Extremely disappointed that this installs as an "App" and not regular software program

[Dangerous]

2 minutes ago, Matterdor said:

You don't understand because everyone is different. For example, I have different drives and different folders on my system. I have all of my general utilities under D:\Tools and my development tools under D:\DevTools. I have general purpose software in C:\GeneralApps. This helps me with backups and management of the stuff that I work with. It's easy for me to configure the various applications when I need them to integrate with each other. It's the way that I am comfortable working and fits in my workflow and processes. Affinity is the first serious application that insists on being a Windows App. Can I work around it? Sure, and I have, but that's not the point. You aren't seeing something as a problem for you and are extrapolating that onto everyone else. Sure, it's possible to work around these issues but people shouldn't need to.

For me, I really appreciate what Serif has done by providing a very good non-subscription alternative to Adobe. I also appreciate their extremely fair upgrade policy. I have no problem paying for an upgrade. I am going to get 1 license of V2 to support them and hold off on the other 3 until I see what happens with the installations.

I have several drives (6 plus 2 external) with different folders in a manner to suit me.
The thread is people not happy that it is an app but the app works the same as it would a standard program. People want the icons on the desktop, that takes seconds to do. I have integrated it with Faststone & Photo Supreme. It also works with Blender and probably many other till Serif get a better fix. It can be moved to a different drive if space is limited. 

[Steel Rat]

19 minutes ago, Dangerous said:

Not superior, just different. Why care where the program is when all you need to do it run & use it

Because 99% of my use of APhoto is selecting images in XNView and hitting Alt 2 (the shortcut in that application for APhoto that I assigned). That doesn't work with V2 if there are spaces in either the path or filename. Photo v2 just gives me a bunch of error messages.

And the shortcuts created by dragging the icons from the start menu to the desktop aren't visible to other standard applications. The shortcut I manually created is visible, but the result when I try to pass data to it is above. For me, to use PhotoV2 in the way I've become accustomed to using every other application I have used for the last 20 years is the issue. It is not worthwhile to have to open V2 separately, then navigate to the drive>folder in question, then reselect all the files I had already selected in my image manager, then open them. It may seem trivial to some, but it isn't to me.

I'm not trying to pile on the Serif, I've enjoyed their programs. But if their soon-to-be solution doesn't let me function in the way I've outlined, it's not worth my time.

[Steel Rat]

8 minutes ago, Dangerous said:

The thread is people not happy that it is an app but the app works the same as it would a standard program.

It doesn't. If it did, I would never have found this thread.

[Dangerous]

5 minutes ago, kelement said:

Read the thread. It doesn't install. I had to troubleshoot a firewall service for two hours to get it to install. Even after that I am having issues that render the app useless. I have requested a refund, but now I can't even uninstall.

My system is hardened and all MS spyware services are disabled. This is pretty common among users of Affinity products who intentionally left Adobe for exactly this reason.

In order to install, uninstall, or upgrade an app, I have to reboot in safe mode, disable/enable services, rename certain system directories, reboot again, perform the install/uninstall operation, then reboot into safe mode again to put everything back, then reboot yet again. I am an expert in performing these operations with 15 years IT experience.

I do not have formal IT training, I am self-taught, built my computer and had no issues installing affinity. I had no end of issues with adobe installations & updates but got them sorted. At one point even adobe support was close to giving up. 

As for it doesn't install. A few have issues compared to the many that don't. 

[Steel Rat]

4 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

It's new technology, and people don't like the change, as it's less flexible. Whether that makes it wrong depends on a trade-off with the benefits it also brings 

In it's current form, it is of zero benefit to me. I won't spend time on workarounds that may or may not work.

[76mm]

So I've heard good things about Affinity over the years, when I saw v2 I decided to finally give it a try.  And immediately got frustrated by this app business.  Every other program on my computer is on my D drive.  Except Affinity which is buried God knows where because it is an app.  Not a great start.

