I agree with the OP regarding the price. I’m new to Scrivener and really like it so far. The price could be $100 or $150, it would not matter to me if this would equate a stable version 3 soon, and thereafter new releases without years of delay - with good bibliography management.
Charging more would do nothing to speed up development, and often the case, neither does throwing more developers at a problem.
While some have no issue paying $100 or more, I suspect the vast majority would find that sort of cost prohibitive.
Obviously not true. If it was true, then Microsoft would have only one developer employed.
Do I really need to point out the problems behind your logic?
So first of all, Microsoft is not developing one product. They are developing an armada of suites and programs and solutions to most of the world right now. Not the same scale.
On a program level, there is a cost associated to adding a programmer this late in the game. While yes it would be another productive person, he would have, at first, to acclimate to the code base, and that training could take precious resources from the barebone staff they already have. This late, it would be an hindrance more than a boon at first. His patches would have to be reviewed by the current staff each time he commits something after that.
Sometimes, throwing more money at a problem won’t fix it, and this is one of those cases. They are in the end stretch, squashing the bugs in the base they know. They just need time to get this right.
Someone doesn’t know much about either (a) software development or (b) computer history. IBM proved decades ago that throwing bodies at development projects (the IBM 360 system, to be precise) is no way to speed up development. Putting together a team is one thing…it’s easy for a focused team to be productive. To simply add people to speed things up doesn’t work.
It’s beta software. You knew this going in. The current version expiration date shows up every single time you open the software.
Every writer should know the most elusive thing in the world is an idea. When Scrivener failed to open, the first thing you should have done was not futzed with the software, but open Word, WordPad, Notepad, the voice notes app on your phone, or grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and written the idea down. The preservation of your work is the most important thing, not the tool used to create it. If you’re trying to make a living with this, you maybe shouldn’t be using beta software, and you maybe should have alternate means of doing work.
I’m truly sorry you lost what you wanted to add to your story. I know that pain. But the fault is entirely your, not the software’s, and not the development team’s.
Someone doesn’t know that a single anecdote doesn’t equate a proof of a position, replied the former Project Owner. However, it is true that more coders will do little good if the team is poorly organized. Still, a larger budget would be an advantage, not only to hire more people, but also to hire better people. Saying the opposite is nonsense.
There have been many more examples other than the IBM one.
Your comment ‘better people’ is an insult to the current L&L team.
I don’t know if you are aware of the history of iOS Scrivener. L&L hired expert professional coders who could not come to grips with the specialized nature of Scrivener and turned out to be a waste of money. It fell to Keith who knows Scrivener inside out to learn iOS coding and do it himself. I might add he came up with an app so tightly coded it is smaller than many with less functionality (IMHO)
I find the attitudes of some of the writers on this site to be both fascinating and flabbergasting. I would assume that as purveyors of the written word, we’d all have a better appreciation and understanding of digital products, but maybe not.
Perhaps because I’m a professional author and have also been a professional programmer, it’s easier for me to empathize with both sides, but let me try and defuse some of this programming criticism by putting it into writing terms:
Imagine you’re writing the next War and Peace, the penultimate novel of your life. It’s so ambitious, that you decide to share early drafts with your fans, so that you can get feedback to help you reach the novel’s full potential. You’re a small writer, and depend on your royalties to feed your family, so the long writing period puts a lot of stress on your family. But your fans come to the rescue. They’re willing to give you feedback, in exchange for influencing your story and the opportunity to read in advance of the “ordinary reader.”
So you send the early drafts out, at no charge, in hopes of quality feedback, but instead, you get a ton of complaints about all your grammatical and spelling errors. Half the respondents are not even commenting on the “meat” of the story, just your silly typos. “But, it’s a rough draft!” you insist. “No sense correcting all the grammar until the main plot is complete.”
Still, your fans bitch and moan about the typos. You spend tons of time answering these complaints, rather than writing or correcting the plot. But now, your fans want special treatment over and above the chance to read your work early, even though you didn’t charge them for the privilege. Instead of appreciating this advance access, they start questioning your writing ability, the sloppiness of your prose. They get angry because you wasted their reading time with a less than perfect novel. They start questioning your abilities as a writer. They complain because you can’t email them updates as quickly as they would like.
Stressed with the deadline of your novel, you grow frustrated and bitter. After all, didn’t you offer the advance manuscript as a favor and privilege? At no cost? If your fans didn’t like it, they could always stiff you for the final novel price and go somewhere else. But they wouldn’t do that, you tell yourself. After all, you made yourself vulnerable and accessible by trusting them in the first place.
But over time, your confidence is shattered, your trust in your fans violated, and you start to ask yourself the question, “why did I even offer the rough draft to my fans? They don’t even seem to understand the concept of ‘rough draft.’” Then, finally, you release your life’s work, after wasting hundreds of hours responding to fans with ridiculous and petty requests, only to find out that they have moved on to another writer, who churns out cheap dime-store novels, at a rate of 3-4 per year.
