Ulysses just started semi-public beta, so maybe they will really be able to come out with an official release at the end of January. This will give them at least a few months of advantage over Scrivener. I agree we have seen several postponed deadlines from Lit&Lat, but competition was not pushing so hard in the past. At the same time, I guess Lit&Lat has the advantage of a wider user base, that will mostly still be there when Scrivener for iOS is out.
The Soulmen have the great advantage of having rewritten their application, making it simpler to port. And making it simpler, they have probably also become more interesting for new writers, who should still choose their writing app. I wouldn’t dislike to wait still a little for Scrivener for iOS to appear, if this time is devoted to some ‘cleaning’ in the Mac Scrivener’s UI. But I doubt this will happen, at least not in the same radical way the Soulmen or Apple have redesigned their software.
In the meantime, I continue to enjoy Scrivener+Daedalus Touch for some of my writings!
Not wanting to wait for Ulysses or Scrivener iOS versions, I tried and finally bought Storyist Mac and Storyist iOS versions. They go wonderfully togheter: the sync is complete for folders (Manuscript, Characters, Settings and all) and images. It is what I would expect from the combination Scrivener Mac - iOS.
I would like to stress the concept that is really a great advantage to have an iPad version of a creative writing software, because an iPad is something that you can take with you everywhere and thus exploit every bit of time to write without complicated imports and syncs. I recently bought a McAir 11" and I put Scrivener immediately onboard, but I find easier to use my iPad because I have the 3G connection (while I need to do a phone tethering with my Air) and I can access web resorces at will.
P.S. Best wishes !(Merry Christmas and Happy New Year)
Well, I recently started using Scriv again. There are certain things that as a working journalist it does well. Yet, more than a few first drafts have been hammered on my iPhone on a simple markdown editor, waiting for council meetings to commence, or in between sessions.
I find Daedalus a tad weak. So Soulmen are about to release a new version of Ulysses, and one for the IPad. I guess I will have to give them a try. Storyist is ok for fiction. But as a working journalist I need something sturdier than that. Notebook and Onenote are also decent options.
Scriv has been the best, but only when working at home. And quite honestly I am tired of waiting. I just watched the video at the Soulmen, and if it works that well, it will likely be my choice.
I need to be able to work seamlessly. I know that my poor IPhone 4 will need a replacement soon…so them are the breaks. And yes, I replaced my IPad last year looking forwards to scrivener on it.
I’ve been using the Ulysses iPad beta for a couple of weeks now. Love it. Although not all desktop app features have been implemented (they will be for launch), the iPad version replicates the desktop experience almost completely. It syncs perfectly and instantly via iCloud.
It’s about simplicity, not complexity. Scrivener is an amazing and rich product, but it is also a complex one. The learning curve reflects that. But that complexity hinders rethinks of delivery and new platforms.
I find that Ulysses does 90 percent of what I used to use Scrivener for, and I’ve created alternatives for the other 10 percent. To my surprise but delight, I find the simplicity of Ulysses more conducive to my workflow in writing. The iPad app, in my two weeks of using it, perfectly ports that experience onto the iPad, and I’m giddy with delight.
I can appreciate the frustrations that Scrivener’s developers have had with their iPad app. In hindsight, reduction of features might have gotten the product out the door sooner. Last year I also suggested on this board that they crowdfund the iPad app, so as to have a financial runway to robustly develop. That was poo-pooed.
Anyway, if one seeks screen simplicity but with exceptional functionality available when needed (and out of the way until called upon), Ulysses III has delivered for me. Both desktop and iPad apps. I find that when I go back into Scrivener now, there’s too much screen clutter and too many widget-like distractions for my writing and thinking. A rethink of the UI (and UX) is a good idea for Scrivener.
Seriously, crowd-fund Scrivener a bit. You’ve got the user numbers and enthusiasm. As others have pointed out, several years of “updates” regarding an iPad app becomes a reason to seek alternatives.
The Soulmen recently tweeted that the official iOS release of Ulysses should be in the spring. I don’t think there will be an official release in January.
