Where did you inform us …

[Oval]

7 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

We have been using our flagship information site affinityspotlight.com to keep people abreast of changes and so if you want to know where we would most likely make any announcements then just monitor that.

We wanted to buy not only one copy but couldn’t. Serif was not able to inform here in the forum or via email that APu will not launch this year … after more than three years of suboptimal information … again no excuse … no words! Perhaps the renewed delay should have been kept secret. The image of Serif is not the same this year.

[Patrick Connor]

You could argue that Affinity Publisher is already "available", but that is perhaps playing semantics with English.

To be honest we did plan (for much of last year) to launch Affinity Publisher last year and every time the Customer service team and Tech support team repeated that, we thought it would happen. There are a number of genuine reasons why we did not, sorry, but as Head of QA and Tech Support I honestly think that the whole Affinity range will benefit from this short delay.

For example in front of me I have an internal only build of Affinity Publisher that treats Master page frames as many customers are demanding for where their position, style and text flow relationship is independent of the text they contain. This major potential change has consequences to the whole range but will lead to Affinity Publisher being more useful to a wider audience on launch.

[Oval]

Few days before 2019 the official launch information “2018” was quietly changed to 2019 on a hidden place outside the forum! There is no excuse for that afterwards. That slap on the face of customers can not be undone. Thanks for having tolerated us in the past.

[firstdefence]

6 minutes ago, Oval said:

Few days before 2019 the official launch information “2018” was quietly changed to 2019 on a hidden place outside the forum! There is no excuse for that afterwards. That slap on the face of customers can not be undone. Thanks for having tolerated us in the past.

A tad dramatic don't you think? Personally I think you are making a mountain out of a hole hill. 

Will anyone need counselling due to the insidious switching a single number in a group of four digits?  - I think not.

Will anyone die from this {Speak'th in'th a Shakespearian styli >>} "utterly contemptible betrayal that has scarred our hearts for all eternity at the hands of the Machiavellian darksiders"? again, Nah!

Will we get a better program when it is finally released? - Hell yeah! woooo hoo! 

 

[Patrick Connor]

2 hours ago, Oval said:

official launch information

and

2 hours ago, Oval said:

on a hidden place outside the forum

It's official information but not sure how our website About page could be described as "hidden" . As for a "slap in the face" I have already said what I think above 

 

[AlainP]

"A slap in the face" .... wow ! Some people have stronger emotions than others. I wish you have a better year in 2019 Oval. 

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Oval said:

Serif was not able to inform here in the forum or via email that APu will not launch this year …

On December 26th of 2018 I received an email titled "Thanks for an incredible year" that did exactly that. In case you missed it, it says in part

Quote

We were originally planning to launch Publisher before the end of this year, but we have decided to take a little more time over it with the hope we can get a few more of the features you are asking for in for our initial launch.

 

[Patrick Connor]

Thanks R C-R, perhaps Oval missed that notification.... I could check our database or he can return to let us know.

[AlainP]

I got that email too on Dec 26. I still have it.

[Oval]

15 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

It's official information but not sure how our website About page could be described as "hidden" . As for a "slap in the face" I have already said what I think above

You don’t make anything better with that saying. But on the contrary.

It is about here in the forum, where everyone thought you would get the news and excuse if something would delay! Not somewhere on another marketing thingy like your website where it is hidden. What you think is not what loyal customers think that are waiting for the correct launch (information) since years. If you don’t want to tell us delays and excuses here, tell us (why).

[Oval]

10 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Oval missed that notification

That is finally the truth. And that has already been written.

[Oval]

So again: Where did you inform us … here in the forum? Or will you do it?

[firstdefence]

54 minutes ago, Oval said:

So again: Where did you inform us … here in the forum? Or will you do it?

I think the best solution to this circular discussion is to have a Status Page on the forum in plain sight so that people like oval can, themselves, be proactive in sourcing the status of app development. The KISS methodology would work here, so how-about on the forum browse tab at the side of "Online Users" it can't be anymore in plain sight than there and should kill this loopy discussion and nobody will have any excuses if they feel they are not informed, you could even have a badge or an alert overlay to indicate new information.

Problem solved. 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Oval said:

It is about here in the forum, where everyone thought you would get the news and excuse if something would delay!

How could you possibly know if anyone other than yourself thought this? I certainly did not & I am reasonably sure many others did not either. 

[Oval]

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

if anyone … ?

1. There is a news section … which seems to …

2. They told us

3. everyone of the Oval team

4. You did not answer and distract from our question again and again and again. A bad strategy to get rid of uncomfortable questions and loyal customers?

 

 

[firstdefence]

14 minutes ago, Oval said:

1. There is a news section … which seems to …

2. They told us

3. everyone of the Oval team

4. You did not answer and distract from our question again and again and again. A bad strategy to get rid of uncomfortable questions and loyal customers?

 

 

I've given a solution but you seem to ignore positive replies, I asked you what you think the solution to your issue would be and again you chose to ignore it, you are locked on the issue and do not appear to want to find a solution. Time to bow out of this circular discussion.

[R C-R]

Your question has been answered. The answer did not meet your expectations. However, you have been made aware of why the launch has been delayed & where to find information about the launch, whenever that happens.

What more do you want?

[Patrick Connor]

3 hours ago, Oval said:

You don’t make anything better with that saying. But on the contrary.

It is not my job to make things "better", I try to make things clearer.

2 hours ago, Oval said:

Where did you inform us … here in the forum? Or will you do it?

In the Christmas newsletter email it would appear, which I have replicated here. The Newsletter email is sent directly to most customers whereas this is a support forum not really a marketing tool where we expect customers to read everything we post. Do not come here to learn everything about Serif. We did not previously directly inform the delay here in the forums, though anyone following the Affinity Publisher forum discussions closely can see we are still suggesting more is being added before release, as with Designer and Photo, which need to be released first or simultaneously as has been explained. We do not pre-announce release dates anywhere, not for product launch or point updates. We try to manage expectations and will give estimates, but have not hit them, sorry.

 

[Oval]

On 4. Januar 2019 at 8:09 AM, Oval said:

not sure how our website About page could be described as "hidden"

Such insinuations show how delicate the long concealed fact is that Serif “did not previously directly inform the delay here in the forums”. Even if you think you should not inform here in the forums, the delayed launch cannot be found in www.serif.com: “Affinity Publisher”; it is hidden in “Company”. One would like to finally believe those many misinformation on www.serif.com in the past, but we had hoped that one tends more to real information and news here. But thanks for the answer in reply #42. The towel was useful.