Slow start up (All Affinity apps)

[zibrah]

Hi, this is an accidental cross post because I responded to a thread with the subject/title above thinking I was in the "Report a Bug in Affinity V2 - Photo 2 Bugs found on macOS", but I meant to post it here because its existed in V1 but V2 is way slower. Definitely a bug!! Here is a link to the original post --  

This is what I wonder.....

Hi, I really really wish this would get resolved. V1 was slow to open for me but V2 takes a really really long time, way more than it should.

All of my other photography and non photography apps open very quickly. It shouldn't matter whether I bought it at the App Store or from Serif.

It seems to me that it may never get fixed..... If it is really is a better way of going, I am wondering about asking for a refund from Apple and buying at the Serif store. It really seems like that would be a hassle and also opportunity for something to go wrong . I shouldn't have to do this anyway.

If an Serif moderator/employee could jump in and maybe give hope for the App Store version of this problem being really being fixed in a reasonable amount of time that would be reassuring.

If a Serif moderator/employee could verify that the Serif store version does not do this, then if I get a refund from the App Store is it going to be a mess If I have already bought the three apps and have a key/license currently registered (from the App Store) with my account at Serif.  Does the App Store key/license get revoked and removed from my account and then a new license/key from the Serif store automatically take its place?   I just wish it would work and that I didn't have to consider this.........

Intel Macbook Pro

 

[monzo]

This is an issue with my M1 Mini - incredibly all my V1 Affinity apps take about ten times longer to open than on my old 2012 MacBook Pro. No other software performs as badly. I thought it was an M1 related issue, but maybe not.

[zibrah]

I wish I knew the solution.... I am tired of the Icon bouncing in the dock for ever and ever to start up...

[ifarlow]

This was an issue with version 1, and I'm quite disappointed to see that it is still present in version 2.

[Lee D]

Thank you for the reports, I've passed them over to our development team.

[azguy]

This slow startup problem needs to be resolved.  Affinity apps are by far the slowest starting apps on my Mac.  The slow startup really hurts Affinity sales when I try to show off these apps to clients.

[Chapit Zulkefli]

have the same issue too with my current setup.
even just to open the apps.
it will getting worse when i'm opening the apps together with working files.

[Bryan Rieger]

Out of the blue today all three Affinity v2.0.4 apps take forever to start (first time) on macOS, roughly 30 seconds with no indication in the dock. Not sure what changed, but I don't recall this behaviour when I last used them a few days back.

macOS Ventura 13.2, 32GB M1 Pro

Edited February 7, 2023 by BryanR

[Chapit Zulkefli]

7 hours ago, BryanR said:

Out of the blue today all three Affinity v2.0.4 apps take forever to start (first time) on macOS, roughly 30 seconds with no indication in the dock. Not sure what changed, but I don't recall this behaviour when I last used them a few days back.

macOS Ventura 13.2, 32GB M1 Pro

interesting. still happen to me too, since my last post.

[brandoseven]

Yes, the slow startup speed of all the V2 Affinity Apps bugs me since the launch of the products. 20 secs to even see the startup screen of the app. The second launch is way faster afterwards, about 5 secs to the startup screen. Maybe it's the verification check (over the internet) if the license is valid that slows down the startup process.

I got the feeling that the Beta 2.1 apps are a little faster at startup. But only a few seconds. 

I love the apps, working with them is quick and snappy. I hope this gets sorted out, that would be awesome.

macOS Ventura 13.2.1, Mac Mini M1 16GB

[MEB]

Hi @brandoseven, @Chapit Zulkefli, @BryanR, @azguy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thank you for your feedback. We are aware this is still a problem on macOS, unfortunately we weren't able to sort it out yet.
I've updated/bumped it again to bring it up to dev's attention.

[Chapit Zulkefli]

53 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @brandoseven, @Chapit Zulkefli, @BryanR, @azguy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thank you for your feedback. We are aware this is still a problem on macOS, unfortunately we weren't able to sort it out yet.
I've updated/bumped it again to bring it up to dev's attention.

Thank you. Hopefully will be sorted out in the next update.

[dougdi]

Still waiting…

[Chapit Zulkefli]

11 hours ago, dougdi said:

Still waiting…

same.

[Erkki-Petteri]

On 12/2/2022 at 12:47 PM, Lee D said:

I've passed them over to our development team

This is meaningless, development team obviously already knows about this issue, but Affinity does not care enough?

On 2/23/2023 at 2:38 PM, MEB said:

I've updated/bumped it again to bring it up to dev's attention

I would assume the devs already know, care and are embarrassed about this. This needs to be dumped on the desk of some business or product manager.

I have paid for Affinity products, but is there _really_ nothing you can do about being the slowest ever macOS app to launch?

The slow launch is a limiting factor in how much I use Affinity products, I can't be bothered to wait for them to launch on my M2 supercomputer. Just the fact that it is so slow has lead me to looking for new apps, unfortunately I have not found a good, light, native macOS image editing app yet. Anyone have suggestions on where to move to from Affinity?

[Chapit Zulkefli]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:41 PM, Chapit Zulkefli said:

same.

 

33 minutes ago, Erkki-Petteri said:

This is meaningless, development team obviously already knows about this issue, but Affinity does not care enough?

