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Equally as many designers use OSX rather than Windows. ;-)

 

Absolutely understand your aversion against CC (I am counting the days until the release of Affinity Publisher so I can stop my subscription), but there's lots of alternatives on Windows (Xara, Corel, Ragtime), wheareas the Mac market doesn't have as much professional graphic tools (yet).

 

It would without doubt be nice to have the Affinity series on Windows as well, but if I were Serfic, I'd consider:

- the likelyhood of needing to compromise functionality / speed to keep both versions on the same level

- that Affinity might clash with their existing ...PLUS product line on Windows

- the cost of developing and updating three programs for TWO platforms rather than one (more programmers needed, more time needed, MUCH more testing needed)

 

I think the chances are currently relatively slim, but that might change after Publisher is out of the door (late next year) and Serif has time to think about their products and resources again.

 

In short: I wouldn't start holding my breath earlier than spring 2016.

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There is a reason Windows has over 90% of the market. I have been using it for 30 years, for graphic design...no problems. And, I can sit down to a Mac and pick right up from there. It makes no sense not to offer a major piece of software to PC users. That's part of the reason I haven't bought a Mac...all the proprietary stuff (including who can fix one) makes it just a wee bit precious. This issue with Affinity is just another case in point.

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We also think that the Windows platform is great. That's why we already have a range of successful consumer applications on Windows. 

 

Offering Affinity only on Mac is about focus and time. Serif doesn't have any applications on OSX so it makes sense to target a popular user group on that platform.

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Maybe it's just me, but their Windows products look very prosumer. I'm not sure I'd turn my studio's production time over to something called Drawplus. I liked what I saw in this Affinity product.  It was pushed on someone's Twitter feed and caught my eye. Maybe the two branches can come together and be marketed under the same brand.

 

What their InDesign equivalent product will do will determine the success of the product line.  Photoshop and Illustrator are great, but without InDesign (or Fireworks) to pull the parts together, the Adobe Cloud products are more limited.

 

The Mac versus PC thing is what it is. I've used both. I enjoy both. I complain about both. :)

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I've been in the Graphics business for the last 30 years. I can only speak for myself, but the majority of the professional graphics companies I worked for use macs. That doesn't mean that there are no windows based graphic designers. Affinity wants to position the Designer as a professional tool and for that reason it seems to me to be a very reasonable choice.

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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You are incorrect to say that most designers use Macs. I've been in the field for over 30 years and if you look at corporate work, it's almost all PC. The fact that Adobe products operate the same on Mac and PC (ahem, Affinity) makes it possible for PC users to do everything that Mac users can. In the beginning, the design products were made for Mac; it's old thinking to assume that the majority of designers use a Mac.

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On all the agencies I worked on, some of them multinationals, almost all (if not all) designers worked on Macs.
Most designers don't want to worry about constant updates, worries with anti-virus, being asked by the OS about every little thing (even when pluging pens and such), etc.
They also want a system with consistent color management.

Also, they like a machine that can run Mac software and, optionally (and legally) run Windows software.

Besides that, the IT guys on all agencies I worked on, preferred Macs because they didn't had so many worries with the systems and complaints from users (that stuff just works!!).

I started by using PCs (still back in DOS). Then I started using Windows (and even tried GEM and PS2, from IBM).

After using Mac OS, having to use Windows (I have to, sometimes) is a pain.

Of course this is my personal experience. But most of the multi-platform users I know also share this opinion.

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I think that the reason the Affinity is Mac only is more skin deep than anything. It seems to use a lot from the CoreImage and Cocoa frameworks built into OSX. That is why it feels so snappy, it isn't loading multiple libraries to draw the shapes, rather than just using what is built into the OS. Although it may be disappointing that there is not a Windows version, the fact that they can concentrate on taking full advantage of built in libraries instead of patching it up to work on both, or just plain leaving something out is a good thing.

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I'll just go straight in and say that our rendering engine, document model, memory management, threading and the fact that we have written this stuff from the ground up to be scalable in terms of document complexity is the reason that we're so 'snappy' - we've written the core of our application with massive attention to detail and obsessed over it for years - and this was all written by our small team.

 

We do use Cocoa, you are quite right (and probably some CoreImage functions too) - but this is only 'skin deep' as you put it - literally - as these technologies are only used in the presentation layer that you see as the application UI on top.

 

I don't know if that disappoints you, or excites you - I can't tell what you were suggesting in your post - but I wasn't going to leave it alone because writing this technology has been a large part of my life (and that of the whole team) for such a long time...

 

Matt

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Yeah I'll second this - the reason we feel "snappy" is the opposite of what you suggest. Competing Mac vector apps use CoreGraphics, CoreImage etc. - we use our own rendering engine, written from the ground up. It's many times faster than CoreGraphics at some key things - and that's why you notice the speed difference..

 

AndyS

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"serfif has a range of applications for windows"

 

True but they're just not good enough to compete with adobe CS hence the fact that only independents and hobbyists use it.

 

I don't understand serif's business case for this, doesn't make sense to invest in an application targeting professionals and then restricting themselves to a smaller market.

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Hi developers,
I only registered to this forum in order to quickly express my stunning disbelief about Serifs platform decision.

 

  • You create a promising and contemporary looking modern product line which is clearly geared towards graphics
    professionals and really limit it to just the Mac?
     
  • You do this in 2014 with a wide array of mature cross platform software and interface development tools available?
     
