My feedback

[spacehg]

I bought Scrivener because of all the rave reviews from some of my favorite fiction authors. I also bought "Writing a novel with Scrivener" by David Hewson. I was disappointed that whole features that's on the mac are not in the windows version, including those which would have been easy to implement (comments, etc.,).

I like Scrivener, but I wish that I would've known beforehand that the windows version lacks many of the features available in the mac versions. Paying the same price for less features kind of irks me.

[MimeticMouton]

Thank you for taking a look at Scrivener, though I'm sorry it didn't meet your expectations. The website goes over the features that are available for each version (and the 30-day trial allows you to see them firsthand), and we do not conceal the fact that the Windows version does not contain the full feature set of the Mac version yet, though it is well on its way and contains many more features than the 1.x Mac version did. (The Windows version is in fact priced at $40, the same as the original Mac version, rather than at the $45 price point set for the Mac 2.x version.) Lee, our Windows developer, is continuing to roll out features as he is able to add them, so much of what Mac users didn't get until 2.0 is making it into the 1.x updates for Windows. The goal of course is for the two platforms to reach parity and to develop forward from there, but as the Mac version has been around many years longer, this can't happen overnight. While it's easy to imagine that various features would be easy to implement, actually programming them is a bit more complicated.

I hope that as you spend more time getting to know the program, it clicks for you and you find yourself aided by the tools that are available rather than focussed on what isn't. The forums are always a great place to get ideas of how other users are working and using the flexibility of available features to meet different needs, so I definitely recommend reading and asking here if you have questions or want suggestions.

[emcollier]

Hi,

Don't think about what's not there, instead think about the features that are there. I didn't know there were any differences and if I did I still would've bought it.

I've tried all of the Windows writing software and Scrivener is the best one out there, imho.

I'm thankful there is a windows version at all

[NationWarrior]

You can check out the official list of differences between the Windows and Mac versions by clicking here.

Keep in mind that Scrivener was available for 2 years on the Mac before the first Windows version was released. That kind of development time gap is very difficult close especially since development for the Mac version continues on.

[xiamenese]

Keep in mind that Scrivener was available for 2 years on the Mac before the first Windows version was released. That kind of development time gap is very difficult close especially since development for the Mac version continues on.

Scrivener for Mac became commercial early in 2007, if I remember rightly, and had had a few years development before that. It moved into v 2 about a year before the first Windows betas were launched, so Windows 1 is apparently more like Mac v 1.5, the last version before the big change to v. 2. And as the Windows version is a completely separate development thread, not a porting, it takes time to write the code for each enhancement from scratch. Remember also, that Scrivener for Windows is the work of 1.5 people, not a whole team — Scrivener for Mac is developed by Keith on his own. So yes, there are features available in the Mac version which haven't yet made it into the Windows version, but they will come.

So the real question you should be asking yourself is, "Will the current Windows version, with its features as they are at the moment, enhance the process of drafting my WiP or not?" Don't agonise about what the Mac version has which the Windows version hasn't yet.

Mark