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At the moment I'm still waiting for new Mac hardware that is announced for next year. Meanwhile I'd like to use the new Affinity v2 apps on macOS 10.12.x or 10.14.x.

  • Are there others who want to see lower system requirements than macOS 10.15.x for the Affinity v2 apps?
  • Are there chances, we'll see decreased requirements?

All feedback is welcome.

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Where did you buy it?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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One thing to remember is that Apple no longer supports those versions of macOS.  No security updates.  

Using them on the open internet gets riskier the older they get.

Apple supports the current major version and two previous versions - with macOS 13 out now, that means that macOS 11 is the oldest supported version (the oldest version which will continue to get security patches and the like).

Serif is already supporting one version older than Apple is, which imposes limits on what they as developers can do as newer APIs become available and older ones are deprecated by Apple.  To support newer versions of macOS sometimes developers need to switch to newer APIs which don't exist on the older versions, because the older APIs don't work on the newer macOS.

It also increases the testing effort and the need to keep the older versions available (which is risky to them as well with the lack of security updates) in order to provide support and handle bugs and the like.

There is a limit to how far they can reasonably go, and a major version release is a good opportunity to prune the need to maintain extra code to support older versions.  The more recent the minimum requirements are, the longer the major version can last without needing to further drop support for the older macOS versions later on, so even supporting 10.15 seems reasonably generous at this point.

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2 hours ago, fde101 said:

There is a limit to how far they can reasonably go, and a major version release is a good opportunity to prune the need to maintain extra code to support older versions.  The more recent the minimum requirements are, the longer the major version can last without needing to further drop support for the older macOS versions later on, so even supporting 10.15 seems reasonably generous at this point.

Yes, you're right. From developer perspective, I do agree. From customer perspective, we had Affinity v1 supporting macOS 12 Monterey all the way down to OS X 10.9 Mavericks. That are altogether 9 (nine!) supported different macOS versions from Affinity apps, including around 7 operating systems that Apple didn't support anymore. Not so long ago even OS X 10.8 was still supported by Affinity. With the release of Affinity v2, we do have a huge jump of minimum system requirement from OS X 10.9 to macOS 10.15. That are 6 system versions difference and that's a lot.

I do agree with your security concerns, but there are many ways to get a reasonable security even on older OS versions, like using modern third-party browsers, mail clients and firewalls, etc. There are good reasons for keep using older system releases, too. If you want to be productive, you'll need a system that just works. You don't have the time to spend every weekend in installing latest OS versions, fixing important broken workflows or dealing with latest OS bugs. I'm still using old macOS versions as I'm still using Adobe Creative Suite in parallel to Affinity apps. Adobe CS doesn't run anymore on macOS 10.15 and I don't want to be forced to Adobe subscriptions. Indeed, that was a main reason for my transition to Affinity apps. I know there are more people, that want to keep their Adobe CS AND want to use the latest Affinity apps until the transition is complete.

I like all the Affinity apps and I'm sure that those will become my main tools in the near future. Meanwhile I don't ask for supporting OS X 10.9. Supporting macOS 10.12 would be my wish and would be a really great thing. At least supporting macOS 10.14 would do me a big favor, making my personal transition from Adobe to Serif more comfortable and smooth.

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26 minutes ago, efinity said:

That are altogether 9 (nine!) supported different macOS versions

Yes, after the suite (starting with Designer) has been around for eight years.

If the idea is to avoid dropping support for macOS versions within a major version of the Affinity suite, then cutting back to four supported versions now means that the suite would be back to supporting nine major versions five years from now.

The question then becomes, what is the lifespan of a major version of the suite?  If it lasts another five years before v3 comes out, then they will be supporting the same number of major versions of macOS that they were supporting for v1 up until now.

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3 hours ago, fde101 said:

Serif is already supporting one version older than Apple is, which imposes limits on what they as developers can do as newer APIs become available and older ones are deprecated by Apple.  To support newer versions of macOS sometimes developers need to switch to newer APIs which don't exist on the older versions, because the older APIs don't work on the newer macOS.