While we would of course love it it if all writers preferred Scrivener, if other software works better for you, you should use it. Ulysses is a fantastic piece of kit, and if you prefer its simplified UI, you should definitely go with that over Scrivener. There’ll be no hard feelings from us, because we like The Soulmen a lot. While Scrivener’s UI will be getting an overhaul this year, it will still be Scrivener and it is never going to be as simple as that of Ulysses because we don’t have any plans to strip back the feature set in the radical way that The Soulmen did with its own 3.0 version (although our iOS version is greatly simplified, of course).
SarsenLintel - the iOS version won’t support Handoff, unfortunately. We looked into it but currently Handoff won’t work well with Scrivener. It also won’t support iCloud out of the gate, as we chose to focus on Dropbox to begin with since we have to support cross-platform, but we’ll be looking at other sync solutions once we’re happy Dropbox is working smoothly post-1.0. The price is still planned to be in the $10-15 range, but this is subject to change.
As for the person suggesting crowd-funding, we rightly pooh-poohed that idea because our sales are very healthy and we most certainly do not need the money. Money has nothing to do with the length of the development process, except for the fact that we are not a multi-million pound company with dozens of programmers (which crowd-funding would not change, at least not ethically!).
Yes, (desktop) Scrivener’s complexity has contributed to the length of time it has taken to develop the iOS version (along with well-documented development hiccups along the way). Had Scrivener been a plain text editor without the structural features it has, we undoubtedly could have churned out an iOS version in six months. If people now prefer greatly simplified apps without all the features of Scrivener, then it may well be that I’m out of touch with what other people want, as I often look at such software and think, “Nice, but it doesn’t do what I need.” But I set out to create a program that does the things I want for my own writing, and that’s what I’ll continue to do. (Not that this means we don’t listen to users - we do, and a great many of Scrivener’s features and refinements have grown out of user feedback. All I mean is that I won’t turn Scrivener into something that isn’t what I want for my own writing, as that would defeat the object for me.) Maybe this will mean that we end up selling only to fellow out-of-touch writers, but hey, I never expected Scrivener to sell so well in the first place anyway. Fortunately, our sales don’t seem to be suffering - quite the opposite - so rumours of our death… etc.
I was just curious about Handoff because for work projects I’m not actually allowed to use any cloud services since I’m dealing with confidential patient info and such and they have rules about that (boy, do they have rules… )
I’ll have to keep my usb cable handy to do iTunes sync I guess.
Careful… Handoff doesn’t store data in the cloud, but it does require that both (all) of the devices involved be connected to iCloud. developer-tech.com/news/2014 … -possible/
Whether that puts Handoff off-limits for you would be a question for your company’s IT folks.
It is worth noting that any modern iDevice paired with a Mac (and I think PCs can do this to) will not require a USB cable to manage its data. If you enable WiFi syncing in your file management software (iTunes is fine, if the company doesn’t allow better tools to be installed), you need only have the device in proximity, on the same local WiFi network, in order to interact with it on your computer. It should be just as fast as Handoff theoretically would have been, though of course using a cable will be by far the fastest way to move things around.
From what I’ve gleaned, and I might be wrong, they don’t need Handoff. They’re doing their own sync service so Handoff won’t be required. It’s way too late in the game to switch to that, and I bet there are too many users who use machines that don’t support it.
Isn’t that because (at some later date) iOS Scrivener is supposed to work with both the Mac version and the Windows version. Handoff is an Apple product.
It’s not so much that we don’t need Handoff, just that Handoff is currently incompatible with Scrivener’s file format (although it is true that it wouldn’t work with our Windows customers too). Many of these new Apple technologies only work with programs that work with a moderate amount of data that can be stored in a single flat file, whereas Scrivener has to use a folder-based file in order to support the importing of many research files (and it also reduces the chances of all of your writing getting lost in the event of file corruption, since the work is distributed across separate files within the .scriv bundle).
We’re currently nearing the end of iOS development, by the way - very soon we’ll be doing lots of internal testing before starting full beta testing. Of course, everything takes longer than we expect…
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