I just posted another blog post to keep people going in the meantime. 
Hopefully not too much longer now.
That’s it. I’m officially invoking the Geneva Conventions.
So many ravishing teasers without shipping must surely violate some tenet of humane treatment for we poor prisoners of our own hyper-ventilations.
I reiterate
:mrgreen:
This is disastrous news. The blog posts are meted out approximately every 10 days. This further blog post means, at a minimum, it’s not going to happen for a further 10 days.
Where is the resistance? Any hackers out there? 
Since the β-testers are now testing [redacted], I think we can assume, that it is practically done… I assume it will turn out to be less than 10 days!
What we ask beta-testers to do is confidential, please don’t share. Thanks! (And ten days may be optimistic.)
Which sounds way more salacious than it is. Except, of course, for that one time when [redacted] and we had to [redacted]. And I said, “Gee, I hope he gets back before all this dry ice melts.”
gr
Sorry Keith, I just assumed it was okay, since this thread seems to be quite the open ended when it comes to discussing where you guys are in the β phase, and we seem quite close to release! And you know how patient some of us are in here, in the lust for Scrivener 3, or bread crumb news regarding it… I will point out that I am not a beta tester, I just came across the link to the beta forum by chance at one point (Someone posted the link on Macrumors.com), so I have been loosely following the status in there out of sheer interest, but I will of course keep silent from now on.
So to iterate what I wrote in my previous post…
Sorry, David, I thought you were a beta-tester! Well, in that case, we are indeed testing the new site, as we’ve had some slowness issues. There are still a few things to do to the site, though, and we’re still trying to get the UI translations fixed up which is holding things back a little.
Thanks and all the best,
Keith
I hate to say this, but the way this round of release has been handled, we took a step backward. I long for the days when Scrivener public betas were available, and we had the ability to test and help out Keith. Even Apple since the release of Scrivener version 2 has gone more “open” with their beta testing. What’s is up here?
It seems that you have nostalgia for an age that never was. We never released any public betas of Scrivener 2 before it was released - we had a private beta group, just as we do now. The only public betas we have ever released have been of point updates - 2.2 or 2.3 and such. I understand and appreciate that some users are impatient and so demand public betas so they can get their hands on the software now, but we have to release our software in the way that works best for us and that we believe is best for our users, too.
Scrivener 3 arouses so much passion !!! That’s impressive
Take your time, L&L. We, users, need the best Scrivener 3.0 possible.
Meantime, any writer can use a pen and a scrap of paper or… hey ! why not Scrivener 2 ?
I know we are all anxious for S3, but we have to respect that Keith and team have made decisions about the beta process and the state they want the Scrivener 3 ecosystem to be in as a prerequisite for launch. At launch, if documentation wasn’t ready, incomplete or filled with typos, we’d complain loudly. If the new website wasn’t able to handle high volumes they are going to get at launch, we’d be VERY upset. If Windows users didn’t have something usable in their hands at Mac launch, they would start a revolt in social media and lay siege to the castles of Cornwall. If you had to tell your publisher that “Scrivener 3 ate my homework”, you would be screaming.
So far as releasing beta software to the masses, for productivity software, that’s a very uncharacteristic thing to do. ie It’s very unproductive. First off, most users ignore the warnings and start using beta software for production use. In their minds, they blur the lines between beta and release quality software. Some will see bugs and then whine on social media that the new version is terrible.
Additionally, public betas are big and messy. A company like Apple has the resources to manage a large community of beta testers and to deal with the deluge of feedback that results. They have layers of product managers, QA specialists, separate software development teams for major components (ie UI design, data export/import, platform interoperability, editor, compiler…) They have more departments than L&L has staff. They have a toolchain which supports this sort of scope and model for development. For L&L, they need a small number of testers who are carefully chosen based on what L&L needs to have tested (language, platform, user expertise with specific features such as advanced compile options. The needs are not much different than selecting an awesome group of beta readers for your novel. You want to maintain a reasonable signal to noise ratio in the conversation with your testers and keep the team small enough that you can have meaningful dialogue.
