Hah! 
No, my mistake. I was referring to Microsoft, Apple and Google, not L&L.
The point is that small software houses have written their own text engines, so I don’t believe company size is necessarily an impediment. Doesn’t mean you should or you need to, but it can be done.
Sure, that’s easy. LumaFusion is a pro video editing app that can play back 6 streams of 4k video on an iPad Pro. Apple can’t do that in Final Cut Pro on a beefy desktop Mac. Luma Fusion was built by some great coders who built their own video frameworks.
Apple’s APIs and frameworks are great conveniences and smooth the learning curve. Writing custom code and frameworks is a common practice in software development.
That’s a management problem, not an engineering problem.
If L&L couldn’t find an expert iOS coder for the money they were offering, they should raise the price. I’d pay much more than $20 for an iOS version of Scrivener with full feature parity with Scrivener OSX. Even more for a modern, intuitive iOS user interface.
That’s not required. You could still use Apple’s code where it works well. Custom code and frameworks are used to replace the functions in Apple’s code that are problematic.
Look at the iOS apps from OmniGroup. Sure they use Apple’s code, but they write a lot of custom stuff and their functionality is next level.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Scrivener’s design, and I applaud Keith for teaching himself how to program enough to build a thriving business. I think it’s wonderful that Apple’s frameworks helped him realize his idea in the world.
But the problems in implementing the design of Scrivener iOS (like scrivenings) cannot be solved by relying on Apple’s frameworks. Advanced problems require advanced solutions like writing purpose-built code.
Though your response is clearly snark, I’ll treat it as if there is a genuine question at its heart.
“Power” when speaking of computer applications is a metaphor. It is not a literal measurement of power output like horsepower. In physics, power is defined as Work divided by Time (P = W / t). As the amount of Work accomplished increases over a stable unit of time, the Power increases, and we would say it is more powerful.
The reason power is used as a metaphor when speaking about computer apps is that it refers to either how much work the app can do over a unit of time, or how much the app helps you get work done over a unit of time.
Because it’s a metaphor, this can lead to inconsistent and subjective comparisons in a way that doesn’t happen in physics.
For example, since LumaFusion can manage and manipulate huge amounts of complex audio and visual data, it can be said to be more powerful than Scrivener, which does not handle such a big data load. However, Scrivener’s design and workflows significantly aid the user in being more productive, so it can be said to be powerful from a different frame of reference.
I hope that clears it up for you.
You’d be surprised by my level of understanding of those thought processes and decisions.
BTW -I love Scrivener; I just wish L&L would step up to the next level and improve development.
It’s pretty easy to verify; it’s not a novel idea or a secret. Just read some interviews or papers coming out of WWDC and other developer conferences. When developers who make apps for iOS talk to other developers, they discuss the custom code they write. (They also talk about wishing that Apple would implement/fix things so they wouldn’t have to write so much custom code.)
It has a broad general use case. It’s poorly suited for something specialized, like screenplay formatting. This is why the major screenwriting app developers scratch-build their own text engines. (To be fair, they have a narrow use case, so their frameworks don’t have to cover as much functionality as Apple’s.)
Well, this is where development design and strategy play a crucial role. There are alternatives to using no Apple code or all Apple code. There are a lot of ways to design how an app works. Hypothetically, if the OmniGroup took over Scrivener’s development, I think you’d see different approaches to how it was coded.
But let’s not kid ourselves. We’re just having a fun little spirited internet convo. Nothing any of us says here is going to make any difference in the development plans of L&L.
I fully expect that Scrivener iOS will not have functional parity with OSX any time soon, and L&L will continue to blame Apple.
Well, your vote counts for exactly the same as mine – zero.
KB’s vision, design, and willingness to code are what matters.
It may continue to be called Scrivener, but if they made the kind of radical changes you’re suggesting, it would cease to be Scrivener.
See? We found something we agree upon.
The radical parts would be under the hood where the user wouldn’t see them.
If L&L somehow started developing Scrivener like the OmniGroup, I think it would be more like Scrivener.
It was a genuine question and your answer confirmed that it is basically a subjective assessment done by each individual who uses an app.
The thing that has surprised me the most in this thread (and a few others with similar discussions) is that people don’t see the apparent similarity between writing a book and writing an app. Both are creative processes, and both require that someone has the creative spark and also the means to create the book/app they envision. But a big difference is that readers seldom request that authors re-write their books with changes in the plot, whereas a lot of people in this forum seems to see it as a human right to have the app of their choice. And when L&L answer “no” and explain that there are technical limitations, people respond by saying “hire more people and fix this!”.
Do you think that is what Georg R.R Martin should have done when he ended up having difficulties writing the final part of his book series? Hired a group of authors? Should Patrick Rothfuss do the same?
