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Why did Serif delete the entire roadmap thread


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Why did Serif delete the entire roadmap thread?? :o

Why not just rename and lock it?

EDIT: all roadmaps were deleted!

 

 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Please find below the current feature roadmap for Affinity Designer. The list is a selection of features from our own internal roadmap we would like to share with our users. If a feature you would like isn't on the list then feel free to create a new post so everyone can discuss it. We read all the feature suggestions and consider each one very carefully.

The idea is the list will never get longer. As we complete and release features then we will replace those features with new ones.

Pro Printing

-Phase II transparency flattener

-Bleed area guides

Illustration & Design

-Mesh fill tool

-Mesh warp/distort tool

-Knife tool

-Calligraphic line styles

-Arrow head line styles

-Export slices previews with actual export data 

-Pages

-Text features including Bullets and Numbering

-Knockout groups

-Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape

-Convert Pixel selection to Vector shape

Usability

Replicate/Blend

Please feel free to ask questions about the features on the list but don't post new feature requests in this thread, just create a new thread.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Suddenly removing such a thread with hundreds of suggestions and input from customers  rather than adjusting it... 

That INDEED sounds like they are ‘adjusting’ it.

 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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14 minutes ago, Jowday said:

Suddenly removing such a thread with hundreds of suggestions

Of course, there were not supposed to be suggestions on that thread. All suggestions from the users/customers were supposed to be posted as new topics. That thread was only supposed to be comments about the items that Serif had posted in the Roadmap post. :)

If Serif was reading them at all (misplaced as they were), I'm sure they have been added to the tracking lists already. Thus they are not lost, merely hidden from us.

Perhaps for the new version of the roadmap they will lock it immediately to prevent the chaos that resulted in the first one, and force the users to follow instructions.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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You still don't suddenly delete a thread like that. Erase memory.

They deleted all roadmaps btw.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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Closing and archiving the original Topic with Roadmap in the Old feature requests section, when the new Roadmap arrived, would have been the most convenient course of action.

Best regards!

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3 hours ago, Jowday said:

Suddenly removing such a thread with hundreds of suggestions and input from customers  rather than adjusting it... 

That INDEED sounds like they are ‘adjusting’ it.

 

I agree that removing it completely was not the best idea, but let's be fair here. That thread was massive, and was not a good place to get input from the community regarding feature requests. If someone wants to make a request or even multiple, it is far more manageable to post that in the Suggestions forums where that information can be more easily digestible. Would anyone here want to read through that Designer roadmap thread and catalogue all requests done for the last half decade while going through all the posts that were not feature requests? I sure wouldn't.

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I am certain that their main reason was to remove the roadmap. Not the discussion. The discussions would fit perfectly in the archive together with any other previous discussions. 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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I agree with the idea that it should have been archived instead. But my main problem as a recent new user with the roadmap was that it was unclear how up to date it was because the post was so old and I didnt notice any specific edit dates. I hope they use a blog post that they can update separate from forum comments or something like trello

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7 hours ago, ZenMasta said:

I agree with the idea that it should have been archived instead. But my main problem as a recent new user with the roadmap was that it was unclear how up to date it was because the post was so old and I didnt notice any specific edit dates.

It would be nice if they showed edit dates, but the first post in that topic was the current roadmap, up to the time that 1.7 was released.

Implemented items (prior to 1.7) had been deleted, as stated there, and new items had been added that Serif was willing to commit to.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 2 weeks later...

I mean, you know I'm already outspoken, but I will no longer mince words here: this is a total shambles. I've been away for less than two weeks, to get my bearings, and… I was checking some notifications relating to that thread and now what, Serif is deleting history here? Big, big no-no in forum land.

Whoever made this decision should, if possible, immediately reverse it and, at the very least, keep the old thread visible, but locked. This isn't moderation, it's… “fixing” something that was arguably broken, yes, but with a neutron bomb instead of with a hammer. Get real, guys! All of you. The Serif team, and you softies, for even thinking of making apologies for such an inexcusable move. Clearly some of you haven't been using public forums for long enough, or in the right places, to know what is and isn't acceptable by community standards and netiquette in general. Or from the angle of digital archivism of publicly-available information… If Serif wasn't willing to archive it themselves, at least they could've dropped a hint at the guys from archive.org to do it for them.

