinity (not everyone) should also learn from Serif Plus team.

Just curious about what you think they could learn from those legacy, Windows-only apps built on an entirely different code base from the Affinity ones that are designed to support 3 different operating systems...

[R C-R]

Just now, BAKAI said:

How to treat/talk decently their customer/client/user.

What's wrong with how they do that now? Most Affinity users, myself included, seem to think the Affinity customer support is excellent, much better than from some of the competition like Adobe.

[R C-R]

@BAKAI, I am confused by your last post & the "very actively" quote. Are you saying Serif does not actively support its non-western customer base?

[debraspicher]

How would they know who is Western or not? Language barrier?

[Arte]

16 hours ago, dcr said:

IMHO, if Serif can get the features people want/need in either a future 1.x release or a 2.x release, I think they have a tremendous opportunity.  I looked into a number of Adobe alternatives and, for InDesign, I hedged my bets with Affinity Publisher, QuarkXPress and Scribus.  QuarkXPress has really dropped the ball and now with their call-home-every-five-days nonsense to check your license, it's a PITA.  Scribus seems almost MIA.  Granted, it's open source and it looks like the team may be volunteers, but even development releases seem slow.  Even lacking some needed features, Affinity Publisher seems like the best alternative to InDesign right now.  I hope Serif is able to take advantage of that.

There is also Viva Designer that is aiming at InDesign users though it does not have graphics design and photo editing siblings like Publisher, so the Affinity team definitely is my preferred choice especially if those few missing things (at least few to me) are added in V2. The Affinity trio at full price  also costs just a little more than the one-purpose personal non-commercial license of Viva which makes Affinity more cost effective.

Hopefully V2 will be released in the next few weeks, this "Is Affinity dead?" thread is starting to feel like a zombie walking around in circles chasing itself for lunch. 😁

[ashf]

I think the problem is that there aren't many non-Western language speaker in Serif and it's difficult to understand the problem in those language environment for them.

[Petar Petrenko]

5 minutes ago, Arte said:

There is also Viva Designer

They are very long on v.10. Maybe they are dead not Affinity?

[debraspicher]

14 minutes ago, BAKAI said:

Ha Ha Ha.....

You & R-C-R  from USA, I am from INDIA....... Alfred from Scotland.......

Not everyone puts their personal information on a public forum

[MikeW]

38 minutes ago, Arte said:

There is also Viva Designer that is aiming at InDesign users though it does not have graphics design and photo editing siblings like Publisher, so the Affinity team definitely is my preferred choice especially if those few missing things (at least few to me) are added in V2. The Affinity trio at full price  also costs just a little more than the one-purpose personal non-commercial license of Viva ...

VivaDesigner has been around, under a different name, nearly a decade longer than InDesign.

There is a decent cross-grade option for the commercial version. As well, upgrades run about $75 every two years or so. The cost of ownership is price effective after an upgrade or two.

I've long used Photoline as an image editor, for my needs its capabilities far exceed APhoto. 

Vector design can be done in it too, though I prefer any of the other 3 vector design applications I use daily. 

[v_kyr]

53 minutes ago, MikeW said:

VivaDesigner has been around ...

• VivaDesigner Wikipedia  - (Wikipedia translated from DE -> EN)

[MikeW]

50 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

• VivaDesigner Wikipedia  - (Wikipedia translated from DE -> EN)

Yes, not a complete history but good enough. FWIW, it also opens ..indd and .indt files too.

Being on a self-imposed semi-retirement, I only have a single client I do work for that uses it. In the past, only one client I used it for was US-based. The others were in Europe.

It definitely is different to use. With only a single client, I need to actually think about how to do certain things in it. 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, BAKAI said:

Once on a discussion on "Frame Text Tool" someone ask Serif why they don't add Frame Text tool on Designer.

There is a Frame Text Tool in Designer. By default, it is paired with the Artistic Text Tool but you can access the Frame Text Tool by long-clicking on the Artistic Test Tool, clicking on the small disclosure triangle in the Artistic Test Tool, or customize the Tools panel so each of the two has its own position.

2 hours ago, BAKAI said:

P.S. I always block "Windows Designer-Photo Lead", "Affinity Photo Lead" & "Top Cat".

I do not know who the first two are. Do you know what the name above the the avatar in their replies shows? But if they are support staff & you block them then of course you will not see any of their posts.

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But if they are support staff & you block them then of course you will not see any of their posts.

Last time I checked, the Staff could not be Ignored on the forum.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Last time I checked, the Staff could not be Ignored on the forum.

So then if you are right about that (& I have no reason to believe you are not) then it would seem that @BAKAI is mistaking comments made by other users for those made by staff members.

@BAKAI, if there is any doubt about if someone is a staff member, you can tell from the badge on the top right of their avatar, by the "Moderator" label (for the mods), etc.

[AffinityMakesMeSmile]

8 hours ago, Arte said:

There is also Viva Designer that is aiming at InDesign users though it does not have graphics design and photo editing siblings like Publisher, so the Affinity team definitely is my preferred choice especially if those few missing things (at least few to me) are added in V2. The Affinity trio at full price  also costs just a little more than the one-purpose personal non-commercial license of Viva which makes Affinity more cost effective.

Hopefully V2 will be released in the next few weeks, this "Is Affinity dead?" thread is starting to feel like a zombie walking around in circles chasing itself for lunch. 😁

Version 2 released in few weeks???

WTF! This is impossible - it ain’t happen…

Version 2 in the whole Affinity Suite must be at least 12 month away, or more…

They can begin to release Publisher for iPad version 1.x first…

[Petar Petrenko]

9 hours ago, MikeW said:

I prefer any of the other 3 vector design applications I use daily. 

And they are (and why)?

[MikeW]

19 minutes ago, NNN said:

And they are (and why)?

Mainly Xara Designer Pro, CorelDraw, and Illustrator. 

XDP, in part due to the speed it affords for the simple illustrations I make.

CD for the screen printers I do work with. Its tools are well suited for such work. 

Illustrator, well, because there are some illustrations I need to return in that format, even if I do X amount of the work in XDP before finishing it in Illy.

But like all things, the "why" boils down mainly to preference and comfort. I've never liked working in AD--nor Illy for that matter. I just want to get work done. 

[Petar Petrenko]

5 minutes ago, MikeW said:

XDP, in part due to the speed it affords for the simple illustrations I make.

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

I, also, thought you will mention Vector Styler.