I posted a couple months ago that people should be patient in the waiting game for Scrivener 3 for windows. After all, I thought, the beta was looking pretty good (while still way too buggy to use).
Well, I’m rethinking my comments of support. The wait is too long, and there is absolutely ZERO updates on status of the project. I don’t care if you don’t want to post another estimated release date, but at least give us something for crying out loud!
So here - I’m giving you my own date. A definite ‘drop-dead’ date.
If the product is not released by December 31 I am moving on from Scrivener for good. And I won’t ever buy another product from L&L. This is my promise to you.
They post status reports about every two weeks…
Not that it is much comfort Canlino5 but I spoke to my son about new software, he is always waiting on something being released shortly, he is a student and avid gamer. He laughed when I mentioned I was still waiting for Scrivener 3 and that it was months behind schedule. He really does not see months as anything but average for the industry. Here is an example of his world…
Star Citizen is the most crowd funded game in existence. After its initial round of crowdfunding finished back in 2012, leaving Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games with $6.2 million (£4.6 million) in funding, it’s gone on to raise more than $175 million (£130 million) in its lifetime.
That’s certainly an impressive figure, but the trouble with Star Citizen is that the studio behind it – Cloud Imperium Games – still hasn’t delivered on its promise. Originally slated for a 2014 release, Star Citizen has been delayed countless times, sliding from 2014 to 2015, then to 2016… now it no longer has an expected release date.
A lot of people (not son) have paid big money up front in a sort of attempt to get it released. No joy yet apparently.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m probably not as fancypants as some people might be, as far as using Scrivener really, really deeply goes. But I just finished a book using nothing but successive betas of WinV3, and the latest bugfix list is smaller than the last, so I’ll disagree that it’s way too buggy to use, although of course YMMV on that. For the price - even though I’ll buy yet another license if/when WinV3 is released - it’s still an excellent deal and a good tool. Hopefully you’ll reconsider if/when WinV3 is released.
I just wanted to reiterate what Lunk said. Although they have not made blog posts about it, they have been very diligent about beta updates and their progress. Each time a new beta is released, it comes with changelog that lets you in on the progress the devs are making.
It may not be traditional progress updates, but the progress is being made at a really good pace, and it shows. I suggests downloading the beta and trying it out, it’s miles better than it was just a few months ago!
I think people need to remember–this is not a game. Which is to say, if someone buys the “Finished” product, and it has a major bug that pops up just as they’re in crunch time for a major paper/article/etc, they may be losing far more than their newest achievement on World of Warcraft.
It has to be as bug free as humanly possible, because I will tell you from experience that nobody is going to remember the thousand times they worked on it and everythign was fine. They’ll remember the one time it glitched and ate all the backups so they had to tell the boss “can I have more time?”
And remember that Scrivener V1 for Windows doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it is fully functional.
I love scrivener, use it for everything. Would I like to see V3 right now? Sure. Do I want to see it right now if it comes with a risk that it might eat my next novel? Heck no.
Give it time, and yeah, from the above post, this isn’t even in the top 10 stories of “the promised release was late.”
As if Scrivener is the only piece of software where we have to worry about “crunch time” and “losing far more than their newest achievement on World of Warcraft”. I work with a lot of complex software (way more complex than Scrivener) creating both 2D and 3D computer graphics. In the realm of 3D, I work both with 3D modeling packages and real-time 3D game engines. “Crunch time” is a way of life for me most of the time and the software I have to use is hardly bug free. The complexity of the software often seems to preclude that, despite the budgets allocated to the task and many having scores of people programming the software. It’s not the fact that Scrivener v3 has bugs, but that L&L can’t seem to get enough of a handle on them to bring the software to release.
I can be patient with buggy software. But these constant delays with the Windows version of Scrivener? Nope. I’m done waiting, to be frank. I’m a new face here on the forum, having only posted once before, if I remember correctly. But I’ve been using Scrivener v1 for many years now and have been checking in with L&L for quite a long time to see the progress of v3. I think being patient for a few years is more than enough, don’t you? As it is, I am going to stick with using v1. As others have pointed out, it’s capable. I’ve also been checking out other pieces of software as there are quite a few more on the market these days (more than there was back when I had originally purchased Scrivener back in 2013). What this means is that L&L most likely won’t get another dime from me.
Like the original poster, I’m about out of patience myself.
I presume everyone in this this thread is a writer.
Are any of you the kind of writer who would give George R. R. Martin crap about getting the next book in the SoIaF series out, or do you understand (because you’re a writer) that sometimes it takes a lot more time than you initially estimated going into a project to get that project to where it needs to be?
If you are that kind of writer who thinks (as Neil Gaiman famously said) that Mr. Martin is your b***h, then you’re a lousy person and you need to go find Gaiman’s essay on the topic and study it and find out why you’re a lousy person and then do better.
If you aren’t that kind of person, then why in the world do you not extend the same professional courtesy to the software engineers who are working on Scrivener for Windows??
I have stayed away from these threads which contain little information and a lot of noise of the “you’re horrid”, “no I’m not” variety. This time I thought I would make one personal observation.