The thing with old threads is that other people can read them, link to them, etc. There was a treasure trove of information there, which is now gone. Man-months, if not years, of actual investment from users.

And yes, since I've mentioned it, I did check archive.org. The last snapshot from that thread was taken in August 19, 2018. As for everything else, off-topic or otherwise, we've posted for the better part of 11 months…? It's all gone, boom! To say that I am mad at the Serif team right now is a bit of an understatement. Are you guys out of your damned minds? This is an outrage!

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On 7/1/2019 at 11:54 PM, Jowday said:

I am certain that their main reason was to remove the roadmap. Not the discussion. The discussions would fit perfectly in the archive together with any other previous discussions. 

If that was their main reason, they have no *insert the expletive of your choice* idea of how to run a public forum, because they just threw the baby out with the bathwater for no good reason (unless they were actively trying to piss users off and curtail certain discussions, in which case, well, they certainly succeeded).

They already had a habit, by design, of editing the main, pinned post, which was weird enough and not very appropriate for this application, and even led me and others to beat the long dead Trac horse into a pulp, but leaving that post stripped of an actual roadmap and populated instead with an explanation as to their reasoning would've been totally fine by the standards of 99,99% of forum users.

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On 7/1/2019 at 11:51 PM, Frozen Death Knight said:

I agree that removing it completely was not the best idea, but let's be fair here. That thread was massive, and was not a good place to get input from the community regarding feature requests. If someone wants to make a request or even multiple, it is far more manageable to post that in the Suggestions forums where that information can be more easily digestible. Would anyone here want to read through that Designer roadmap thread and catalogue all requests done for the last half decade while going through all the posts that were not feature requests? I sure wouldn't.

Steering away people from that model is not only reasonable, but desirable. We were ourselves actively asking Serif to put that gargantuan thread out of its misery and replace it with something more functional. But implying that the fact no one here would want to read through those dozens of pages makes them inherently useless is a total fallacy in the digital world. Yes, who even reads through near-infinite amounts of stuff linearly anymore? But… that's what hypertext (i.e. links, and linking to other posts is a thing this web forum app is very good at, in fact) and search were invented for. To deal with and make sense of vast amounts of information, obviously.

What the hell, people. Wake up! Wiping information from the face of the Earth for no good reason – and, I mean, let's also be fair to ourselves: nobody ever really incurred, that I've seen, in hate speech or other illegal forms of harassment in these forums that would justify deleting individual posts, let alone an entire thread, and I don't think Serif employees accidentally posted corporate secrets over there, either – is downright Orwellian. Surely some British guys should be able to appreciate the implications of that, especially the way it rubs off on people, better than anyone else, am I right?

No. I won't stand for it. This is just taking an extremely heavy-handed and, at the same time, sloppy approach to managing what was, I thought, a very welcoming forum. And right now I'm having my doubts about that, too. Something is indeed rotten somewhere, and it ain't in the state of Denmark.

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On 7/1/2019 at 9:07 PM, walt.farrell said:

Of course, there were not supposed to be suggestions on that thread. All suggestions from the users/customers were supposed to be posted as new topics. That thread was only supposed to be comments about the items that Serif had posted in the Roadmap post. :)

If Serif was reading them at all (misplaced as they were), I'm sure they have been added to the tracking lists already. Thus they are not lost, merely hidden from us.

Perhaps for the new version of the roadmap they will lock it immediately to prevent the chaos that resulted in the first one, and force the users to follow instructions.

