Appstore vs Direct Purchase + Moving from WinScriv

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’m picking up my first Mac computer tomorrow, and Scrivener is (of course!) on my to-purchase list. Apple provide a $100 credit for the app store for students as part of their educational discount, so I was looking at purchasing it through there. However, I have heard that it is usually better to purchase the non-Appstore version for programs, since the appstore sandboxing and review by Apple each update can interfere/cut features/delay updates/otherwise make the program less useful than the non-appstore version.

Is this an issue I need to worry about with Scrivener? If so, are there current differences, or is this only a potential future concern? Is educational pricing valid through the app store, or only direct purchase? Anything else to bear in mind when deciding which version to get (eg, does Not Kevin get a larger cut of the proceeds through non-appstore purchases thus supporting him more if I buy direct, etc)?

Secondly, is there a way to transfer my Scriv preferences from my current Windows laptop to the Mac or will I need to recreate them? I know I can move from one windows machine to another, just not sure if I can do that cross-platform or not.

Thanks guys :slight_smile:

2

Ha, your avatar is especially appropriate at the moment.

Sandboxing will add a little extra friction to some specific tasks, but for most normal usage it won’t be something that comes up. It’s mainly a problem if you link research material in instead of fully importing it, and a few other minor issues of that nature. Basically you just have to give it permission to read files from your user folder. That is done transparently when you use a load or save action. It’s only the automatic stuff that requires more setup. The main strike against sandboxing is that it is still kind of buggy, as a framework. There is a rare, to be stressed, but greater degree of unsolvable issues with the MAS version, which I suspect is because of that, because most everything else should be identical.

With update speeds, I’d say the difference is acceptable, depending on your personality. There is definitely a lag behind the direct-sale version. Right now for instance, 2.4 is out but it is still in review in the MAS so everyone that bought it that way is waiting for the update to be approved. But that’s only a concern a few weeks every several months, so in the grand scheme of things it isn’t a huge issue either. Additionally if you are really hankering to try the newer direct-sale version, it has been coded to recognised a MAS receipt and unlock itself from demo mode. That doesn’t come without some caveats (since neither can access the other’s preferences and backup folder) so those who prefer that tend to just migrate permanently to the direct sale version.

Potential future concerns: well, they are there. Applications did not always need to be sandboxed, and for a while it looked like features would have to be cut, but some clever workarounds solved that. Who’s to say if that will always be the case. When you buy from a vendor that has absolute authority over what the software it sells can do, there is always a risk that bureaucracy can end up diminishing the version of the software you bought.

There is no form of discount or sale pricing through the MAS. If you want to get the discounted educational pricing you’ll need to purchase directly.

Alas there isn’t a way to do that. The available preferences are so different that attempting to share a format would be more trouble than it is worth. The same will go for any compile settings you’ve made in your projects. So if you’ve done a lot of customisation there, make sure to screenshot or write down your settings.

Yes, that is true. But whatever works best for you is what we really want, not a few extra dollars. :slight_smile:

Welcome to the Mac side of things!

3

Thanks Amber - amazingly helpful as always :slight_smile:

While I usually import my resources rather than linking to them, I am very definitely sure that one of the things I want to be able to do is synch between Scriv and Aeon Timeline. A forum post over there suggests that the sandboxing from the App store can interfere with that (at least with Appstore Aeon, don’t know if Scriv being sandboxed would have the same effect or not) so I think I’ll dl the trial versions of both and then direct buy in a fortnight once my wallet has recuperated from having to buy a laptop and textbooks. I can always use the App store credit for other programs that I don’t need cross-program use for (or the Scrivener iOS app when it comes out, assuming credit for the mac appstore and iOS appstore are shared?). Would Pages be a good program for layout editing upon exporting out of Scrivener?

Thank you! I’m excited to get to play with all the shiny new features :smiley: Well. Not new, I suppose, but new to me. I have a feeling my schoolwork may end up neglected for a day or two while I run around applying custom metadata to everything and laughing maniacally. :smiling_imp:

…I may be more excited about getting to satisfy my compulsion for hyperorganising everything in my scriv folders more fully than anything else about acquiring a new laptop. That’s normal right?

4

During my time here on these forums, I’ve only heard complaints about Pages (it’s shiny and nice for fliers and shorter papers, but it lacks some features you expect from a mature word processor), and only praise for Nisus Writer Pro and it’s compatibility with both Scrivener (because RTF is the native format for both), and MS Word.

Pages lacks good support for RTF, though it deals pretty well with .doc & .docx files, while you have to install Java to take advantage of Scrivener’s improved Word compile output filters (which brings with it the recent headaches and worries of Java exploits) so that Pages can properly deal with footnotes and page headers and other things you expect to just work.

Nisus seems to deal well with RTF compiled Scrivener output and with both input and output to Word compatible formats, which makes exchanging a manuscript with an editor using Word easier (can’t speak from experience though), as it supports Track Changes, something that Scrivener can’t do.

If I hadn’t already owned Pages and if Scrivener hadn’t added the advanced, java-based .doc exporters, I’d probably at least trial Nisus for my own needs.

5

Not sure what your needs are, but if you do extensive academic projects, then you may want to give Mellel a try for the post-scrivener phase of your projects

6

Yeah, integration between programs is going to be one of the things that suffers in sandboxing. It’s frustrating—the whole thing is roughly the security equivalent of airport security. A nightmare of regulations for those providing it, and everyone being subjected to indecent treatment if they want to travel. Meanwhile the actual criminals aren’t even going through security in the first place, naturally.

Maybe, Apple’s gift card system is messy. A card for the iTunes store (which lets you buy iOS apps as well as music and such) may not work in the MAS and vice versa. And on top of that they have a third class of gift card that can only be used to buy hardware and boxed software from the web site.

I’m not really the best to give you a recommendation on word processors as I avoid that whole ethos of document generation. I’m one of those LaTeX nerds. But Nisus Writer/Pro is a favourite amongst those in the know, and it works great with both Word and Scrivener. Mellel was my favourite as I prefer a heavy stylesheet approach to word processing, and it provides that. However you can’t buy that off of the MAS any more these days, so I don’t know.

To a degree, 99.9% of that can be avoided by disabling Java in your web browser. That is the vector for nearly all current exploits. The remaining are trojans, so as long as you don’t download and run .jar files from untrusted sources, it’s pretty safe to have Java installed on a Mac. I’d be more nervous about it on Windows, but offline Java on the Mac is fairly benign. I run it, myself.

Reference.

7

Thanks for the help guys. :slight_smile: I’ve decided for the moment to compile to .doc then transfer over to Word on my PC for final layout stuff, since I don’t think I do it often enough for the computer change to become an issue. I’m keeping an eye on Nisus, but it’s pretty pricey (not comparative to similar programs, just to a poor student who already bought textbooks and a laptop in the last month), so it might be something I look into more in the future.

Loving Mac Scriv so far :smiley: It’s not even the big things, like the freeform corkboard or the custom metadata that’s making me happiest, it’s the little things like ‘copy as html’ :smiley:

Though I do miss pigfender’s SciFi translation a great deal… any chance of that getting ported? Probably a good thing to use the ‘real’ labels for a while until I learn where everything is now, but… O:)

8

If you squint really hard, so that your eyes get blurry, you can almost see a Holodeck from the Mac’s Command—ahem File menu.

9

My advice … compile to .rtf, which is fully readable by Word and actually gives better results than compiling to .doc.
:slight_smile:
Mark