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  • Staff

Hi George,

 

I think we'd never say never, but at the moment we require OS X Lion or greater (Lion has been around since July 2011) and as soon as Yosemite is released later this year it means we'll be supporting 4 major versions of the OS. Adding Snow Leopard support would not be trivial, but also not impossible so we will have to see how things pan out over time. If there is a huge call for this then we'll clearly try our best.

 

Cheers,

Matt

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  • 5 weeks later...

I'd just like to echo George's request for Snow Leopard Support if possible. I'm one of those dinosaurs that still likes to use Freehand and although I'd like to upgrade to Mavericks, it's the sole reason I haven't. I still need it to access older files periodically and find certain things simply easier and less time consuming to do it compared to other vector apps. I'm sure there's a few others in the same boat, but maybe they've all moved on by now. Anyway, Snow Leopard support would be most welcome and it would also allow me to evaluate Affinity Designer as a possible go-to vector tool for the future.

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Hi Bertrude

Welcome,

Affinity's team is already working on a way to import Freehand files directly to Designer. There was some requests here on the forum to provide them freehand files to test the new importer. Hopefully you should be able to access your old files soon. Overall Affinity is much more intuitive and accessible than other software solutions, with some suggestions coming directly from other Freehand users here on the forum. Maybe it works for you as well. Worth to keep an eye on it :)

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Another vote for Snow Leopard support. This would be especially helpful for the scientific community where legacy software and data make following the accelerated OS upgrades difficult. Maybe the users are relatively few in numbers, but frequently in the position to make decisions for whole laboratories and such.

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I, too, would like to add my request for 'Snow Leopard' support. I doubt I'll upgrade past the 10.6.8 version of OS X simply because to do so would 'break' too many of the 'legacy' apps I use (e.g., FreeHand MXa, Kai's Power Tools, etc) in my work. Affinity is doing groundbreaking work with the apps they're developing, and I would love to use them. Unfortunately, none are compatible with my OS. Please do give some consideration to making these apps - which I've downloaded the beta for but since discovered can't be installed - available for 'Snow Leopard' users. Thanks in advance.

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  • 1 month later...

I think the best solution for running old software like Freehand is to have two computers; an old computer for the old software and a new computer for the new software. I just don't think it is realistic for software companies to support an OS from five versions back. I liked freehand a lot too but that was thirteen years ago, at some point you just need to keep the old with the old and the new with the new. If you only use the program occasionally it shouldn't be too big of a difficulty to move back and forth between two machines.

 

I guess one of the reasons I am against really old OSs is that I would like to see Affinity take advantage of some of the latest features in Mavericks and Yosemite particularly those that have to do with file managment (duplicate, rename, move, revert to, iCloud Drive, etc.) Other graphics apps like Sketch and Pixelmator already have these features so I would like to see Affinity catch up in those areas as quickly as possible but I don't think that can happen while they are simultaneously trying to support Snow Leopard. Pixelmator actually requires Mavericks to run so they aren't doing any backwards compatibility at all. I can see maybe going back one old version but if you do much more then that the program won't be able to live up to it's full potential.

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  • Staff

Hi KipV,

 

Affinity Designer will support iCloud when you run it up after buying it from the App Store (it's one of Apple's requirements that you can only have iCloud if you've purchased through the App Store). iCloud Drive is a different thing and if you tell your account to upgrade to iCloud Drive then you'll have access to your iCloud files in a more dropbox-ish kind of way.

 

Thanks,

Matt

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I empathize with the users (potential users?) who would like to have Affinity in their workflow on Snow Leopard; however, as has been pointed out, Freehand is--although no less effective now as it was in 2003--an eleven year old package. One solution, if it helps, is to partition your Mac and (if your Mac will run Lion/Mountain Lion) creating a virtual hard drive wherein the newer version of OS X can be installed. This will allow what is known as "dual booting" wherein one can optionally boot into Snow Leopard to use one's current setup or boot into the newer OS to use Affinity.

 

I just did the above on this past weekend to an old 2006 Core 2 Duo 15" MacBook Pro which accepted OS X Lion 10.7.5 (the latest version of OS X that the hardware would accept) so I can run Affinity Designer in the Lion partition and run Freehand MX in the Snow Leopard partition.

 

Look here to find out the absolute specs on your Mac: www.everymac.com

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@Quarian I did the same thing on my old mac except I had the two OSs on their own hard drives.

 

I have gotten over using Freehand at this point. With all the good things you could say about it there were a number of things it didn't do very well. The layers panel was really bad and it had too many panels that just floated around the screen, and the effects features were painfully slow. It was a good product for it's time but mostly dated now.

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One thing I should make everyone aware of. The 2007 Macbook and the 2006 Macbook Pro I upgraded and put Affinity on ARE old macs. Because of this, there are certain functions that will work at less-than optimal speeds. The main one I've found being the vector brush tool. It works, but hesitates when creating curves when attached to my Intuous Tablet with the older hardware. On my newer hardware, no problems exist. Brush control is set as "pressure". Of other remaining functions that I've used, there have been no problems. Not blaming Affinity, it's just that it IS running on older hardware.