  • You want to address graphics studios who boycott Adobe's forced rental contract just with the Macintosh platform in mind?
     
  • You create a comprehensive new suite of Pixel and Vector tools and decide to disregard Adobe's unique selling point:
    To be the only vendor worldwide who offers a 100% identical suite of  graphics tools on the 2 most important operation systems?
     
  • You have the  fantastic chance to unify your already highly diverse product portfolio but instead decide to deal with the
    same development tasks twice, in two entirely separate product suites: And and you call this more efficient?
     

What firms do is of course entirely their business – but I can't bend my mind enough to remotely follow this logic.

Also the option to see Affinity features eventually dripple into your Windows tool Suite holds no promise. A wasted chance.

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Maybe you actually answered your own question but didn't know it?

 

 

If Serif already had an existing line of older products and wanted to  'reboot'  them,  they couldn't launch a range on Windows as far as I see it?

 

 

Here's why:  A new version of existing software with so much fewer features than the old ones and is not even compatable with the old one is never going to go down well,  so wouldn't they actually be forced to establish a new brand and new product that is not in conflict with the old one until such time as users of the old products see that actually they might be getting less features,  but they just work better  -  so give them what they want at the time they realise they want it,  don't force it down their throats as  'this is the future you didn't ask for' ?

 

 

If you re-read what is said,  2 of their devs (great program guys xx) have basically just said that everything that makes this what it is doesn't need it to run on Apple.  You say  'a wasted chance'  but I think they're waiting because they have to.  Any business decision made by even small companies is rarely an accident

gmcg

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You indeed managed to squeeze the only reasonable interpretation out, but it definitely requires more than just a bit

of reading between the lines. I didn't follow along closely and hence didn't read anyone stating that their new code

is meant to be os-agnostic!
Given that your interpretation was correct one certainly could deal with this topic more elegantly.

At this point a group of windows customers who don't fall in the target group of the PLUS product line gets attracted

to Serif with the announcement of Affinity (often - probably for the first time) and turned off again right away. Having

to wait a bit was quite a differenent story - releasing on one platform first, getting feet wet and at some point making

the product available on additional platforms isn't rare at all.

cheers!

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There is a reason Windows has over 90% of the market. I have been using it for 30 years, for graphic design...no problems. And, I can sit down to a Mac and pick right up from there. It makes no sense not to offer a major piece of software to PC users. That's part of the reason I haven't bought a Mac...all the proprietary stuff (including who can fix one) makes it just a wee bit precious. This issue with Affinity is just another case in point.

"all the proprietary stuff"

 

Sure, it's well known that Microsoft is the most open source software. You can find the code online, they have plenty of succesfull open source project widely used and they don't use proprietary file format. You can even install Windows without online registration and serial numbers. Wait....

 

Of course this I'm going to say is only based on empirical data but... the Mac market is a smaller marked worldwide but not smaller in the designer/artistically biased individuals.

 

Not only this but it's well known that Mac users are more willing to pay for software meanwhile Windows users will try to pirate it first. (kind of the iOS vs Android story).

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Childish battles on preferred operating systems and even assumtions on creativity and mentality

of their respective user base don't help anyone. Not here, not anywhere else.

 

Indeed – and as pointed out earlier – there's no sound reason to restrict the development of Affinity just to the Mac.

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hifred,

I am shure there are good reasons. As is said in this article:

 

According to Serif, vector graphics drawing program Afinity Designer was built from the ground up for OS X, with full 64-bit and multi-core processor support to ensure fast performance - even when working on huge, multi-gigabyte projects.

 

 

There are quite some technologies in OS X that are not available on Windows, things like Grand Central Dispatch, Open CL and so on. Without being a programmer I guess it is not easy to squeeze every possible optimization out of both systems while staying 100% compatible and featurewise identical.

 

Especially for Mac users history has shown that applications running on both operating systems don’t take advantage from technology that is only available on one of them (read: on OS X). Thus from a Mac user’s perspective quality would likely suffer and probably less people on the Mac side would buy a non-optimized Affinity Designer.

 

Adobe once was a great company. I think their decline in software quality (not in $) began as soon as they decided to go from Mac only to cross platform. Yes, they own a bigger market today and probably had to go this way albeit so many people have grown to dislike their bloated products and attitude.

 

Switching back to Affinity: From a marketing point of view it is a very good idea to stay focused and debut with a product (or a suite) that is the very best it can be on a given platform – even more so when competing with a de-facto monopolist that wants to be everything to everyone. I’d prefer a Mac speedboat over a cross-platform battleship anytime and surely I am not alone.

 

If the Affinity products will succeed in the Mac market (which I am sure of), Affinity can still decide to take the Adobe route and go cross-platform for the rest of the creative pro market.

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Matthias,

you are putting forward standpoints which partially were valid 10 years ago.

Nowadays OS- agnostic code development is a reality, it's available for years. This means that newly developed tools will run

on any mayor platform without any hickups. Many software developers work that way – and according to gmcg Serif uses this

strategy too, with Affinity. Given that statement is correct Serif artifically restricts this software suite to the Mac at this time.

It is not correct to state that MacOS has global performance advantages over Windows due to more advanced technology.
Sorry, that's just not true. If you don't believe me, just do a Google search on that topic.

And it belongs to the realm of speculation that starting Windows development introduced an overall decline of Adobe's software

quality. Don't you think that a firm with  >11.0000 employees and and a revenue of > 4 billions could deal with instability problems?
(just for the record: I see no such issues).

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