So, you're sticking by this decision, regardless of the undeniable fact that Serif tried to herd users by pissing them off instead of providing them with workable alternatives and treating them – and behaving – like adults, by communicating their intentions…? That's what their “forcing users to follow instructions” stunt, as you've worded it, really amounted to in reality. Is it really “following instructions” when not only did we not have a choice in the matter or even got nothing in the way of an advance warning, we also saw a very tangible, personal investment into our engagement with Serif and our fellow users vanish into thin air? Oh boy, where do I even begin… 9_9

Changing forum dynamics while respecting users aren't mutually exclusive goals, you know? Taking a v.1.8 branch, or an entirely new v.2 suite, or whatever, as an opportunity for a fresh start would've been great and understandable, and people could very well be “forced” into a new model and accept it sooner rather than later. Yes, even by locking the threads right away. Heck, by your logic of forcing people to behave, but still giving them some freedom to comment, Serif mods could even meet them halfway and apply a very assertive, almost Reddit-like style of moderation by deleting spurious posts as they came in – and users might even be fine with it, as long as the rules were explicit, consistent and enforced only after a set date –, but retroactively deleting an entire old thread, including whole back-and-forths between people and historically relevant information?

That's uncalled for, virtually unheard of from any self-respecting and respectful forum admin/moderator, and obviously preposterous! Please trust me on that one: I'm on a lot of forums, about subjects that range from skyscraper projects all the way to Apple-related stuff, and things have to get very political and heated up, like turning into an off-topic “separatist vs. unionist” grade-A flustercuck, with personal insults flying left and right and whatnot, before a thread is even locked, let alone outright deleted, as good mods will always try to judiciously delete individual offending posts and block or even ban its respective authors before throwing in the towel and going nuclear.

I can only pinpoint one such occurrence, that led to an entire thread being wiped out of existence as collective punishment and a warning for the future (hey, it worked; the new thread that replaced it, which I still peruse to this day and multiple times a week, works great and is very welcoming to all, which is nothing short of a moderation miracle considering that the underlying political strife that led to its predecessor's demise is now coming to a head, so clearly the mods did and are still doing their jobs right!), and other than entire forums perishing, a sad but sometimes inevitable occurrence, this is the only time in TWENTY years (yes, I've been online since 1999!) that I ever heard of a thread being deleted just… because.

Considering just how very civil and constructive this crowd is by comparison with some of the shenanigans I've seen online before, this move just feels amateurish and petty, sorry. Have some self-respect, people, and demand more respect in kind. As I've said, I'm on many strictly amateur, labour-of-love-ish forums that are managed more professionally and respectfully than this one (at least when it comes to this sensitive topic of data integrity), out of all things from a burgeoning company whose wares are aimed squarely at professionals. It's shameful for everyone involved, really.

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17 hours ago, Jyscal said:

Was the Knife tool seriously placed on the roadmap 5 years ago and still nothing? That's quite astounding. Not trying to be rude, but wow.

At least that's a tool, which even requires a proper icon and shortcut key, and it was put there, so we know they intend on tackling it probably still during v.1.x.

The “select by same stroke/fill/appearance” feature, by comparison, is downright basic even by ex-FreeHand users' standards (they don't care how hard it is to code; from an end-user standpoint, it feels basic and essential, especially in its current Adobe Illustrator's incarnation as but a couple of options on a submenu, which is the bare and expected minimum, so it's understandable that users just assumed it would come sooner rather than later and will be flabbergasted if it indeed only comes in a later, v.2.x paid upgrade), and has been an extremely popular request also for 5 years straight, spanning an entire 12-page thread. And yeah, as you can see, it's not there, not even a blip on the radar.

Quoting you, once again: “not trying to be rude, but wow” x10. Somehow, this doesn't feel like the kind of feature that should require a gigantic amount of coding and testing, like a multi-line composer, or an auto-tracer, or something like that, and if Serif's excuse is that “their document model isn't ready for that kind of search forum” (I'm not entirely sure, but IIRC there were some comments to that effect, but please correct me if I'm wrong), then clearly some serious mistakes were made when developing said model at the early conception stages of the entire Affinity suite. Such a lack of foresight is severely disturbing, and doesn't match the expectations that a using a core document format, a portable engine written in C, etc., raised.

