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Why is Photo STILL on sale?!


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I was excited about Affinity Photo for iPad. I trusted the company and bought it at launch before any reviews or feedback for $19.99. This was supposed to be a temporary early adopter discount before it went up to $29.99. Only, in the last 7 months since launch, it’s only been $29.99 for one week. It’s even been discounted as low as $9.99 a couple of times and now it’s $14.99.

 

If I’d been able to actually use Photo at launch, it wouldn’t have bothered me as much, but it was horribly buggy at launch and for months after. I even bought a new iPad Pro with hope that would make photo run better. It didn’t. 

 

So, I basically, stupidly paid a premium price for the agonizing privilege of being a beta tester. Had I waited until the app had been properly tested by all of the other suckers, I could’ve picked it up for $9.99.

 

What’s done is done, but I can say that I’ve lost a fair amount of trust in this company, and I for one will NOT be foolish enough to buy one of your apps at launch again. Fool me once... :(

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Maybe you should come to Australia. We had to pay $39 AUD. Even at that price I consider it a bargain. One off payment (not subscription), great support and an amazing app to boot. I guess we all have different expectations of our purchases.

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

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First off, like I said... had I not had to basically pay a premium to have a buggy, unusable app at launch, and for months following... I wouldn't have minded basically paying a premium price for an app that would ultimately settle on less expensive pricing than what I paid. It's unacceptable to pay premium app prices for apps that barely even work. So, YOU give me an effin' break. 

 

I even bought an effin' brand new iPad Pro... mostly because I thought all the problems with Affinity Photo were related to it not being able to run on an Air2. I didn't need to invest in a new machine, because the problems were with Affinity Photo, NOT the hardware.

 

Secondly, I'm giving Affinity honest customer feedback. Maybe they'll think twice before launching an app that wasn't ready for prime-time. Don't tell me they didn't know the app wasn't ready for general use. It was a complete dog out of the gate. They launched an app they knew wasn't ready, charged what was allegedly a bargain launch price... simply because they wanted to sell a lot of units on the tail of being featured at the Apple presentation. They obviously didn't consider (or care) how the customers would have to deal with an app that was freakin' buggy as hell. 

 

That said, I'm not asking for a refund. I'm not asking for anything at all. I'm just stating that although I'll continue to use Affinity Photo (now that it's mostly useabl), I won't necessarily be buying another app from this company. At least, I won't be foolish enough to buy an Affinity app at launch again. I'll just wait for all the early adopters to pay the premium cost, as well as all the aggravating time on a paid beta, and only after that period will I'll consider buying again, only after several updates and confirmation that the app is stable. Maybe even just wait for these deep sales they like to have. I bought on launch and didn't question the cost because I trusted this company to deliver a great and stabile product for a fair price. With this launch, they sadly disappointed and lost my trust.

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Buggy software seems to be the norm these days, although it has always been released with defects in -- sometimes lots of them. I worked in software quality and have direct experience.

A dilemma is that it is almost impossible to find all defects and arrival rates are often on a negative exponential curve. A practical question for developers is 'how many defects do you want to release with the software' rather than 'when will the number of defects be negligible'. Software development is highly front-loaded in costs -- you have to pay loads before you have anything to sell, and there's huge pressure to get it out there, especially if you can find a friendly, tolerant market (unlike for example, medical and military customers, who pay a lot and must have very high quality systems).

When I was working in the industry, we'd do one release per year, if that. Nowadays with the internet as an easier channel than disks, companies do regular bug-fixes and updates. For users, this means a little patience, although bug fix releases are more frequent. Affinity crashes on me regularly, but I forgive it because (a) it's great value, and (b) I love the way it works. I also hate the Photoshop price model (didn't like it either when it was hundreds of pounds for a DVD) and, after an extensive period of trial of other software, I concluded Affinity was, despite its current imperfections, (a) the best, and (b) likely to get better in the not too distant future.

Dave Straker

Cameras: Sony A7R2, RX100V

Computers: Win10: Chillblast i9 Custom + Philips 40in 4K & Benq 23in; Surface Pro 4 i5; iPad Pro 11"

Favourite word: Aha. For me and for others.

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29 minutes ago, dmstraker said:

Buggy software seems to be the norm these days, although it has always been released with defects in -- sometimes lots of them. I worked in software quality and have direct experience.

A dilemma is that it is almost impossible to find all defects and arrival rates are often on a negative exponential curve. A practical question for developers is 'how many defects do you want to release with the software' rather than 'when will the number of defects be negligible'. Software development is highly front-loaded in costs -- you have to pay loads before you have anything to sell, and there's huge pressure to get it out there, especially if you can find a friendly, tolerant market (unlike for example, medical and military customers, who pay a lot and must have very high quality systems).

When I was working in the industry, we'd do one release per year, if that. Nowadays with the internet as an easier channel than disks, companies do regular bug-fixes and updates. For users, this means a little patience, although bug fix releases are more frequent. Affinity crashes on me regularly, but I forgive it because (a) it's great value, and (b) I love the way it works. I also hate the Photoshop price model (didn't like it either when it was hundreds of pounds for a DVD) and, after an extensive period of trial of other software, I concluded Affinity was, despite its current imperfections, (a) the best, and (b) likely to get better in the not too distant future.

 

 

To be clear, I AM sympathetic to Affinity for the balancing act of when to launch. However, I think the main deciding factor they used with Photo's launch was having it ready in conjunction with it's feature in the Apple presentation, while it was fresh in the the mind to maximize launch revenue numbers. That was a marketing decision that didn't necessarily consider what the experience would be like for end users who were paying based on trust of the company. I don't know that had I been in charge of their marketing, I wouldn't have made the same decision. But I'm not the marketing director... I'm one of the suckers who got a little burned on launch.

I also don't mind that I paid $20 for the app. It's worth the $30 they wanted to charge for it. The fact that it's now perpetually on sale and seems to be settling in the $15 range, is disappointing. 

Like I've said, I will likely buy their products again. I have both Affinity Photo and Designer for the desktop. I've got Photo for iPad, and I'll likely buy the next apps they release. I just won't be foolish enough to buy them on launch again. I'll wait for a few updates and reviews until I know the app is reasonably stabile, and likely a sale... since they seem to be a quarterly thing anyway. 

 

Once bitten... 

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Hi skiphunt,

I'm sorry to hear that you've had a poor experience with the iPad version. As you may guess we do our best to ensure the app is as stable as possible - we have absolutely no interest in developing a subpar apps - but due to a lot of variables/reasons sometimes things may not go as smooth as we hoped for. The iPad version was our first release on this platform, it was also launched a couple months before a major platform update - iOS11- which introduced several system changes, new ways to handle files (Files app), changes to Photos app, new formats/settings (HEIC) to deal with etc -. There was several updates to third-party cloud services to accommodate the iOS changes/improvements that a lot of users rely on to exchange files. Betas for iOS apps were/are also limited in number. All this caused issues that only become apparent after the application was released to a wide user base despite our efforts to detect/fix issues during the app dev and iOS 11 Betas. As soon as iOS11 was released/stabilised, the issues with the app reported and fixed, things started improving. Due to the rapid evolution of operative systems/software/hardware it's not easy to keep track of all those changes all the time. While this doesn't excuse/justify a poorer experience i do hope you understand it also wasn't an "usual/regular" app launch.

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