While on first blush it might not seem to be an indicator of existing customer satisfaction, you need to bear in mind that we do no advertising beyond sponsoring NaNoWriMo each year and some other minor sponsorships and that the vast majority of those new users are coming to us through word of mouth from existing users. We have over 20,000 followers on Twitter, over 20,000 on Facebook (not enormous numbers, but larger than most comparable small software houses), and as many again signed up to our newsletter, all of which is growing daily and is populated by existing users that are incredibly nice and enthusiastic about Scrivener. We receive dozens of emails every day from happy customers. We are in constant touch with our user base and know our business very well. We also try to read the numerous blog posts that are posted daily about Scrivener and the various reviews on the Mac App Store and elsewhere (by existing customers). So with all due respect back at you, your anecdotal evidence is not at all what we are seeing.
So of course we know that a number of our users are impatient for our iOS version, but we would be serving them very poorly if our sole aim was to rush it to market, or just to “get it finished”. If we listened to everybody who told us our business would fail if we didn’t do such-and-such, there would be no business left. Also, my guess is that you wouldn’t be bothering to post here if you weren’t keen to get the iOS version in your hands - why would you care otherwise, after all? - so it doesn’t look as though you have abandoned Scrivener entirely.
We’re working hard to make the iOS version as great an app as possible (and I should be working on the sync code right now rather than on this post); in the meantime, users already have ways of working with existing iOS apps (external folder sync).
This list is a highly-useful way to find third-party utilities. It’s noteworthy that the best-selling Mac app is currently a a duplicate-file finder. It’s also disappointing that Apple doesn’t provide a builtin way to find that.
The most famous description of this phenomenon is the Brooks book “The Mythical Man-Month”. The Wikipedia article on that book is quite good: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
And a good craftsman learns to use what tools he/she has.
I certainly would like to use an iOS Scrivener, but have long since learned other ways to use my iPad and PC together.
In the initial stages I can use Evernote on my iPad to collect story ideas, but once I start to outline it’s time to use the PC version. I also use it for the bulk of my writing. I often have good intentions of writing bits of stories when I’m out and about doing other things, but the point is - I’m doing other things. I may jot down an idea or two but that’s it. I still need to sit down at my writing desk, with fresh coffee and some background music, and just write for 2-3 hours. Even more so for editing, initial stages are done in Scrivener, until I need to export to Word for Beta readers and copy and proof editing.
So - when this iPad app comes out some time in 2014, I’ll try it out, but may just stick with what I’m doing now.
I know I could get my post pulled for this, and I don’t mean to start a fight. I just think bad behavior deserves to be called out.
“patoot”, I find your posts insulting toward the employees of L&L. How can you claim to know their business or the best way to develop their software? They are making products we purchase, not providing for your god given rights. Their schedule and business practices deserve to be their own.
Within the last year they have put out a significant updates to Scrivener and Scapple, kept us more updated on the iOS version than many developers would, and have been very responsive to users on these forums. That’s more than I’ve seen from many small development houses.
While my workflow likely differs from yours, I enjoy the syncing feature in the Mac version that lets me use the iOS text editor of my choice to work on parts of my draft.
Keep up the good work, L&L. There are people who appreciate it.
Hi I’m new and this is my first post. I joined to learn more about Scrivener because I have decided to use it to seriously organize my writing because I am taking too much time trying to re-organize my notes. I tried Evernote and while that’s great for some people, I do not trust Evernote due to them being hacked awhile back. I no longer use them anymore. I know that no company is immune from these type of security issues so I won’t hold it against them.
I am posting in this thread to let you know that if you are developing this app, please take in consideration of customers who are currently using the default Notes app in iOS. I use the default notes app to write story notes. Will the iOS version of Scrivener easily let us transfer our notes from the Notes app to Scrivener and will anything we do in Scrivener be backed up whenever our iCloud Backup automatically backs up? I ask because iCloud automatically backs up once a day when the iPhone is in sleep mode and connected to Wi-Fi. This will also comes in handy for iTunes backups as well.
Also will you use iCloud to sync Scrivener across devices? Some apps do.
Do you have any examples of programs that can communicate with Notes? I have never seen that done before in any iOS software, so I’m wondering if it is even possible at all. What leads me to believe this is not possible is that there is no entry in the Privacy section of the Settings panel, like there is for Contacts, Photos and such.
This protocol was never designed with complex file formats in mind. It is a single document protocol, so syncing a project which may contain thousands of files is not possible. We will be supporting Dropbox in the iOS version, which has no such limitations.
No apps communicate with Notes. I forgot iCloud was that restrictive. I had stuff like Pages and even whatsapp (which also syncs with iCloud) in the back of my head. Doesn’t apply here at all.
Patoot’s quote above has actually prompted me to join this forum after reading it for so long now. I know she/he didn’t put it the best way, but his/her feedback actually reflects how my own scrivener usage has evolved.
I also appreciate KB’s defensive response. I don’t feel Patoot’s comments were meant to be how they seem to have been taken. The fact that we are all reading/commenting on scriveners forum should mean we really love and support it. But I’ve stopped using it (not b/c I want to), my work is now 98% on the iPad and my time and deadlines often mean I don’t get a chance to go back to scrivener (which is my loss). As a result I’ve not really worked within scrivener for nearly 12 months. I’ve also purchased scrapple, but haven’t really used it for the same reason.
The iPad has made me incredibly spoilt, as I can work where and when my ideas come into my head. This isn’t perhaps any developers fault if they haven’t got an iPad version, but is more about the success of the iPad as a replacement to all the notepads I had placed in my car, bedside table, tv room etc.
Love your product KB, I don’t think anyone meant to disrespect what you have created for us to use - we just want to use it more (which hopefully makes you feel you have created something special).
I thought that was why Apple redesigned the new iWork format? Ie. from large XML files to several small binary ones to help syncing via iCloud through delta updates?
I understand even if my statement is true that reworking the scrivener format would be a huge undertaking. And I vastly prefer Dropbox over iCloud.
Another important consideration is that iCloud is only available to a fraction of our users. Only Scrivener from the Mac App Store would be eligible to use iCloud (because iCloud can only be used by apps sold via the Mac App Store), so all of our Windows users and all of our Mac users who bought from us direct would not be able to use that form of sync anyway. Thus, it makes more sense for us to focus on syncing via services that are available to everyone, such as Dropbox.
Bah! Humbug! This “sense” you speak of does not exist!
Returning to the real world for a minute (which I find quite painful), I do see the wisdom of this direction from a support/business perspective. I’m wondering though it promoting DB as a sync solution is really a good idea though. It seems to me that there are more issues with DB as a sync than would be acceptable.
But then you are “reworking” things so those issues may go away and make me sound dumber than I really am (as if that were possible).
I am now returning to my own little world where we only exist as figments of vic-k’s imagination. the fact I’m more comfortable there should invalidate my entire post…
I think Dropbox makes sense, for the reasons given. One question, though, around encryption. Will we be able to integrate with something like TrueCrypt?
That wouldn’t really be possible to the best of my knowledge. iOS programs cannot just use the file system like Macs or PCs can, and so Dropbox doesn’t work the same way on them in that it monitors an ordinary folder for changes. Every program that has Dropbox support must manually write stuff using the special API for doing so, which is strictly controlled by Dropbox.