[rvst]

In just 4 days, this thread has managed to become the 3rd most replied to thread of all time. Impressive 

[PaulWilliamson]

9 hours ago, richardcpack said:

I have installed all three on windows 10 today, none of the including the one 2 minutes ago gives me the choice of what drive to install on, all go under c:\Users\username\.affinity.

What am I missing?

Walt told us how to do it.  I forget where it is located but you can specify what drive apps get installed.  My three are on my E drive instead of C.  You'll have to search for the post.

[Vonsnake]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Once installed the software is the important thing 

To install Affinity v2 I used powershell because for whatever reason, both of my up to date Windows 10 machines did not have the app installer installed and I wasn't going to go install it explicitly for a single companies programs. I've never used an MSIX before, so I googled what they were to find that there's a command to sideload non-MS store apps and then also find out there was an external dependency that was supposed to be installed so I didn't have to use a command line in the first place. I installed v2 on a system I mostly use for testing, it never made it onto my production machine.

Software is important but first impressions are even more important, and my first impressions of an MSIX installation is that it's underdeveloped and currently should not be used in a production environment, regardless of how convenient and user friendly Microsoft's documentation pages make it sound.

Affinity v2 could be the best program suite in the world, and as I said in the previous post I do like it, but it's a hard sell when I can't integrate the software into my system the way I like and it'll forcefully auto-update whenever I start it and there's a patch available. It's no longer about the software, it's now about the BS surrounding it and how I have to babysit and be weary of it.

For some users this is fine, for others not so. As a suite of software being marketed as proffesional I would expect it to treat me as an adult and respect my ability to use a computer. Providing an MSIX as a reccomended install and MSI as an alternative install would have solved all of this because then as a user I get the choice. I understand that this would create more overhead for deployment, but with the responses so far in here it seems like sticking with MSI would have been the easier route for both development and support.

The MSIX reasoning thread that keeps getting posted does not provide any valid pro points and comes across as a quick effort to justify the decisions made. Out of all of the software I use, I've not seen another company switching installers because of an issue with support cases related to the installation. To me that says there's an issue with Serif's particular installer, which isn't something I or any of the other people I've managed to convince to buy Serif software have experienced. With a cursory glance at forum search results, v1 install failure doesn't appear to be something that's a known or widespread issue either.

How this is being handled frustrates me because Serif's business model and the capabilities of the software vs other alternatives to Adobe is a breath of much needed fresh air and I'm rooting on you guys getting a strong grip on the market. An installer should be something so minor I don't think about it and it certainly shouldn't be the reason to request a refund, but this change forces the software to be integrated into a half baked OS infrastructure that I and evidently other people don't want to be roped into. And this is after the hassle I had to go through to even run the file to begin with.

[Ron P.]

15 minutes ago, Vonsnake said:

The MSIX reasoning thread that keeps getting posted does not provide any valid pro points and comes across as a quick effort to justify the decisions made.

That's basically a correct statement, with the exception of does not provide any valid points. The company is owned by Serif, not any of the thousands of users of their products. They do not function as a democracy. They do not have to justify to you or any of us why they choose to use whatever model.

Please see this post...

 

[PattiR]

2 hours ago, Dangerous said:

I have several drives (6 plus 2 external) with different folders in a manner to suit me.
The thread is people not happy that it is an app but the app works the same as it would a standard program. People want the icons on the desktop, that takes seconds to do. I have integrated it with Faststone & Photo Supreme. It also works with Blender and probably many other till Serif get a better fix. It can be moved to a different drive if space is limited. 

 In my case I use both Photo & now Designer integrated with my animation program Crazytalk Animator for creating characters, scenes and props. Without an .exe file to point to they won't open from there & certainly won't integrate between the two like V1. I have already asked for a refund & will continue with V1. Hopefully they resolve this, but I'm gonna start shopping for another image and vector editor. Just in case.

