I keep getting notices that the license for the beta version expires on July 15th. Will the program stop working? I don’t want to lose my work and files. Should I start transferring them back to the old version? Thank you for your help.
It’s always a good idea to keep your work backed up when working in a beta.
However, in terms of the current beta’s expiry date, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about – to date, the Scrivener team have always released a new version before the expiration date of the existing version. Hope that sets your mind at ease. 
Worth noting, if they end up actually coming out with an official release, there will be no new beta. 
That being said they’ve always been pretty generous with their trial period so even if you didn’t want pay for a license you could always download the trial and backup/compile/export your project.
I bought a license last October with the promise that the update would be delivered by mid November, I think. I started using the beta in June, and I figured they’d do something about the expiring license, but it’s in like 4 days. It’d be a major pain for me to backup every file into the old version, but I will lose my mind if all my work vanishes. I was hoping I’d get on here and someone would have made an announcement or people would be talking about it, but I don’t see any of that.
I bought a license and used it for a while until someone shared a file with me. It wouldn’t open because I didn’t have the updated version (this was formatted for Windows). I downloaded the Beta (but kept the old version as well, or so I thought) and now that this beta is expiring, I can no longer access either version.
The beta expires on the 15th and as Collider mentioned above historically Lit & Lat has not missed putting out a new beta before the prior one expired. Considering we’re over 40(ish) betas in now, I’d say you have very little to worry about.
No, the beta will just release when Literature and Latte is ready. They really don’t have any fanfare, they just post it in the forum. If it were actually getting a full release, I assume they would have some sort of notice beforehand, like they did with the Mac release, but I’ve been wrong before.
Okay. I’ll just assume they’re not going to totally fuck me over, As of now, I can’t lie, my faith is extremely limited. I mean, how do you promise a new version in November and fail to deliver it 9 months later? That’s not a work delay. That’s a drug binge and a trip to rehab. But, sure. Let’s hope.
Unless you have a demonstrated successful history of estimating and sticking the delivery time to port an extremely complex software package from one OS to another – where by “porting” I mean “redeveloping in a different language and framework, and having to identify the gaps in system functionality that are not present in the new OS and figure out how to bridge those gaps” – perhaps you may want to accept that this is a lot more complex than you think, that your language is a bit inflammatory, and that L&L is acting in good faith.
See, this is the first month I’ve used beta, so I didn’t realize they tagged a one month expiration date on it each month. If I had, I wouldn’t have been so worried. And, I got the update this morning, so it all worked out, and I was actually coming here to delete the whole drug binge thing, but you’ve already quoted it, so okay.
I did my research before buying this. The promise of an update that brought the aesthetics and functionality closer to the Mac version was one of the main reasons I decided to buy it. At the time of purchase, I was quoted a delivery date of November. It is now July. You can use all the programming jargon you want to complicate the issue, but, bottom line? It’s not cool.
That being said, the beta seems fully functional to me so I’d think they’d release it soon. And I love Scrivener. I recommend it to people all the time. It’s a fantastic program. There’s just a question of reliability that makes me extremely nervous considering how much time I’ve put into setting it up and how devastated I would be to lose my work. I doubt those feelings are unique to me.
RC8 is released so the whole discussion a little moot.
As we all know, those that have been here a while or those who bother to check other ‘the sky is falling and the beta is expiring’ posts, L&L have never missed one.
Minor point on the ‘promised’ November last year release. I’ve not seen a single ‘promise’ of a release date from L&L (correct me if I’m wrong).
Several disappointingly missed ‘hopefully’, yes, but progress continues and we live in hope.
Also in the time I’ve been using Scrivener I’ve never seen L&L ‘fuck anyone over’, nor nothing to warrant such a suggestion.
All of the previous comments considered, it still would be nice to have some idea of how long we are talking about having to wait. Does L&L ever give estimates on a release date? I’m not being snotty, I’m seriously asking because I haven’t seen anything from them about this particular version release for Windows. I get not wanting to put a date out there, and then having to slide it, and disappoint everyone, but considering how long some have been expecting/waiting, it would be nice if we could get some updates on a hopeful month/year release. I mean I’m looking forward to the new version, but I am less excited about it every time I come to the website to check, and still no new version and no estimate of when we might expect it. Just sayin.
Regards,
Blue
You weren’t here for the previous blow ups on the release were you? Every time they’ve put out an estimate, and failed to meet said estimate, they’ve taken a lot of heat for it. There have been many, many threads about it here and even some blogs and social media posts from discontent users. All in all it was a whole lot of unpleasantness to contend with. I don’t really blame them for being so tight-lipped, I would be too in their shoes.
Thanks for the reply. No, I haven’t been around here all that long, but just noticed the lack of a date. I understand them not wanting to be berated. It does seem they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Oh well.
Waiting semi-patiently,…
Blue
Understandable but meantime the current RC is perfectly useable. Has bugs, but still a great app. Some developers might have already released it,
So you’re talking about the current Beta Release Candidate for version 3, correct? But would you do new work with it? Isn’t there a risk that the final version may not be compatible? Can you have the beta installed separately to play with and still do your work in version 1?
I and my colleague have been doing exactly that for nearly 2 years. Why on earth would Lit&Lat spend all this time developing the beta, implementing features to make it as as close as possible to Mac v.3, eliminating bugs … only to publish a released version which was not compatible?
And yes, you can install both, but they must be in separate folders. If you open your v. 1.9 WIP in the v. 3 Betas/RCs, it will save a copy of the 1.9 project and update the format. Any changes or additions made in v. 3 will not be accessible in v. 1.9 (unless you have a Mac owning, Scrivener using friend who can convert it back for you), if that’s what you meant by being incompatible.
Mark