Some creative works are the result of one persons genius, others are collective creations. Scrivener belongs to the first category, the Omni products to the second.
Sorry but an app is not like a book. If you would be comparing a game-app, I could follow, but Scrivener is productivity software, it is a TOOL, not something to be merely enjoyed but to be USED.
If a company makes a hammer, you also would see people saying: this design works better to let me do this job. Comparing valid feedback from users that use your TOOL, is different from fans being mad that their season didn’t end the way they imagined it. There is a different dynamic between a consumer enjoying a work of art and a user using a tool to make a living or to do creating himself. In both, feedback can be important, and in both it’s sometimes important to choose which feedback to ignore and which ones to listen to. But once a piece of art is done, it’s finished. With an productivity app, there are often changes and refinements to be made, depending on how the user base grows, how the market changes, how it is being used, etc. …
That doesn’t mean there is no creativity involved. I think there is a lot of intelligence, creativity and empathy involved in making an app.
BTW I also would pay a lot more for a full featured iOS app. I think the fact that we have so many limitations has to do with both technological limitations, resource limitations (L&L is a small company, with still I think a pretty niche public - hey, I’m doing my job talking to people about it whenever I can!) and other priorities or vision by the developer. I also have deep respect for Keith who still made one of the greatest and most flexible tools on the Mac that in my opinion no other app can touch in quite the same way.
And every day we learn more about iOS 13. I yesterday learned there will be different Background-Task APIs to let an app do stuff in the background that before this, it would do in the foreground. We have pinned files in Apple’s Files app that keeps stuff downloaded and automatically synched, which used to be a big limitation in how Scrivener iOS could theoretically work with iCloud Drive. (I did a test in another thread to prove this and got some feedback from the Scrivener team). There is the new Pencill and Markup api, that maybe (could be wrong) changes how Scrivener is able to work with PDF’s inside it’s app. L&L said in the past you couldn’t highlight a PDF inside Scrivener iOS because of the limitations in how Apple’s built in PDF viewer works on iOS, while it is possible in Mac. I’ll be curious to see how Scrivener iOS evolves (or not) with the pretty big changes Apple announced for iOS 13/iPadOS.
There are many similarities. A how-to book is also a tool.
Both are creative processes with a start and an end - the finished product. And in both cases it is an option for the creator to improve the product, or not.
My point was you (and all of us) have zero understanding of Keith’s though process and decisions, other than his oft stated point that Scrivener is the result of his desire for such a program that fits his view of what it should be (along with the best of customer suggestions that synch with his plans for Scrivener).
Telling him to be like some other company and use their development process is unlikely to achieve much (IMHO)
Keith didn’t intend to make a screenwriting app; he added screenwriting features because many customers begged him for them. That was a concession to his users, a departure from his single-minded personal vision.
There’s always a chance that he might decide to hire more developers who can solve Scrivener’s problems.
We can always hope.
We?
Since when did you become royal? 
Or do you claim to represent a majority of Scrivener users? On what ground? You definitely don’t represent my view on this.
I hope Keith does NOT clutter Scrivener with lots and lots of more and more special gadgets and whistles and whatever. MS Word 1.0 was a very handy word processor, but as time has gone by Microsoft has made it more and more difficult to use by adding so many different things that it gradually has become more difficult to find the few things you really want to use.
I have seen this in other apps as well. It starts with at brilliant idea, a very useful app, but then some users demand that something is added. Other users that other things are added, and the app creator wants to be helpful and start adding one thing after another. So one day new potential users can’t seem to find the basic stuff which in the beginning made the app successful, because the app has become too complicated. So they skip it and search for a less complicated app.
There is always a conflict between new and experienced users, and developers need new users to find the app and think “this is just what I’ve been searching for” and not to think “this seems like a very complicated app, I’d better search for something a bit simpler”.
Save for a few want-to-be-assertive voices on the forum, my experience offline and online is that far more people would side with the balanced views and reasonings expressed by popcornFlix than not; easily a ratio topping 100:1.
And all of the points made above and about Keith being a sole developer and and and and and … are all reasons why popcornFlix is right. But it seems the people making those points just don’t realise the implications of what they are saying.
Slàinte mhòr.
The thing is, those who don’t share his views don’t find them “balanced”. 
And if someone wants Scrivener IOS to become more powerful, like Scrivener on the Mac? Are you saying the Mac version has too many features? And if not, will Scrivener IOS be ‘ruined’ if it has the same features as the Mac version?
I am not saying it has to be feature parity one on one. I quite like the feature set of Scrivener IOS save for some things I am missing.
But every time someone counters one of your defenses you come up with a completely new argument. We can agree to disagree but I also think it’s all a valid discussion and most of the points made (by either party) are valid and respectful.