Again, all of this seems to confirm my assertion that Serif developers are great, genius coders, but severely lacking in the creative relations department. They should take a page or two from Apple's playbook when doing the Mac Pro and Display Pro line reboot, and either actively ask users, in private, what exactly do they need, or at least look attentively at their own forums and, while I'm at it, treating them with a wee bit more respect (instead of, say, nuking the entire threads like they just did). These threads are by no means scientific surveys, but they are certainly better than nothing, and definitely better than anything other competitors like, say, Adobe could hope for. And I dare say, more useful than the insane sales figures and rave reviews on the App Store Serif keeps bandying about. Please stop behaving like a mini-Apple (of yore, that is; ever noticed how Tim Cook recently stopped bombarding us with sales figures? That's right, they now have so much new stuff to discuss every year, they do not even have to use figures as filler…), and forget about 5-star reviews and moolah; you should be always, always focusing on criticism, not praise. That's the only way you can grow as a person, as a professional or as a company.

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Speaking of which: I am positively fed up with Serif's inaction and lack of attention to customers (are they all on vacation already? What's going on over there? This thread had been going on since July the 1st, and I would say this is an extremely serious issue as far as the forums themselves go), and I don't feel that, considering the current market outlook and the expectations raised but unmet, Designer is even a 4-star product, let alone a 5-star one, and I'm very much willing to drop it down a further peg or two on account of my soured and as of now unpatched personal relationship with them.

Sure, it's cheaper and more elegant than the competition on the surface, but besides the obvious – and expensive! – 800lb gorilla that is Illustrator CC, Inkscape is free and probably more powerful and flexible than Designer as it is already (the only reason I won't jump ship to it is that it's too similar to CorelDRAW for me to want to go back down that rabbit hole). As for Publisher and Photo, they only survive that fate because both apps are arguably very good indeed considering the competition, respectively Scribus – dear lord! :o – and GIMP – meh. I won't target those two because it just wouldn't be fair to their teams; yes, some of the features that have been requested over and over again for Designer would be welcome on them, too, but the fact of the matter is that Designer is the oldest product, those weird decisions were made when finishing it up and they still affect it the most.

Seeing how Serif only seems to respond to those App Store ratings, maybe a few hits here and there will make them reconsider their hyper-focus on the digital illustration market and dumbfounding structural decisions and priorities, at least as far as Designer is concerned. If anyone cares to join me in my protest, you know what you have to do.

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If you're really seriously fed up ..... just use Inscape, Scribus, Gimp and enjoy them, but stop crying and stop whinning.

There.... I will probably get another warning point.... but reading post like yours.... I'd rather be thrown out of the forum  than saying nothing. 

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
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32 minutes ago, AlainP said:

If you're really seriously fed up ..... just use Inscape, Scribus, Gimp and enjoy them, but stop crying and stop whinning.

There.... I will probably get another warning point.... but reading post like yours.... I'd rather be thrown out of the forum  than saying nothing. 

Nope. I won't. Do you know why? Because I paid for this thing. And, to top it off – or, better yet, this is the real crux of the matter, because ~€40 isn't that much to lose, really –, I also invested countless hours of my precious time in this by giving suggestion after suggestion, feedback post after feedback post, bug report after bug report. I'm not as active here as other users, but I'm certainly way more active than many of those millions of customers who are happy (but really; are they all? Are they really frequent and valuable users, like, say, design teachers like I already am? Or have some of them paid for the app – even after, sure, using up the free trial –, tried it further for a bit, figured out that it wasn't good enough for their needs and just chucked it into the proverbial digital drawer?). And what did I, and others, get in return? I, for one, even got personally insulted by a Serif employee here in the forums. And, you know what, considering how things turned out, isn't this thread's entire purpose right now whining about a decision by Serif, anyway? It started out with a very valid, very serious question, which has gone unaddressed for two weeks!

Look, I know I sound entitled, and that I sometimes behave like a little brat. But a), as a paying customer (of the entire suite, no less), I kind of am entitled, by default, and b) this entire UX SNAFU is a hill I'm absolutely willing to die on, even if I have to do a damn postgraduate course in UX if I must to better back up my assertions with proper, structured knowledge and verbiage (and, in fact, my Faculty offers one such course, given by some former colleagues from my first MA in Communication Design and New Media, and I may very well do just that after I'm done with my PhD, as that's what the commercial market is really asking for now, big time; if I do so, expect to see me here in the forums even more, not less, even if it happens only five years from know when Affinity hits, oh, I don't know, v.2.5.x, and maybe then we'll have advanced selection tools and a knife tool, but still no universal layers or a sensible document model…? 9_9 ).

