licensing swaping question

[someguy]

How does the licensing of the product work? I want to purchase now for windows but I have every intention to purchase a new mac in the near future. Can one deactivate one install, and reactivate on another platform themselves? Does this require the assistance of technical support? Is this act of swapping between platforms limited to a number of times?

[someguy]

after searching the support forums i found my answer.

Sad to see you cant do this - this is primarily a decision Serif has made and how licensing is structured with their products that Could be fixed.

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, someguy said:

this is primarily a decision Serif has made

It’s primarily a decision that was made for them when they decided to sell their apps through Apple’s Mac App Store. Since Serif and Apple don’t share individual customer data, there’s no way for Apple to know that you already purchased a licence for the Windows version of an Affinity app.

[someguy]

Just now, αℓƒяє∂ said:

It’s primarily a decision that was made for them when they decided to sell their apps through Apple’s Mac App Store. Since Serif and Apple don’t share individual customer data, there’s no way for Apple to know that you already purchased a licence for the Windows version of an Affinity app.

I do have a somewhat simplistic solution for this ... which i'm sure Serif is aware of .. if it would be of any use to the conversation.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, someguy said:

I do have a somewhat simplistic solution for this ... which i'm sure Serif is aware of .. if it would be of any use to the conversation.

One obvious solution would be for Serif to stop selling through the Mac App Store and only sell directly through their own Affinity Store, but many users appreciate the convenience of the way the MAS works (which was probably the driving force behind Serif’s decision to offer the Windows apps through the Microsoft Store) and I have no doubt that Serif have benefited enormously from the publicity they’ve received from Apple as a direct result of using the MAS.

[someguy]

7 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

One obvious solution would be for Serif to stop selling through the Mac App Store and only sell directly through their own Affinity Store, but many users appreciate the convenience of the way the MAS works (which was probably the driving force behind Serif’s decision to offer the Windows apps through the Microsoft Store) and I have no doubt that Serif have benefited enormously from the publicity they’ve received from Apple as a direct result of using the MAS.

couldnt they do what everyone else does and continue to offer their product through the MAS, but the full blown version requires activation with a key that is bought through serif?

 

[someguy]

looks like the purchase page is passing at least the users email address and serif account details .. .serif knows this and im sure much more about each user (need to review the privacy policy)

Serif can associate a user with an installation and should have no trouble preforming the swap - but the point about serif making the business decision not to offer such is most likely the actual reasoning behind this. Thats a better answer. This isnt impossible - it's functioning as intended due to their business model. Good for Serif, for users not so much I guess.

[R C-R]

On 10/24/2018 at 10:45 AM, someguy said:

looks like the purchase page is passing at least the users email address and serif account details ..

If you mean the the Mac App Store purchase page, where do you see any indication of this? Obviously, Apple already has the email address associated with the Apple ID used for MAS purchases, but they know nothing about a user's Serif user account, or even if they have one or not.

The only way Serif gets a user's email address is if they buy something from the Affinity Store, subscribe to the newsletter, sign up to post to the forums, or the like. See the How do we collect Personal Data? section of the Privacy policy for more about that.

[R C-R]

On 10/24/2018 at 10:40 AM, someguy said:

couldnt they do what everyone else does and continue to offer their product through the MAS, but the full blown version requires activation with a key that is bought through serif?

They recently started doing that, but it is still a single-platform license. You can check this for yourself: open https://affinity.store/ & click on the "Buy Now" button for either Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo. On the next page you can choose between the Mac & Windows versions.