Affinity V1 optimized for M2?

[Nick12961]

I am looking to upgrade from my Mid 2014 15" Retina (16GB/2.2GHz i7/512GB SSD/Iris Pro) to a M2 Max 16" due to availability and future proofing. I purchased V1 (Photo and Designer) at the time I ran a 2014 as my daily driver Mac and purchased V2 at launch (I run both on this 2014 and my hot spare 2015 DG).

When I purchase the new computer will V1 ever be fully optimized for M2 or should it only be installed to maintain old projects and anything new goes V2 (now, into the future as well)?

Edited April 8, 2023 by Nick12961
Edited for clarification

[v_kyr]

Welcome!

Define fully optimized for M2! - Affinity V1 products did already support and run on Apple M1/M2 silicon hardware.

Though since the Affinity V1 software isn't developed any further since the V2 software release, you will on the long go/run have to upgrade to Affinity v2 products in order to get future bug fixes, new software features and updates (... also in terms of further future Apple silicon hardware optimizations).

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, Nick12961 said:

ever be fully optimized for M2

It seems neither V1 nor V2 are "fully optimized" (whatever aspect you mean) as the various issue or/and bug reports respectively their frequent recommendations to deactivate hardware acceleration indicate. Also, the performance preference options appear to leave "optimization" partially up to he user and may depend on specific tasks when using the apps.

https://affinity.help/publisher/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Workspace/preferences.html?title=Preferences

V1 – Performance options

• RAM Usage Limit—allows you to set your preference for optimising application performance for your projects.
• Disk Usage Warning At—choose the limit at which you are warned about disk usage.
• Undo Limit—choose the history length you are able to access.
• View Quality—choose the way in which the image displays during modifications. Select from the pop-up menu.
• Choose whether to dither gradients, when working on projects, to speed up performance.
• Choose a clipping option for optimising performance.
• File Recovery Interval—sets the interval for saving temporary data for currently open documents, allowing a document restore to be offered at startup if the app develops a fault.
• Display—Choose whether to use hardware acceleration such as Metal, OpenGL or OpenGL (Basic), or use Software acceleration. If your computer experiences performance problems, use the above option order until performance is acceptable. Metal requires Sierra macOS (10.12.x) and above, with Affinity optimised for High Sierra 10.13.x) and above. If your Mac has an additional discrete graphics card, checking the Use only integrated GPU will not allow access to it, therefore reducing power consumption and conserving battery life (useful for unplugged MacBook Pros).
• Retina Rendering—choose your rendering experience. Select from the pop-up menu.
  • Automatic (Best)—renders as non-retina followed by retina for balanced performance and quality.
  • Low quality (Fastest)—renders as non-retina only for highest performance level but compromises on quality.
  • High quality (Slowest)—renders as retina only for high quality but may compromise performance.
• Hardware Acceleration—checking Enable Metal compute acceleration boosts some tasks' performance if a compatible GPU is available. See the Hardware acceleration topic.

[Nick12961]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Welcome!

Define fully optimized for M2! - Affinity V1 products did already support and run on Apple M1/M2 silicon hardware.

Though since the Affinity V1 software isn't developed any further since the V2 software release, you will on the long go/run have to upgrade to Affinity v2 products in order to get future bug fixes, new software features and updates (... also in terms of further future Apple silicon hardware optimizations).

I already purchased V2, I keep V1 around for legacy projects which need it. By fully optimized I meant if the M2 chips have a feature that needs an update will it be done.

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, Nick12961 said:

By fully optimized I meant if the M2 chips have a feature that needs an update will it be done.

The M2 chips offer more cores, RAM usage and also (...depend on Pro/Max chips) a slightly overall faster/better connection bandwidth in contrast to M1 chips, so they are generally slightly enhanced in that direction. - But I doubt the Affinity apps are explicitely "fully optimized for all possible aspects" of the Mx architecture chips here.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Nick12961 said:

By fully optimized I meant if the M2 chips have a feature that needs an update will it be done.

Regarding your topic, V1 will receive future updates only in limited situations, such as "critical problems caused by the operating system", which I don't understand as optimization in the sense of speeding up app usage. – Accordingly, future hardware changes will not cause Affinity updates for V1 but quite likely will (have to) be considered in V2 updates.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/173986-affinity-v2-updates-pricing-and-no-subscription-repost/

Quote

Updates to V1 moving forward

While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update.

We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.

[Nick12961]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Regarding your topic, V1 will receive future updates only in limited situations, such as "critical problems caused by the operating system", which I don't understand as optimization in the sense of speeding up app usage. – Accordingly, future hardware changes will not cause Affinity updates for V1 but quite likely will (have to) be considered in V2 updates.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/173986-affinity-v2-updates-pricing-and-no-subscription-repost/

So it sounds like on the M2 Pro, time to move to V2 full time (as well as my old Mac), but install V1 for older projects

Edited April 8, 2023 by Nick12961
Correction

[thomaso]

3 minutes ago, Nick12961 said:

So it sounds like on the M2 Pro, time to move to V2 full time (as well as my old Mac), but install V1 for older projects

I don't think there is a universal "optimum," so your ideas are worth just trying. Note that not all users and not all M1 or M2 Macs are or were affected by the same reported problems, which might indicate that it depends heavily on specific hardware + performance settings + workflow.

[Nick12961]

8 minutes ago, Red Sands said:

I think “build for” is what Serif is trying to say.

However, M1 and M2 performs very well in all apps with builds for this new hardware. Best hardware I ever had.

I tried the M1 in person, and was blown away. However, I held out until enough of my applications were updated for Apple Silicon. I'm down to one being known EOL (which I expected but it was superseded with a compatible replacement), one I need to get an ETA on a Apple Silicon update or it's also EOL, one is already in Beta for Apple Silicon, the other I need an ETA on if it's done or in progress. Other than those 3, my apps are ready. I know Affinity V2 is ready for both, but V1 was a minor question mark.

I held onto this 2014 due to the port dilemma and thermal issues hampering the new machines as well as the keyboard issues.