 

The 2007 Macbook has a Intel GMA950 IGP of 64MB of VRAM. The 2006 Macbook Pro has an ATI X1600 dedicated card that produces 128MB of VRAM. I think, by the time Lion came along, 256MB of VRAM was the norm...not to mention the fact that the 2006 MacBook Pro has a 32-bit EFI so, according to everymac.com, there are some conflicts in running Lion in full 64-bit on this hardware.

 

Just saying...you might be able to run Affinity, but there might be some features that won't run as fast as on newer hardware.

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The vector brush issue appears to be a software problem. This topic has been raised in in these forums and the developer said they can make improvements to it's performance. I run the latest Mac Mini that is fully maxed out and even I have performance issues.

 

Also I should specify a little more what I meant when I said "old computer". I was mainly talking about people with really old operating systems. It is worth pointing out however that Mavericks will support computers that are around 5 or 6 years old. That is one reason I am not terribly sympathetic about people who are not upgrading their OSs for hardware reasons is that if you are not able to run Mavericks your computer might just be too old. My previous machine was a 2004 Power Mac and that thing is painful to use these days compared to a new Mac. A 2006 computer has been around for nearly a decade at this point so it's probably about time to look at upgrading. You can then keep your old computer around for running Freehand and other old apps.

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One other thing to add, the price of good performing Macs have come down considerably since the time you bought your computer. When I bought my Power Mac with Cinema display the configuation set me back about four grand. This last year I bought a Mini for around $1300, nearly a third the price of the Power Mac. Even a $600 Mini is a good performing machine these days, certainly better then a 2006 laptop.

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Duly noted, KipV. I also own a 2012 Mini and a recent iMac (both running Mountain Lion). My interest in using Affinity on those older Mac laptops is simply because they ARE laptops and, therefore, portable. The price of the current Macbooks AND the fact that Apple no longer makes a 17" Macbook Pro is what keeps me from fully investing in Apple laptops, however I will invest in the desktop models. My most recent laptop purchase is a quad-core PC bought for the purpose of running Serif's PagePlus and DrawPlus (as well as Lightworks and FXHome's HitFilm among other packages, I guess you can tell...I'm trying to get off of the Adobe teet) as it was found after much study that PagePlus is the one software closest to being the equal of InDesign, outside of Quark, in many ways...at least, until Publisher comes out.

 

Admittedly, I probably would have bought a new mac IF--at the time--I'd known that Serif was going to come out with their Affinity line. The older laptops have been pressed back into service solely because of Affinity Designer and it's upcoming siblings.

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I am, as well, excited to hear news of Publisher and am in agreement with you regarding InDesign. I dislike the whole subscription business model for Adobe software. If someone pays $50.00/month for 3 years, after 3 years they should own something not just look forward to paying for three more years. I will be happy to let go of InDesign for my personal endeavors on the day that Publisher is released.

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To me the problem isn't just the rental price but the fact I think the last great update was CS4 from a really long time ago.

 

True, KipV  —  the newer version all had one or two new important features each (e.g. nested styles, multi-column paragraphs) and in my opinion weren't worth a full new version, more like free update additional features.

The pressure for purchasing the newest version always came from clients who bought any Adobe software for their staff and required me to update for reading their files.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I add my kudos and encouragement to any consideration to add compatibility with Snow Leopard in the near future, even if only for some time. Some of us have perfectly sound machines and do not wish to (or cannot, for different reasons re hardware or workflow) upgrade to any of the newer OSs, including Yosemite, about to make its golden appearance (at least for now)....

Especially when SL was the last of Steve Job's pups (or, well, kitty!)

That said: Congrats on your launching success, Affinity Designer team! About time Adobe CS had some healthy—and powerful—competitor. Best of best wishes.

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I too had 10.6 on my computer.  Did not want to give up my old software.

 

I installed 10.6 on my external drive.

Then I got the free update to 10.9

After that I installed Affinity Designer.

 

Now at start up I chose which drive to boot from.

 

It's the best of both worlds.

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  • 1 month later...

Another vote here for Snow Leopard compatibility, if possible please.

 

We're running Snow Leopard on two Mac Pros, mid 2010 3.33 Ghz Xeon Westmere 6-core.  The main reason is that we have a massive archive of FreeHand files going back to 1989, and ongoing, daily access to FreeHand is an absolute MUST here.

 

These MacPros will easily accommodate an OS upgrade to at least Mountain Lion, so a dual boot system would be possible, though impractical for daily use back and forth in a frantic, deadline-driven environment. Hence, as long as we need FreeHand, we're pretty much stuck with Snow Leopard until something (AD, hopefully) will eventually replace FreeHand completely.

 

If AD is looking to step into FreeHand's shoes (or at least open FreeHand file effectively), I'm definitely in.

 

And if there's any chance that Snow Leopard compatibility can come to the many of us who need it, sooner rather than later, that would be truly amazing.

 

Could this be the app that sets FreeHand users free?!

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  • 2 months later...

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