Remember that it is possible to use a real keyboard with the iPad. Whether carrying an iPad with a real keyboard would represent a weight saving is another matter, of course.
If I have to carry around a separate keyboard then I may as well get a small laptop.
Precisely, the keyboard strikes me more as a “when I’m home” type thing for people who only own an iPad and no other computers. I doubt we’ll see too many of these in coffee shops.
Ah, never underestimate the pose-appeal of the Apple logo; there’s going to be plenty of these things in coffee shops; I just don’t think they’re going to see a lot of interest from writers. (And since it cannot print, this certainly rules it out as the ‘only computer you will need’ for many writers.)
I meant that only in the specific case of toting the dock around with the device. I have no doubt I’ll see iPads in coffee shops, I suspect that after the first month or two, however, seeing somebody sitting at a table with one of these things in a keyboard dock will be rare. It’s just too much clutter and mess where a laptop would do better. As a thing always sitting on your desk at home though—sure that makes all kinds of sense.
Another scenario that I don’t think will apply terribly often for me, but sounds very attractive when it does apply, is overnight or longer conference trips or similar. You take the iPod and physical keyboard away with you, and at this point there’s probably little advantage in terms of saving weight, and actual disadvantages in terms of functionality. But when you go out everyday, you leave the physical keyboard in the hotel room, giving some space and weight advantages. The rationale is that during conference sessions you’re not going to have time to write a chapter of a book, but you may well want to do that, or write up in long form the quick notes you took during the conference sessions, when you get back to the hotel.
I just saw a video of a US tech journalist running around 50-60 WPM with the on-screen keyboard. Whether you can keep that up, I don’t know. I tried one today and found it ungainly but I imagine it may just take time to adapt to it. Certainly wouldn’t want to write vast quantities with it but who knows maybe some will be able to do it.
Dave
I’m pretty surprised at how fast I can type on the on-screen keyboard. The problem is with “special” characters, such as quotes, apostrophes, or hyphens. Those are on another screen, which means that you get slowed down considerably if you have to type those a lot. That said, I’m going to try writing up the background for my next D&D character on this thing and see how I like it. If we start seeing a lot of things with TextExpander support, it’ll be even better.
(Written from my iPad.)
Unlike a laptop you don’t “have” to carry around the keyboard. You have the choice.
You can’t run an iPad without owning at a Mac or a PC. It’s a companion device that requires a computer with iTunes running and of course an iTunes account.
My thoughts on the whole
“Should Scrivener be on the iPad” come down to this. At this point the bifurcating the development of Scrivener onto two platforms (iPhone/iPad, Macintosh) is untenable due to finite resources. I’m of the belief that Scrivener in fact “should” be on the iPhone/iPad but that belief must be buttressed against the reality that software doesn’t write and test itself.
I’m no programmer (but I play one on TV 
) yet I realize that currently Apple’s software development tools do not allow for small Independent Software Vendors (ISV) L&L to easily reuse the code they’ve crafted for their Macintosh apps.
If Apple wants to maintain forward momentum we need to see a few things.
a. We need to see future versions of Xcode do much of the heavy lifting to port Mac apps to iPhone/iPad. Developers need to be able to reuse as much code as possible.
b. The iPhone/iPad need to continually add more and more Mac OS X software features without bloating the systems down.
c. Apple needs to make sure the middle ground (in this case web based tech) can be the tool in the middle that glues things together.
Apple just so happens to be showing a preview of Iphone/iPad OS 4.0 on Thursday and the key points to what out for will be the low level geeky stuff that will potentially make it easier for all developers contemplating delivering iPhone/iPad companions to their desktop/web apps.
Perhaps Scrivener 3.0 will launch on Mac and iPhone/iPad simultaneously. Don’t rule it out which each successive OS update developers get more “stuff” for free and I don’t see any abatement of that trend.
HM
Just a thought…
The iPad is, basically, all screen and almost no keyboard.
I have a gadget that is the other way round: all keyboard and almost no screen. It looks like this:
It’s the good old Alphasmart 3000. No wifi, no internet, no bookreading, no games… but the best keyboard in the world and a batterie life of 500 (five hundred) hours. Its coolness factor in cafés beats anything, if you define “coolness” by the amount of curious looks it provokes. And it’s the ultimate productivity tool - you can’t do anything else but writing, so you don’t do anything else.
In comparison, the iPad is just a toy. Although a beautiful one.