I think this is likely the main reason. Apple is pretty aggressive at pushing “forced” upgrades, and developers are in a tight spot: if they want to take advantage of great new features that users on new systems want (or new developments in the API, or even just the change of API to build in the new system), then they are forced to abandon older systems. Some software developers are able to get around it, depending on the needs for their apps, and I am not sure what all is involved to achieve it.

However, I feel (note the subjective word) that Serif must be aware they will be missing out on a lot of sales because of the dropped support of comparatively recent systems, so I conclude that they either had no choice in view of what they are trying to achieve, or else that they estimated that the cost of whatever complicated workaround or complexity of conditional coding would outweigh the extra sales by extending support. At the very least, if it were just a simple extra click of a button in the building process, or even a few hours’ work, they would surely do it for the sake of the extra sales and maintaining customer good will.

So to summarize: I totally understand the frustration of users on older systems (having been stuck there myself at various times), but I put the blame on Apple on this one.

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I'm also on 10.14.6 and thus locked out for the time being. Obviously would love to see Mojave making a comeback on the support list. In my book Catalina is a climb down and one to definitely stay far away from, Big Sur perhaps a minor improvement on that and whatever the current one is called only recently got its firmware issues for my hardware worked out, otherwise a somewhat mixed bag.

So from a productivity perspective they're all unattractive choices to me. Especially when you factor in that upgrading the OS and especially when jumping a few version numbers at once usually also means upgrading (or replacing) other software for compatible versions.

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44 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

However, I feel (note the subjective word) that Serif must be aware they will be missing out on a lot of sales because of the dropped support of comparatively recent systems, so I conclude that they either had no choice in view of what they are trying to achieve, or else that they estimated that the cost of whatever complicated workaround or complexity of conditional coding would outweigh the extra sales by extending support.

As far as I know, the latest version of Xcode for Ventura lets you compile only as far back as High Sierra compability. My impression is that Affinity 2 relies on underlying technologies the were not available before Catalina. Perhaps it doesn't necessarily affect features we're seeing in v2.0.0 yet, but it will surely be a factor for new features coming with 2.x updates.

So I'm almost as sad as anyone else who doesn't want or can't switch to Catalina or higher, but I can understand the move. Maintaining legacy compatibility comes at high costs for developers, and not many have the resources for that. (One recent example is 2manyrobots.com, developer of the brilliant Yate app for audio files tagging. He is currently providing two separately compiled versions to ensure compatibility with Intel Macs that cannot be officially upgraded beyond El Capitan, e.g. like my spare MacBook Pro 2008. Amazing!)
I have a Catalina partition more or less in sync with my main El Capitan partition (using a lot of symbolic link trickery, haha), and I will install Affinity 2 later today. But for the forseeable future I will stick to El Capitan as my primary workspace. My main MacBook Pro is 10 years old, so inevitably I will have to get a new one rather sooner than later anyway, I guess.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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1 hour ago, thomasp said:

Especially when you factor in that upgrading the OS and especially when jumping a few version numbers at once usually also means upgrading (or replacing) other software for compatible versions.

Not to speak about hardware! I have a bunch of perfectly working Firewire audio interfaces which I'm using regularly for multitrack recording with Logic Pro. They are the main reason to stay on El Capitan because one of them – while already using hacked drivers – won't run on anything beyond.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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I believe Affinity did the right thing here possibly updating the Apple framework in the new branch of the Affinity line (v2) - basing v2 on the latest base technology they can making future development easier (and possible) (to integrate with future updates of macOS and ipadOS). From what I have collected and understand Affinity is based on quite a lot of third party products including as much as they can from the OS. Backwards compatibility with older versions of macOS is simply not part of many of these updated frameworks. And sticking to older versions of frameworks and libraries is a losing game.

So that ship has probably sailed. There is no easy fix.

The decision was the right one if you are looking at the future as a company that constantly upgrades their software products.

If you prefer status quo in this day and age, you pretty much have to stick to it; not upgrading anything. 

 1) You have completely wrecked the layers panel, Serif.

