No .exe, no interest

[nucleardirk]

To be honest, grab the discount now and be patient, its worth the wait and I believe Serif is gonna try to fix the issue asap. 
As Affinity v1 was supported +/- 8 years now, I am sure you wont regret and will have a longlasting grafic suite with a couple of years of updates and new functions. 
 

@Patrick Connoryou should work somehow on your announcing and communication to avoid mistakes or not offering what the users want in the future. What about periodically request some „user requests and feedbacks“ with multiple choice questions?

[Patrick Connor]

7 minutes ago, gogi said:

Ok, let's see if the msi/exe will be available before the discount on the whole package expires.

I really hope that it will be for the sake of many interested customers. I'll push hard for it

[Patrick Connor]

Just now, nucleardirk said:

What about periodically request some „user requests and feedbacks“ with multiple choice questions?

I head up Tech Support, this is not my area, but I take your point 

[deeds]

8 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

17 minutes ago, gogi said:

Ok, let's see if the msi/exe will be available before the discount on the whole package expires.

I really hope that it will be for the sake of many interested customers. I'll push hard for it

There's an easy sure fire way for win/win/win...

push the discount's expiry date out until the mis/exe is ready.

This way the management and bean counters will feel the pain of making a decision like this - win, they'll make less mistakes like this in the future, and will likely see them double their efforts to get this out faster win/win

IT leads and pros gets a chance to experience/trial/test the msi/exe version before buying at the discounted rate - win, probably a lot of multi-seat sales here

 

[Corgi]

29 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

The MSI would technically install, but will be wrapped in an install EXE that checks for a minimum OS.

The application is not aimed at the features of LTSE. If you find a way to get it running then it will probably run but it's not a supported OS so we will likely discourage installation and potentially also display a "not supported" message on run up.

Having a warning that the product hasn't been tested on the OS and will be unsupported is completely fine. But unless doing the installation would actually damage the system, please allow the installation to proceed, at the user's own risk.

The core problem with the software business is that once the product works well, it (with one exception) never really needs to be updated or upgraded. A company's revenue stream dries up unless it can innovate to a degree to prompt users to purchase the next version. Serif is still in the early stages of its products so they have nothing to worry about on that front, for a very long while.

But Microsoft is a different story, and that's where the exception lies: security. For the vast majority of users, the only reason to pay for a new version of Windows (or Microsoft Office) is security. If not for malware, I'd still be on Windows XP, and perfectly happy as long as companies like Serif produced applications that ran on XP.

Back to reality -- Microsoft forces OS changes down our throats (because of security), which forces developers to shift to the new OS, which prompts them to abandon support for older OSs for market reasons. Still, I try to cling to whatever works for as long as possible, and it's discouraging (if economically understandable) when Microsoft supports an OS for a longer time period than developers support their applications which run on top of it.

So if Serif doesn't have the capability of testing and supporting on older OSs, okay, whatever, but please don't preclude users from trying to make it work.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

On 11/26/2022 at 12:29 PM, Patrick Connor said:

I understand why this is the obvious question, and we're doing our best to achieve that.

Installing the MSIX in the meantime and swapping out for the EXE/MSI when released is an option 

In another thread I asked about the trial period: Will the trial be reset when the MSI/EXE becomes available?

Right now I'm down to about 12 days, although I can't test anything because of the installation problems.

[deeds]

19 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

In another thread I asked about the trial period: Will the trial be reset when the MSI/EXE becomes available?

Right now I'm down to about 12 days, although I can't test anything because of the installation problems.

Long ago I suggested they switch to a 30 days of usage trial. That would have solved this problem. You're currently at zero days of having used the trial... and each day you open up and use Affinity counts as a day of your trial expired.

 

Scrivener, from Literature and Latte (a writing program for writing anything) provides this kind of trial, and it's a life changer once you've experienced it. 

They're an English company, and Affinity/Serif could stand to learn an enormous amount from them with regards to product and service. And support.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

On 11/28/2022 at 11:33 AM, deeds said:

Long ago I suggested they switch to a 30 days of usage trial. That would have solved this problem. You're currently at zero days of having used the trial... and each day you open up and use Affinity counts as a day of your trial expired.

 

Scrivener, from Literature and Latte (a writing program for writing anything) provides this kind of trial, and it's a life changer once you've experienced it. 

They're an English company, and Affinity/Serif could stand to learn an enormous amount from them with regards to product and service. And support.

Oh wow, yes! That makes so much more sense, a very nice example of how a test phase should actually work.

Also, there is still no statement from Affinity, neither officially nor unofficially, I guess. I don't have a test phase then? Cool cool cool, that's just great.

[StrixCZ]

On 11/12/2022 at 2:33 AM, rvst said:

I don't use MS Store apps. I don't even use the standard Windows 10 menu, instead using Stardock's menu which looks like Windows 7, precisely because I don't want to see these Windows store apps and I detest this ridiculous tablet interface

100 % this! Also, Open Shell FTW (and screw you, W11 🤮).