Hi,
I doubt the iPhone OS 4.0 will do anything like this. I do wonder if it will bring a rich text system, though - in fact I would be surprised if it doesn’t. That would open up the iPad to better text editing applications, although it wouldn’t make porting Scrivener any easier. Both the iPhone OS and Mac OS X use Cocoa, but Cocoa is a combination of the Foundation framework, which essentially comprises all of the underlying model (data) stuff, and the AppKit, which essentially comprises all the view layer stuff. The two platforms use the same Foundation framework (the underlying data structures) but a different AppKit (view layer). So if you were developing a program that mainly provided a novel data structure which was represented using some fairly standard, out-of-the-box views, provided the glue code wasn’t too complicated it would probably be fairly straightforward to port. The problem for programs such as Scrivener is that there is so much code done at the view layer. Not only does Scrivener rely on built-in components of the OS X AppKit that as yet have no counterpart on the iPhone OS (such as outline views and rich text - we’ll see what Apple say about that on Thursday), but it also provides many custom views, such as the corkboard, index card view, heavily modified outliners, and so on, which are built on top of OS X’s AppKit view layer. It’s not possible just to transfer these to the iPhone OS; they would need completely rewriting - and so would all the glue code. Of Scrivener’s 200,000 lines of code, only a tiny fraction could be reused.
I find the idea that Scrivener “should” be on the iPad interesting, as it is something that a number of users seem to feel. I’m interested in whether this is “should” from a subjective point of view (“Because I love Scrivener and want it on my iPad, dammit!”), which is fair enough and I totally understand that ( 
), or from a more objective point of view (“Because it makes commercial sense” / “Because there is demand” or whatever). If the latter, then I would ask, where else “should” Scrivener be? From a commercial point of view, if it came down to a choice, which would you develop for - the iPad or Windows? My point is just that if Scrivener “should” be on other platforms, then there is an awful lot more demand for a Windows version, and if I had to choose which platform I should try to get Scrivener onto next, it would be insane to choose the iPad over Windows if in both cases a complete rewrite would be needed anyway. The iPad would only be viable over Windows if I could port Scrivener to it really easily, which is not the case.
Of course, if on Thursday they announce that iPhone OS 4.0 can run Mac programs*, then I’m laughing.
All the best,
Keith
- Note: Sadly, that’s not going to happen.
From what I heard the only requirement was an activation procedure. I suppose if someone doesn’t live near an Apple store it might be more difficult, but this can be done right in the store, and once it is “activated” it need never be plugged into a computer again. Hopefully Apple drops their megalomaniac “activation” scheme, though. How is this supposed to be a device “for the rest of us” if it needs an expensive and complicated computer to even turn on.
Andreas, but that doesn’t Synch With Every Other Application In Existence!! It doesn’t hook up to The Cloud!!! How are we supposed to Use it?
My Alphasmart syncs indeed with Every Other Application In Existence - but only one-way. Too sad, there is always some little dark spot in even the most enlightened things…
Keith, doesn’t the iPad already support rich text? Granted, I’ve only had the chance to briefly scan over the intro SDK docs, but it mentions that one of the new features present in the iPad is Core Text. Also, Pages certainly has rich text, though this could be through the use of those dastardly private APIs.
See the thread “iPad as a writing/research tool”
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/ipad-as-a-writing-research-tool/7271/17
Where I’m reporting on the actual experience of working on an iPad for those purposes.
And I, too, conclude that Scrivener would be a huge hit on the iPad.
Which is available, via iTunes, to both Mac and PC users.
CoreText is the basis for a rich text system - it is not in itself a rich text system. You would have to create your own text system using CoreText, which would be nice if you had a year or two. We’ll see whether Apple announce a proper rich text in their iPhone OS 4.0 announcement today.
Not that that makes any difference. I only write programs I’m interested in using myself.
So, in case you missed it: there are no plans to bring Scrivener to the iPad. Even if Apple announce a fully-fledged text system and outliner for iPhone OS 4.0, there will still be no plans for an iPad version for the time being. And, just to reiterate: if I were going to go out of my way to bring Scrivener to another platform, to get someone to put all that work in with the limited resources we have available… it would be Windows. Scrivener would be a much bigger hit on Windows than it would be on the iPad. It would be insane to work on an iPad version when we have so many people clamouring for a Windows version, and that’s all there is to it - if it comes down to a choice, it’s pretty easy.
As for Pages… Yeah, they wrote their own text system that isn’t available to devs. And they are getting a lot of flak because Pages for the iPad wipes out your footnotes, endnotes, track changes, comments etc… Because the iPad is not a serious writing environment. But heck, even if some users use it that way, I have no plans to - so, for the last time, there will be no Scrivener for the iPad in the near future.
I hope that clarifies things.
To help answer future demands:
Should be added to the smilies of the board: This way, everybody can answer those suggestions and save Keith’s time…
Given that Keith has answered this question a million times - there will be NO Scrivener for iPad or iPhone no matter how much people moan – why are there people still asking this question? Do you honestly think he’s going to turn round one day and say… Oh yeah. All right. I’ll pack in everything else and spend the next year doing it?
Wouldn’t you rather he worked on V2 of the very useful piece of software we have now instead of coming on here having to repeat himself?
I would. You’re too polite Keith. The correct answer to all these questions is… shut up and let me get on with my real work.