Poking at Ulysses’ new “Projects” feature. This is a pretty direct shot across the bow at Scrivener.

@chipotle L&L can’t release a new version every 3 years and expect us to stand by while apps like Ulysses, iA Writer, and others steam ahead with new features on a regular basis. Sad to say I’ve kind of given up on Scrivener.

@hcmarks @chipotle Is there any way to have the more complex sheet control and novel writing options of Ulysses, in iA Writer? There are content blocks, but it’s not the same.

@hcmarks @chipotle I’m one of the, seemingly, few that has no issue whatsoever with paying a subscription. I’ve made a decision to go ‘all in’ with Ulysses from now on having used Scrivener for six months or so.

@hcmarks I've been bemused by how slow the development of Scrivener—and Scapple—seems to be. I know they're a very small team, but that's true for many considerably faster indie developers out there (including Ulysses).

@BenSouthwood @hcmarks @chipotle @pimoore I feel a little sadness because I used scrivener to write my thesis to help me graduate almost 10 years ago and it hasn't really changed since then. Also, you can get Ulysses with a setapp subscription.

@mandaris @chipotle @hcmarks @pimoore I’ll be honest and say I moved to Scrivener because of ‘peer pressure’ (of sorts) that if you want to write a book, you really should use Scrivener. It’s undoubtedly great at what it does, but I’m not a fan of Dropbox and find the L&L forum a smug and unfriendly place. Ulysses users always seem so cool in comparison.

@BenSouthwood @mandaris @chipotle @hcmarks The Dropbox sync is a real sore spot for Scrivener, along with the half-assed iPad version. I agree about the forums too, I’ve seen devs and staff members giving snarky replies on there. And to say the development pace is glacial would be an understatement, unfortunately, even the Windows version took far longer than it ever should have.

It’s too bad really, as it’s such a capable app that avoids being locked into a subscription like Ulysses. However if there’s no forward progress with the app, is that really better?

@BenSouthwood I’m not bothered by the subscription model either, really; I understand why some people are, but I also understand why recurring revenue is a great thing for developers, and if they’re making steady updates like Ulysses does, I feel like they’re keeping their end of the implicit bargain.

@pimoore @BenSouthwood @mandaris @chipotle When compared to the desktop version, I can see how it would look half-assed, but on it's own, it gets the job done. But the sync is atrocious and never works right. it's so bizarre that it can't just keep things in sync automatically without having to do a whole ritual to make sure there are no conflicts or corrupted files.

At least with the subscription, I know Ulysses will have funding to keep going.

@pimoore Unfortunately, I don’t think so; that’s part of why I moved from iA Writer to Ulysses (although I brought the “iA Writer Duo” font with me). I got a little frustrated at seeing the Windows version of iA Writer get outline features the macOS/iOS one still doesn’t have years later, and while I think iA Writer’s style check is clever, it’s not as good for me as Ulysses’s revision mode.

@hcmarks @bensouthwood @mandaris @chipotle I give the Ulysses team credit, they’re much more active than L&L for the subscription cost, and you can tell they’re passionate about the app. I reread Matt Gemmell’s write ups about Ulysses and it quickly reminded me the power it offers. Even Pages doesn’t have that much flexibility, and it’s drastically better than it used to be. If iA Writer offered the long form tools that Ulysses has, this might be a different conversation, but even it is nowhere near the latter.

@hcmarks I think the thing I like the most is that Ulysses is the same on every device without having to do anything. I have to admit I haven’t had any massive issues with the Dropbox sync, but regular conflict messages and suchlike cause no end of anxiety.

@BenSouthwood Agreed. One of those few "it just works" apps. And they're just static files, so I can open them in iA Writer or Obsidian without having to export them first, or convert them in some way.

@hcmarks @bensouthwood @chipotle This whole conversation in tandem with Matt’s posts have made me once again appreciate everything Ulysses brings to the table, and I’ll be keeping the sub. The app gets full and complete attention and feature parity on the iPad, and plaintext is best text. At this point, I don’t see how reinventing the wheel to use something else is helpful, when it just distracts from writing — in an app that has already addressed what writers need, including novel length prose.

Thanks for a great eye opening conversation, gents!

@pimoore @BenSouthwood @chipotle I'm about 16k words into a new novel, which I ported out of Scrivener into Ulysses, and it's been fantastic. I can write on my phone, or iPad, or laptop without worrying about whether my stuff synced over, or fiddling with settings.

And I can use Freeform now to collect research on any device.

I may have to replace Scrivener with 2-3 other tools, but it's worth it if I know that those tools are going to work on everything everywhere without fail.

@hcmarks @bensouthwood @chipotle Freeform seems like the perfect tool for research, as well as planning plot lines, characters, you name it. I’m really excited to see where Apple takes it going forward.

@hcmarks @pimoore @chipotle I really need to look at Freeform. How easy was it to export from Scrivener to Ulysses?

@pimoore Same here. I feel a bit daft for ‘abandoning’ it when it did nothing wrong in the first place.

@BenSouthwood Surprisingly easy. I think I used one of Matt's articles to do it. There was some formatting finagling to do (like adding line breaks between paragraphs), but otherwise a pretty clean migration.

@hcmarks Thank you, I’ll give it a go.