Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Communication and Secrecy at Serif


Recommended Posts

5 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Maybe there's a lot of customers out here who don't want Serif to rival Adobe on price. ~£600 a year indefinitely. No thanks. I feel I have been saved (passive voice) several thousand £ over the last few years by Serif.

What I see in the forums is some people who seem to want all the features of Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign but for a one time £30 price per program. And free updates for ever. And on top of the free updates they would like a discount too.

The Serif programs don't do everything I want. But in quite a few cases I have found very reasonable workarounds.

That's some pretty amazing context removal!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

What I see in the forums is some people who seem to want all the features of Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign but for a one time £30 price per program. And free updates for ever. And on top of the free updates they would like a discount too.

...and this is epic levels of misinterpretation, at the very least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It's not at all. You wrote it. I could just as easily have quoted the whole sentence.

And you'd still have removed the whole context, which was encapsulated by: "in this marketing approach", which refers to the above paragraphs (plural) which respond to the suppositions and propositions of the post being replied to, within a thread about the nature of hiding versus transparent things.  

 

As I say, some pretty amazing context removal to utilise those words the way you have!

Well done, I think... it's kind of a straw man building endeavour, I think. But it's so amazing I'm a bit unsure what happened.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Expectations and rapport between the company and customers would have to be improved before they could go back to a true roadmap, imo. It may never be feasible if development remains too fluid for reasons such as a development learning curves, technical obstacles, business opportunities, etc... they are a small company attempting to do something very ambitious and probably learning in the process.

My conjecture: I suspect that during v1 they were still in the baby stages of building a full platform that would've worked for what they promised, but faced early growing pains either because of scaling problems or issues with the platform itself that needed rethinking/refactoring. Perhaps having to undo some of what they first built in order to continue to scale properly and reliably at that point on 3 platforms (it used to just be Apple...). So to reduce bugs, but also to meet the goals they could have met at the time and maintain income, they kept moving forward but with a more fluid outlook in mind. So that took away from the development of major features that otherwise might’ve been at least been started by their team in order to solve issues with scaling the platform/foundation itself.

Potential Development Woes: Many aspects of development seem as if they're being done from scratch. Some of the current implementations may be placeholders for proprietary/long-term solutions. This can give the appearances of a hastily built product while they are work on the guts. We have no way to know, but they don't have the development experience of say, the developers of Adobe. Moreover, Adobe is building on top of an older platform. It's time-tested, it's proven, and it's likely been refactored to scale for many years to come. It's much easier for them to scale or to cycle through new developers, keep them up to speed and still hit development targets fairly on time. How much work would they really have to do if the bare bones were laid before them? Also, it likely has more documentation. It's much easier to train that person within the confines of certain time-tested APIs rather than to bring in a brand new person to build the API itself entirely, plus write the initial code to interact with it. I think it is much more likely Serif bit off more than they could chew with v1 rather than that the company being disingenuous. However, that's just my feeling.

Now, if all what I said above were indeed the case, yes technically they could have come forward and been more upfront about having to gut V1 entirely and that as things were it could not meet their expectations. This could've been their primary mistake, not being forward.. That said, they’ve kind of admitted this by suggesting they were buildings things differently this time, that it should work better and thus should work for their business going forward. Basically, they were in new territory. This, however, does not mean they are not still learning.

This is what I think caused the roadmap to ultimately be pulled. Something along these lines anyway. At some point the writing was on the wall and the pressure to meet certain demands maybe became too much while fighting with the frustrations of working with V1 code. To speed things up, they cut their losses and took down the roadmap to flesh out the development process itself. That's why we always hear "This is going to be an undertaking but it is in our plans”, etc. I don't think it is an excuse, personally. I think they are being honest and it might even feel awful when they have to say this. So that might be another reason for reduced communication, developer frustration and just not feeling like they are where they want or expected to be.

