I just migrated from Scrivener 3 on Mac to Scrivener on Windows. Needless to say, I was suprised by the horrid appearance of Scrivener on Windows. I also downloaded a beta of Scrivener 3, and found its userface to be amazing. When will Scrivener 3 for Windows be released? PLEASE make it soon - I rely on Scrivener for all my writing!
Here’s an old post I found for you Max. This is a post by Keith ( Boss) in response to a Mac user’s request for a release date for Mac Scriv 3. Note the date…
"WED SEP 21, 2016 5:23 PM POST
Hmm, a few words, let’s see… How about “writing”, “tutorial” and “now”? 
We’ll have news soonish. The hard part is going to be letting our Windows users down gently. The macOS update is likely to be a good six months ahead of the Windows one (like an inverse Microsoft), but our Windows developers are working on a 3.0 to match the macOS version (in case any Windows users happen along here)…"
Six months, well it has been nearly ten, but the Windows Scriv3 is slowly getting there. Would have thought it will be awhile yet. Put it on your Christmas list ( not necessarily the upcoming one.)
I have Scrivener 3 for Mac but find myself migrating away from Mac and back toward Windows, thanks to the apparent lack of continuing development I’m seeing in Mac hardware (e.g. keyboards with too little tactile feedback, too few data ports, buggy OS features [esp. Time Machine], etc.). The reasons I switched from Windows PCs to Macs a few years ago (e.g. Windows 8, poor quality hardware, and rapid obsolescence) are quickly disappearing. Windows has gotten much better and as a touch-typist, I find keyboards on many Windows laptops, especially Lenovo Thinkpads, work better for me than those on my MacBooks, including my MacBook Pros. Since Windows computers represent perhaps 90% of the computer market, I’m sure there are many of us eagerly looking forward to Scrivener 3 for Windows. I will probably use both Windows and Mac for quite some time to come, so the ability to open the same file in either platform will be fantastic if and when that becomes possible.
Scrivener 3 on Mac does look nice, but I don’t think the Windows version looks all that terrible. It’s functional design, no?
I look forward to Scrivener 3 for Windows.
I understand that the development may take a long time but I still find that the team should take a few minutes to communicate with its community.
Talking about the progress or proposing a release date would be nice for them.
I hope to see a communication on this soon.
Hi 7Z7,
I don’t work for L&L, but if I were you I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high that they will be sharing a proposed release date for Win V3.
L&L formally announced the Mac V3 release date only a few days or so before they released it, and I would expect a similar approach for Win V3.
The current beta expires mid Dec, so unless you are of the opinion they would release a major upgrade around the holidays at year end, than I wouldn’t expect to see it until next year. 8)
Jim
ETA: Of course, I would love it if L&L proved my prediction above to be wrong. 
Maybe Santa’s little helpers have a surprise in that bag of toys?
Our policy is not to announce release dates, due to some bad experiences in the past where announced dates were not met and customer outrage ensued.
The public beta and associated notes are the best indication of the current state of development that we could give.
In past years, customer support has closed over the Christmas/New Year holidays, so I would imagine that a release in that time frame is unlikely.
Katherine
If the current beta ends in mid-December, it seems impossible to me that WinV3 will be released in 2018, especially if Customer Service is on holiday at that time.
I understand that they don’t want to announce a date so as not to disappoint, but now they’re going to disappoint some of the customers by not releasing the V3 for 2018 as announced from the beginning, so they might as well get wet again. :mrgreen:
We will take our time, I hope for the first quarter of 2019.
Of course, not announcing a release date also means there’s no particular incentive to bring it out in a timely fashion, either. Mac users have been enjoying all the spiffiness of V3 for damn near a year. Windows users keep getting fobbed off with “some day” and now an acknowledgement that it won’t be out in 2018 at all. So much for Mac/Windows parity. I’m not holding my breath for a 2019 release, either. L&L will probably be too busy making updates to the Mac version.
Count me among the disappointed. And before anyone suggests it, no, I do not want to use the beta. I’m holding out for the real thing, though with less and less hope that I’ll ever see it.
As I understand it, there are two different development teams, one for Mac and one for Windows. So, the Windows programmers cannot be pulled off to work on Mac Updates.
This is true, unless you think they might want the best product and the happiest clients possible. If you ever owned a business, then you’d know that delivering a really good product and having happy clients is a very big incentive. It is why you are in business.
