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No rewards for being an existing user...


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9 minutes ago, Jimo said:

But also more expensive, right? Compared even to the full starting price for the Univeral Licence on Affinity V2, which is three apps combined.

It was very easy to throw lots of money into software that didn't work well back then without a good resolution. I'd say bugs were way more common. At least here, we have a way to be compensated by future releases. Resurrecting the 90's business practices as far as software goes is not something I expected on a forum in 2022. At most, we received 1-2 updates for products that were limited by CD/DVD spec which were usually just patches with a some minor nice to haves (very minor). Affinity products received updates all the way through 1.9x that included features without requiring a paid upgrade. That's wasn't typical for Adobe which I think mainly did the old patch & keep it functional until the next upgrade model. Definitely not a thing in the 90's when we were limited to DVDs (generally speaking) where niche software particular was always broken in some way and never fixed.

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11 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

Definitely not a thing in the 90's when we were limited to DVDs (generally speaking)

I recall floppies still being a thing back in the 90s. The iMac didn't come out until 98 which effectively killed the 14 or 17 floppies for installation of some software I had.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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10 hours ago, PaulEC said:

I think it's really sad that some people get so upset by the fact that other people are getting the same great deal that they are being offered!

Exactly. It should have been a day of joy for everybody. We got the same gift in exactly the same part. And yet…

Paolo

 

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11 hours ago, chakko007 said:

Wrong. They did sales. They didn't drop the prices. The prices actually always went up. Originally, the Affinity apps cost 49,99 €, then 54,99 €, then 64,99 €, and now 84,99 €.

Again, though, we're straying from the topic here. The question was: "Why is there no rreward for existing customers?".

 

10 hours ago, chakko007 said:

That said, a lot of companies do offer upgrade prices.

Even Adobe offers upgrade prices for Photoshop Elements.

Also, I'm not upset. I couldn't be more relaxed. That doesn't stop me though from making up my mind. 20 to 30 € upgrade would have been a no-brainer for a software I don't use every day. 50 € makes me think about it several days. 85 €, no way.

$20 bucks is less than the  average tip I leave when dining out 😂

Also since you said you don’t use it everyday and find little value in it, why are you inclined to upgrade? That’s the real question.

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I just did and would buy the v.2 license just to support Affinity's development even if I didn't care about the features, in fact I bought Designer for that reason (at this point I only work with pixels, not raster graphics). 

However, the fact that this thread is now five pages long says something about how customers perceive things, i'nit?

There are lots of posts from people kvetching, followed by responses explaining why it's a good deal, obligatory car analogies, and so on.

And in my opinion the responses totally miss the point! I don't care about not getting a lower price than new customers get, but I do understand the reactions.

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I was also a bit disappointed about no exclusive bonus for existing users, to be honest. But I don't bother about the intro price being the same as for new users, it is still a great deal. But also I cannot quite believe the argument why this was technically impossible to determine who is an existing user, as it was no problem to include a function to import things from the v1 upon installation. That would have the point to trigger some kind of a treat. Just one or two fonts, some extra brushes, an email with a nice "Thank you!"-picture in it... something like that. Just sayin. Would have been nice.

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14 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I recall floppies still being a thing back in the 90s.

Before floppies! – I still have "happy" memories of spending hours carefully typing in code from a magazine, to install a programme on my Spectrum. Didn't work. Checked it carefully, still didn't work. Next issue of the magazine they published a correction to their typo!

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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13 hours ago, NewInBoston said:

Also since you said you don’t use it everyday and find little value in it, why are you inclined to upgrade? That’s the real question.

Why would I not update?

Using something rarely doesn't mean that there is no need for potentially useful features in a new version. Maybe I'd even use it more often because of those added features.

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13 hours ago, NewInBoston said:

$20 bucks is less than the  average tip I leave when dining out 😂

Yeah, and some people live in million dollar homes. Does that mean that less money isn't a lot of money for others? Especially when you're a hobbyist not using the software very often.

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25 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

Yeah, and some people live in million dollar homes. Does that mean that less money isn't a lot of money for others? Especially when you're a hobbyist not using the software very often.

I’ve heard of educational discounts but never discount for hobbyists. Creative idea, though.

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I don't ask for a discount. The topic is "No rewards for being an existing user".

Frankly, I agree with Tony0 though. Just close this. Obviously, there are a lot of misunderstandings from people who somehow need to defend Serif wherever they can. It's pointless to discuss like this, when one side alwas makes up things, misunderstands, or acts condescending by saying that the software just costs double what they tip on a restaurant visit. Absolutely pointless to discuss like that.

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3 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

I’ve heard of educational discounts but never discount for hobbyists. Creative idea, though

The Reaper DAW was mentioned either here or in another thread, and that kind of does have a hobbyists discount rate - $60 compared to a commercial $225, but with all the same features. Other companies offer/have offered cheaper, featured limited versions of their products too, which are sort of dicounted versions for hobbyist. I remember getting Sony Movie Studio before upgrading to Sony Vegas.

Of course Affinity apps are ALREADY priced at the level though - in fact LOWER in many cases for fully featured 'pro' packages!

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11 minutes ago, Jimo said:

The Reaper DAW was mentioned either here or in another thread, and that kind of does have a hobbyists discount rate - $60 compared to a commercial $225, but with all the same features. Other companies offer/have offered cheaper, featured limited versions of their products too, which are sort of dicounted versions for hobbyist. I remember getting Sony Movie Studio before upgrading to Sony Vegas.