Anyway, don't worry about getting warning points from moderators. I've probably done and said much worse stuff here than, AFAIK, you ever did, and I haven't gotten any warnings yet, so… nah. If anyone here is getting them first, that would be me. And if I did get them, I would probably vacate the premises, STAT, instead of wasting any more of my time here.

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Anyway, I'll just leave this here; it's a direct quote from the 1-star review of Affinity Designer I've just dropped on the Mac App Store. It's entirely written in Portuguese, and I know upwards of 90% of the users here won't be able to understand it, but I still feel I should share it here publicly with you and with Serif, because I know at least fellow user @rui_mac speaks my language and especially none other than Serif forum moderator @MEB also does and can translate the contents into English for his colleagues' convenience:

Quote

Sempre me considerei um dos maiores fãs da empresa Serif, e da suite Affinity, e participei de forma bastante activa nos fórums da empresa e nos programas de teste de versões Beta dos vários componentes.
Os avanços iniciais dos três aplicativos, Designer, Photo e Publisher, foram impressionantes e promissores, algo que sempre nos fez, a mim e aos outros utilizadores, desculpar certas limitações deste programa, e certas ferramentas, como o editor de gradientes, eram (e e são) tão boas comparadas com as da concorrência que compensava (e compensa!) criar ficheiros neste programa, mesmo para serem depois utilizados noutros programas de outras empresas.
No entanto, passados cinco anos, existe um número apreciável de pedidos incessantes, por parte dos utilizadores nos fóruns oficiais da empresa, de ferramentas básicas como a “selecção de objectos com o mesmo contorno/preenchimento/aparência”, as “camadas universais” ou a “visibilidade fora das pranchetas”, que foram e continuam a ser pura e simplesmente ignorados. Alguns desses pedidos nem sequer estão no roteiro oficial das ferramentas a desenvolver (que, a propósito, foi apagado dos fóruns sem qualquer explicação, levando consigo anos e anos de discussão entre os utilizadores, situação cuja gravidade e falta de respeito inerentes estão a ser debatidos entre nós, utilizadores dos programas da empresa, desde o início de Julho de 2019).
Poderão pensar que isto são pequenas questões, mas algumas destas omissões, assim como algumas decisões da empresa em relação à estrutura dos documentos (como a de tratar as pranchetas como “contentores” de objectos, o que impede o uso de “camadas universais”), tornam o programa um absoluto inferno de usar para um número tão grande de trabalhos que mais vale continuar a usar outra alternativa qualquer. Eu sei, porque tentei, e desisti. Parecia-me uma aplicação de 5 estrelas, pelo menos a julgar pelas primeiras experiências básicas que fiz, mas enganei-me na minha avaliação prematura. A verdade é que uma aplicação com todos os arrebiques técnicos, como filtros não destrutivos e paletas PANTONE, de pouco ou nada serve se, na prática, os trabalhos que o utilizador tenta fazer com ele levarem o dobro ou o triplo do tempo (quando não é mesmo uma ordem de grandeza a mais) a fazer. Para isso mais vale pagar pela subscrição do Adobe CC.
Como se isto não fosse já mau o suficiente, uma sugestão construtiva da minha parte, após um erro da empresa ao activar acidentalmente uma ferramenta relativa à aplicação Publisher, no sentido de que a tornassem acessível, mesmo que apenas a clientes que tivessem comprado essa mesma aplicação (facto que já acontece com ferramentas do Designer e do Photo dentro do Publisher, para quem tenha comprado duas das aplicações ou todas as três), foi alvo de chacota insultuosa por parte de um dos quadros da empresa, como se eu estivesse a sugerir que dessem borlas a toda a gente.
Em relação a este episódio, ainda não recebi qualquer pedido formal de desculpas, isto ao fim de mais de um mês de espera após o envio de uma queixa formal por e-mail à linha de apoio e ao gabinete de Relações Públicas da empresa. É absolutamente vergonhoso, e serão necessárias muitas mudanças para voltar a ter total confiança e à-vontade com este programador
.