I would assume the devs already know, care and are embarrassed about this. This needs to be dumped on the desk of some business or product manager.

I have paid for Affinity products, but is there _really_ nothing you can do about being the slowest ever macOS app to launch?

The slow launch is a limiting factor in how much I use Affinity products, I can't be bothered to wait for them to launch on my M2 supercomputer. Just the fact that it is so slow has lead me to looking for new apps, unfortunately I have not found a good, light, native macOS image editing app yet. Anyone have suggestions on where to move to from Affinity?

Interesting because my last post in April regarding this still got no feedback.
I thought it was only happened on Intel, yet M2 too..

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Chapit Zulkefli said:

Interesting because my last post in April regarding this still got no feedback.
I thought it was only happened on Intel, yet M2 too..

It's happening because of a security check that macOS is performing, and I would expect that to be the same regardless of the architecture.

 

[Bryan Rieger]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It's happening because of a security check that macOS is performing, and I would expect that to be the same regardless of the architecture.

And yet it only happens with the Affinity apps. Other large universal apps such as Adobe, Ableton, Unity, etc have absolutely no problems launching in a reasonable amount of time on macOS.

[Murfee]

13 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

And yet it only happens with the Affinity apps. Other large universal apps such as Adobe, Ableton, Unity, etc have absolutely no problems launching in a reasonable amount of time on macOS.

It doesn't happen for me... all 3 apps open within a few seconds, maybe it is just apps purchased through the Mac App Store, which could explain why Adobe etc doesn't have the problem

 

[Bryan Rieger]

I purchased via the Affinity store, and it’s been reported by numerous folks for a few years now. Everything can be working fine as you describe, then suddenly the apps start taking ages to open.

[Murfee]

3 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

then suddenly the apps start taking ages to open.

That sounds like an issue with the system, if it were an app issue I would expect it to happen all the time, not suddenly

[loukash]

5 hours ago, Chapit Zulkefli said:

yet M2 too

There must be some other factors at play because every v2.3.0 app takes exactly 4 seconds to launch.
MacBook Air M2 15", 24GB RAM, 2TB SSD, MacOS Ventura, running off battery at the moment.
Apps downloaded from Serif store, using the internal update mechanism, thus no security checks necessary anymore.
Same has applied for the recent betas which were all a completely fresh install on this machine, including clean app support directories.

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

It's happening because of a security check that macOS is performing

Frankly, I keep SIP disabled, for various reasons. An average user shouldn't ever do that unless they know what they are doing. (Disclosure: I'm definitely not an "average user" )

56 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

And yet it only happens with the Affinity apps.

I'm experiencing similar issues in other apps, actually.
For example, every time the Time Machine connects to my – admittedly "antique" – Time Capsule to make a backup, applications that are constantly checking for mounted volumes may lock down with a spinning beachball for a minute or two until the Time Machine network volume has been fully mounted in the background. That's annoying. My old Macs usually running El Capitan never had these issues while backing up to the same Time Capsule, so it's apparently a Ventura issue. (Affinity apps aren't affected by this.)
Other times, like every few weeks, the whole system may slow down for seemingly no reason. Logging out and in again often fixes it, but sometimes a reboot is necessary. Given that I use the machine for many weeks without rebooting, sometimes the system caches may develop some corruption.

Another typical example of what may severely affect the performance of design apps like Affinity is bad font management.

[Chapit Zulkefli]

49 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

And yet it only happens with the Affinity apps. Other large universal apps such as Adobe, Ableton, Unity, etc have absolutely no problems launching in a reasonable amount of time on macOS.

i cosigned.

[Bryan Rieger]

46 minutes ago, Murfee said:

That sounds like an issue with the system, if it were an app issue I would expect it to happen all the time, not suddenly

Sigh. It's not an issue with the system. It's much like the UI panels in the Affinity apps that suddenly go pear shaped (see image below) and take up half the screen when they were working fine the day before. No system updates. No additional software installed. Nothing. I've even had these behaviours surface within hours of reinstalling macOS and installing the Affinity apps. These are known issues.

[Bryan Rieger]

41 minutes ago, loukash said:

I'm experiencing similar issues in other apps, actually.
For example, every time the Time Machine connects to my – admittedly "antique" – Time Capsule to make a backup, applications that are constantly checking for mounted volumes may lock down with a spinning beachball for a minute or two until the Time Machine network volume has been fully mounted in the background. That's annoying. My old Macs usually running El Capitan never had these issues while backing up to the same Time Capsule, so it's apparently a Ventura issue. (Affinity apps aren't affected by this.)
Other times, like every few weeks, the whole system may slow down for seemingly no reason. Logging out and in again often fixes it, but sometimes a reboot is necessary. Given that I use the machine for many weeks without rebooting, sometimes the system caches may develop some corruption.

Another typical example of what may severely affect the performance of design apps like Affinity is bad font management.

Apps locking up while checking mounted volumes is an entirely different problem from an app taking an excessive amount of time to launch.

I also had problems with my antique Time Machine (I loved that thing) in later versions of macOS and eventually had to retire it and migrate to alternative storage options.

Yes, bad font management can impact the performance of the apps, but that should apply to all apps equally—especially design apps. This is not the case.