Today I got a popup message from DropBox asking me to log in again - and then informed me to ‘please upgrade your system’. Yes, wouldn’t that be lovely… it would only cost me about $6000 to do so, to replace a perfectly tuned and running $3500 Mac Pro system that I use to make my living as a children’s book author and illustrator. No doubt I’d need to buy a bunch of new peripherals also… as usual.
I wonder if there is any workaround - to reassign the online location of Scrivener so that I can continue to use my iPad Scrivener to sync with my desktop Scrivener?
Frankly, I’m tired of buying new $3000 computers that run fine. And if I actually did upgrade to a new computer, then the devious forces of computer science would have me pay a lifetime monthly fee of $50 month till the end of time to replace my Adobe Creative Suite (that cost $1700 and runs perfectly) and also Microsoft would like me to pay them $10 a month until the end of time also.
Since I have my own website with 100 mgbs of space, I wonder if I could somehow just use an address there for Scrivener syncing? Or maybe use Google Drive (for free) or any number of other spaces.
If not, I guess my days with Scrivener are probably about over…
You don’t need to replace your computer - unless it’s really old - but only update the operating system. Dropbox has dropped support for operating systems older than 10.9. We’ve done the same - Scrivener 3 requires 10.12 or above to run. But older Macs can still run the latest version of macOS. My main machine is a Mac Pro - one of the older steel tower ones that is now nearly nine years old - and macOS 10.13 runs on it perfectly well.
Currently there are no alternatives to syncing Scrivener with the iOS version, as only Dropbox is supported. I hope to add other ways of syncing in the future but can make no guarantees beyond what is already offered, I’m afraid.
I haven’t tried it, but I know that it is possible to use iTunes for syncing. I suppose that will be more hands on and less automatic. There has been many discussions on why iCloud and many other cloud services (including Google Drive) doesn’t work for syncing Scrivener projects. Has apparently to do with how a project is built with often hundreds of individual documents. To explain it more accurately than that requires computer knowledge beyond my pay grade. I’ve seen that there are those brave individuals that are testing “unwarranted” work-arounds, but I wouldn’t risk it.
I suppose that your present work-station is to old (more than eight years) to upgrade to High Sierra and to use the latest version of Scrivener, v.3 (both works fine on my late 2009 MacBook). To buy a MacBook or an Air—new or used—to use just for the writing wouldn’t set you back so much, i.e. not thousands of dollars (a new Air costs $999). But, in your case, I suppose that you’d lose the smooth integration between writing and illustrating, that I understand that you cherish.
EDIT: See now that Keith already answered you, saying basically what I said, but with more authority and fewer words.
Reflecting on your post, I realise that your problem with upgrading perhaps has less to do with the physical age of your computer, and more to do with the fact that an upgrade might force you to upgrade Adobe and Word, and ensnare you in their blood-sucking subscription programs (Perish the thought!). That’s a real dilemma I don’t envy you.
My Mac runs on Sierra. Creative Suite 5 (from 2009 I believe) runs fine on both machines, as do Dropbox and Scrivener v3. I don’t know about Word, though.
You’ll find a list online (don’t know where now) which legacy apps still run on Sierra / High Sierra. If you find a way of upgrading to Sierra, I think you’ll be mostly fine without spending anything. Photoshop CS5 has some minor bugs, but nothing that gets in the way of my work. You’ll have to install an older version of Java, though.
Sorry to hear that Scrivener for IOS is so totally dependant on DropBox. I hope some future build allows one the option to put a sync folder wherever you like instead.
My problem is I make most of my income running Adobe Photoshop and CS6 - and the text of my picturebooks is just an extra. Since I make images all day and use 100’s of gigantic art files in Photoshop, Bridge, Indesign and Acrobat I can’t risk losing the current speedy crash-free status that I now enjoy for a possible upgrade beyond my trusty Snow Leopard. (I know many graphics professionals who share this opinion)
So I won’t bore you with the years of research that show that upgrading my current MacPro ($3000) past Snow Leopard will greatly slow down it’s effectiveness. Yes, programs will open after upgrading to Sierra and beyond - but will they actually run blazingly fast and without crashing for days on end? I could refer to lists full of disillusioned MacPro users who discovered that with each upgrade, their system slowed down - until they had to buy a new $3000 computer. And how fittingly ironic that the scandal of the iPhone battery finally revealed to the public how Apple purposely pushes machines into obsolescence.
Sigh. I guess it’ll be Evernote or some similar app for me then.
Generally I agree with this fellow, who is a graphics professional who discovered upgrading his Mac Pro too many times turned it into a very expensive doorstop. Yes, it still runs and opens… but now it’s slower than molasses and useless for power computing projects. It still opens though and probably runs a word processing task fine.
I second the sync via iTunes option. At the very least, it would be worthwhile for you to explore.
It will certainly be less convenient than syncing via the cloud, but you won’t have to make any software/hardware changes or spend any money, and it will buy you some time to figure out what you want to do.
But I suspect it also would require my upgrade past Snow Leopard.
I like to always tell the story of my artist friend Bob Staake, (bobstaake.com/) who creates his award winning children’s books and New Yorker covers using an ancient iMac and the original Photoshop 3! (that’s like 20 upgrades back). He likes using it because it’s all so much simpler.