Despondent, you wonder why you went to all that trouble in the first place. You step outside, take a deep breath of cold night air, sigh, and pull the trigger . . . .
This was a great metaphor right up until the end. Please do not trivialize the pain of suicide just to make a debate point – you don’t know how many people out here it has touched.
^^^^^
Could you maybe dial it down a bit? That was jarring to say the least, and hardly necessary to support your point. I appreciate your attempt to engender empathy toward the developers, but also have a care for those of us who may be a bit sensitive to death imagery on a technical support forum for software.
First of all, the links to the beta versions have already expired as of Sept 30. So they are useless. And I’m not using the beta because I want to experiment with it.
I MUST use the beta because the MAC versions are incompatible with older versions of the Windows versions.
I am collaborating with a Mac user on a writing project. With her upgrade I can no longer open files. The beta version was an easy way for her to continue using the newest Mac version while still being able to share our work.
So please, do not chastise me, please point me to an updated beta with an expiration date that’s not in the past tense.
Thanks for your continued hard work on an excellent product.
If your Mac user is using Scrivener 3, they can export the project in v2 format, which is compatible with Scrivener for Windows 1.9. It’s one extra step for them,but it keeps things working between the released versions of Scrivener.
Having said that, this thread always contains the link to the most current version of the beta:
The download links are near the top of the top-most post in the thread and contain the version number and 32/64-bitness.
I can be a big a-hole at times, so… #NoSympathy
This is a BETA, it’s labeled a BETA, the purpose is specifically for users who wish to, to use a buggy product and provide feedback on the bugs so the developers can more quickly rectify them.
It is NOT for production use, if you are using it that way, you are 100% in the wrong, so again #NoSympathy,
Stick to the release version if you aren’t willing to risk the loss of work, time, loved ones, space monkeys, whatever - it’s a BETA version, and honestly, whining about an expiration date on a public BETA (aka the norm for decades across all software) makes me wonder if you’ve even purchased a license at all.
Also, seriously, Click Community, Click Forums, Click Beta Testing (Windows), look at the big stickied post with the latest release of the BETA, and click it - walah! The newest BETA.
How could you miss this? Each time you open the Beta it gives you the expiration date? You have to acknowledge it each and every time to use the software?
Um… 1.9 is not a Beta. But it ‘does’ have a 30 trial period when you download it and then open it each time with a countdown of how long is left. Of course if you purchased it you should have received a license key to input in your e-mail. You ‘have’ to click on that as well telling you how long is left before it opens.
Sorry no sympathy there. Doesn’t matter which one you download. All files open with either one.
Nobody ever said to use it for Critical Work. It’s beta. It has flaws, its not meant for critical work. We are ‘testing’ it. Some that are doing so know that it can fail and make appropriate backups. It’s even stated when you ‘read’ the notes.
Welcome to the forums, obviously you’ve never bothered to be here. Read what’s going on or … whatever.
Really? Where did you pay for the Beta? None of us have. Now you paid for the public released version. Hence why there’s a ‘forced’ cutoff date so as to ‘not’ have input from ‘older’ version that people ‘wouldn’t’ update but complain about possibly fixed bugs. Hence the name Beta and Beta Testers. Again welcome to the forum, there’s lots and lots of info here you might want to read. If you can spare the time.
Know what a door is? Or do you need help? By the way again, you ‘didn’t’ purchase a copy of the Beta.
Can’t answer that for fear of being sued by Disney for infringement rights over their character. You of course said you paid for a copy. You have 1.9.14 right? Use it. It should be in your carpentry box where you left it. If it asks you for your License Key check your e-mail that you provided when you purchased it, else guess what…
@Bridger Ignore the Scrivener fanboys who feel the need to get nasty and pile on for a week after the original post anytime anyone makes the slightest criticism of Scrivener or the way L&L runs its business.
I think you’ve probably gotten the point that you downloaded the wrong version if you meant to use the paid version. I have the beta installed but I am still using 1.9 myself for my work because I don’t want to deal with the hassles or potential problems of beta. Good luck.
@Liz, it’s not a matter of fanboys (love how quickly people descend to throwing that around when they get called out)
It most definitely a case of pointing out (mostly respectfully) that the issues were of the OP’s own making, definitely not as claimed any failing on the part of L&L and that threatening to go elsewhere is self defeating.
There are a number of very helpful posts in the list.
I guess more than a few people do get a little testy when new posters, in their very first post blast L&L for ‘issues’ that are of their own making, demand changes, insist L&L don’t know what they are doing, (get more developers, not enough, current ones are incompetent, demand consequences). Guess we should learn to just shrug our shoulders and think ‘another one’.
@Liz
Fanboy = Adult who reads release notes, understands what free beta means, and is an adult.
No project is perfect. Everyone is smarter in critical hindsight. Complaining about reality doesn’t fix it.
But complaining because you can’t do a simple thing like download the software twice from the same location is… ya that.