You do understand don’t you, that they are paying these Windows programmers, and have gone through 8 or 9 Beta versions and made no money from it. They won’t make any money on all that programmer cost until they release it.
So, obviously, they want it to come out as soon as possible, but not so soon it causes problems, or complaints about features not working or data being lost.
You can count on them getting it done as soon as they can so instead of spending money and getting no income, and having complaining clients, they make money and have happy clients. The worry is that they will do what many companies do and release it before it is really ready and sell it and get some money while their clients pay to be beta testers.
Look at the list of beta fixes with each new beta version, and it is obvious they are working very hard and trying to get it right.
Or vice versa. The two platforms are sufficiently different that the two development teams are essentially independent of each other.
Katherine
Well, other than having a product to sell.
Katherine
Unless your clients literally die waiting. 
It’s been proved not once that it’s better to release an innovative product and then iron out the inevitable bugs, than spend years ironing out the bugs and lose the clients. Especially if releasing means money, With which you can strengthen the team and do work more quickly.
I’d say, the only reasons L&L has not been hurt by this is that the product is very niche and basically they have no competition. Clients have nowhere to go.
Not to say that current version is bad, of course. It’s quite good and fits most needs. I’ve used it for years with great pleasure, and would continue if I could.
Sadly, I won’t be upgrading this time. I have to move away from Scrivener not because of lack of v.3, but because of lack of cross-platform solution. My usage of Linux has been growing exponentially during this year (and will continue), and not having compatibility halts the writing process. So I’m moving to markdown editor, which will allow me versatility I’ve never had before juggling between Fedora, Android and Windows, Of course, it’s not quite the same, but then, writing is not about bells and whistles.
I wish the Windows development team all the best and am sure they will deliver a great product. Hopefully before the users start dying of old age.
By the way, could anyone using beta post some UI screenshots? I’d like to have a look.
The people behind the Manuscripts app tried to do exactly that back in 2014. It was to be a writing app dedicated to scientific writing and fully integrated with Papers 3 reference app. They released an early beta version for free but vey early decided to start selling the beta as version 1 although it was still a very buggy beta. Users became increasingly frustrated because of all the bugs and complained in the user forum, which after some time made the developers close down the user forum. The developers finally had to give up and realized in 2017 that they weren’t gonna make it. So they decided that the app should be an open source project instead and said they were gonna reveal the code in 2018, which by the way hasn’t happened yet. But the app is still out there, for free, if you want to test a different kind of writing app.
Didn’t say anything about early beta. Something that has been worked on for a year can only be an early beta if no work has been done whatsoever. Which is obviously not the case here.
Besides, steveshank was talking about “a really good product”, which implies strive for perfection. That is a good thing per se, but you see how long Windows users have been complaining. Have people had this new release, even if a bit buggy in some scenarios, they would have had an ability to roll back to the previous version and wait further. I think there would’ve been more understanding. Otherwise people feel neglected compared to other users. I don’t think this makes for happy customers.
There are lots of apps for Windows and Android that are not available for Mac or iOS, but that doesn’t make me feel neglected. Personally I actually think this kind of complaining is a bit childish. If Scrivener 3 is so important for you, there is a simple solution. Buy a Mac! If running Windows is more important than running Scrivener 3, stay with Windows and Scrivener 1.9!
Life isn’t fair or juste, it only is what it is.
I’m not sure I understand the complaint here. The public beta is available for download now. That is exactly the code you would get if we released the program today, except that it’s free, and admits that it is beta-quality code.
If you don’t want to use beta code, that’s fine, but it doesn’t really make sense to argue that we should release the software now while simultaneously refusing to use the code that we have released.
Katherine
Yes, I love Scrivener and I don’t want to dump it, especially since there isn’t anything else that’s comparable.
But it is frustrating to wait and wait and wait for the promised parity with Mac and, after a year, be told there’s still no plan to actually release v3.
I’m sure the Mac developers haven’t been sitting on their hands this past year waiting for Windows to catch up. So, will Windows v3 be released before Mac v3.1? I doubt it.
But, hey, we can always use the perpetual beta. 
Or buy a Mac. 
There are competitors and thus alternatives for those who are discontended with Scrivener 1.9 and don’t want to use the beta: