Hmm. Whether one is in der Schweiz, where I lived quite a while, or in some Martian (!) quadrant of Finland, where there have been very interesting times, there’s a temptation to add something here, so long as it can be a little wise.
Software is hard, very often a lot harder than first imagined. A construction like Scrivener is especially so, with all the differing writerly intentions it is designed to be adjusted to, and thus deliver the full measure of its help.
So, it;'s no surprise that it ‘takes a little longer’, while at the same time the pace of improvements on surfaces now gives pretty good indication that the long effort to get the foundation right, first, has been a very sensible one.
It does take patience to allow this to happen. As others have indicated, it isn’t as if other software is delivered any more rapidly in its completion, and there are reasons all around for that. There is complication: a lot more complication than there used to be. There are customs: the habits of millenial construction with ópen’’ software packages are far more taxing in their continuous change and re-issue. Scrivener isn’t as strongly affected by this second element, but to some extent, as anyone could find looking into the packages it uses.
The complexity aspect means it is nearly impossible for a team, large or small, to ‘get everything right’ in what used to be considered a complete software delivery. As others have mentioned, you get creep from the very beginning of loose deliveries – or, you either wait out or participate in Beta programs, contributing your patience and reporting for the value of early use of the software.
The team here is small, and I think you would not like the result of it having been a large one, with a 'managerial approach to its quality and ethics.
What we get instead is thoughtful craftsmanship, mirrored in a stability of practical function which has so carefully not been interrupted, so that we have in fact been able to use Scrivener 3 successfully for many months, seeing only stages of improvement.
I could give you contemporary tales of actually fine software by highly capable person which quite differ, so we are rather fortunate here. And that other software is taking just about the same numdber of months, interestingly enough, while asking a great deal more out of those who are enthusiastic and very dedicated in their intent to use it.
I don’t think we can have it any better than we do, that’s what judgment born of experience must say.
There isn’t anything in the world that actually performs as Apple for example keeps promising to do…and then visibly sinking itself beneath enough waves.
One can understand the formation of attitudes where it might seem there could be an ideal where it’s different; that’s the task if we want to explain – and also a big subject.
But I think we have to go with the balances that have been described through the answers from the original posting: that it takes the time as you see to do this; that no, dealing with multiple versions of updates is not practical; that a patient mind will have you finding that there’s no sense of real interruption at all, in taking a moment once every few weeks to update your software.
It’s a privilege, isn’t it? And once again, we’re now getting pretty near what everyone desires.
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