I switched to the beta of Scrivener 3 for Windows on July 15, 2018, when the version was 2.9.6. I have used it exclusively since that date.
I have used it every single day since then to write my daily online photodiary (at owenkelly.net if you wish to verify this) and an average of two medium to long articles per week. I have also written six large grant applications, a number of academic essays, the structure of my next book, the outline and structure of a detective novel, a collection of song lyrics, and the texts for several other websites, including the one where I publish a podcast every two weeks.
In all this time I have had no problems, except occasionally with compiling in the beginning - and they have now gone away. If everyone used Scrivener the way I use it then version 3 could have been released in the summer of 2018! Unfortunately for the developers it appears that other people insist on having different requirements from me, and it seems that meeting all these requirements takes time to code and test.
I have spent the last sixteen months working constructively on a daily basis, and I am thankful every day for Scrivener 3 - which I find an immense improvement on version 1.
I have therefore decided that I should also give you my own personal date.
If the final version of Scrivener 3 is not released by December 31 2019, ready for me to purchase, then I will carry on using the latest version as though nothing had happened. Furthermore I will carry on paying L&L nothing at all until they ask me for money.
And that’s a promise.
Well Said +1 on your sentiment 
Hear! Hear!
The only one you’ll harm by fulfilling this promise is yourself.
I’m genuinely baffled by this. It’s not like they were selling version 3 licenses, and you’re sitting there with no writing software, fed up with having paid up front and gotten nothing. It’s the opposite; you have a stable release to write with, or you can download the beta for free.
If you’re willing to use software that’s released based on a calendar rather than a state of usability, then you have everything you’re asking for minus the cost. The updater works every time the expiration date arrives for me, so installing them is super simple if you check for updates before that date. If they released an official version 3.0 today, the updates would be coming as frequently (maybe more frequently) while they continued to work through bugs, so even that’s no different from what you’d experience if you got what you’re asking for.
Would you be this upset if they’d kept the beta secret until now?
The beta is available for download whenever you like.
Stamping “Windows Scrivener 3.0” on the current beta, releasing it, and charging money for it will have ZERO impact on the quality of the code.
So people who are “out of patience” are demanding that they be given the opportunity to pay for code that our developers believe is not yet ready.
What could possibly go wrong?
How will these people react if, come January 15, they have gotten their wish, paid their money … and encounter a critical piece of missing functionality, or a showstopper bug, or something else that demonstrates that yes, in fact, it really was beta quality code?
Probably not with outpourings of delight and appreciation.
When Windows Scrivener 3.0 is ready to release, we will release it.
Katherine
I actually look forward to reading your responses on these threads. You show a level of patience that I really really really need to achieve. Thank you.
Aw, shucks. 
Katherine
I, for one, am happier to see this attitude from Literature & Latte than the usual software industry “Let’s sell the beta…” mentality.
Ain’t nobody got no reason to be bitchin’, in my book–They’re not releasing anything before its time, and they’ve not collected a dime in revenue during development. If it takes ten years to get 3.0, so be it. It’s not like they’ve broken any real contractual promises, which most software companies do all the time, by releasing software that’s really not ready for a production environment.
I think all of you folks complaining about 3.0 not being out yet need to relax. There’s nothing to complain about, because they’re taking their time to get it right. Now, if Literature & Latte had released a 3.0 that was “not quite done”, the way a lot of shady companies do, and you were losing work to bugs and crashes? Yeah, then you’d have a right to bitch. As it is, I think y’all ought to give the nice people some room, and relax. It’s not like you’ve paid for anything as of yet, now is it?
Seems to me that these days people do have a reasonable expectation to voice their opinion of praise or critisim, compliment or complaint of a company, especially when they provide a public fourm for their product.
I personally believe it’s pretty narrow minded and unreasonable to dismiss people who complain when they have had their expections set and then reset and set and reset and then finally told to expect nothing.
When you set a goal and you don’t meet it you end up hurting your reputation and your credability and when you do it repeatedly, you only make it worse. When you then leave vaccuum of real updates and don’t try to get a handle on the narrative it’s not really fair to expect people to change their behavior and act differently.
…and trying to dissuade people from complaing by insulting and dismissing them is only going to fan the flames and bring other people to the argument.
Characterizing L&L’s current stance as “told to expect nothing” is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst.
It has been shown over the course of the lifetime of Scrivener for Windows that people are going to complain no matter what L&L does because they feel entitled to something, no matter HOW L&L tries to set the expectations. No matter how carefully worded the blog post, no matter how many times they use terms like “estimated”, there is always a vocal minority who let slip with the raging entitlement and come in with toxic attacks.
We’ve put out almost a dozen updates since then, and have closed hundreds of tickets. The software is progressing very well, both internally and publicly. This “vacuum” you speak of seems to be largely rhetorical, care to explain what you mean by that? I can attest to one thing, this “get a handle on the narrative” isn’t something I’ve ever been a fan of. Sounds like politics and spin to me. I’d rather just get work done.
As to the rest, I’m not really sure who you are speaking about to be honest, but that doesn’t sound like a very productive or interesting line of conversation to me. Let’s talk about the software, and how that’s going on, not who is worse than whom (that goes nowhere good). Thank you.