A todos os potenciais utilizadores do Affinity Designer deixo então o seguinte aviso à navegação:
• Se forem ilustradores digitais, força, gastem o vosso dinheiro e aproveitem tudo o que o programa tem para oferecer, pois será óptimo para as vossas necessidades, vai pagar-se a si mesmo em menos de nada e não será, no geral, frustrante de usar;
• Se forem designers gráficos (ou até de equipamento) que precisem de trabalhar em documentos complexos, como design de informação, prototipagem avançada de sites com pranchetas múltiplas, padrões para corte a laser e outros tipos de ficheiros CAD, desenho técnico, etc., poupem o vosso dinheiro e usem, em vez disso, o programa grátis e open source Inkscape, que ficarão muito mais bem servidos, por muito mais “feio” que seja comparado com o Affinity. Pelo menos durante os próximos 2 ou 3 ou 4 ou até mais anos, até que a Serif “acabe” o Affinity Designer a um ponto em que possa ser usado por toda a gente para quem o publicitam.

At some point, I would have to decide that enough was enough. It's big, but considering everything I've managed to cram in there, and how big my posts here usually are, it's rather succint.

And yes, I know this sounds a bit like blackmail – hey, I guess it is; so sue me –, but if Serif does address the “Baselinegate” (that's the name I'll be giving to my spat with @Patrick Connor henceforth, to make it easier for me or others to reference it) and to the “Roadmapgate” (that is, in the same vein, the name I'll be giving to this very thread), the paragraphs in bold and italic will be completely gone (well, if you react before the next update hits, because otherwise I believe they will be set in stone in an archive somewhere), and the rating will also go back up by one or two stars depending on how many of them are.

Address the remaining issues, bolded and underlined for your convenience, other related stuff will be gone as well, the overall tone will change and the rating will accordingly and progressively go back up to four stars with the infamous and long-in-the-tooth “advanced selection tools” and maybe, one day, back up to five stars if my pet peeves with artboards, clipping, universal layers, etc. are addressed either fully, or at least via sensible compromises and further customisation options.

Oh, yeah, I know I'm but a single disgruntled user in a “sea” of favourable reviews (Ha! As if… In the Portuguese store there are only 18 5-star reviews, and a further 11 reviews with text, 9 of them 5-star, including one from yours truly written back in the glorious v.1.4 days and which will soon be superseded by this one, and 2 of them 4-star; by the way, most of them are, incidentally, 4-year-old reviews as well, hmmmm… I do wonder what exactly do Portuguese users really think of Affinity Designer these days…?), but it should go without saying that I will be relaying the same comments that are now on display, in Portuguese, for everyone to see on the Portuguese Mac App Store, to all my colleagues, students and to users on any English-speaking forums and social networks where I may partake in discussion about it (including unofficial Facebook pages over which Serif has absolutely zero control). Besides all the complete strangers involved, we're talking fellow design teachers, with a combined number of hundreds of students of their own, hopefully a few dozen students of mine, yet a few dozens of graphic designer colleagues from the Uni with who I still keep contact, and the entire Portuguese Typographers' Association (a local ATypI-supported offshoot of sorts, of which I'm a founding member; most of its members, whose work I know very well, have been in cahoots with Adobe since before its inception, complete with sponsorships by the 800lb gorilla in all the prior international-level events they put up and in which I also participated, so if I was already wary of even mentioning Serif to that crowd before, that wouldn't even cross my mind now), here. People who really trust me and absoultely listen and usually follow my technical advice, down to the computer, phone or even smartwatch they should purchase, plus all the people under their own influence, so… I'd estimate an immediate, combined 1000-2000-ish people, with room to grow every further year during which these issues persist because, hey, we're freelancers, design teachers, and even studio owners (as a matter of fact, I also know a few who are both). We basically dictate which apps have a real chance in the market. I'm sorry, but I always do what I must and what is, ultimately, in my and other fellow colleagues' best interests, not necessarily what's nicest or what I would have liked the best.

