Don’t Buy….Buggy, No Updates, Loss Of Work

[Bowzer]

Updates Very Few & Far Between

I brought this app 2 years ago as I was looking for a reliable app to use on my iPad day to day for my job as a designer. I found Affinity Designer of the iPad and was impressed with the tools and functions as I had transitioned over from Adobe Illustrator on the desktop. My joy of finding a decent workhorse for my vector designs was to be short lived. As I used the app I started to experience more bugs. I did report the bugs, taking screen shots and recordings, sending them on through. The were some issues that I could work though however there were some issues that were obviously common place as I found out from the forum. I send the hardcore issues though to be told, “thank you, we’ve sent them through to the dev team”. 2 years later and I find I’m here writing to you, saddened that what is an app with a lot of potential is going to the dogs. I posted my concerns on the forum and have found that there are many, many users fed up with the comment, “thank you, we’ve sent you concerns on through to the dev team”, only to find….nothing gets fixed, or in a hurry anyway. I paid for this app and I feel like I’ve been ripped off. 2 updates in 2 years is a joke. If you are considering buying this app, you will love the tools and options within but you will become increasingly frustrated as your concerns will fall on deaf ears. THERE SHOULD BE SOME ACCOUNTABILITY FOR UFATES TO APPS ON THE APP STORE. Serif Affinity you should be ashamed!

[Lee_T]

Hi Bowzer,

I can see that you've posted numerous threads/posts with valid feedback and bug reports, thank you.

You're correct, it's been a while since out last update but as Patrick states here,

Quote

"we are focusing our efforts on a major release (new features and fixes) and consequently have not done any minor patches for a long time". Unfortunately, all I can advise at the moment is that you're issues are logged with our developers."

Lee

[awakenedbyowls]

Is this major release going to be offered to owners of the currently version?

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Is this major release going to be offered to owners of the currently version?

I’d be surprised if it isn’t offered to everyone! If you’re asking whether it’s going to be offered for free, that will depend on whether it’s version 1.11 or 2.0.

[awakenedbyowls]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

I’d be surprised if it isn’t offered to everyone! If you’re asking whether it’s going to be offered for free, that will depend on whether it’s version 1.11 or 2.0.

So I'm good for updates until it goes to 2.0 then?

I think it should depend on how bug free the current version is really

[Alfred]

37 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

So I'm good for updates until it goes to 2.0 then?

Yes.

38 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

I think it should depend on how bug free the current version is really

If the iPad version works like the desktop version, the current version won’t ever expire (so the 2.0 upgrade will be optional) but I can’t see Serif fixing any remaining bugs in version 1 after version 2 is released.

[Twolane]

On 8/16/2022 at 7:27 PM, Bowzer said:

I brought this app 2 years ago as I was looking for a reliable app to use on my iPad

So you paid, what, 25 bucks max if you didn't get it on sale, used it for two years, and now it's unusable. It may be, for some of us. For the majority, it's probably quite useable, just the way it is.

[awakenedbyowls]

11 minutes ago, Alfred said:

If the iPad version works like the desktop version, the current version won’t ever expire (so the 2.0 upgrade will be optional) but I can’t see Serif fixing any remaining bugs in version 1 after version 2 is released.

Optional as in optional to buy? Don't know what you mean by expire. 

I don't expect free updates for life here, but if there are bugs with the current version they should either be fixed or a free upgrade to a newer version.

They don't charge much for the software so it's pretty good value (compared to other larger competitors) so I'll consider paying to upgrade going forward - but I won't feel like doing that if all I'm getting is more or less the same software with previous bugs fixed, you know?

[Alfred]

8 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Optional as in optional to buy?

Yes.

9 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Don't know what you mean by expire.

I simply mean that the release of the new version won’t make the old one stop functioning.

10 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

I'll consider paying to upgrade going forward - but I won't feel like doing that if all I'm getting is more or less the same software with previous bugs fixed

I don’t think any of us would want to pay again if that’s all we’re going to get!

[awakenedbyowls]

9 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I simply mean that the release of the new version won’t make the old one stop functioning.

Sure.. but this kind of goes without saying..

[NotMyFault]

On 8/22/2022 at 7:41 PM, Alfred said:

If the iPad version works like the desktop version, the current version won’t ever expire (so the 2.0 upgrade will be optional) but I can’t see Serif fixing any remaining bugs in version 1 after version 2 is released.

While true in theory, not guaranteed to be true for the future in practice. Apple tends to enforce some compatibility breaking changes to AppStore and to iPadOS every few years, and Apps who don’t get updated by the developers may get removed from AppStore. So it may be save to assume that the old Affinity apps continue to work on an old iPad with and old iPadOS, you have no guarantee to be able to re-download the app on a new iPad, or after upgrading to a new iPadOS. And regular users tend to keep their devices updated for the sake of security (fix vulnerabilities).

There are fine details to consider when interpreting „no expiry“ or „lifetime“ etc.

Apps could break sooner than you would expect, e.g. bad software design could hard-code certificates which expire in 1-2 years, TLS 1.2 will become depreciated for the benefit of TLS 1.3, and on and on.