Of course Affinity apps are ALREADY priced at the level though - in fact LOWER in many cases for fully featured 'pro' packages!

Reaper also has an unlimited "trial", it just nags you and lets you think about your life choices for a few seconds at each first startup on any given day. It doesn't even nag you the second time on the same day, simply launching into its full self instantly. 

 

A point I'd like to make: 
 

Affinity Designer has not yet come close to matching the feature set of Adobe Illustrator from the 1990's (Blend tool, anyone?) and the suite of Affinity products is certainly nowhere near where the Corel Suite was at that time. 

So it's ridiculous to compare prices for two reasons: 

The software of the 90's was leap years ahead of all other ways of doing graphic design. Stencils and silk screening and pen and paper etc. And if you got moderately good with the software of the time you could do wonders.

 

And they weren't that buggy, for me. And the products were expensive enough that folks took learning them seriously, and teaching them, too. So bookstores had great books that actually helped head towards mastery. Remember those days?

 

Now there's dozens of online drawing programs, and half a dozen good-enough free and open source alternatives for desktop, and Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw are now vastly more powerful and featureful than they were in the 1990's. 

Again, not the same thing. Affinity plays in the kiddies end of the design tool pool.

And charges accordingly. Pros don't worry about the cost of Affinity as a product, but do as a user experience and the extents of its tooling. It's still too slow to get the power features. There's much it simply can't do.

I'd happily pay thousands for a genuinely good alternative to the majority of power features in Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. This isn't nearly that. 

Though the vector editing is good.

 

 

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27 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

I don't ask for a discount. The topic is "No rewards for being an existing user".

Frankly, I agree with Tony0 though. Just close this. Obviously, there are a lot of misunderstandings from people who somehow need to defend Serif wherever they can. It's pointless to discuss like this, when one side alwas makes up things, misunderstands, or acts condescending by saying that the software just costs double what they tip on a restaurant visit. Absolutely pointless to discuss like that.

I hardly post on this forum. I’m here today to counter the trolls of which there are only a handful but who are loud, persistent, and rude to a team that I believe is deserving of some accolades. 

No one misunderstands anything. There is a very vocal minority here that somehow imagined “lifetime free updates” when they purchased or Serif, Ltd. is really Serif Foundation for Disenfranchised Artists dot org.

The only mistake Serif made was not charging for an incremental update to help dispel the disillusion of charity.

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People say they love Affinity. Apparently not enough to support the team behind it.

They want new features, but don't want to pay for it.

Last time I checked businesses have bills to pay.

 So, if you've paid $50 five years ago, how are they supposed to run forever?

 

Also, I do think there are lots of features missing and I am disappointed for that. I hate to spend money, but I'm aware they need money to keep working.

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1 minute ago, fernand0n said:

People say they love Affinity. Apparently not enough to support the team behind it.

They want new features, but don't want to pay for it.

Last time I checked businesses have bills to pay.

 So, if you've paid $50 five years ago, how are they supposed to run forever?

Venn diagrams of these groups might reveal the flaws in what you're attempting to say.

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5 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

I hardly post on this forum. I’m here today to counter the trolls of which there are only a handful but who are loud, persistent, and rude to a team that I believe is deserving of some accolades. 

No one misunderstands anything. There is a very vocal minority here that somehow imagined “lifetime free updates” when they purchased or Serif, Ltd. is really Serif Foundation for Disenfranchised Artists dot org.

 

You're either deliberately missing their points, or... I dunno. 

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16 hours ago, debraspicher said:

It was very easy to throw lots of money into software that didn't work well back then without a good resolution. I'd say bugs were way more common. At least here, we have a way to be compensated by future releases. Resurrecting the 90's business practices as far as software goes is not something I expected on a forum in 2022. At most, we received 1-2 updates for products that were limited by CD/DVD spec which were usually just patches with a some minor nice to haves (very minor). Affinity products received updates all the way through 1.9x that included features without requiring a paid upgrade. That's wasn't typical for Adobe which I think mainly did the old patch & keep it functional until the next upgrade model. Definitely not a thing in the 90's when we were limited to DVDs (generally speaking) where niche software particular was always broken in some way and never fixed.

The 90's also featured critical reviews in magazines by experienced users with journalistic skills. Remember that?

This meant that it wasn't that easy to throw money into software that didn't work well as any news agent (remember these public libraries of old) would provide a constant stream of insight into the performance, stability and features in direct comparisons with rivals and prior versions, all taken seriously by writers considerate of reader opinion of them and their host publications due to the relationships with readers.

 

Granted, there were magazines with bought and paid for content thanks to the influence of advertising, but they weren't in the majority.

 

Try to find an objective youtube reviewer in this day and age...

 

I'll wait. 

 

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15 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

I hardly post on this forum. I’m here today to counter the trolls of which there are only a handful but who are loud, persistent, and rude to a team that I believe is deserving of some accolades. 

I see. Then all left to say is that I wish you luck on your crusade for the "good".

Maybe it was a good thing that you hardly post on this forum?

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1 hour ago, chakko007 said:

No rewards for being an existing user

The journey is the reward. 😇

 

We have been able to use version 1 all this time, which is what we paid for when we bought it.  How is it that people seem to think they are doing Serif such a massive favor by using this software that they should be paid for the work Serif is doing instead of the work they themselves could be doing?

This whole entitlement mentality of the allegedly modern generation truly boggles the mind.

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