Frustrating interface, help and performance

[GilS]

Every time I use the Affinity suite for iPad it takes many times longer to do the simplest task because I have to exit the document and go to Help to find a well hidden instruction that is made unnecessarily complex by unintuitive icons. 

I appreciate the price point of Affinity but I find myself abandoning a project and returning to Photoshop to do simple tasks (ex: among many other like tasks, today’s beef: selecting a drawing and moving it) Shouldn’t this be simply drawing a marquee around an object and repositioning it by dragging?

I’ve worked in graphics for over 2 decades as an Adobe suite user and I understand the interface will be different but having to go through a tutorial almost with every tool borders on byzantine. I’m sure I’m not alone.

[loukash]

2 hours ago, GilS said:

returning to Photoshop to do simple tasks (ex: among many other like tasks, today’s beef: selecting a drawing and moving it) Shouldn’t this be simply drawing a marquee around an object and repositioning it by dragging?

This is a commont misconception among (former) Phototshop users that the workflows should be the same in Affinity. Many aren't, and that's per se a Good Thing™. Affinity Photo is not a PS knockoff.

2 hours ago, GilS said:

I’ve worked in graphics for over 2 decades as an Adobe suite user and I understand the interface will be different but having to go through a tutorial almost with every tool borders on byzantine. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Frankly, having been a PS user from circa 1995 until 2019 myself, it took me a few years since buying Photo in 2015 to realize and appreciate the differences.  
The official video tutorials did help. I'm still regularly watching the new ones, and I'm still learning new tricks.

So… no, you don't necessarily need to reposition stuff by using marquee selections. In Affinity, every layer/object is basically a "smart object" that can be freely transformed by any available means, inluding the Move tool or the Transform panel.