2) I recommend Reddit groups instead of this forum. Not the same few bot-like users replying to everything, a wider representation of users, fewer fanboys, more qualified users. In short, better!

3) I was here to report bugs and submit improvement requests for professional work professionally in a large setup and to bring a lot of knowledge from the world, i.e. professional product development, web- and software development, usability, user experience design and accessibility. I actually know what I am talking about!

BUT! We are phasing out Designer and Affinity in 2022 Q1 - and replacing it with feature complete and algorithmically competent alternatives.
Publisher is unsuitable for serious use, and was never adopted.

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48 minutes ago, adbosch said:

Does anybody have experience running the affinity suite on a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 i5 / 8GB / 256GB? In theory there should be no problem, but how about in practice?

I have not used any surface devices  but you can try with the trial version for 30 days and if the suite works on that device you can then buy the full license and activate the software there is no limits on the trial other than the 30 day limit.

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21 hours ago, kat said:

Just bought v2 but I'm on 10.14.6. How do I get a refund. So sad.

Quote

…If you are not satisfied with your product for any reason, you may return it within a 14 day period after receipt of your product to receive a full refund. Please email affinityreturns@serif.com with your name, order number and reason for returning the item to begin the process.…

Have a look at https://store.serif.com/en-us/help/#return

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

Yes, after the suite (starting with Designer) has been around for eight years.

If the idea is to avoid dropping support for macOS versions within a major version of the Affinity suite, then cutting back to four supported versions now means that the suite would be back to supporting nine major versions five years from now.

The question then becomes, what is the lifespan of a major version of the suite?  If it lasts another five years before v3 comes out, then they will be supporting the same number of major versions of macOS that they were supporting for v1 up until now.

Good points. Developers need to have an income. If Serif keeps the perpetual license model, they probably need a new major release before the next 7 years are over.

Thinking of Adobe, one was able to upgrade from one version to the next but one in the past. That were around 2 years, before one lost the value of a license. As there are no upgrade options for Affinity right now, there'll probably be another sales model. A shorter lifespan of major releases would minimize the need to support older systems thus minimize developing efforts and generate a new income. Of course the requirements could also be raised within the same major version number, as we have seen before with OS X 10.8, but as you mentioned, a new major release is a better reason to drop support.

The question is, what are customers willing to accept to get the latest features and how often. Would be a new major release every 2 or 3 years accepted by most customers or is a 5 year frequency generating enough income for Serif to continue with their developing? Personally, I'm really willing to pay for the Affinity v2 update, but for me it means to buy a new Mac. I'm not sure, if I can afford upgrading to a next major release of Affinity, if it always means to buy a new Mac to get this done.

8 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

I think this is likely the main reason. Apple is pretty aggressive at pushing “forced” upgrades, and developers are in a tight spot: if they want to take advantage of great new features that users on new systems want (or new developments in the API, or even just the change of API to build in the new system), then they are forced to abandon older systems. Some software developers are able to get around it, depending on the needs for their apps, and I am not sure what all is involved to achieve it.

However, I feel (note the subjective word) that Serif must be aware they will be missing out on a lot of sales because of the dropped support of comparatively recent systems, so I conclude that they either had no choice in view of what they are trying to achieve, or else that they estimated that the cost of whatever complicated workaround or complexity of conditional coding would outweigh the extra sales by extending support. At the very least, if it were just a simple extra click of a button in the building process, or even a few hours’ work, they would surely do it for the sake of the extra sales and maintaining customer good will.

So to summarize: I totally understand the frustration of users on older systems (having been stuck there myself at various times), but I put the blame on Apple on this one.

