If you can, I’d recommend buying through the L&L store. Not only will L&L get more of the money, but when Scrivener 4 rolls around, you’ll be able to take advantage of upgrade pricing.
I’m only just getting to the export feature and I agree they are nice and seem quite fast, even on iOS. I noted the sync too in my post. I don’t like Dropbox but generally speaking I like Scrivener much more than I hate Dropbox.
I will respectfully disagree with you on Scrivener’s editor. I use Scrivener because I want to use rich text. If I wanted to use a mardown editor, then I’d a markdown aware text editor. I wouldn’t like to see the waters muddied unless they were two completely separate modes of entry.
As for the pricing (it’s $7 in my country) I’m still undecided. If used every day of the year, then hands down it would be worth it; i’d get the annual subscription and write it off as an operational cost of business. However, I can’t see myself wanting to use it for anything longer than a blog post or short story.
I tend to trust Markdown more than I trust rich text, especially when it comes to converting to and from various formats. That’s why I like it, but Scrivener’s support for MMD is a bit too basic for my liking, so I stick to rich text. (I also have it on some authority—Max Seeleman, coincidentally—that RTF is a pretty poorly designed spec.)
Oh, I agree. I’m a big markdown (and other text-based formats) user in my personal and professional life. Nothing beats plain for reliability, longevity, cross-platform support and network interchange.
However my current project is a complex 200,000 word, 15-year endeavour that’s basically a massive kludge. I ain’t converting that to markdown – and kudos to Scrivener for handling that volume of work.
Beside which, I kind of like writing fiction at least in rich text. Feels closer to the end product. That said, I have got several newer projects currently on hold while I finish the fantasy epic, and most of those were drafted in markdown.
17 Aug. blog post from iA Writer regarding subscriptions: ia.net/writer/blog/ia-writer-5- … -to-sushi/
Thanks schrugged. I enjoyed this article. What really resonated with me though was the linking article on plain text: ia.net/topics/multichannel-text-processing/
It made me realise that even Ulysses plays the smoke an mirrors game (or perhaps its iCloud’s fault) with your files.
Wow. These links from iA Writer really help me realize their product is not my cup of tea. I lived through too many IT religious wars, I have no desire to ally myself with (or financially support) zealots ever again. I really appreciate L&L’s pragmatic approach to software design.
Come again?
Delete due to weird duplicate
Delete due to weird duplicate
Try to locate where on your file system Ulysses stores your files and you’ll know what I mean. I found them buried in ~/Library in a confusing mass after I got creative with searching in Finder and grep on the Command Line.
Compare that to the approach highlighted in the iA article I linked to. Their point was that such schemes, along with content locked in databases, binary formats and package formats are contrary to the benefits of plain text. I’m reviewing Ulysses and it resonated with me because even though Ulysses uses plain text (sort of), it feels to me much less transparent than even Scrivener’s package/rtf format.
I can see an interact with Scrivener projects on the FS. I can do the same with plain markdown documents in dropbox. I cannot do that with Ulysses, which obscures data in an iCloud library
Ah, I see. To be fair to them (much as I’m upset with them right now), it’s easy to export your data. You can drag sheets or entire groups into a Finder window, and it’ll make a copy of them right there. They’ll be in .ulysses format, but that’s just a file bundle (similar to .scriv) that contains your stuff in plaintext.
This post isn’t about whether I think subscriptions (or Ulysses’ implementation of same) are good or bad. It’s part of the overall learning opportunity this event became for me. I kind of knew; but not really.
I had read Max Seeleman’s following claim around the time it was originally made but being that I’m not a coder, I didn’t have the necessary knowledge to judge its accuracy nor did I have the ability to evaluate the scope of the job. I also didn’t know the people involved with this.
All that’s still true. But after searching for developer reactions and non reactions, searching for Ulysses reputation as coders qua coders and asking someone who codes in a different environment, I can accept the claim. (As coders – Ulysses’ team is well respected, including by their direct competitors.)
The amount of work required to change their model was immense:
twitter.com/macguru17/status/897050119983550464
It’s something to keep in mind while awaiting or after installing the next version of a must have app, or while searching for a new one. Writers can probably relate to the immense, unseen work’s relationship to their very own finished creation.
The subscription model thing is something I dislike, but at the same time can see why it would be necessary for some businesses to move that way.
A recent high profile instance was that of photobucket. That they moved to a subscription model isn’t the real issue, but rather the abysmal way they went about it. No warning, disabled third party links for existing subscribers, no grand-fathering etc… leaving many internet forums bare of pictures !
By contrast:
This has been handled MUCH better.
I finally published my review of Ulysses on my blog. I’ve had some great responses but my goodness, once it hit social media there’s a lot of bitterness directed toward Ulysses for the business model switch. I almost regret posting it! I was trying to review it on its merits and compare it to the way Scrivener’s helped me write for ten years!
Crikey, lot of angry people 
Very well-written and thoughtful. It’s written in such a way so as to be attractive to a diverse audience. It’s here: chrisrosser.net/posts/2017/09/01 … ses-review
Very kind, thank you
The guys of Ulysses have clearly thought over very well their decision, and Max Seeleman’s explanation is very clear and very well written. Yet I think they have made a fundamental mistake, which could cost them dearly.
It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of users hate the subscription model, and that they will try to trash each and every application adopting that model.
This being so, the central question should be: how indispensable is my application to the majority of its users? Can they permit themselves to trash it? In my opinion, only in a few cases, the answer to this last question can (or could) be “no”. Scrivener is a ‘must have’ for those who do serious research in the humanities and in the social sciences (well, yes, of course you can do without it, but then you’re damaging your work and needlessly complicating your life); Bookends and Sente are, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are, Devonthink is: all these applications have very few serious serious competitors in their specific field. Only similar applications might therefore consider a move towards a subscription model; but even for them, it would be a serious risk.
But Ulysses doesn’t belong to this category. It is a beautiful and very agreeable application, which certainly has a great potential; but it is indispensable to few. For the majority of their users, it’s an application they use besides (and after) other applications. And Ulysses nowadays has many competitors, especially in the markdown field, which are also substantially cheaper.
For serious problems there are no easy solutions. But in my opinion, it would have been better (after cutting the costs wherever possible, of course) to adopt the Papyrus (or Tinderbox) model. Which implies: high(er) price but great value for money; very regular substantial updates, which are not cheap, but which you are completely free to acquire or not. If not, then you continue using the previous version, without the newest features, but also without being rudely cut off from the application as such, which is experienced as a smash in the face, and therefore to be absolutely avoided. And yes, in this case the costs for the user would probably be higher than with the subscription model. That is true. But that’s not the point. The point is: can I convince the vast majority of my users to follow me on the path I have chosen? And in my opinion, this is easier with the Papyrus/Tinderbox model than with the subscription model. People want to be free: that is a very fundamental characteristic of human nature that should never be underestimated.
And in the specific case of Ulysses, I would have trashed the one library model (which clearly is a deal breaker for many), and would have reintroduced the forum. Every serious application of some complexity nowadays has a forum; Ulysses has not (anymore).
But time will show, and I sincerely hope time will prove me wrong; because Ulysses is very sympathetic to me, and I wish it all the best.
From 9 to 5 Mac:
9to5mac.com/2017/11/06/ios-11-2 … app-store/
As things stand today from Apple:
developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/
How an invite-only meeting at Apple’s luxury loft in New York set the stage for the building one of the biggest subscription businesses in the world
by Kif Leswing, August 12, 2018