Dorchester — Jul 9th 2019
Euan introduced us to Affinity Publisher ,the third DTP application produced by the Nottingham based British company founded in 1987 Serif originally producing apps for Windows PC. They took the Apple market by surprise and delight by launching Affinity Designer in 2014. Affinity Photo followed and both apps became available additionally for Windows and IOS. Whilst there is much commonality between the two apps but it was only with the release of Publisher, this year, that Serif’s full 10 year vision was revealed. Using a common file format for all three apps and a new feature called StudioLink, working in Publisher you have full instant access to features of both Designer and Photo without having to open the separate apps. Euan demonstrated how this means that instead of having to switch between apps copy/pasting/importing edits back into Publisher you can carry them out there and then in Publisher simply selecting the require app icon top left of the screen. Euan also showed how with Catalina, IOS 13 and Sidecar you can work on a Mac with iPad as second screen and the power of Apple Pencil.
David, following a suggestion of Tony Still, talked about preparing for the inability to run 32 bit programs on Catalina and how to prepare for its release in the Autumn. Running pre Catalina systems, Apple System Information>Software>Legacy Software lists items that will not run in Catalina. You can also see what applications run in 32 bit by looking at Apple System Information>Software>Applications and sorting on the 64 Bit column. However a better method is to use an 32-bitCheck.app created by Howard Oakley and available on his https://eclecticlight.co where go to Dowloads and click on AppSelectionChart. The free app comes with useful instructions and explanations as to why it’s better.