Apple does a good job to release Swift frameworks (formerly Objective-C) that make developers' lives easier. As a developer, it's not only a big time saver, but also makes difficult things possible by just using some advanced high level code. The bad thing is, Apple lost the reliability and endurance of their frameworks long time ago when they started with a yearly system release cycle. That's good for progress of software evolution, but it's also making developers live more complex to keep track of every API change. Apple announced around 4 years ago, that they'll stop short release cycles in favor of returning to software quality. Unfortunately that was not the case and nothing changed. I understand that software needs progress, but it's a pity if quantity comes before quality. I'd prefer a matured rock solid software base over a bunch of features that I don't really need. The only ways for developers to escape from Apple's 'pushing to new framework versions' is to have a broad base of lower level code in their codebase or to use third-party frameworks with slower release cycles. That makes software development slower and more complicated, but it's easier for maintaining long-term support for legacy systems or to port software to other platforms. In contrast, the most developers tend to use more short term solutions as they are faster with publishing and monetizing their ideas. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard had a release cycle from 2009 to 2011 with 8 minor releases. That was one of the most stable macOS of all time. I'd like to see Apple returning to longer software release cycles and fixing their code, too.

7 hours ago, loukash said:

As far as I know, the latest version of Xcode for Ventura lets you compile only as far back as High Sierra compability. My impression is that Affinity 2 relies on underlying technologies the were not available before Catalina. Perhaps it doesn't necessarily affect features we're seeing in v2.0.0 yet, but it will surely be a factor for new features coming with 2.x updates.

The transition from Objective-C 2.0 to Swift up to the latest Swift 5 release resulted in a lot of deprecated functions and whole framework parts. To release Universal Binaries for new Apple Silicon and old Intel platform, it needs some extra effort. Releasing a binary for legacy macOS versions, often needs development on such legacy platforms and then sticking together the different releases to a single Universal Binary for recent and legacy platforms. As virtualization isn't possible anymore and emulation is needed for running software on a different architecture (ARM vs. Intel), the whole process got extremely complicated. You're right, there might be essential functions in use, that simply don't exist on legacy systems. How much rework should be done for legacy systems? I guess none, as the world is moving forward fast and none wants to look back. That's why I like Open-Source Software, as you can decide by yourself, how much effort you spend to make something work. Maybe Affinity is generous enough to make some extra efforts supporting legacy macOS versions, maybe Affinity will switch completely to Apples software paradigm to give new features only for the last 2 release versions and security fixes for another release back in the past. As we don't know, I would be glad if some Affinity developers would give us some more insights about their philosophy and plans here.

8 hours ago, François R said:

I believe Affinity did the right thing here possibly updating the Apple framework in the new branch of the Affinity line (v2) - basing v2 on the latest base technology they can making future development easier (and possible) (to integrate with future updates of macOS and ipadOS). From what I have collected and understand Affinity is based on quite a lot of third party products including as much as they can from the OS. Backwards compatibility with older versions of macOS is simply not part of many of these updated frameworks. And sticking to older versions of frameworks and libraries is a losing game.

So that ship has probably sailed. There is no easy fix.

The decision was the right one if you are looking at the future as a company that constantly upgrades their software products.

If you prefer status quo in this day and age, you pretty much have to stick to it; not upgrading anything. 

Yes, you're right. For example the PDF printing engine PDFlib once was responsible for dropping PDF 1.3 support during Affinity 1.8 update and forced us to use PDF 1.4+ output format. As PDFlib 10.x has a minimum requirement of OS X 10.9 there must be some other component responsible for preventing better backward compatibility.

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12 hours ago, drkanukie said:

You can run Windows 10 on quite old hardware, I'm fed up of my Mac hardware that still works becoming unusable due to software policy. I had two usable Mac's now down to one. I think Electrom apps like Figma are the future. They run on anything.

Isn't Windows 11 required? https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/full-feature-list/#system-requirements

EDIT: Thanks to @walt.farrell for explaining that Affinity 2 can run on Windows 10 😊 

Edited by efinity
Correcting my wrong assumption.
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4 minutes ago, efinity said:

No. 

image.png.8ada3150266faf342979730d21cfae04.png

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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On 11/9/2022 at 4:44 PM, kat said:

Just bought v2 but I'm on 10.14.6. How do I get a refund. So sad.

I was really excited about an updated Affinity 2 suite. I downloaded the 30 trial. Unfortunately my 2019 macbook pro still has OS version 10.14.6 as well. The reason is I want to keep this particular version of the OS is that I want to keep itunes and if I upgrade I will lose that.