[Vonsnake]

27 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

That's basically a correct statement, with the exception of does not provide any valid points. The company is owned by Serif, not any of the thousands of users of their products. They do not function as a democracy. They do not have to justify to you or any of us why they choose to use whatever model.

Absolutely, 100% agreed and their interaction is greatly appreciated. It's also worth noting that they're managing all of this after a major release where they're going to be swamped with queries not related to this topic.

However this doesn't mean that information they provide and actions they take can't be scrutinized, and the post has already been criticized with greater detail in this thread by people who share the same sentiment.

[Lee N]

3 hours ago, TychoBrahe said:

Seriously, I spend 40+ hours a week at work with these kind of headaches and I just don't have the energy or interest anymore to research this at home (where I have it installed).

This, for me, is the most important statement in the thread so far. It's something that developers should take more seriously because over time it just wears us down to the point we can no longer be bothered. I have many thousands of pounds worth of software that I use daily. Add to that all the other online accounts and various systems we use every single day as part of our work. 

All of these changes and aggravations added to our workflow can feel like it's becoming a full time job simply trying to deal with unnecessary nonsense. Over the past three years I have been slowly changing the way I work and slowly doing away with everything I use unless it's an absolute necessity. I have given up subscriptions, stopped upgrading software and even uninstalled some software (that I have spent a lot of money on over the years) that I like, and want to use, but can no longer deal with the accumulation of aggravation. A hundred small changes and annoyances to our daily routine ends up a very real, and very time consuming problem

Companies and developers think we are being trivial and behaving irrational but they just don't see the other side of it because they treat every problem like it's the only thing we have to deal with. We get the same cr*p with all other software, dealing with banks,HMRC, Paypal, Stripe, email providers, forced updates, hardware ... the list just goes on and on.

For this reason alone, I have been slowly changing how I work and even given up completely other smaller sources of revenue (and it's associated software, online accounts etc) because I can no longer continue dealing with the added workload. I've had weeks where I have literally spent more time with stuff like this than I have actually working. It gets you down and even ends up affecting your health.

The end result is my typical behaviour now goes something like this ... I notice a software upgrade in email, I click the link and look at what it offers - I wait and then check forums to see what others are saying. I see this type of unnecessary added aggravation and I make my mind up before even trying, irrational or not, this is now just another company that has decided to go down the route of problem causing. I don't need the problems, I'll just add this to my ongoing list of software that I need to find alternatives. Maybe I'll calm down, maybe I won't, but whatever happens - Affinity is now on my list of "just like all the other companies - find alternative".

Your software might be great, it might not, but I just don't need another problem in my life dragging me down if I can find a different solution. The most important decision factor in my work life and anything I purchase or sign up to has become one simple first-stop check - "how much unnecessary change or problems is this company prepared to inflict on its customer" ... anything above zero and I'm already questioning whether or not I can live without it.

[kelement]

4 hours ago, Dangerous said:

I do not have formal IT training, I am self-taught, built my computer and had no issues installing affinity. I had no end of issues with adobe installations & updates but got them sorted. At one point even adobe support was close to giving up. 

As for it doesn't install. A few have issues compared to the many that don't. 

Right. You're running a spyware riddled system. Apps don't work when you remove that stuff.

[Keith Reeder]

4 hours ago, Dangerous said:

I can't understand why people are so against it as an app. I don't like windows apps but not because they are apps, just because they are crap. 

And that doesn't answer your question?

🙄

[Keith Reeder]

Quote

The company is owned by Serif, not any of the thousands of users of their products. They do not function as a democracy. They do not have to justify to you or any of us why they choose to use whatever model.

Jesus wept - you know nothing about business, do you?

Clue: "the customer is always right".

Seriously - look it up: it's a maxim that outdates anyone on this thread by 100 years, and although it's a cliché, it's also often true.