I guess he has a 2nd computer that he uses for communications beyond his drawing board - so I’ll probably do something like that too before long. I’ll ‘air-gap’ my useful and perfectly running expensive MacPro and use a second machine to ‘keep up with the upgrade times’. Lol!
Another way to sync - not very elegant but works every time - is just emailing the Scrivener Document to yourself. I do this when working on different computers, It’s a bit of work but I feel much more secure than using Dropbox. Depends on how often you switch your device, of course …
Yes, I already have a standalone version of Word & Excel that I don’t want to pay rent on to the end of time.
Also, I second the idea of emailing the document to my desktop version - I often do that anyhow, especially with PDF’s of my illustrated children’s books - since I notice it gives me a totally new idea of what changes need to be made when I see it on my iPad instead of on my desktop.
I only wish there was some way that consumers could get together and unite against all the sneaky unethical actions of software companies. Why do we have to keep paying money over and over and over again for the same thing we already paid for once?
But someone in the software industry figured out the parable of boiling the frog in the pan - how if a frog is put into hot water, it will naturally jump right out - but if instead the frog sits in a pan of cold water and slowly has the temperature raised until it’s just as hot - the frog will not jump out but instead remain there to be cooked. And how fitting that the very first time I heard that odd science fact was from Paul Allen. I guess he knows something about how that principle works in business…
Oh, just a detail… The frog story dates back to the second half of the 19th century and it is actually wrong. If you put a frog in boiling water it dies but if you put it in cold water that is slowly heated it will jump out (if it can) when the water temperature gets near the critical thermal maximum for the spieces.
One could actually argue that the prescription version is more logical if the software developer supplies corrected and slightly updated versions over time, like most do with apps bought via the App store. The pay-once alternative could be interpreted to mean that you get the current state and that’s it. When software was distributed by floppy disk or later on CD there was no such thing as “fixing bugs”. You bought it in its current state and that was the end of it.
Today we are a bit spoiled, expecting developers to keep developing and changing the apps we have already bought and payed for, and customers question if an app is not upgraded in some way after a while. Look in the forum part about Scapple. “Has it been abandoned by the developer?” is a common question just because it hasn’t evolved lately.
Oh yes, I’d be fine with subscription IF they just would refund me the $2500 I already spent on the original versions of the software I already paid for!
Honestly, just looking at my Applications folder list - where I have 25 expensive Adobe products that I paid for twice already - Photoshop 4, Photoshop 5, Photoshop CS, Photoshop 5, Photoshop 6 and Indesign CS, Indesign CS5, Indesign CS6 and on and on - it’s a list of 25 items. I really feel like I’ve paid enough for my software (that all works perfectly fine and always has).
But by now, frankly I think I’d rather spend money on a new vacuum cleaner or a new coffee maker or a trip to London.
So, if I was starting all over and had never spent a nickel on Adobe or Microsoft software, I’d be fine with subscription. And since they won’t refund a nickel I’ll just keep what works! lol!
Pardon, but that’s like asking authors to refund the money you’ve already spent on their books because they’re putting out new updated omnibus editions with new short stories and content.
When you buy software without a subscription, you’re buying the product as it exists at that time. Just like buying a book, you’re compensating for the work that has already gone into the product.
When you buy software with a subscription, you’re funding ongoing development. This is more like a Kickstarter or Patreon purchase.
Two different business models. Neither one is inherently unethical. But expectations are not necessarily the same.
No, not any more. Nowadays developers are supposed to fix bugs relentlessly for years and years, without getting paid any extra for that. Look at Scrivener… The last free update of version 2 was 2.9, right? And how many free updates had there been over the years?
I’ve said for years that one of the silliest things software companies can do is sell software without having a clearly defined support policy that includes a clear expiration timeline.
Nevertheless, most EULAs are quite clear about what people are ACTUALLY buying vs. what they think they’re entitled to.
Just a quick word regarding the E-Mail syncing solution:
Using the out of the box Apple Mail client, I can mail Scrvener Files (which are actually folders) without any trouble without having to compress them (zip).
And another quick word on Adobe’s subscription model:
A lot of long time users like PeterPenguin and myself feel bummed, because we always paid for incremental upgrades, sometimes since decades, The upgrade from, say, CS4 to CS5 was always cheaper than buying CS5 for the first time. So you made an investment and kept putting money into that investment, getting upgrades in return. Very much like Scrivener, only that with Adobe we’re talking about thousands and thousands. With the move to a subscription model, that very heavy investment (updating Adobe products for so many years) was suddenly worth nothing. (That wasn’t so quick after all …)
Yeah, I have friends in various niche publishing industries who rely heavily on the Adobe stack, so I’ve gotten quite an earful of the pros and cons over the years. I don’t think Adobe was wrong to switch to subscription, but the way they made the switch was pretty heavy-handed.
At the same time, I have enough contacts in the software industry (I’m an IT architect/consultant by trade) to know how massively painful to the bottom line ongoing support issues can be for standalone software products. I also know how badly Adobe’s products were targeted by pirating for decades. And at the end of the day, Adobe is a business.
Yep. That’s the thing folks tend to forget. There must be sustainable $$ inbound for products to continue.
That said, the subscription model makes more sense for “online” apps than local installs in my opinion. I can see something like the industry standard annual maintenance fees for local installs, but the cripple method… not a fan.