Honestly 2019 isn't that old of a computer for these programs not being compatible. Very disappointing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am also one of those users caught in the grip of being on Mojave. I have other software packages that I use that necessitate remaining on 10.14.6 in my production workflow (one of whom is Art Director’s Toolkit, which is not made in 64-bit and has no single equal). I do however have a old ZBook studio G3 that’s running Windows 10—that was upgraded to 32GB of RAM—that is currently running Affinity 2.0 and a 6th Gen iPad w/iPad OS 15.5 that I’m able to run 2.0 on (haven’t used it in production yet; I’m sure it will probably run slower than on a newer iPad but will probably have to upgrade eventually). Fortunately, the new installs don’t require installing over v1 and, as long as that is effective, it helps. Not the desired solution, but a sidestepping one. My 2015 MacBook Air will run Catalina BUT, as it only has 8GB of RAM including 1.5 GB that it dedicates to the video processor, it’s considered that—as 10.15.6 requires 4GB of RAM—2.5GB of RAM might not be the best option to run Affinity 2.0 on.

 

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14 hours ago, Pencilsnpixels said:

I am also one of those users caught in the grip of being on Mojave. I have other software packages that I use that necessitate remaining on 10.14.6 in my production workflow (one of whom is Art Director’s Toolkit, which is not made in 64-bit and has no single equal). I do however have a old ZBook studio G3 that’s running Windows 10—that was upgraded to 32GB of RAM—that is currently running Affinity 2.0 and a 6th Gen iPad w/iPad OS 15.5 that I’m able to run 2.0 on (haven’t used it in production yet; I’m sure it will probably run slower than on a newer iPad but will probably have to upgrade eventually). Fortunately, the new installs don’t require installing over v1 and, as long as that is effective, it helps. Not the desired solution, but a sidestepping one. My 2015 MacBook Air will run Catalina BUT, as it only has 8GB of RAM including 1.5 GB that it dedicates to the video processor, it’s considered that—as 10.15.6 requires 4GB of RAM—2.5GB of RAM might not be the best option to run Affinity 2.0 on.

 

I have a Catalina 8GB Air same vintage it can run v2 apps but i've not pushed it, basic edits to simple graphics are ok

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On 11/11/2022 at 7:51 PM, michie said:

I was really excited about an updated Affinity 2 suite. I downloaded the 30 trial. Unfortunately my 2019 macbook pro still has OS version 10.14.6 as well. The reason is I want to keep this particular version of the OS is that I want to keep itunes and if I upgrade I will lose that.

Honestly 2019 isn't that old of a computer for these programs not being compatible. Very disappointing.

The issue isn’t really your computer, but rather the desire to stick with OS X Mojave, right?

I get it. My Mac is on Mojave, too. But the reason I stick with it is because I’m one of the surprisingly common professionals who wants to hang on to Photo$hop C$6 for a few isolated tasks that I can’t do with the Affinity Suite. Upgrading to OS X 10.14 would allow me to also upgrade my latter, but I’d completely lose the ability to use the former. It’s an unpleasant spot to be in.

By the way, my otherwise very smoothly running Mac is so old that Catalina is the final OS upgrade I can possibly perform on this machine. 
😅😂🤣

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On 11/10/2022 at 11:11 AM, fde101 said:

One thing to remember is that Apple no longer supports those versions of macOS.  No security updates.  

In its basic version, Avast is free, and gives robust protection. Then, avoiding navigating into odd sites is also good hygiene.

Mojave is the last MacOS version that can run Adobe CS6, the software from which many of us will have to migrate toward the Affinity suite. Not supporting Mojave will break the link allowing to fade out the old software, while phasing in the new one.

Paolo

 

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The Windows app isn't that big an issue - you can easily move its location and the updates are handled better. It's annoying they dropped Windows 7 support as it's still my preferred OS. My problem now is using different versions across machines as its not backwards compatible, which was probably the worst call they made.

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