In recent years, beta “testing” has often become more of a marketing/sales activity than a QA process. The focus is on creating “buzz”, not on bug reporting and testing. I believe this started in the gaming community and it has certainly spread to other types of software. In some communities, users will pay for early access to help support development and to have bragging rights that they were on board from the very beginning.
With Scrivener, L&L has a well-earned reputation for releasing mature, stable software that’s just awesome at what it’s supposed to do. The intent of their current beta program is not to be exclusionary, but to be practical and to maximize the launch experience for everyone by getting a quality product out the door at the earliest possible time. I’m sure there’s nothing L&L would like more than to see their cash register ringing with a stream of new release sales, but they are taking the long view, which is the smart path for both L&L and us as writers.
“With Scrivener, L&L has a well-earned reputation for releasing mature, stable software that’s just awesome at what it’s supposed to do.”
That’s the problem! I am neither mature, nor stable. God knows I am not good at what I am supposed to do. No wonder I can’t finish my work with a snooty, upper crusty program like Scrivener. When I stopped writing in DingBats, everything went to hell…
Doubly so because, in that situation, the support team would be learning about the new version at the same time as everyone else.
Katherine
Among my other efforts in procrastination, I do play an online game on the best team in that particular game - unless you are a gamer you won’t understand the level of work that takes. As a result, we along with some of the other teams have been engaged in ‘beta testing’ a new extension of the game, it’s been going on for nearly a year now and is more like they are using us to build a different game entirely. Being involved with that process has nothing to do with ‘bragging rights’ as it was put, more to do with making sure we are across the new extension to the game before it goes live.
That being said I agree with Katherine when she points out that then the so-called beta testers then know more about the app or program than the so-called programmers do (or rather in this case trying to learn at the same time as the users). Trust me when I tell you its an exercise in frustration to try and explain basic problems to people who while I’m sure are very smart, well they are total idiots. It takes forever for them to understand that there is a problem, they have no idea how gameplay actually occurs, the impact of what they are doing or how to fix problems once they understand there is one.
As frustrating as I find the delay. I want S3 now!!! I’ll wait.
I do appreciate that L&L is one of the few remaining companies that do beta testing properly. Or I will when I get my hands on it. lmao.
That’s great news, but I respectfully request we not rush things. Dignity presumes a measured pace, and I think an extra day of remembrance for the spirits of writers past would be in order. Those writers from whom the muse has flown on wings of Word, writers suckered into the false hope master document mode could be a replacement for a future Scriv 3.
Or little Johnny Paper, whose love for rascal Puff would have soared on a corkboard with alternate views, but who, alas, is not so little any more. His stories of magic dragons are now reduced to corporate memos written in Outlook, issued from a windowless office, read by no one, signifying nothing.
Let’s remember all those writers whose pens ran dry, drained by the incessant tick, tick, tick of the Version 3 clock, taken before imaginative prose begat legacy, those who lived for the joy of enhanced scrivenings and were spared by the Reaper from rejection letters.
A final day, it’s all I ask, just 24 more hours delay. Or a week. Flags fly at half-staff for a month at a time.
It’s the least we can do for those who fell during The Wait. Everyone will agree. No doubt.
This thread has been read over 14,000 times. Too bad there is so little interest in the Scrivener 3 launch.
Hands up if you’re personally responsible for at least 1K hits.
Bad news, 4miler. Not only is there yet another awesome blog post today, but Keith references the content for next week’s post as well. Using this model for predicting S3 release, I’d say we’re at least a couple of weeks away.
If by chance, S3 isn’t launched by the end of this month, I will gladly share my plan for the invasion of Cornwall and the systematic siege and sacking of its castles.
Just one minor point of correction, but today’s post was brought to you by Jennifer, not Keith. 
Also, we have more content to talk about than we do time left before launch. This wan’t meant to be a series that concludes abruptly—and I wouldn’t make interstellar travel plans based around predictions of its continuation or demise.