[JohnDK]

30 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

Also, there is still no statement from Affinity, neither officially nor unofficially, I guess.

If there's no reset on the trial perion is there any reason you can't just sign up for a new trial using a different email address?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

6 hours ago, JohnDK said:

If there's no reset on the trial perion is there any reason you can't just sign up for a new trial using a different email address?

Well, the inconvenience, time invested and number of clicks to create a new address. The fact of having to use such a workaround in order to take advantage of a 30-day trial period should be reason enough.

One would assume that potential problems, such as those that are taking place here on a relatively large scale, would be taken into account before the release of a software package. It's not like Affinity is starting from scratch with absolutely no market knowledge, let alone Serif, so it could be a marketing strategy.

In any case, I'm very confused about how the release unfolded.

[Patrick Connor]

On 11/28/2022 at 10:10 AM, MrDoodlezz said:

I asked about the trial period: Will the trial be reset when the MSI/EXE becomes available?

We're aware how this is going and we're looking at technical ways that you (and others) will be able to have a 30 day test once the EXE containing the MSI install is available. It isn't settled how this will be achieved (we have a few options being considered) but yes trials will reset (is the plan, we're still testing)

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Thanks for the answer in this thread as well. Fingers crossed it'll all work out before the offer ends. 🤞

[Paul Coddington]

On 11/24/2022 at 1:10 AM, Patrick Connor said:

At the moment some functionality like StudioLink and Edit in are non functional. Sorry this is far from straightforward given the way the applications share downloaded content and created assets/brushes.

We need to address these and anything else we find before MSI installers are made available more generally, or we will just be introducing more problems than it resolves.

I am working on compiling a list of problems, but it might take me a little while to check them thoroughly and decide how best to present them.

As a heads up, I am encountering serious problems with Affinity Photo on Windows with HDR desktop enabled (color pickers, previews, displaying SDR documents, converting 16-bit to 32-bit, clipping warnings, some tools, are not working correctly for me).

As much as I want to have MSI installers, it is more important to me to be able to archive my scanned slides in HDR format for viewing on modern displays, as the results are far more lifelike and invoke a much stronger feeling of "being there".

So, prioritising fixes, especially for features not completely working yet, is most welcome.

[Patrick Connor]

2 hours ago, Paul Coddington said:

I am working on compiling a list of problems, but it might take me a little while to check them thoroughly and decide how best to present them.....

The only way to present them in these forums is one thread per problem, anything else doesn't work.

[Nex0]

There might be people interested in how to ignore a particular user. For anyone who is looking for a way to do it: click on your own profile, then Ignored Users and add the username of the member that you think is not and will not be contributing anything worthwhile.

[Patrick Connor]

14 minutes ago, Nex0 said:

There might be people interested in how to ignore a particular user. For anyone who is looking for a way to do it: click on your own profile, then Ignored Users and add the username of the member that you think is not and will not be contributing anything worthwhile.

Although this post feels a little passive/aggressive, it is good advice to anyone here finding the trolling of threads to be a problem to them, and I approve this method of ignoring anyone you wish (who is not staff who cannot be ignored) . We rarely mute accounts because they are customers and we should listen, but individually each of you can do that if you wish.

[debraspicher]

I only come here to say, every time I see this thread rise up again under recent posts, I think of "no shirt, no shoes, no service"...

I'll see myself out.

[Patrick Connor]

@Zen22

Your reply was deleted because it didn't substantially respond to the OP's issues in a nice manner.

Your post breaks a number of the forum guidelines. You are welcome to express how you feel, which was overall positive about the MSIX installs, but you are not welcome to say what you think of others expressing their opinions, particularly not using the language you did. 

[DigitalTux]

Having purchased V2 not realising it was just msix installer only at this stage, was quite disappointed as we use a very specific version of 21H1 win10 not working with msix/appx, so the news of upcoming exe/msi release is the only that stopped us from refunding to be honest. Hopefully its coming very soon! sticking to V1 till then. Thanks for updates Serif.

[Patrick Connor]

On 11/23/2022 at 12:10 PM, Patrick Connor said:

We are likely to release MSI installers when we do the first patch, so hopefully before Christmas.

I have just posted about these installs here.

Please follow that thread for news of the release. 

[Patrick Connor]

 The Unsandboxed (MSI/EXE) Windows installs are now available to all. Sorry this took longer than we expected.

More information here

 

[Nox]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

 The Unsandboxed (MSI/EXE) Windows installs are now available to all. Sorry this took longer than we expected.

More information here

 

Thank you all so much ❤️

[debraspicher]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

 The Unsandboxed (MSI/EXE) Windows installs are now available to all. Sorry this took longer than we expected.

More information here

 

Massive thanks to you and the rest of the team, Patrick