Best Mac OS for Affinity 2

[StewartTower]

I'm a graphic designer of 29 years and am washing my hands of Adobe. My home computer is a 2017 iMac running Mojave. I've recently had to restore from Apple's servers and now my Adobe Creative Suite barely works. (CS4 and CS6). I refuse to pay Adobe's lease fees for their Cloud version since the pre-cloud Creative Suites are still perfectly good. Affintiy 2 will not run on Mojave so I'm looking for feedback on which Mac OSs are better or worse. Cheers...

[Komatös]

Hi @StewartTower and welcome to the forum.

macOS Catalina 10.15 is the smallest working version with which the Affinity V2 programs work.

[R C-R]

I run Catalina on my iMac with Affinity & it works fine. Your 2017 iMac can run all current macOS versions but if you want to run an older one like Catalina you may find it difficult to install it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 may help with that.

[StewartTower]

I'm thinking Catalina would be the best bet since I see numerous issues with Monterey and Ventura in the forums. As a rule, I'm leery of the latest updates until all the bugs get worked out.

[jmwellborn]

2 hours ago, StewartTower said:

I'm thinking Catalina would be the best bet since I see numerous issues with Monterey and Ventura in the forums. As a rule, I'm leery of the latest updates until all the bugs get worked out.

For what it is worth, I am using Big Sur, and all of the V2 apps are performing flawlessly, including the latest Betas 2.2.0.1903.  One step beyond Catalina but not venturing into uncharted territory!  (At least for me.  IOS 16.5.1 (c) did a number on several of my iPad and iPhone settings for which I am not a happy camper.)  

[nickbatz]

On 7/22/2023 at 8:28 AM, StewartTower said:

I'm thinking Catalina would be the best bet since I see numerous issues with Monterey and Ventura in the forums. As a rule, I'm leery of the latest updates until all the bugs get worked out.

It certainly makes sense to wait until the software you use is updated, but are you sure the numerous issues aren't just the Intel version?

FWIW I've been using Ventura on my Mac Studio for months with no issues other than the occasional hang on quit, currently the latest beta 2.2 of Affinity Photo.

Before that I was using Monterey, which is what my Mac Studio Max came with. I also run lots of music and audio software, so I have to make sure the plug-ins I use work before updating OSes.

In general, if I'm going to update it's for a reason, and I go to the most recent macOS I can. That's the one developers use as a target, and also it's going to have the most up-to-date security patches.

Ventura has two features I love: converting image formats by right-clicking on it in the Finder (Quick Actions), and removing the background intelligently.

[StewartTower]

Good points. I've upgraded to Big Sur for now and purchased the Affinity suite. Haven't had much time to experiment yet but I'm liking what I see so far. Thanks for the input.

[thomaso]

On 7/22/2023 at 5:28 PM, StewartTower said:

I'm thinking Catalina would be the best bet since I see numerous issues with Monterey and Ventura in the forums.

Apart from the fact that the total number of users of each macOS is unknown + the forum search is not very specific, I wonder if your observation is just an impression (based on your expectations and focus) and does not match with a real number of issues related to the different macOS versions.

A search can indicate a decreasing number of issues (or 'just' a decreasing number of users?) : 206 -> 120 -> 88 results

. .

… while Big Sur seems to point to limitations in the forum's search: 23,870 results.