Hi Marcus,
Thanks for your post. I e-mailed Max a long-ish message earlier to ensure there were no bad feelings in case he was referring to me. 
I’m really sorry you’ve experienced some bashing from users of other apps, especially if anyone has used Scrivener to bash Ulysses. (On the other hand, I’ve never seen a bad review of Ulysses, which says something.) There is certainly a minority of would-be-users who will try to tell you what you need to put in your app and who don’t like “no” as an answer, who will argue and get frustrated and even slightly aggressive. (I had one tell me I had a s**t name because I didn’t like his ideas and replied in a tone similar to the one he took with me.) I’ve been lucky so far in that most users aren’t like this, and I’m slowly getting better at not taking it personally… Except that it’s hard not to take it personally, like you say, because of the amount of work and energy you put into creating something you believe in. (I think zikade got it right in comparing it to having your novel or story criticised by others. It’s painful; it hurts.) I’ve always found it curious how, as a general rule, shareware seems to be thought of as being open to user-driven features whereas no one (sane) would dream of trying to e-mail Microsoft or Adobe to tell them what to put in Word or Photoshop. I feel sure - in fact I know from seeing your forums that this must be true - that you must feel the same as me in that user suggestions are great as they give you something to think about and evaluate, putting your app in a new light. You might decide the feature doesn’t fit, or it might show you how you could make something different but related clearer or better. The trouble is when someone starts arguing and telling you that you are being stupid because you won’t implement their suggestion.
As for my following comment, please bear in mind that I’m an ignorant Brit with only one language: The comments about “arrogant” and so forth - I wonder if this is a German/English-speaking issue? I used to hang out on a forum whose user-base was equally split between German and English-speakers; I also had a couple of good German friends. It took me a while to realise that sometimes German translated into English could sound very matter-of-fact to the point of seeming abrupt. So it may just be a misinterpretation on the part of English speakers. Maybe. Of course, I may be wrong and it may just have been that my friends and those other forum users just thought I was an idiot.
Anyway. I just downloaded Ulysses 1.6, and it looks beautiful - good job. I hope you guys don’t feel too beaten down; I hope it’s just a side-effect of having worked your asses off recently to get this release out. And congratulations on the five years! I hope it becomes ten and twenty and more (though let’s not wish our lives away…). I said this to Max via e-mail, but I’ll say it again publicly here: I think your update model is admirable and I try to follow something similar myself. Not charging too soon for updates (five years, crikey!), keeping the version numbers to small point updates, and focussing on stability and refinement rather than on whizz-bang new features - I think these things make an application stand out. (I think the DevonThink guys are very good on this, too, as an aside.) Don’t let a few would-be-users who don’t “get” Ulysses upset you. I can only say from my own perspective that when I was nagging you about italics or structured folders, my persistence at the time was only because I was so enamoured of Ulysses, I so wanted it to work for me, that I was over-zealous. I wanted Ulysses be for me… But it wasn’t. (As you pointed out at the time - and I have used this phrase since to users asking for mindmaps or timelines in Scrivener - asking for such features was like asking Adobe for, say, an MP3 editor in PhotoShop.) So it may just be that the users having a go are only doing so because they want Ulysses to be for them, when you have always honestly declared - as is quite right of any honest developer talking about their app - that it cannot be for everybody.
That was longer than I meant it to be, so apologies for waffling on. I don’t think any Scrivener user who has visited the forums will be any doubt about how much I like Ulysses or about the influence it has had on Scrivener, so I’ll just say congrats again on 1.6 and the five year anniversary.
All the best,
Keith
P.S. Tripper - actually I think both Marcus and Max are writers too. I believe that they came to develop Ulysses in much the way I came to develop Scrivener - to address their own needs as writers. Todd Ransom did the same with Avenir/StoryMill. I think the fact that they all take different approaches shows how many different approaches to writing there are. I know for a fact that StoryMill users - and probably Ulysses users too - have criticised Scrivener for not being writer-friendly!
) and it’s still pretty fast on an old ibook g3.
