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18 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

It may be what you want, but, i can see how portable applications are not very good for the majority of users, who don't even know their user preference, or files are in the Documents folder, or, in a folder like AppData/Roaming. Or, even, that Programs are by default installed in ProgramFiles, or ProgramFiles (x86). Or, that those folders need amin rights to write to, thus would be bad places to install portable applications, when you're logged into Windows as a normal user.

See where i'm going?

It's not just me for sure. I did not invent the concept of portable apps. I see other people did and I like it very much because I see the benefits.

The majority of users does not really care. So they even go over to actually use system default folders like "C:\Users\Steps\Documents" and so on. Pretty risky I think. I had to rescue several peoples data which actually had a non-more starting Windows (due to a virus or whatever) and had their data on the same partition as the system. I learned that this is not a good thing.

Always keep your system partition and user data separate for security reasons.

Portable apps indeed are just the extreme way to do that.

And as mentioned before Steam has as huge benefit also this portable concept. Most people I know have for that reason a separate steam partition or (in my case) even a seperate disk. So after re-installing Windows there is no need to download again all that games.

This is something you learn from experience and failing systems teach you.

Windows 10 Pro x64 (1903). Intel Core i7-9700K @ 3.60GHz, 32 GB memory, NVidia RTX 2080
Affinity Photo 1.7.2.471, Affinity Designer 1.7.2.471, Affinity Publisher 1.7.2.471

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4 hours ago, Steps said:

On MacOS the installation routine with {sic} just copy over a DMG file which is like a portable self-contained app already is the easiest model.

Nope. DMG files are not self-contained apps. They are a type of disk image file that can be used as a container for several different kinds of files, but basically they contain raw file block data which may be compressed and encrypted. DMG files are usually opened by the faceless DiskImageMounter.app, so they appear as if they were mounted volumes of a physical drive.

There are so-called "drag & drop" apps that often are downloaded as DMG files. To install them after they are mounted, it is only necessary to drag & drop them onto an appropriate directory, usually either the root level Applications folder (so they are available to all users) or the current user domain Applications folder (so they are available only to that user). Dropping them in the top level Applications folder requires admin privileges. 

However, most applications are installed by the Mac Installer.app, which (much like for Windows) takes care of verifying the integrity of the files in the application package, putting them in the appropriate locations, registering them with the OS, & so on. Typically, to do this Installer.app runs 'pre-flight' & 'post-flight' scripts contained in the package, creating application & system level sub-folders as needed to put everything in the correct place & maintain the correct access privileges for each of them. This is in no way a "self-contained" model -- even apps that can be installed by the drag & drop method cause data to be written to various locations outside user space on the boot drive by the OS when they are run.

Apps are "portable" only to the extent they can be run from some drive without actually being installed on it, ideally with no loss of performance or other issues that would prevent them from working exactly like they would if installed on the boot drive. That includes seamless integration with access privileges enforced by the OS, graceful recovery from crashes that otherwise could leave that app (or something else) in an unstable state, unnecessarily complicate or interfere with third party or OS-specific backup applications, & so on.

There are not that many apps that meet all those criteria, regardless of the OS they run on. The Affinity apps are definitely not among them.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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6 hours ago, Steps said:

I had to rescue several peoples data which actually had a non-more starting Windows (due to a virus or whatever) and had their data on the same partition as the system. I learned that this is not a good thing.

The only thing not good about what those people were doing was failing to adopt a good backup strategy, one that makes multiple redundant copies of at least all the data they cannot afford to lose to other drives, to cloud backup or sync services (like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive), to archives of various kinds, & so on.

7 hours ago, Steps said:

Always keep your system partition and user data separate for security reasons.

Portable apps indeed are just the extreme way to do that.

Nope. Portable apps do not, by themselves, offer any significant backup or security protections. For users, the most important files to protect are document files & any other data that cannot easily be recreated from other sources (like installers or downloads from original sources). You don't need a separate partition for that but you do need a backup strategy that works even if the boot drive fails, making all of its partitions unusable.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@R C-R Thanks, I stay corrected. I thought indeed drag and drop installing was the default. I did not know of the Mac Installer App. All I need on my mac mini at work was installed via DMG. That lead me to false conclusions.

Windows 10 Pro x64 (1903). Intel Core i7-9700K @ 3.60GHz, 32 GB memory, NVidia RTX 2080
Affinity Photo 1.7.2.471, Affinity Designer 1.7.2.471, Affinity Publisher 1.7.2.471

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/25/2019 at 2:08 PM, - S - said:

I'm not sure whether they've implemented the changes yet, but Microsoft said they were changing the pricing to 5% when a customer uses a deep link to get to and purchase an application.  Or 15% when Microsoft delivers a customer through any other methods, such as via a Store collection or a Microsoft Store spotlight.

Link:
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-store-revenue-share-is-coming/

On 1/25/2019 at 2:12 PM, lashman said:

nope, that never happened ... well, not yet at least (even though they said it would happen in 2018)

It appears Microsoft have now updated the Microsoft Store revenue fees they mentioned at Build 2018 (better late than never I guess…):

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/legal/windows/agreements/app-developer-agreement-change-history

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/legal/windows/agreements/app-developer-agreement

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  • 3 months later...

I wouldn't mind having a copy on Steam either. Even if it was a 30 day demo where you had to enter the license number purchased from Affinity's website. In fact that might be prefered.

I run Blender through the Steam store specifically because it auto updates in the background without hassle.

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