[inkBot]

Came here to ask about this myself and since there's a huge thread on the topic already, I'll just add my voice to it.
Downloaded and installed the demos for the new versions, and was quite annoyed that it just installed onto c without even asking. I have a separate ssd where I like to keep my installs. Luckily you can just go into Apps & Features and move the install to another drive, so that's what I did. Just a bit annoying that you aren't given the option during install. I can imagine many people not even bothering to go find out how to move apps between drives, since it's not a feature that comes up a lot.

[Mark Ingram]

The biggest benefit of switching to MSIX is the easier, smaller and faster in-app updates that weren’t previously available in v1. Customers wanted a better update experience from what we offered in v1, and MSIX allowed us to deliver that. Obviously as there has been no updates yet, no-one in this thread has experienced that yet. 

[Terry44]

8 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

The biggest benefit of switching to MSIX is the easier, smaller and faster in-app updates that weren’t previously available in v1. Customers wanted a better update experience from what we offered in v1, and MSIX allowed us to deliver that. Obviously as there has been no updates yet, no-one in this thread has experienced that yet. 

I had no issues with the version 1 update process.  What complaints were there?   I prefer that with the ability to choose whether to update or not versus a forced update.

If an update breaks something how can I revert back to a previous update?   I also like having downloaded copies of the updates, can we still do that?

[thomasp]

Assuming you would even want auto updates in a production setup. I always turn them off or block them and prefer to install updates at my own choosing (or skip problematic ones). 🙂

E.g. I have Affinity V1 applications blocked from net access because I do not want alerts about new versions popping up when the programs start up.

[Vonsnake]

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

The biggest benefit of switching to MSIX is the easier, smaller and faster in-app updates that weren’t previously available in v1. Customers wanted a better update experience from what we offered in v1, and MSIX allowed us to deliver that. Obviously as there has been no updates yet, no-one in this thread has experienced that yet. 

I'm down for smaller delta updates but not when it's automatic, that's a huge no for production software. My understanding of how this works is that you can disable updates but it's a single toggle for all Windows apps, so for users that are already integrated into the MS Store ecosystem this means all or nothing for everything they have installed.

As a programmer who's constantly trying to work customer requests into a product I understand the push to get it in and a lot of times there's a long list of prerequisites needed before you can implement something, but falling back on pre-made solutions is not always the best solution. With Serif being a smaller company I can see why setting up your own solution for this would be a challenge, but when the solution is to change the programs OS integration and cause more issues then you're solving then you have to question whether it's actually worth it.

I don't mind downloading the installer again for each update, a lot of software still does it this way, and I'm sure the majority of users can understand why delta patching wasn't implemented in v1. Honestly, with how other software in the industry rolls it's not something that I've even thought about as being a requirement.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Vonsnake

[Mark Ingram]

1 hour ago, Terry44 said:

If an update breaks something how can I revert back to a previous update?   I also like having downloaded copies of the updates, can we still do that?

You download the previous version and just install it. 
Yes you can download full copies if you really want to.

[Gianpaolo64]

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

The biggest benefit of switching to MSIX is the easier, smaller and faster in-app updates that weren’t previously available in v1. Customers wanted a better update experience from what we offered in v1, and MSIX allowed us to deliver that. Obviously as there has been no updates yet, no-one in this thread has experienced that yet. 

I do not think a smaller update file is an added value in 2022, I (like many others) prefer a full update and the ability to manage the installation in a personalized way
I will uninstall the trial and keep version 1

[Frank Mu.]

I also cannot imagine that 600 MB download per programme is a problem. Delta updates are also possible when using MSI packages.

[iamnemo]

I have installed all my programs using Revo Uninstaller Pro. But Revo does not support the installation of MSIX apps. If Serif had clearly stated that version 2 was to be installed as an MSIX app, and explained the consequences of this move, I would have remained with version 1. The arguments of Serif for using MSIX are unconvincing, and anyway unimportant to me. I am now considering asking for a refund.