I think negative sentiment is a factor, but I just don’t think to the degree some people are suggesting. I can think of a couple of moderators/staff here that can hold their own. So I don't think a user's cynical feeling prevents all from expressing themselves. That said, it does appear at times as though developers do let marketing do the legwork as far as PR and that can be seen as using them as a shield. This, imo, has been quite damaging. That’s why there's been this strong impression either via (supporters) “Oh they’re afraid of being forthcoming because see all the criticism and disappointment! Can you blame them!? *points at crazy rando*" versus (detractors) “They’ve misled us, it’s been the marketing intentionally misleading all along and I/you were so foolish to believe in them. Look at how much they suck, haha” It's created conjecture and tension between two ways of perceiving the situation, neither of which could be debunked fully.

I do agree they should be more aggressive with betas/alphas in preproduction, but they should likely also be very careful about it. Maybe set it up so people will have to apply for it and keep it limited. Doing it out in the open presents issues because 1) trolls and to be quite blunt, 2) there's a portion of the user base here that don't understand how the development process works and are prone to unnecessary conjecture. This can lead to misunderstandings, something the staff likely want to minimize.

It's different for open source programs. Development is supported by donations and generous volunteers/testers who treat it as their pet project, so expectations are adjusted accordingly. Nobody expects GIMP to compete with Adobe, for example, as the user base for these programs are quite niche. Also the toleration for weird design choices are much higher. I still remember when GIMP was a bit of a joke among artists very early on. It's been in development forever and is still considered a joke for a some even if that's not quite true now. The user has no real skin in the game if they are testing a product for free. Serif isn’t the same, they’re the opposite of a charity, they’re an actual business and must be able to fund themselves through word of mouth.

Basically, while they absolutely cannot make business decisions solely based upon the discretion of a very limited demographic of users on their product forums, they should consider borrowing more inspiration towards development from the most attached of their user base as far as company interaction is considered. Since these are the most ideal of members to spread the most positive words on their suite. Some might say they already do that with staff interactions, but I mean this from a corporate perspective. Imagine if word spread that a thread here gains enough recognition for leading to significant tweaks/changes in the program suite that make their a positive off forum. It then gives the perception of a company that truly listens. The problem is, these changes tend to come so late, the opportunity is often lost.

Microsoft Windows 10 Home (Build 19045)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @ 3.8Ghz (-30 all core +200mhz PBO); Mobo: Asus X470 Prime Pro
32GB DDR4 (3600Mhz); EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 3080 X3C Ultra 12GB
Monitor 1 4K @ 125% due to a bug
Monitor 2 4K @ 150%
Monitor 3 (as needed) 1080p @ 100%

WACOM Intuos4 Large; X-rite i1Display Pro; NIKON D5600 DSLR

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

My conjecture: I suspect that during v1 they were still in the baby stages of building a full platform that would've worked for what they promised, but faced early growing pains either because of scaling problems or issues with the platform itself that needed rethinking/refactoring.

I remember reading a staff post last year or so – I think it was even a reply to one of my own threads/feedbacks/bug reports on the topic – acknowledging that the code for boolean operations is somewhat suboptimal in v1, and thus implying that it's the reason why many long time requested features haven't been added yet by then. That code was apparently fixed or even rewritten for v2, which is likely also why we've finally got the first iteration of vector warping, and can expect many more of such features and improvements in upcoming free updates for a few years to come.
So keep in mind, folks: this is still just v2.0.0. The future is bright. ;) 

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

...

Basically, while they absolutely cannot make business decisions solely based upon the discretion of a very limited demographic of users on their product forums, they should consider borrowing more inspiration towards development from the most attached of their user base as far as company interaction is considered. ...

Thank you for your thoughtful insights, Debra. The quote above is just one sentence I pulled out from your long reply; don't read too much into my selection. 😉

It would be interesting to know how much of what you speculated about actually reflects the history and present situation with development. I'm sure there has been a lot of information passed around in the forums (that I've never read) which sheds some light about what might be behind various decisions they've made.

I hadn't spent a ton of time in the forums until v2 came out, other than to check in vain periodically for new Betas. But after v2 came out, I dove into the forums and found myself asking, "Why are people surprised by <x>," and "Why doesn't Serif say something about <y>," and "How did Serif make the decision about <z>?" So I am only reacting to the symptoms of whatever history led Serif to this point.

I hope that they will take a fresh look at how they interact with the user base and make adjustments to their blind spots. As I said, there's a lot they get right already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Corgi said:

It would have been fine for Serif to say on the day after the v2 announcement, "We understand that some users have an issue with the MSIX installation. We're going to be discussing it among ourselves to determine what, if anything we will do in response. Stay tuned." It obviously would have been even better if the plans to use MSIX had been divulged months before announcement, since it would have better prepared Serif for release.

Hey, you've got a good point in your message! It is always nice to see where a company is planning on going with a well-respected product. I found this in one of the forums I was looking through, and it seems similar to what you were talking about with the msix installation situation😁:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Corgi said:

Some of this secrecy might be justifiable (if somewhat cynically) for business reasons. For example, prospective first-time customers looking to buy Affinity v1 this past July might've been discouraged if they knew that v2 would be released in November, but they would have to pay the going rate for the upgrade.

Well, Serif could have opted to introduce the new license earlier on, prior to release. By introducing the new license prior to the release of the next version, people would have two options:

  1. Pay the V1 price, knowing it would only receive support for an X amount of time.
  2. Pay for the V2 universal license, which means, you'll get V1 in the meantime and the update to V2, because you have purchased V1 within the specified pre-release window.

Although this would reduce the impact of the new release somewhat for those who knew about the new license (and the new V2 price), it can still be marketed with. In addition, existing customers will get to know that the next release happens somewhere between, let's say 3-6 months from now. And, anyone who bought the product prior to the release window will know that they won't get a discount on the next version.

Then again, the main issue is when to set the release window open. Does this occur with the last point update of the previous version? And when do you let your users know that when they buy the product, they will no longer be able to expect feature updates and only bugfixes (as was the case for those who bought Affinity V1.10).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

Pay for the V2 universal license, which means, you'll get V1 in the meantime and the update to V2, because you have purchased V1 within the specified pre-release window.

Except we can't do that for all v1 customers because of the Apple and Microsoft app stores. We would have had to pull the apps from those stores in order to "force" people to acquire it from ourselves, in order to offer the v2 Universal Licence on our site.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, debraspicher said:

Expectations and rapport between the company and customers would have to be improved before they could go back to a true roadmap, imo. It may never be feasible if development remains too fluid for reasons such as a development learning curves, technical obstacles, business opportunities, etc... they are a small company attempting to do something very ambitious and probably learning in the process.

My conjecture: I suspect that during v1 they were still in the baby stages of building a full platform that would've worked for what they promised, but faced early growing pains either because of scaling problems or issues with the platform itself that needed rethinking/refactoring. Perhaps having to undo some of what they first built in order to continue to scale properly and reliably at that point on 3 platforms (it used to just be Apple...). So to reduce bugs, but also to meet the goals they could have met at the time and maintain income, they kept moving forward but with a more fluid outlook in mind. So that took away from the development of major features that otherwise might’ve been at least been started by their team in order to solve issues with scaling the platform/foundation itself.

Potential Development Woes: Many aspects of development seem as if they're being done from scratch. Some of the current implementations may be placeholders for proprietary/long-term solutions. This can give the appearances of a hastily built product while they are work on the guts. We have no way to know, but they don't have the development experience of say, the developers of Adobe. Moreover, Adobe is building on top of an older platform. It's time-tested, it's proven, and it's likely been refactored to scale for many years to come. It's much easier for them to scale or to cycle through new developers, keep them up to speed and still hit development targets fairly on time. How much work would they really have to do if the bare bones were laid before them? Also, it likely has more documentation. It's much easier to train that person within the confines of certain time-tested APIs rather than to bring in a brand new person to build the API itself entirely, plus write the initial code to interact with it. I think it is much more likely Serif bit off more than they could chew with v1 rather than that the company being disingenuous. However, that's just my feeling.

Now, if all what I said above were indeed the case, yes technically they could have come forward and been more upfront about having to gut V1 entirely and that as things were it could not meet their expectations. This could've been their primary mistake, not being forward.. That said, they’ve kind of admitted this by suggesting they were buildings things differently this time, that it should work better and thus should work for their business going forward. Basically, they were in new territory. This, however, does not mean they are not still learning.

