Hey! I'm not disparaging Affinity Designer!
Nor did I imply you were, though it came off that way, for sure… It's just that many people here in the forum still seem to be largely unaware of Affinity's very existence.
I have been having a lot of fun playing with it this past week --and it was cool that a day after I rued the lack of stroke adjustments --BOOM, the Devs released an update with stroke adjustments. (Now I'm rueing the lack of gradient meshes & keeping my fingers crossed for the next quickee update. Hmmm, also keeping my fingers crossed for the ability to create personalized vector brushes, perhaps even more than gradient meshing.)
^ THIS. I can't stress this enough: these guys deliver, and then some. They are, indeed, firing on all cylinders, and at an impressive pace at that, and still surprise and delight you every now and then. And, according to their forums, they seem to have some aces up their collective sleeves.
However, Affinity Photo & Publisher are still vaporware at this point, frankly. I don't believe they will be released before January 2015 although I'm very hopeful & cheering the development team on.
While Affinity seems to be a “bet the company” move, Serif must have an otherwise sound business model, or else they wouldn't be offering version “X8” (as in 18?) of their publishing (alas, Windows-only) application, PagePlus (interestingly, they just now implemented baseline grids, a feature that, along with strong OpenType support – which is present in Designer already –, I warned them well in advance as being make-or-break for Affinity Publisher – I did send them a lenghty e-mail on the wake of the CC announcement, complete with a famous Churchill quote on difficulty and opportunity [

], and though they say they had Affinity Designer on the works for four [!] years already, I like to believe that my suggestions had at least some impact on them; but either way, these guys do listen – to the market, at least – and deliver).
But something tells me that, at a solid 5-star rating and Editor's Choice even in it's v.1.0, solitary incarnation, that bet will pay off and they will have the funds to develop the rest of the suite (judging by the fact that you can do raster brushes in Affinity Designer already and also the fact that it was released on schedule and in a fairly stable and functional state, Affinity Photo and Publisher shouldn't be that much behind schedule, if at all; and both those tools and the pixel previews make the much-touted interoperability between the various apps seem promising). I even go as far as venturing that Affinity will some day be [back-]ported to Windows and supersede the Serif suite. Give 'em some time, but they will get there. And that, my friends, could very well be the definite end of Adobe's stranglehold on the DTP market.
I think that everyone using Macs looking for Adobe alternatives is in a good place compared to a year ago, what with major updates to Pixelmator, iDraw & Acorn this year, and the release of great new apps like Affinity Designer & Mischief.
Edit: How can I forget mentioning Manga Studio 5/Clip Studio too? I love this one too.
Yep. I very much enjoy seeing competition; in fact, someone mentioned in the support forums that exporting slices in vector formats wasn't currently possible in Affinity Designer, as oposed to… was it Acorn? iDraw? The fact that the (lower-priced) competition may offer something the bigger players lack will force the latter to improve, without necessarily choking the smaller players (which can and will find niche markets for themselves). The current Apple market, as far as designers and graphic artists are concerned, is huge and can absolutely sustain all these players.
As for Mischief and Manga/Clip Studio, since I'm a graphic designer by trade, I never looked into that kind of digital painting/drawing software, but they do look impressive, wow. It really is a good time to be on the Mac, and moving away from this whole CC debacle doesn't seem to be such a frightening proposition anymore; in fact, I anticipate a full-blown graphic software renaissance in the coming years.