I know this is very heavy-handed, but this is what you get when you are heavy-handed/aloof with your own paying, loyal, dedicated, well-intentioned users/evangelists. Also, I am doing this for your own good. It's not like I'm steering illustrators away from your app and cutting off your precious revenue supply… But I refuse to let students or colleagues of mine waste their time – and money! – with cumbersome tools, and let you destroy your own reputation further, and especially to put my own on the line for no good reason. I admire your gumption, but I'm taking no bullets for you. Also, I did give you several warnings, over the course of several months, and all have gone unanswered, so I'm not feeling guilty of being unfair in the least with my decision of no longer being quiet about the current state of affairs. If and when Designer is ready for primetime, I will surely and steadily peddle it to no end (as I did in the early days) but, until then, I'll mostly stay clear of it (as I've said before, as an already paying customer with a vested interest in its future, this obviously won't be the last you've seen of me here) and, above else, actively advise people in my situation – graphic designers and teachers + students thereof, not illustrators, photo editors or DTP typesetters on a budget who are willing to mix and match tools from different vendors – to do so and not even bother with throwing more money at you. If you want to corner this market and get valuable endorsements like my own, you really have to do much better than this, and fast. Yeah, it's official: [TL;DR] I'm boycotting/anti-marketing Affinity Designer until further action.

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35 minutes ago, AlainP said:

You have too much time to waste JGD.

For the time being, indeed I do, because I just came out of a four-year-long MA and am still more than seven months away from a PhD scholarship application; basically, I'm on yet another “extended vacation” of sorts, though I have that application to make and an entire book to publish, so there's that. But rest assured, I only “waste” time with stuff I really care about. I see it more as an investment, really; I always stood to gain a lot more, that's why I even bought this thing, knowing full well it wasn't finished, in the first place.

Oh, I also bought Publisher, even while being extremely mad at Serif and knowing that, because of their really weird choices (and the fact they foisted them upon us, instead of giving us some much needed workflow and document model customisation), it wasn't likely I would be using Designer frequently for the foreseeable future. But much like I had already used Designer to make .EPS/.PDF files that I then imported into InDesign, considering how cumbersome Designer actually is I may end up, if Serif doesn't get their act together, throwing in the towel, and doing the exact opposite by using mostly Inkscape in combination with bits of Designer and the Designer Persona in Publisher, depending on exactly what kind of artwork I'm dealing with, because InDesign is really becoming that horridly buggy as of late. It now reeks of QuarkXPress 5 in a bad day. As for fully replacing Photoshop with Affinity Photo, the jury is also still out on that one, but out of the three components of the suite it's probably the one I'm most optimistic about.

My purchase decisions are almost never political or emotional, but strictly technical and very self-serving. You see, €40 really is peanuts for me, even if I end up not making much use of an app, as I absolutely must keep tabs on things and stay ahead of the curve so that I can keep being the influencer I've been for many years (9 in an official capacity, to be precise, and around 16, if you count all the way back to when I entered my Uni and started becoming the unofficial go-to guy for all things Mac). Besides, I'm running all this stuff on a 5K iMac with 40 GB of RAM and a secondary 24'' screen. It really doesn't make much of a difference how many different apps I work with at the same time and how I deal with linked files, as I have way more computing capacity at hand than I should usually need anyway (all that RAM is there for the one-off VM, and the 32 GB I had for many years on my vintage and trusty 2009 27'' model did indeed save my proverbial behind on more than one such occasion). To say that I'm not a normal user is a bit of an understatement. As for Affinity's “StudioLink” thing, well, that's all nice and cool, but I don't really need it per se. I've been doing this kind of stuff for almost 19 years now, and I know I can devise my own workflows, complete with stuff like GREP styles, scripting, batch actions and whatnot, and make them work faster and be more optimised than anything Serif may come up with by themselves (and even if their default way is marginally faster, it's probably not worth the hassle of retraining my muscle memory for it).

Still: I would like to see these three apps blossom into something barely functional, as a whole like Serif intended and heavily promoted, and finally chuck everything else into the bin. Is that too much to ask? I know I will keep fighting for that dream.

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