This is what I think caused the roadmap to ultimately be pulled. Something along these lines anyway. At some point the writing was on the wall and the pressure to meet certain demands maybe became too much while fighting with the frustrations of working with V1 code. To speed things up, they cut their losses and took down the roadmap to flesh out the development process itself. That's why we always hear "This is going to be an undertaking but it is in our plans”, etc. I don't think it is an excuse, personally. I think they are being honest and it might even feel awful when they have to say this. So that might be another reason for reduced communication, developer frustration and just not feeling like they are where they want or expected to be.

I think negative sentiment is a factor, but I just don’t think to the degree some people are suggesting. I can think of a couple of moderators/staff here that can hold their own. So I don't think a user's cynical feeling prevents all from expressing themselves. That said, it does appear at times as though developers do let marketing do the legwork as far as PR and that can be seen as using them as a shield. This, imo, has been quite damaging. That’s why there's been this strong impression either via (supporters) “Oh they’re afraid of being forthcoming because see all the criticism and disappointment! Can you blame them!? *points at crazy rando*" versus (detractors) “They’ve misled us, it’s been the marketing intentionally misleading all along and I/you were so foolish to believe in them. Look at how much they suck, haha” It's created conjecture and tension between two ways of perceiving the situation, neither of which could be debunked fully.

I do agree they should be more aggressive with betas/alphas in preproduction, but they should likely also be very careful about it. Maybe set it up so people will have to apply for it and keep it limited. Doing it out in the open presents issues because 1) trolls and to be quite blunt, 2) there's a portion of the user base here that don't understand how the development process works and are prone to unnecessary conjecture. This can lead to misunderstandings, something the staff likely want to minimize.

It's different for open source programs. Development is supported by donations and generous volunteers/testers who treat it as their pet project, so expectations are adjusted accordingly. Nobody expects GIMP to compete with Adobe, for example, as the user base for these programs are quite niche. Also the toleration for weird design choices are much higher. I still remember when GIMP was a bit of a joke among artists very early on. It's been in development forever and is still considered a joke for a some even if that's not quite true now. The user has no real skin in the game if they are testing a product for free. Serif isn’t the same, they’re the opposite of a charity, they’re an actual business and must be able to fund themselves through word of mouth.

Basically, while they absolutely cannot make business decisions solely based upon the discretion of a very limited demographic of users on their product forums, they should consider borrowing more inspiration towards development from the most attached of their user base as far as company interaction is considered. Since these are the most ideal of members to spread the most positive words on their suite. Some might say they already do that with staff interactions, but I mean this from a corporate perspective. Imagine if word spread that a thread here gains enough recognition for leading to significant tweaks/changes in the program suite that make their a positive off forum. It then gives the perception of a company that truly listens. The problem is, these changes tend to come so late, the opportunity is often lost.

Nicely said!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Except we can't do that for all v1 customers because of the Apple and Microsoft app stores. We would have had to pull the apps from those stores in order to "force" people to acquire it from ourselves, in order to offer the v2 Universal Licence on our site.

 

Since you now have two separate products - you could have kept V1 products on the App Store along with the new versions (a number of developers have done this), and provided a discounted bundle for the two versions (e.g. Photo V1 & V2). V1 can then be discontinued when you stop supporting bug and security updates for it.

This would have provided existing customers with an additional discounted upgrade path, for those of us who no longer require the full suite, or wish to continue for a short while with our original V1 purchases.

You could still then offer the Universal License for new (and existing) customers, without alienating those of us who feel we’ve been pressurised into paying again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, monzo said:

You could still then offer the Universal License for new (and existing) customers, without alienating those of us who feel we’ve been pressurised into paying again.

I don't really understand what you are on about.

Serif has not pressurised us in any way to do anything. If you are happy with v1 stay there. If you are happy with the new features released in v2 they have offered us an extremely generous upgrade path to v2.

Are you upset that new customers get the same discount as you? Why? If Serif are so generous to do that what's that to you?

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I don't really understand what you are on about.

Serif has not pressurised us in any way to do anything. If you are happy with v1 stay there. If you are happy with the new features released in v2 they have offered us an extremely generous upgrade path to v2.

I was responding to claims that an upgrade path wasn’t available. But, at the risk of repeating what I’ve already posted a number of times, I’m disappointed there wasn’t an upgrade path for individual products, and that support for V1 was removed on release of the new products - which pressurised some customers into thinking they had to grab a limited period offer to keep their existing purchases working. This has  since been rectified, and an apology has been made by Serif.

27 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I don't really understand If Serif are so generous to do that what's that to you?

Again, at the risk of repeating myself yet again (it’d help if you read through previous comments before wading in), as someone who’s supported the company by purchasing all of their products already, and acting as a cheerleader resulting in numerous sales via recommendations, to have been faced with immediate discontinuation of my purchases in favour of a new set of products priced at exactly the same rate as a new customer, a time-limited deal, with no separate upgrade path, feels like a bit of a snub.

You’re happy with this, and I’m happy for you and all the others who’ve chipped in. However, there is a reason why companies reward existing customers for their loyalty. It makes them feel their support has been valued.

Have we not covered this now? I’m fed up with repeating the same stuff, I’m sure everyone is just as fed up reading them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, monzo said:

However, there is a reason why companies reward existing customers for their loyalty. It makes them feel their support has been valued.

I hope you have read the response of Ash from Serif who said:

However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 

We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Staff

We will fix V1 if it breaks, and are planning a 1.10.6 update when we can

34 minutes ago, Seneca said:

If Serif are so generous to do that what's that to you?

It is hard for some to accept that 40% is what we would have offered only to our upgraders if they could be reliably identified without a lot of complaints or breaking store rules. New customers could have got less than 40% if it were possible. To be angry that they did not get less seems odd to me. I am happy for them.

Here are some of the groups of customers we would not have been able to reliably offer 40% to

  1. Bought only Affinity Photo iPad
  2. Bought only Affinity Designer iPad
  3. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer iPad
  4. Bought only Affinity Photo Mac App Store
  5. Bought only Affinity Designer Mac App Store
  6. Bought only Affinity Publisher Mac App Store
  7. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer from the Mac App Store
  8. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer from the Mac App Store
  9. Bought Affinity Designer and Publisher Mac App Store
  10. Bought Affinity Photo from the Mac App Store and Photo from the iPad Store
  11. Bought Affinity Designer from the Mac App Store and Designer from the iPad Store
  12. Bought Affinity Photo, and Designer and Publisher from the Mac App Store
  13. Bought Affinity Photo, and Designer and Publisher from the Mac App Store AND Affinity Photo and Designer from the iPad Store

Tell me #12 & #13 do not deserve the full 40% offer because they are not loyal/valued customers.

 

    Patrick Connor
    Serif Europe Ltd

    "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    16 minutes ago, Seneca said:

    I hope you have read the response of Ash from Serif who said:

     

    However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 

    We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.

    I have, and it's great they have now admitted stating they were wrong to announce immediately abandoning basic updates for V1, and that there should at least be some attempts at rewarding customer loyalty.

    But you've tagged me on my response to the upgrade mechanism, so I'm not sure why you're asking me to go through all this again.

     

     

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    32 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

    It is hard for some to accept that 40% is what we would have offered only to our upgraders if they could be reliably identified without a lot of complaints or breaking store rules. New customers could have got less than 40% if it were possible. To be angry that they did not get less seems odd to me. I am happy for them.

    Either this is a very clever semantic inversion done deliberately, or you're deliberately ignoring the actual complaint in order to write spin, or you simply don't understand what's being expressed, or some other form of mischaracterisation of your users' articulations.

     

    I can't know which and don't want to attempt to attribute intent, nor spend the time reviewing your communication style and history in order to better estimate how and why you're getting this so wrong when so many are making such good efforts to express exactly their sentiments.

    Part of the problem, I strongly suspect, is the Affinity brand having a marketing policy/practice of acquiescing to the two major stores' policies in order to get supposed good treatment, high visibility, some favouritism and promotional support from those stores. In other words, using the stores as publishers, not merely retailers.

    In doing so, this seems to have severely restricted Affinity's direct possible relationships with their users, and has made Affinity more a customer of these stores than their users customers of Affinity. I suspect that this has jaundiced the view into existing customer responses to the discounting practice and the manner in which it's been rolled out, and the subsequent attempts to defend and deflect.

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • Staff
    36 minutes ago, deeds said:

    Either this is a very clever semantic inversion done deliberately, or you're deliberately ignoring the actual complaint in order to write spin, or you simply don't understand what's being expressed, or some other form of mischaracterisation of your users' articulations.

    Oh, sorry I was only addressing one small element of the thread. Ash our managing director dealt with some if the rest in the news section post. It's hard for any one post to address everything. I apologize to those in this thread if it appeared that I was not responding to your comment(s)

    Patrick Connor
    Serif Europe Ltd

    "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

    the news section post

    ^ You're linking to the wrong thread. ;) 

    Edited by loukash
    fixed now, nothing to see here :)

    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

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    31 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

    Oh, sorry I was only addressing one small element of the thread. Ash our managing director dealt with some if the rest in the news section post. It's hard for any one post to address everything. I apologize to those in this thread if it appeared that I was not responding to your comment(s)

    No worry, you're doing good work here. Very appreciated.

    Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    8 hours ago, Oasin said:

    Corgi do you work as a product manager? Found some of your ideas very professional.

    Thank you. I was in various technology roles for decades, but never a product manager. 

     

    4 hours ago, rawii22 said:

    Hey, you've got a good point in your message! It is always nice to see where a company is planning on going with a well-respected product. I found this in one of the forums I was looking through, and it seems similar to what you were talking about with the msix installation situation😁:

     

    Yes, that latter posting was much appreciated. Although as someone affected by the MSIX situation, that five-day gap between the v2 announcement and that post you cited was anxiety-filled, not knowing whether the decision to use only MSIX was etched in stone or not, or whether the 40% discount would disappear before we'd find out whether there would be a standard installer.

    It would have been better for Serif to have made a public statement about the intention to use MSIX-only for v2 well in advance of the announcement (or, if they'd have had a wider v2 Beta). That would have surfaced the problems much earlier, giving Serif a chance to change course, resulting in a smoother rollout. And I can't think of any good reason for them to have withheld the plans for MSIX. Perhaps there was one, but I'm not seeing it.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    55 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

    We will fix V1 if it breaks, and are planning a 1.10.6 update when we can

    It is hard for some to accept that 40% is what we would have offered only to our upgraders if they could be reliably identified without a lot of complaints or breaking store rules. New customers could have got less than 40% if it were possible. To be angry that they did not get less seems odd to me. I am happy for them.

    Here are some of the groups of customers we would not have been able to reliably offer 40% to

    1. Bought only Affinity Photo iPad
    2. Bought only Affinity Designer iPad
    3. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer iPad
    4. Bought only Affinity Photo Mac App Store
    5. Bought only Affinity Designer Mac App Store
    6. Bought only Affinity Publisher Mac App Store
    7. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer from the Mac App Store
    8. Bought Affinity Photo and Designer from the Mac App Store
    9. Bought Affinity Designer and Publisher Mac App Store
    10. Bought Affinity Photo from the Mac App Store and Photo from the iPad Store
    11. Bought Affinity Designer from the Mac App Store and Designer from the iPad Store
    12. Bought Affinity Photo, and Designer and Publisher from the Mac App Store
    13. Bought Affinity Photo, and Designer and Publisher from the Mac App Store AND Affinity Photo and Designer from the iPad Store

    Tell me #12 & #13 do not deserve the full 40% offer because they are not loyal/valued customers.

     

    But you could have offered individual product discounts as upgrade bundle deals, if you hadn't removed the existing products from the stores. A lot of other developers already do this. Allowing existing custmers the ability to upgrade their products as required, and also avoiding the confusion over existing product support.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    2 hours ago, monzo said:

    But you could have offered individual product discounts as upgrade bundle deals, if you hadn't removed the existing products from the stores.

    How? Serif still wpuldn't know if you own V1 or not from the App Store. So, in essence, anyone buying that bundle would be a new customer, buying a new license for V1 and V2. You, as an existing V1 customer, would end up paying more, because you're buying both, again.

     

    -- 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

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
    Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

    Guest
    Reply to this topic...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

    Loading...
    ×
    ×
    • Create New...

    Important Information

    Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.